An Austin TV station is reporting that COTAland will open one of its roller coasters for Formula 1 race attendees this weekend. The station posted a POV video of Circuit Breaker, the park's new Vekoma Tilt coaster that will open tomorrow.
The COTAland amusement park is part of the Circuit of the Americas racetrack in Austin, Texas, which is hosting the F1 United States Grand Prix this weekend.
This is the second Vekoma Tilt to open in the United States this year, following Siren's Curse, which opened at Cedar Point in June. You can read our review and see our POV for that coaster here: Cedar Point tilts the scales with new Siren's Curse.
COTAland is set to open next year, with the Gerstlauer Infinity coaster Palindrome to join Circuit Breaker.
Pleasantly surprised to see that they were able to get this one open in time for the race. Apparently they promised F1 the full park this year and are being fined millions for not delivering, so presumably having this will reduce that a bit. This one has always looked more interesting to me than Siren's Curse, so it will be interesting to hear from the lucky few who get to experience it this weekend how the ride stacks up.
And yes, that is a video from very early in testing. Drone footage from about a week ago shows completed buildings, completed pathways in the ride area, and grass under much of the layout. Most of the stuff beyond the ride's perimeter fence is still dirt, though, so it's very much riding a completed coaster in the middle of a construction site.
I thought it was interesting that you could see the coaster cycling DURING the race yesterday when they showed the wide shot of the start/finish line. However, I can't believe they were charging $25 per ride PLUS the cost of the ticket to be on site during the race weekend. I'm not sure if they're going to continue to operate the coaster as a 1-off after the race, or if it's going to sit SBNO until COTALand is officially open.
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Boy, I certainly hope that POV was filmed a few weeks ago, because if that's footage from the past few days, I can't believe that they're going to open this up to guests this weekend. That tilt track moved so slow, I can't believe that they're going to put actual guests on this in the state in which is looks like in this video.