California’s First Vertical Drop Roller Coaster

California has its first vertical drop roller coaster, called Hangtime, thanks to Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park.

The coaster towers 150 feet at the theme park, sending riders up a vertical lift, halting at the highest point and then dropping down a 96-degree angle toward the boardwalk below. The entire drop represents 15 stories. The roller coaster has five gravity-defying inversions, including a negative-g stall loop that gives participants the feeling of floating.

Hangtime joins the park’s other coasters, including the first corkscrew inversion rollercoaster and the first flywheel launch coaster.

The park’s history dates to the early 1920s, when Walter Knott and his family began selling berries, preserves and pies from a roadside stall. They expanded to chicken dinners, eventually building shops and attractions to keep people busy as they waited for their food.

By the 1950s, the theme park was well underway, and included a summer-long county fair. The Calico Log Ride, now called Timber Mountain Log Ride, was added in 1969 and is one of the oldest log flumes in the United States.