Travel Channel to feature two Extreme World rides
Andy Steinke/Events
Extreme World owner Bill Anderson explains how the ride Terminal Velocity works to Travel Channel show host Bert Kreischer. The Travel Channel was at the park Oct. 26 to shoot footage of Terminal Velocity and Ejection Seat for a show to air sometime next year.
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By Andy Steinke, Dells Events
After day-long rain showers cancelled a Travel Channel shoot at Extreme World in Lake Delton Oct. 23, the film crew was back Oct. 26 to feature Terminal Velocity and Ejection Seat for a new series.
The series has yet to be named, Travel Channel executive producer Charlie Parsons said, but it is expected to air sometime in early to mid 2010.
When the channel runs series or specials about thrill rides, they resonate with viewers, Parsons said.
The channel was at Extreme World last year to film for its “Extreme” series.
“The Travel Channel liked it so much we knew it would be great to come back with a host,” Dylan Edgar, a producer for the new show, said.
The show will be hosted by Bert Kreischer, a man Parsons said is “quick to draw a laugh out of anybody.”
Kreischer joked during filming about the rides at Extreme World.
“Have you ever had an accident at the park?” he asked owner Bill Anderson while they stood in front of Terminal Velocity.
Anderson shook his head no, and without missing a beat Kreischer said, “So what you’re saying is you’re due.”
Earlier in the morning, just before Extreme World employees released the Ejection Seat so Kreischer could see what he was in store for, he screamed at the ride, “If you’re going to break, break now!”
Between shoots, he tried to convince the small crowd that had gathered to watch that he curses and gets motion sickness when he gets on rides, and the crowd laughed.
Anderson said the Travel Channel reached out to him in August about doing another show at the park.
He said the first show was good for the park. After the Extreme series aired footage of Terminal Velocity, he said it overtook Bungee Jump as his most popular ride.
Terminal Velocity is basic. Riders enter a cage and are lifted 150 feet off the ground. When they get to the top, they are lowered just below the bottom of the cage so they can’t grab anything when they are dropped.
Following a short countdown, an employee pushes a button, and the person is dropped on his or her back, unattached to anything, into a net 100 feet below.
Baraboo resident Zach Kimpfbeck, who rode Ejection Seat for the shoot, but has also ridden Terminal Velocity, explains Terminal Velocity this way: “You are falling, and you think you are going to die.”
Ejection Seat, the ride now featured at the park’s entrance, has been a popular ride at the park since Anderson bought it in 1999 or 2000, he said.
Like Terminal Velocity, the ride isn’t extremely complex, but it is extreme.
Riders are strapped two at a time into a seat, which is connected with bungee cords on either side. Once the riders are set, an employee tightens the cords. The employee then pushes a button, and the riders fly into the air at 2.3 g’s — in other words the riders will feel like they weigh 2.3 times their normal weight.
The new show is in its very early stages, but Extreme World will probably be featured in the Madison episode, which will also includes Kreischer log rolling on Lake Wingra in Madison and fighting the undead at Apocalypse Paintball in Poynette.
Details about the Madison show, and the series in general, are still being hashed out, but Parsons said, “(Kreischer) is going to do a variety of things. The show’s core is showing the personality of a location ... Whatever makes a town unique, he’ll be doing.”