Baltimore Is U.S. Center For Roller Coaster Design
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- The image which appears when you think of a Disney, Universal Studios or Six Flags Amusement Park probably includes a roller coaster. So you might be surprised, as Mike Schuh was, to see where the center of roller coaster design is in America.
It's hard to think about who made your roller coaster when you're screaming, but the fingerprints for every scream, every twist and every turn can be traced here to Baltimore.
"And then what the engineers here are doing is taking it from a dream to a reality," said Jim Seay.
Seay owns Premier Rides. If his 225 employees or clients can dream it up, they can build it in shops in Baltimore, Cincinnati and Salt Lake City.
"We just did a big attraction in Indonesia, export a million pounds of fabricated U.S. steel made in the United States to Indonesia," Seay said.
From $5 to $25 million each, about 30 of these multi-million dollar mammoth coasters have been designed and built by Premier. It's enough to be one of the top three coaster manufacturers in the world.
Now, the world is coming to them. Next stop, Beijing. They can't go into a lot of detail but their new coaster in China will set a world record. It will be the tallest indoor coaster in the world. It will go inside a building bigger than M&T Bank Stadium, bigger than that new stadium they built for the Dallas Cowboys.
Once an aerospace engineer, his team doesn't just build coasters, they crease memories.
"They come off the attraction high-fiving because they've had this amazing experience and it's pretty cool to be able to do something like that," Seay said.
Soon, the company will be designing a coaster for the first amusement park in India. The owner says they're expanding and are always looking for good qualified engineers.
