Balder is a wooden

roller coaster A roller coaster is a type of list of amusement rides, amusement ride employing a form of elevated Railway track, railroad track that carries passengers on a roller coaster train, train through tight turns, steep slopes, and other elements, usua ...

at the

Liseberg Liseberg is an amusement park located in Gothenburg, Sweden, that opened in 1923. It is the second most visited theme park in Scandinavia, with around three million visitors annually. Among the noteworthy attractions is the wooden roller coaste ...

amusement park in

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. It opened in 2003 and was an instant success. Balder is very different from a traditional

wooden roller coaster A wooden roller coaster is a type of roller coaster classified by its wooden track, which consists of running rails made of flat steel strips mounted on laminated wood. The support structure is also typically made of wood, but may also be ...

because it is a prefabricated wooden roller coaster. This means that instead of trackers cutting, shaping, and laying down the track on site by hand, the track is laser cut in a factory. This means that the track is manufactured to a higher degree of precision than could ever be achieved by hand. The track is also made so that it snaps together like

Lego Lego (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitri ...

pieces. The track also is made of more layers of wood that are tightly bonded together instead of nailed together by hand like a traditional wooden roller coaster. This has three major benefits, two being to the park and the other being to the riders. The "Plug and Play" aspect of the coaster speeds construction of the coaster since track does not have to be completely manufactured on site. In addition, because of the speed of construction, the costs of building the coaster are lowered due to less

man-hour A man-hour or human-hour is the amount of work performed by the average worker in one hour. It is used for estimation of the total amount of uninterrupted labor required to perform a task. For example, researching and writing a college paper ...

s spent on the construction. The riders benefit from a coaster, that while being wooden, is near steel smooth. However, some roller coaster enthusiasts may find that aspect to take away from the ride since it would not have the same character as a traditional wooden roller coaster. Balder is praised by many roller coaster enthusiasts around the world, and is said to be one of the best roller coasters in Europe. Three other prefabricated wooden roller coasters currently exist, Colossos at

Heide Park Heide Park Resort, commonly known as Heide Park, is a theme park in Soltau, Lower Saxony, Germany. With an overall area of over 850,000 m2 (210 acres), it is the largest amusement park in Northern Germany and among the largest in the country. ...

, El Toro at

Six Flags Great Adventure Six Flags Great Adventure is an amusement park located approximately southeast of Trenton, New Jersey, Trenton in Jackson Township, New Jersey. Owned and operated by Six Flags, the park complex is situated between New York City and Philadelph ...

, and

T Express T Express () is a wooden roller coaster at the Everland theme park in Yongin, South Korea. T Express opened on March 14, 2008, in the European Adventure section of the park, and is themed after a small town in the Alps. The coaster was constru ...

Everland Everland () is South Korea's largest theme park. It is located at the Everland Resort in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province. In 2018, it received 5.85 million visitors and was ranked 19th in the world for amusement park attendance. As of 2010, Everla ...

Awards

References

External links

Balder info on Liseberg home page
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090423004158/http://www.liseberg.com/en/home/Amusement-Park/Rides--Attractions/Balder/ , date=2009-04-23 Liseberg Roller coasters introduced in 2003 Roller coasters in Sweden 2003 establishments in Sweden