Fury 325 at Carowinds has been widely acclaimed since its 2015 opening, but is it really an undisputed top coaster on the planet? I found out this week.
After around a two-year period of not riding a whole lot of roller coasters following a very busy 2024, my wife and I made our first visit to a large amusement park in a while this week by making our way to Carowinds, sitting on the border between Charlotte, North Carolina and Fort Mill, South Carolina.
One of the more focused-on parks within the Six Flags Entertainment Corporation umbrella, Carowinds was previously owned by both Paramount and Cedar Fair, and has perhaps been the park that has grown the most in terms of thrilling attractions in recent years.
Carowinds now boasts a relatively top-heavy lineup of 14 roller coasters, with three of the park’s most popular attractions opening within the last 16 years.
A park that was high on our bucket list for a long time, Carowinds’ reputation is significantly boosted by the presence of Fury 325, a gigacoaster developed by Bolliger & Mabillard that originally opened as a record-breaker in March 2015.
Staying true to its name, the coaster reaches a towering height of 325 feet, still the tallest in the world of any roller coaster with a traditional lift hill, before descending on a 320-foot drop while reaching top speeds of 95 miles per hour.
For the uninitiated, Bolliger & Mabillard has long been one of the top coaster developers in the world, pioneering industry-standard coaster layouts such as the inverted coaster popularized by Batman: The Ride at various Six Flags parks, as well as the flying coaster seen in rides like Tatsu and Superman: Ultimate Flight.
Yet the true crowd pleaser of B&M’s inventory has long been the hypercoaster, which has grown to become a generic term to refer to any roller coaster of any layout that reaches or exceeds 200 feet in height.
As far as B&M is concerned however, the hypercoaster is one of their many models that seem to stick to a given formula that includes a tall lift hill, a large, steep drop and frequent camelback hills over an inversion-free track. Riders are also greeted with the company’s iconic clamshell lap bar restraints, offering an unmatched feeling of comfort and safety while not at all robbing riders of big airtime moments.
B&M has been producing hypercoasters since 1999, when both Apollo’s Chariot and Raging Bull opened at Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Six Flags Great America, respectively. Since then, the company has produced 16 other coasters as part of their hypercoaster model, including a handful that are gigacoasters – or coasters that reach or exceed at least 300 feet in height or drop length.
While these coasters are still part of the hypercoaster model, they represented a notable step forward for B&M, often seen as a manufacturer that aims to balance thrill-seeking intensity with a broad, wide-ranging appeal.
With Fury 325, B&M perhaps struck the perfect balance.
It is no secret upon entering Carowinds that Fury is the centerpiece of the park. In addition to its towering height that was visible from my downtown Charlotte hotel room over 13 miles away, the ride’s queue and signage is as grand as the attraction itself.
Though not explicitly themed after the hometown Charlotte Hornets, there seems to be a loose connection between the coaster and the team. Riders are greeted with a hive-themed sign as they walk up to the gargantuan coaster, donning an ocean blue track with a lime/electric green accent underneath, giving the ride a frutiger aero-esque appearance.
Perhaps thanks to visiting the park on a hot and humid Tuesday with stormy clouds off in the distance, Carowinds was far from packed during our visit, which allowed us to both walk right onto rides while only staying in the park for a couple of hours.
After riding a few of the other coasters I needed to get to in Carowinds, most notably the hangtime-heavy Copperhead Strike and Fury’s B&M hyper counterpart in Thunder Striker, I was finally ready to make my way towards the roller coaster that has been named the best steel coaster on the planet in nine of the 10 seasons since it has opened up.
Only facing a mere five-minute wait, I quickly made my way up to the ride station, where future riders can watch trains begin the massive 325-foot climb before a plunge unlike any other.
I’ll preface this by saying that Fury is not the tallest coaster I’ve gotten a chance to ride, previously getting a pair of rides on the now-defunct original Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point in the summer of 2013. Yet a ride like that, that’s over in the blink of an eye and is solely focused on insane height and speed, simply gives a different feel than a full-circuit coaster that offers the extremes of what’s possible in the traditional layout of a roller coaster.
With that said, the extent of how tall the coaster was didn’t fully occur to me until I was next in line, as I bent down to attempt to see the crest of the lift hill from my spot in the station – and I simply couldn’t. The ride is just that fucking tall.
Before I get into what I thought of the ride itself, I also think it’s worth mentioning the coasters that do feel like perfect rides to me – namely ArieForce One at FunSpot Atlanta and fellow B&M hyper Raging Bull, the latter of which is known for straying from the formula by incorporating more twists and helixes as opposed to relying fully on camelback hills as many other B&M hypers do.
