Munich-based roller coaster manufacturer Maurer Rides is extending its Spike family with two new products: Spike Train and Spike Tandem. Both bring the interactive, software-defined Spike ride feel to the hourly capacity that large parks expect from a headline attraction.
Spike Train – The motorbike coaster, reinvented
Spike Train takes the familiar motorcycle riding position and rethinks it. Riders sit as if on a motorcycle – but this time in vehicles that can be coupled into a train. The result is the hourly capacity of a classic large coaster, combined with the dynamics and interactivity Spike stands for.
With Software-Defined Dynamics, the ride profile is programmable rather than fixed; through interactive control, guests actively shape what happens. This brings the motorcycle riding feel to the scale of a major headline attraction.
Spike Tandem – The immersion coaster, software-defined
Spike Tandem is the immersion coaster of the Spike family. The tandem arrangement brings more riders per train onto the track, and with it the hourly capacity a headline attraction needs. Spike Tandem combines the immersion of a dark ride with the accelerations and speeds of a roller coaster.
This is made possible by the principle of vehicle intelligence: the drive and the ride logic sit in the vehicle, not in the track. The entire ride profile – speeds, stops, backward sections, effects – is fully programmable via Software-Defined Dynamics and changeable by update. And all of this without any additional hardware in the track: friction-wheel drives or brake fins are not required, because every vehicle brings its own drive and braking force through the rack.
A shared foundation: Proven Spike technology
As different as the two products are, their basis is identical: the proven Spike rack-and-pinion drive with 100 percent traction, acceleration at any point on the track, energy recovery during braking and a redundant drive layout. Both vehicles are part of the modular Spike platform – the same technology base that Maurer Rides will present in full this autumn. For parks that means: new capacity on a foundation that proves itself every day across ten installations worldwide.
“Tandem and Train bring the interactive Spike experience to the capacity level large parks need for a headline attraction – with no compromise on the ride feel,” says Jörg Beutler, General Manager, Maurer Rides GmbH.
