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Kings Dominion
Doswell, VA
Cedar Fair Entertainment
 Park News - (1/4/2025) From the sound of things, Kings Dominion will be removing another major this winter. In addition to Anaconda, I’m now hearing that Berzerker, the park’s looping starship ride, will also be retired. I’m not surprised, as the Cedar Fair parks had been in the process of removing these attractions from their parks since before the pandemic, shutting down the H.M.B Endeavor at California’s Great America in 2017, Looping Starship at Valleyfair in 2019 and Southern Star at Carowinds in 2022.
Meanwhile the Six Flags parks had already shut down all their versions about 10-15 years prior, so the closure of Berserker at Kings Dominion also makes this Intamin made attraction officially extinct within the “western” world. According to Google searches, I can only find three still operating in the world, two in Japan (Nagashima Spa Land & Yomiuriland) and one in Malaysia (Sunway Lagoon).
(12/26/2024) According to a permit uncovered by KDFans, the park’s Anaconda roller coaster (Arrow) has given the last rides and will be demolished before the start of the 2025 season. The loss of Anaconda makes sense as it has long been the park’s most disappointing roller coaster, and given the age and low riders satisfaction numbers, it fits the bill that the new Six Flags management is using to seek out old rides to retire.
(10/26/2024) A fun POV video (see below) short from Kings Dominion flys through the wilderness to creepy up on the former Project 305 / Intimidator 305 coaster while playing Guns & Roses “Welcome to the Jungle”. In place as text, they simply put a series of animal emojis that clearly represent the attractions within the Jungle X-Pedition land: a monkey for Tumbili, a gator for Reptilian, a spider for Arachnidia, a green snake for Anaconda, an eagle for the upcoming Rapterra wing-coaster and then a big red question mark.
Since they are painting the coaster Orange and Black… the logical answer to the riddle of what’s orange & black, big and powerful, and missing from this collection of jungle animals? My money is on this coaster taking on a new Tiger themed persona to be announced sometime after the Halloween season is over.
This does lead me back to thinking about an old rumor from during the pandemic sent in way back in July 2022. At the time, the rumor was that the ‘then’ new Jungle X-Pedition would be expanded upon with a future phase or two, eventually adding a new flat ride or two (rumor then was grabbing the Berserker (a Bayun Kurve) from California’s Great America as a way to bring back the park’s lost Mt. Kilimanjaro attraction, but we also had a rumor claiming that the Backlot Stunt Coaster would eventually get rethemed to have new “jungle” appropriate theming, some all new effects, and trains rethemed to look like off-road jeeps instead of the faux Mini Cooper cars we have now.
Clearly the loss of the ‘Intimidator’ brand IP made transforming the park’s top coaster a new high-level priority to take care of first, so while I’m hoping we may still see Backlot undergo a transformation of its own in the future, what is going to stick out a little more in the meantime is Flight of Fear, with it’s Area 51 style top-secret hanger theme tucked away in the middle of Jungle X-Pedition. I can’t help but think that some kind of transformation plan has to be locked away in a file cabinet somewhere for that attraction too. If you include Flight of Fear and Backlot Stunt Coaster as part of the Jungle X-Pedition area, it will soon be home to 50% of the park’s 14 different roller coasters that will be offered in 2025, which is a bit of an amazing feat and drives home the importance making everything perfect within this area.
2025 - Rapterra, Pantherian, and 50th Anniversary Celebration - (12/23/2024) The next episode of the Rapterra Report from Kings Dominion has been posted to YouTube this week. The video contains some extensive footage of Rapterra making test launches and full test runs. Check it out below.
(12/1/2024) You can take a close up look at a train car for Kings Dominion’s upcoming Rapterra roller coaster below.
(11/21/2024) Awesome news from Kings Dominion, as the park has posted a video showing off the first flight of their new Rapterra wing coaster. Check it out below!
(11/20/2024) B&M was showing off one of the new cars for Kings Dominion’s new RAPTERRA Wing Coaster at IAAPA this week. Check it out below, as shot by our friends at Orlando Experience.
(10/30/2024) Kings Dominion has announced that the new name for the former Intimidator 305 / Project 305 roller coaster will be Pantherian. So… I was close… it’s themed to a big cat, but not a tiger as I was expecting. It’s a fun name, but to be honest one of the biggest criticisms I’ve heard on social media was that the new name just sounded a little too close to Pantheon down at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
(9/28/2024) Kings Dominion has posted a new construction update for Rapterra as they install the last piece of track. The video also takes us inside the Clermont Steel Fabricators facility for a behind the scenes look at just how they create all the classic B&M track used around the world! Based on the end of the video, the first section of a train has also arrived, so it wont be long before they can put them together and load them onto the track… probably just in time for the next construction update video from Kings Dominion.
(9/5/2024) Kings Dominion will celebrate the park’s 50th Anniversary in 2025.
The park will be hosting a number of new entertainment options, enhanced decor on International Street and the Eiffel Tower, a new night-time show, the return of the Clown Band, and as a special surprise the park’s famous Singing Mushrooms will perform “an all-new set list”.
Plus the premier of Rapterra, the iconic new B&M launched wing coaster!
(8/18/2024) An official construction report on Rapterra at Kings Dominion has been posted b y Kings Dominion. They say that about half of Rapterra’s track has already been installed.
