Queueing in line to ride a popular roller coaster for a brief moment will never be one of the highlights of anyone’s day. For many people, however, the two minutes of intensely speeding through a winding track offers enough of a payoff to make all that waiting time worthwhile. Fortunately, your minifigs won’t have to wait in line to ride the LEGO Loop Coaster. However, they will have to hold their breath until you can finally set aside all the time and focus necessary to put together LEGO’s newest amusement ride.
That’s right, LEGO has a new roller coaster set and it does all their previous amusement rides one better by coming with actual loops to send thrill riders careening upside down for brief moments on the track. These are functional loops, too, so you can have cars going through the entire track over and over, making for a truly impressive addition to any tabletop amusement park.
The LEGO Loop Coaster is a functional coaster ride with winding tracks designed to give riders a thrilling experience, complete with two loops that the cars will go through in succession. Because going through a loop requires plenty of forward momentum to ensure the coaster cars are able to complete the gravity-defying action, the track starts off at a highly elevated point that abruptly descends at a very steep angle. How steep? From the pictures, sections of the track look perfectly vertical, prompting the cars to immediately pick up speed as they inch their way towards the first loop.
Apparently, it gets enough momentum from that steep drop to do a second loop, too, which is pretty impressive. From there, the rest of the track just involves some standard turns that you’ll find pretty common among roller coasters. Yes, it’s a pretty short ride, so the whole thrill of the track is about the two successive loops that the cars will take upon coming down.
The LEGO Loop Coaster won’t generate enough momentum to let the cars get back up to the high point of the tracks on their own. Instead, it comes with an elevator tower at the end that can fit the three-rider car and lift it to the top of the tracks. Yes, it’s a functional elevator, too, that you can manually operate using a crank. However, it can also be paired with a LEGO Powered Up module if you want to turn it into a motorized lift. Hopefully, there’s a way to activate the lift autonomously any time a car gets on the elevator, so you can leave this on its own while having a three-person car riding continuously down the tracks.
The whole thing measures 36 x 33.5 x 13.5 (height x width x depth) inches when assembled, so this thing will take up a good amount of space. It comes with 3,756 pieces, so prepare to devote a decent chunk of time putting the set together. Aside from the main roller coaster, train car, and boarding station, it also comes with a number of amusement park accessories (e.g. park bench, hotdog stand, pretzel cart) and 11 minifigures.
The LEGO Loop Coaster comes out in July, priced at $399.99.