Fahrenheit (roller coaster)

Fahrenheit is a steel roller coaster at Hersheypark in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Located in the Pioneer Frontier section of the park, the roller coaster opened on May 24, 2008. It features six inversions and became the steepest roller coaster in the world when it opened with its first drop of 97 degrees. Fahrenheit briefly held the record until Steel Hawg at Indiana Beach, which featured an 111-degree drop, opened several weeks later on July 5.

History

Fahrenheit was announced in a Hersheypark press release on September 27, 2007. The ride is the 11th roller coaster and was one of two new attractions for the 2008 season.

Viral marketing campaign

Fahrenheit was the first-ever roller coaster to gather hype through a viral marketing campaign. The campaign started as a post on coaster website ThrillNetwork.com regarding the sight of businessmen in the general area of where Fahrenheit is going to be built.^[1]

At first, the ride was planned for an announcement on October 2, 2007. A sign was seen on the side of the wooden structure for the Western Chute-Out slide the ride would replace.^[2] Not long after the teaser was shown, a web design company named "Nantimi" was uncovered. Curiously, the name of the company was an anagram of Intamin, a roller coaster design firm. Nantimi supposedly had just announced that they would be creating a website to promote Hershey's new attraction, and revealing the price of the attraction, $12.1 million. Two days later, it was discovered that the log-in window on the Nantimi site had a username and password written in it. Using it to log in, logos for a ride called "Tsunami" were discovered.

Soon after, it was found that the Nantimi website was registered through web hosting company Go Daddy, and through it, an address to Nantimi's supposed headquarters was found. Putting the address into online map software, it was discovered that this supposed headquarters was in the middle of an open field with no nearby buildings except a farm. In early September, it was discovered by looking through the Nantimi website a link saying "them.travelled/thRu", that led to a page with a letter that claimed that the materials designed by Nantimi would be ready by September 26, 2007, "for the following day's announcement". An e-mail address was then discovered. Eventually, another e-mail address was discovered, and when e-mailed, provided a response in binary, providing another e-mail address.

After an e-mail was sent to this address, a reply arrived revealing a new announcement date, September 27, 2007, along with saying that those playing the Alternate Reality Game would receive the announcement on September 26, 2007. Later, by re-arranging the letters of the phrase "them.travelled/thRu" a location on the Nantimi site was discovered at the URL,^[3] where an animated GIF flashing between several pictures was discovered. These pictures included pictures of the Western Chute-Out slides, a section of track of the style used by Intamin, and a picture of the ride's layout.

Sometime later, someone e-mailed Hersheypark asking if they had any connection to Nantimi. In the reply, Hershey confirmed the September 27, 2007, announcement date. The same day, Nantimi hired a new employee, a web security developer named Donan Michael. The announcement of the hiring included information that on his favorite colors (silver and orange), and that Donan was a specialist in base64 encoding. That day, a new teaser page was posted on the Hersheypark website, confirming the September 27 announcement date once again. Two days later, coaster enthusiast website Coasterdom managed to get an interview with an employee of Nantimi.^[4] The interview contained a reference to "nanatomic" a member of another coaster website, Theme Park Review.

The same day the interview was posted, a hint, "s & o are the key" and a puzzle featuring an image of what appeared to be roller coaster track was found. Later that day, yet another e-Mail address was uncovered, and when contacted, replied with more binary, that when translated led to another address. That night, the puzzle was completely solved, revealing a shot of part of the ride. Also that night, sing the information that Donan was a specialist in base64 encoding, and his favorite colors, silver and orange, someone thought to encode the phrase "silver and gold" in base64, revealing another URL, which provided a black-and-white image of the Western Chute-Out slides, that was also the GIF animation that the puzzle was found in.

A few days later, 25 people across several coaster related sites began to get messages about "Phase 10". These e-Mails requested that the people the message had sent to them provide their name, birthday, and e-mail address. The next day, a picture of one of the supposed employees of Nantimi meeting with Sandor Kernacs, president of Intamin was discovered. The next day, the ones who had received the messages began getting e-mails containing small square pictures with the subject "25" and text saying "You are one. Play nice.". It was quickly discovered the squares were pieces of a puzzle, and the puzzle started being assembled soon after. Then, a location on the Nantimi website was discovered that contained a list of threads relating to Hersheypark's 2008 ride on several popular coaster enthusiast forums. Soon after a blog supposedly by Nantimi employee Martin Tinley surfaced.

