Scylla and Charybdis

Scylla & Charybdis and Odysseus's Journey are two roller coasters designed for a roller coaster design class. I am currently working on a more immersive visualization of these roller coasters.

Scylla & Charybdis is a steel coaster modeled after its eponymous legendary Greek mythical monsters, who were said to guard the entrance to the Sea of Monsters. The coaster puts guests into the point of view of these monsters, trying to keep Odysseus's Journey from entering the Sea. Odysseus's Journey is a wooden coaster symbolic of the wooden ship that guests board to try and enter the Sea of Monsters. The two roller coasters duel in the strait leading to the Sea. The swooping banks and soaring leaps of the Scylla elements in Scylla & Charybdis are evocative of the image of the mythical winged beast. The whirlpool that Odysseus's Journey dives into is Charybdis, trying to swallow the voyagers whole before they can pass.

These coasters were part of a final project where students had to select a theme park and add both a steel and a wooden roller coaster to the park, and optionally add a whole themed area around them. Based on this idea, I selected Busch Gardens Williamsburg, which is themed around different countries. Luckily, BGW did not have a Greece-themed area, so I designed one on a piece of land that just happened to emulate the real-life strait that the original myth is based on. This new Greece area is also adjacent to the Italy area of the park, which is another geographic checkmark that would make the experience more immersive. The transition from the existing architecture into the mixed ancient and modern Greek architecture would not be jarring, since the cultures around the actual country of Greece are similar to the ones close to it in the park. All in all, this project took about two weeks, and included the two layout diagrams for the coasters, as well as a rough imagining of the new themed area.

For a more detailed writeup on this ride, contact me!