Dragon Mountain is a steel roller coaster located at

Marineland of Canada Marineland (official name Marineland of Canada Inc.), is a themed zoo and amusement park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. The park has performing marine animal shows, sea mammal and land animal exhibits, and amusement rides. It keeps dolphi ...

near

Niagara Falls Niagara Falls () is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Fall ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

. Built by

Arrow Huss Arrow Dynamics was an American manufacturing and engineering company that specialized in designing and building amusement park rides, especially roller coasters. Based in Clearfield, Utah, the company was the successor to Arrow Development (194 ...

, it opened to the public on July 16, 1983. At its opening, it claimed to have the longest ride time of 3 minutes and 30 seconds and the longest track length of , though both of these statistics were exceeded by The Beast four years earlier. Dragon Mountain reaches a maximum elevation of , which is considered the total difference in height experienced throughout the course of the ride, as the roller coaster's support structure follows closely to the terrain. The ride covers of land and is considered the "world's largest" roller coaster on that basis; however, The Beast at Kings Island opened four years earlier and travels across of land, meaning that it never actually held that record. It is also the only roller coaster with a

bowtie The bow tie is a type of necktie. A modern bow tie is tied using a common shoelace knot, which is also called the bow knot for that reason. It consists of a ribbon of fabric tied around the collar of a shirt in a symmetrical manner so that t ...

element. The riders are first welcomed at the base of the mountain by a long path. At the end of the path lies the dragon's cave, which is carved to look like an actual dragon's head. The queue and station inside are almost in complete darkness. The station, however, is lit up more than the queue, because it would make operating the ride extremely difficult for the ride operators and attendants. Upon exiting the station, the riders are brought back outside climbing up the lush-green hill. Throughout most of the ride, the track follows the terrain closely. Upon the opening in the early 80's, the ride was missing the proposed volcano facade around the helix, and the miniature waterfalls built around the stretch of track after exiting the first tunnel. These unthemed parts of the ride had nothing but the framework, which was constructed along with the track. In 2006, Marineland decided to complete the volcano to improve the ride's appearance. Whether the park would like to add more to the facade to make it look more like a volcano is unknown. This has been the only improvement to the ride's theming, as the other incomplete section has remained untouched.

References

External links

www.marinelandcanada.com
Roller coasters in Ontario Roller coasters introduced in 1983 1983 establishments in Ontario {{amusement-ride-stub