(8/3/2024) Kings Dominion has finally confirmed their new for 2025 B&M Launched Wing Coaster will be named Rapterra. According to the story, Rapterra is themed after “the mighty Jungle Hawk”, where guests enter an ancient shrine once built to honor the beast. “People who entered the shrine became spiritually linked to—and temporarily possessed—the powers and abilities of the bird of prey.”
“Building the temple at the base of a volcano, Mt. Inferna, proved unfortunate. The ground surrounding the magma chamber collapsed, burying the Jungle Hawk temple under mounds of volcanic rock. The temple seemingly vanished from the earth.”
“Archaeologists recently discovered the volcanic site and unearthed the remains of the Jungle Hawk shrine. The bird’s ferocious spirit remains at the site, launching brave riders to exhilarating new heights. Rapterra: The world’s tallest and longest launched wing coaster.”
They’ve posted several different animated videos showing off their new creation which you can see below.
(7/27/2024) Construction on the new B&M Wing Coaster for 2025 is moving right along, and you can see a new batch of construction photos below that were posted to Facebook.
(7/19/2024) Kings Dominion has been posted a bunch of teaser about their upcoming new roller coaster project as of late, and now we also have an announcement date set of July 31st.
(7/11/2024) A construction video showing off the current progress of the yet-to-be-named launched wing coaster coming to Kings Dominion in 2025.
Another fun fact… according to a Tweet from KDFans, the internal project name for this new coaster was “Project Caldera”, which is a fun reference to the former Volcano: The Blast Coaster. For those wondering, a “Caldera” is the crater sometimes left behind after a large volcano erupts. Sometimes a large empty chamber is left under the volcano after all the magma has been ejected, which can then cause the structure of the now hollowed out volcano to collapse in upon itself, leaving behind a giant crater, or caldera. Over time, some of these calderas can fill up with water and turn into large lakes, such as the famous Crater Lake in Oregon.
While I doubt Kings Dominion has the budget, nor the space, to enclose their new roller coaster within a Caldera style crater of theming, it would be an interesting concept to see.
(6/30/2024) Construction on the B&M Wing Coaster at Kings Dominion is now under way. I believe the new launched coaster will be taking over some of the site formerly occupied by the former Volcano: The Blast Coaster and is expected to open for the 2025 season. No formal announcement regarding the name or theme of the new coaster has been made at this time.
(6/13/2024) The teaser walls have now gone up at Kings Dominion for 2025’s new launched B&M Wing Coaster. While the coaster has yet to be announced by the park, green track has already begun arriving at the park in storage lots, marked with the “WI” Wing Coaster design designation on the ends.
(3/29/2024) Site clearing is now under way at Kings Dominion for the park’s proposed 2025 new addition, which is rumored to be a launched B&M Wing Coaster. A picture of the site being cleared between the Flight of Fear and Reptile coasters, on the former Volcano: The Blast Coaster site, can be seen posted over at Reddit.
(12/24/2023) A new post at KDFans reveals a potential layout for what they believe could be a new B&M Launched Wing Coaster intended for Kings Dominion as early as 2025. Their analysis of the plans indicates it appears to have an enclosed launch track that may start off with a pre-launch scene of sorts, before launching out into a series of twists, turns and what looks like as many as five inversions, crossing over much of the Jungle X-Pedition land, taking up most of the space between Flight of Fear, Reptilian and Tumbili.
They’ve posted a whole bunch of artwork based on how they believe the layout might go, along with an animated video rendered in NoLimits that is worth checking out.
(7/11/22) While we know that eventually in the next couple of years the plan for Kings Dominion was to replace the former Volcano: The Blast Coaster with the park’s next major roller coaster, but we honestly don’t know when. The addition of Tumbili was sort of a Post-COVID stop-gap measure to buy a little more time for this project by adding a smaller coaster and by creating a little new theming in the form of the Jungle X-Pedition area.
To be honest, having just visited the park myself, the Jungle X-Pedition area actually looks pretty great. Nice theming all around the new Tumbili area, including the transformation of the former Avalanche coaster into Reptilian along with turning the Scrambler into Arachnidia. Along with the new light theming to the restaurants, food stands and the rest of the infrastructure in the area, this area of the park looks pretty good right now and even Anaconda fits the overall theme.
Around the one corner you do have the slight oddity that is the plaza that features both Flight of Fear and Intimidator 305, but I’ll let that one go for now. The one attraction that does sort of stick out like a sore-thumb is the Backlot Stunt Coaster (formerly The Italian Job: Stunt Track). While as a coaster, the ride still works great and is a lot of fun, but the theming has been better days. Currently most of the ride’s once highly-touted special effects are dead and broken.
But would you believe there may be a plan to change all that? According to a new rumor sent in, there may be a “Phase 2” of new theming and additions planned for Jungle X-Pedition to come before the next big coaster project. Our source claims that this could possibly include importing the Berserker (Bayun Kurve) from California’s Great America as a way to bring back Kings Dominion’s lost Mt. Kilimanjaro attraction. Even more exciting however may be a possible plan to revamp the Backlot Stunt Coaster to have new ‘jungle’ appropriate theming, new effects and to retheme the cars to look like off-road jeeps instead.
Just a rumor at this point, but I think it would be great to see more additions brought to fill out this section of the park if any of this ends up happening.
(2/28/20) No details known, but the next big coaster is expected to replace the park’s Volcano: The Blast Coaster site, but this wont happen until a couple of years after a smaller coaster is added in 2022 to replace The Crypt.
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