PANAMA CITY BEACH — The owners of the Miracle Strip Amusement Park have secured the land and financing for the classic Starliner wooden roller-coaster ride to open by next spring.
For four decades, the ride was located on land now used for parking at Shipwreck Island Water Park on Hutchinson Boulevard. The new Starliner will have an upgraded design, said Jenny Meeks, who along with her husband, Teddy, own the 23-ride amusement park on Powell Adams Road next to Pier Park.
She said they hope to have groundbreaking in late October.
“We have bought the original Starliner that has been new and improved,” she said.
She said roller coasters made entirely out of wood are rare and nostalgic, and there are only a few companies that build them.
“This is the oldest wooden roller coaster from the state of Florida,” she said. “In the state of Florida there is a wooden coaster in Orlando, but it is a hybrid with wood and steel.”
Meeks said they have the financing in place to construct the Starliner at Miracle Strip. “We are working on all the engineering right now,” she said.
The Starliner’s rebirth in Panama City Beach is drawing national attention. On July 10, the Los Angeles Times ranked the 80-foot tall Starliner ride fourth on a Top 15 list of “best new rides coming to the U.S.”
“The Starliner wooden coaster will return to its roots after several near-death experiences,” theme park blogger Brady MacDonald wrote in the article. He adds that Florida’s first roller coaster was originally designed by renowned ride builder John Allen and built by Philadelphia Toboggan Co. in 1963.
‘Reborn’
The old Starliner coaster was relocated to Cypress Gardens in Central Florida after the original Miracle Strip closed in Panama City Beach, but the coaster was shuttered after Cypress Gardens was transformed into Legoland Florida.
“The new Starliner will be reborn at Miracle Strip with an altered lift hill, but the rest of the coaster’s out and back layout,” MacDonald wrote.
Meeks said they now have enough land for the ride after moving their amusement park out of Pier Park to a more spacious property off-site. The landowner from whom they leased the property even purchased more land to allow the ride, she said.
Their new park location, about 250 feet away from where they were in Pier Park, opened in April of this year. She said the wooden roller coaster ride, which will be called Starliner 2.0, will weave around much of the Miracle Strip property, Meeks said.
“You’ll have a turn right at this corner, and it will shoot all the way down to almost the end of our property down there, and then come back,” she said as she gave a tour of the property Wednesday.
She said the ride also will have a dragon head tunnel like the original. The ride “will jut out into the water a little bit,” she said.
She said it is quite an accolade for the ride to be recognized by the Los Angeles Times, pointing out that it beat out other rides coming to larger theme parks, such as Universal.
“This is a huge deal for Panama City Beach and us as a mom-and-pop park,” Meeks said.
Meeks said they are hiring Great Coasters International to build the ride.
“They are doing a tremendous amount of building in China right now because there are no Chinese manufacturers of wooden roller coasters, and China is really big on theme and amusement parks right now,” Meeks said.