Batman & Robin: The Chiller

The Batman track was 1,229 feet long, while Robin's length was only 1,137 feet.  Both tracks had Linear Induction Motors (LIM) to launch trains out of the station.  Powered by electricity, the LIMs had enough power to accelerate the cars from a standstill to about 65 miles per hour in four seconds.  A second set of LIM magnets raised the trains on the 200-foot-tall 45° inclines shown on the right side of the picture.  This lifted the trains and provided them with enough potential energy that they could make it backward through the course. (This system failed on several occasions and stranded trains at various points of the track.)  During its first five years, the ride operated with seven LIMs on each of the towers seen on the right, but several sets of LIMs were added and removed over the years as the park struggled to make this coaster work reliably.  At various times, only three or four LIMs were on each track.

In the few days the ride operated in its premier 1998 season, both trains were launched simultaneously.  Having two trains run at once provided an interesting dueling and racing element to the ride, but the power consumption of the electricity-hungry LIMs forced the park to only run one train at a time for the remainder of the ride's troubled lifetime.

This picture was taken in 2007, the only year it operated after the zero-g rolls were removed.  The two inversions were removed in order to try to fix the technological problems with keeping the ride operating.  Since the ride was closed when I visited the park, I can't tell you what it was like to ride it in this new configuration.  In fact, no one can say what the Batman side was like without the roll because it never reopened!  The Robin side ran for only two months without its final roll.  Both sides of the coaster were taken down at the end of 2007.

©2018 Joel A. Rogers.