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Vokel Rok cars, as seen inside the station.
Vogel Rok is a full indoor roller coaster in the Dutch theme park, Efteling and state in the subject area 'Travel Realm'. The coaster, build by Vekoma, is a Custom MK-900 coaster. It was opened on April 9, 1998.
Theme and technical data[]
The coaster's name is taken from the bird Rok from the fairy tales of 1001 Night. The design of the coaster, the queue and the immediate vicinity of the attraction building falls within the theme.
A ride takes 1 minute and 41 seconds. The roller coaster has a top speed of 65 km/h and the maximum G-force experienced during the ride is 3.5 G(positive). The track itself is 20 meters high, with a drop of 19 meters. The top of the building is 25 meters high. Each car is equipped with six speakers, allowing music to be heard during the ride. The music was written by Dutch author Ruud Bos and made Vogel Rok the first non-Disney coaster with specially composed music in the cars.
In total, Vogel Rok cost 28 million guilders (approximately 12.7 million euros), making it the most expensive attraction in the park at the time.
Shortly after the descent, an onride photo of the visitors is taken.
History[]
In the opening year, the attraction was received quite coolly by the public. Not much was noticed of the promised special effects. That is why Vogel Rok was already extremely renovated in 1999. For example, a number of great effects were added to the ride, including lasers and a giant snake head model. During the ride, the cars would pass through the snake's open mouth. The last turn of the roller coaster was decorated with a tunnel with fiber optic lightning, which represents the Valley of Diamonds from the story.
In early 2007, the attraction was rebuilt for a budget of 300,000 euros. This time it was only about the waiting areas, the route, the exit and the photo counter. The design for the new queue was made by Karel Willemen. The coaster itself remained unaffected.
In early 2015, the roller coaster, which normally runs with 3 trains, had problems with comfort. When all three trains were running, the trains had to brake very hard in the tunnel at the end of the ride. Efteling therefore decided to run with only two trains and thus avoid the problem.
The roller coaster was redesigned in the fall of 2018. The braking issue has been resolved, causing the thirs train to return to the track. The onboard speakers have also been replaced and special effects hae been added to the track, such as the sound of a screeching bird. Both the lift hill and the last corner were tackled in the same period, including by replcaing the above lasers with fog effect.