New Roller Coaster to Break 10 World Records

Thrillseekers should pencil this one onto their 2016 calendar: The Valravn Birdseye is slated to open in May at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, and those who survive the 3,415-foot roller coaster will be able to brag that they've experienced a ride that quashed 10 world records. Discovery News explains that the Valravn Birdseye will become America's third "dive coaster" (the others are at Busch Gardens in Tampa and Williamsburg, Va.), meaning "the kind that gives riders that terrifying feeling of free-falling with at least one 90-degree drop"—a vertical drop that riders perilously perch above, frozen, for several seconds, as this video shows.

It'll be the longest dive coaster, as well as the tallest (223 feet) and fastest (at 75mph). A park press release lists the seven other records the Swiss-built ride—which features a floorless car that seats 24 in three rows of eight—will break upon opening:

• Most inversions on a dive coaster (three)
• Longest drop on a dive coaster (214 feet)
• Highest inversion on a dive coaster (165 feet)
• Most coasters taller than 200 feet at one park (5)
• Most rides at one park (72)
• Most steel roller coaster track at one park (9.9 miles)
• Most roller coaster track at one park (11.4 miles)

Click for pictures of 15 other insane coasters. (More roller coasters stories.)