When Green Lantern Coaster opened at Warner Bros. Movie World on Australia’s Gold Coast just before Christmas 2011, it instantly gave the Southern Hemisphere its most extreme drop. The DC Comics-themed machine tips riders over a 120.5-degree beyond-vertical plunge — at the time the second-steepest coaster drop on the planet, and still the steepest in Australia today.
Key Stats
| Height | 108 ft (33 m) |
| Drop angle | 120.5° beyond vertical |
| Speed | 41 mph (66 km/h) |
| Length | 1,601 ft (488 m) |
| Inversions | 2 |
| Max g-force | 3.5 g |
| Duration | About 1:07 |
| Manufacturer / model | S&S – Sansei Technologies El Loco |
| Opened | December 23, 2011 (previews from December 16) |
An El Loco built for a superhero
Green Lantern Coaster is an S&S El Loco — a compact American-designed model whose whole reason for existing is doing crazy things with a small footprint. Movie World’s version wears the hero’s colors head to toe: glowing green track twisting through jet-black supports, with a giant Green Lantern ring worked into the structure. Four-seat cars climb an open lift hill, then hang over the edge before diving 120.5 degrees — so far past vertical that riders are briefly tucked under the track, staring back the way they came.
At opening that angle trailed only Takabisha in Japan on the world steepest-drops list, and no coaster in the Southern Hemisphere has out-steeped it since. The layout that follows crams two inversions, sharp banked turns and an outward-banked hill into 1,601 feet of track, pulling up to 3.5 g at a top speed of 41 mph — modest numbers on paper that ride far bigger thanks to the El Loco’s wild geometry.
A decade of thrills on the Gold Coast
The coaster debuted on December 23, 2011 after a week of previews, arriving alongside the mall of DC theming that defines Movie World’s thrill lineup. It has become one of the park’s signature silhouettes, its lime-green humps visible from the theme park strip on Entertainment Road. For international coaster travelers it is a bucket-list tick: of the handful of true beyond-120-degree drops in the world, this is the only one south of the equator.
FAQ
How steep is Green Lantern Coaster?
The first drop is angled at 120.5 degrees — 30.5 degrees beyond straight down. Only a few coasters on Earth drop steeper; see the steepest roller coaster drops in the world.
How tall and fast is Green Lantern Coaster?
It stands 33 meters (108 feet) tall and reaches 66 km/h (41 mph) over 488 meters (1,601 feet) of track, with two inversions and forces up to 3.5 g.
When did Green Lantern Coaster open?
It soft-opened on December 16, 2011 and officially opened December 23, 2011 at Warner Bros. Movie World on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.
Photo: Holiday Point via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
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