The next day, a supposed beta video of the new attraction was posted on coaster forum Theme Park Review. However, it was revealed after a few days to be a hoax created by a coaster enthusiast who wanted to stop people believing in the game.^[5] The same day the video was revealed to be false, a sale listing for the Western Chute-Out slides was discovered on the website of "Rides4U" a company dedicated to selling amusement rides. Although there were little to no hints from Nantimi for several days, after Nantimi resumed sending out the square pieces, the entire right-hand side of the puzzle was completed by the morning of September 25. It was also discovered that the left-hand side of the picture had been flipped upside down. When flipped the right way, even more of the ride was revealed.

The same day, Nantimi hired another employee, Natalie Vegan. Curiously, her first name and last initial were identical to the member "nanatomic" on the Theme Park Review forums who had previously been referenced in Coasterdom's Nantimi interview. When an e-mail was sent to Natalie's address, a reply was received, strangely from another Nantimi employee, Luke Nanavati, Nantimi's CEO. This e-mail also included the phrase "GottenBaklavaCompulsion..". The puzzle was then completed on the afternoon of that day, September 25. The next day, the "GottenBaklavaCompulsion.." phrase was deciphered, revealing the blog of Luke Nanavati. Later that day, Donan revealed that for those who played the game and received the puzzle pieces, the announcement would arrive at 11:11 PM that night.

That afternoon, a color picture taken in the coaster simulation game NoLimits surfaced. The picture depicted the ride's inverted loop element as well as one of the Corkscrew inversions. At 11:11 pm, as promised, the 25 who received the puzzle pieces received user names and passwords to log into the Nantimi website and view computer generated footage of the ride. However, someone soon managed to access the video without logging in. The video was deleted soon after this incident. Also, shortly after the 25 received their puzzle pieces, 11 of the 25 players were invited to be the first riders on Fahrenheit during opening day in May. At noon on September 27, along with the announcement of the ride, Fahrenheit, Hersheypark confirmed that they were behind the game. According to a press release put out by the park, the Nantimi website attracted more than 34,000 hits from 47 states and 28 countries.^[6]

Naming

Fahrenheit is the unit of temperature most commonly used in the United States. The name works with the high degree drop (97) of the first hill. Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, was stated as an inspiration for the name of the ride by one of the four men who had helped create the ride.

Track layout

Described as a "vertical lift inverted loop coaster", Fahrenheit features a 121-foot vertical lift as well as six inversions, airtime hills and high-speed banked curves, cobra roll, including a record-breaking 97-degree drop on the first hill. This record was quickly surpassed by Steel Hawg at Indiana Beach on July 5, 2008.

Ride experience

The coaster train exits the station and makes a 135-degree right turn. The train then climbs the vertical lift hill of 121 feet. Cresting the hill riders face down directly at the ground and fall into the 97-degree drop. At the bottom of the drop is an on-ride camera. The train then ascends into a rare Norwegian loop. At entrance into the Norwegian loop, the train rolls to the left and dives through a half loop down to the ground. The train soars up and rolls out to the left as it exits the Norwegian loop. Upon exit, the train dives down and to the left into a two-inversion cobra roll, an element that returns riders in the same direction the train enters. Following the cobra roll, the train rolls into two consecutive corkscrews and a banked turn to the right through the lift hill. Exiting the turn, the train flies over a small airtime hill and through a wide low to the ground left-banked turn up into a slanted downward final brake run. The train then makes another 135-degree turn back into the station, concluding the 85-second ride on Fahrenheit.

Gallery

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  Fahrenheit's lift and drop

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  Fahrenheit's lift

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  Fahrenheit's drop

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  Fahrenheit's drop

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  Fahrenheit's drop

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  Fahrenheit's drop

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  Fahrenheit's drop

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  Fahrenheit's Norwegian Loop

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  Fahrenheit's Norwegian Loop

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  Fahrenheit's Norwegian Loop

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  Fahrenheit's Norwegian Loop

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  Fahrenheit's Norwegian Loop

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  Fahrenheit's Norwegian Loop

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  Fahrenheit's barrel roll

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  Fahrenheit's cobra roll

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  Fahrenheit's corkscrew

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  Fahrenheit's banked turns

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  Fahrenheit's corkscrew and other elements

References

External links

• Official Fahrenheit website
• Video of the Opening Day of Fahrenheit