While we patiently wait for Ice Breaker to open this Spring, It appears SeaWorld is already planning for 2021. Earlier this week, the park filed plans for a new project with the Orange County Government, and even though there aren’t many details yet, there’s a rumor that this might be another coaster project. Let’s take a look!
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The permit was filed on Monday, January 13th and is simply for “Site Work”, which is the first phase of any construction project. This phase typically includes demolition, land grading and preparation for the utilities and foundations – which come in subsequent phases.
We filed a public records request and obtained a copy of the demolition site plan, which shows the project’s boundaries and the demolition that will take place. Since this phase of the project doesn’t involve any new construction, the site plan doesn’t show any new structures or details of what kind of attraction might be coming, so at this point, whatever it might be is complete speculation. The plan sheet does, however, contain the code-name for this project, which is Penguin.
Below is an overlay of the site plan with the park. As you can see, it looks like the pathway that runs between Bayside Stadium and the Dolphin Nursery near the front entrance of the park is being demolished. Additionally, even some of the path and roadway on the outside of the park are being demolished as part of this project:
The overall project area is roughly 3.6 acres – for comparison, Kraken occupies roughly 4 acres, so there’s definitely ample space here for a fairly large attraction. Since this is also a heavily traversed area of the park during special events like Seven Seas Food Festival and SeaWorld’s Christmas Celebration, adding an attraction like a roller coaster that could interact with the pathways, festival event booths and waterfront would really liven up the area!
So, what could it be? It’s impossible to know with the information available at this point, but there’s already one interesting rumor going around. Earlier this week, a user named GACoaster on the InsideUniversal forms made a post about a rumored Wing Coaster project on the horizon. Even more interestingly, he mentioned that the new coaster would be located “right at the front of the park as part of an overall revamp of the front gate area … The rumor is the entire entry experience would be reconfigured using part of the seldom used Bayside Pathway area and the new Wing coaster would soar over the revamped entry way (much like Gatekeeper at Cedar Point).” These plans definitely match up with that rumor, so I’m cautiously optimistic that this project could indeed be fore a new coaster!
So what do you think? I think a Wing coaster would be an excellent fit – it’d be a unique offering in Florida and would add yet another world-class coaster to SeaWorld’s lineup. No matter what it ends up being though, we’re super excited to see yet another new project for SeaWorld Orlando! Let us know in the comments below what you’d like to see come to SeaWorld in 2021 and be sure to check back for more updates in the coming months!