White Water West Slidewinders

[Stu]

I’m a huge fan of the White Water West Slidewinder toboggan flume rides, I’d really love to try one, the one at Dollywood continuously wins “best non coaster attraction” awards on these internet polls, so surely a lot of parks are missing out on a cracking ride?

As far as I know they’ve only ever built two, Wilderness Waterboggan at Silver Dollar City and Mountain Slidewinder at Dollywood

I know the Dollywood ride opened in 1987, so they’ve been building them for a while and certainly had them on offer when the many parks here in the UK purchased water coasters from them!

mountain slidewinder:


Recently the silver dollar city ride has been re-tubed and had the ending changed from a single drop to a bumpy drop, as well as a name change to WaterWorks Waterboggan

before:


after:


I wonder if WWW did the re-tubing, they took the slidewinder product off their website a couple of years back, I really hope they still sell this ride though as it does look truly fantastic

Would you like to see some of these in the UK? Which parks do you think would suit this ride?

[Graeme]

I'm all for WhiteWater West rides - I'd buy up their entire range of theme park rides if I had one - but I've always been confused about the Slidewinders. I wonder why they aren't on their website. Perhaps there's some subtle way in which they're technically "old fashioned"?

I've never known how they are different from the water coasters, apart from the turns. Of course, the water coasters that race don't have turns, whereas the ones that have turns don't race, so yes, there's one difference!

But I love water coasters, so the more the merrier!

[Stu]

The slidewinder’s don’t use the inflatable dinghies like the water coasters, they use fibreglass (I guess?) toboggans that can seat 4/5 people

you can see them in this photo / link:
www.lonestarthrills.com/gallery/Silver-Dollar-City-General-Photos/sdc_waterboggan004

hope that helps : )