Upon getting dispatched, riders begin their ascent while hearing alternating buzzing noises out of speakers during the climb, owing to the ride’s beehive theme. After what felt like a pretty quick climb up the fast-moving chain lift, riders plunge at an 81-degree angle down 320 feet, in a drop that felt absolutely insane – but also not incredibly different than other similarly sized rides. Through the first drop, I wouldn’t say that Fury 325 felt all that different than the first drop of Orion at Kings Island, a fellow gigacoaster that has a drop that’s 20 feet shorter.
It was what happened after the drop that absolutely blew me away.
B&M hypers are designed to please even those that aren’t the biggest thrillseekers, providing what is usually a fairly leisurely ride after a face-melting first drop. Fury was not like other B&M hypers – this coaster is all about speed.
I guess I never really thought about that aspect all that much. I’ve rode Raging Bull at my former home park dozens of times throughout my life, and it always feels fast and even a bit intense on the first drop, which reaches top speeds of 73 miles per hour. Turns out, 95 feels a lot faster than 73.
What was most incredible about Fury was navigating a lot of typical, low-to-the-ground coaster elements at a speed that far eclipses anything else that can be experienced anywhere else in the world. While the ride does include a 191-foot tall barrel turn after the first drop and a camelback hill later in the ride, the emphasis is clearly on blistering riders through familiar elements at a speed that they could have never imagined.
Recency bias is a real thing, and I won’t act like I didn’t feel similarly overwhelmed after riding Orion a couple of times. Yet it still feels a bit weird to fully compare the two – especially considering that Fury offers another nearly 1,300 feet in length. Orion undoubtedly delivered on some of the same moments of intensity, but its short length undoubtedly holds it back quite a bit when compared to Fury.
In my experience, most B&M hypers are fun, almost universally enjoyable experiences. If someone that’s afraid of coasters can get over the hypercoaster height, there often aren’t many other elements that appear to be too scary for the uninitiated coaster rider. You’re not lying on your stomach, you’re not being dangled over the edge of a 90-degree drop before plunging and your feet aren’t dangling. They’re just regular coasters that are much taller, and Fury is technically still part of that class.
At the same time though, it really isn’t.
That’s ultimately what led me to the “a-ha” moment when thinking about why this coaster is so universally lauded by enthusiasts and casual riders alike – because it’s the ideal coaster made for both audiences.
Fury 325 provides a ton of intensity owing to its gargantuan first drop and blistering speeds – but it also isn’t quite the heart-stopper that coasters like X2 at Six Flags Magic Mountain and Pantherian at Kings Dominion are. With inversions being a dealbreaker for many prospective riders, Fury‘s lack of them helps broaden its ridership by quite a bit – making it the undisputed crown jewel of the park 11 years after its initial opening.
I have now rode 96 different roller coasters in my life, and I plan to introduce a comprehensive ranking of the coasters I’ve rode after breaking 100 credits, which I intend to do in a couple of months during a visit to the soon-to-be-closed California’s Great America. I have always had a good grasp of which coasters are my favorites – the rides I wish I had in my backyard, that I could hop on at any time I was feeling like it.
Fury might be a tad too intense to marathon ride or start your day with, but it is everything a roller coaster is supposed to be – a thrill-packed experience with an ingenious layout that brings riders the best possible iteration of all of the traditional roller coaster elements they’re the most familiar with.
The record-shattering, blood money-funded Falcons Flight is officially open at Six Flags Qiddiya City in Saudi Arabia, a ride that features an elevation change of 640 feet that absolutely blows any of its contenders out of the water when it comes to superlatives on height, speed and length.
Yet Fury 325 was not designed by the eternally risk-taking, record-chasing Intamin, and does not include the launches and terrain manipulation that Falcons Flight does. It’s logical to consider Falcons Flight, a coaster I will never ride because I will never travel to Saudi Arabia, the proverbial final boss of roller coasters.
At the same time, Fury 325 feels like it’s the culmination of decades of incredible engineering and creativity – the final product of what the most impressive, intense and fun roller coaster would look like without breaking the boundaries of what roller coasters traditionally are. There is no gimmick or oddity that defines the ride. It’s just a traditional roller coaster, perfectly executed to the highest degree that is feasible.
With that, it’s hard to argue against this being the perfect coaster for so many. I certainly can’t argue with myself too much about it.
Leave a Reply