How do you design a theme park attraction around “Volcano,” the Tommy Lee Jones disaster movie where a guy melts in lava? Well, you build a rollercoaster, make most of it inside of a faux mountain, and call it “Volcano.” Boom, done, next. Volcano: The Blast Coaster, which replaced the even-more-baffling Smurf Village in the Safari Village section of Kings Dominion, opened in 1998 and was themed, ever-so-loosely, to the aforementioned movie.
For a while, the thrill ride held the record for the highest inversion in the world (subsequently squashed in 2013 by a coaster at Cedar Point). This LIM (linear induction motor, which means that the coaster can just spring to life instead of having to climb a lift hill to gain momentum) coaster lost whatever loose theme it had when Paramount sold the park (weirdly, the movie is made by Fox). Now, it’s just plain old “Volcano.” But you can still imagine Tommy Lee Jones trying to divert lava flow. The coast is toast, after all.
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