You won’t be able to hear the roller coaster rumble in downtown Orlando, but the thrill ride has a new presence there. Netherlands-based manufacturing giant Vekoma Rides has opened a North American office in the downtown business district.
“We’re a place that’s the theme park aspect, despite working all over the United States,” said Ricardo Etis, Vice President of Sales and Marketing in America. Etges was Vekoma’s first Orlando-based employee.
Currently, there are eight people working in the office near the intersection of Orange Avenue and South Street, including research and development engineers.
“We basically have an extension of the Dutch engineering department,” Etis said. “In the Netherlands, we have 250-300 people. We’ve seen that local resources in Orlando can expand our engineering capabilities.”
Founded in 1926, the company originally produced agricultural machinery and subsequent steel products for the coal mining and petrochemical industries. They began moving towards amusement park rides in the 1970s and decided to focus more on the North American market in 2019.
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In March, Vekoma opened the vertical speed of Flash: Six Flags. A great adventure in Jackson, New Jersey. It is the first “super boomerang” style coaster in the Western world, Etty said. Going forward, the curse of the Siren, a sloped coaster under construction at Cedar Point, Ohio.
It’s a “traditional lift hill coaster with a seesaw element above,” Etis said. “The train is in a horizontal position and has a track section that moves from horizontal to vertical like a seesaw. And locking it to the vertical position will free the train.”
Among the coasters in Florida are Everest in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, as well as the seven dwarf mining trains and Tron/Light Cycle Run Run at Magic Kingdom, and the Guardians of the Galaxy in Epcot: the universe rewind, which debuted in 2022.
The move to Orlando was designed to help expand business in Central Florida and to be “more aggressive and present in clients,” Etges said.
“A roller coaster is like you have a long-term relationship with the park,” he said. “A roller coaster is about installing a ride and making sure the ride is up and running, but also keeping it running for decades and reliable.”
Other pluses in the Central Florida office include proximity to the park (“we actually had a field trip to the epic (space)”), vendors, potential employees, and the November IAAPA Expo at the Orange County Convention Center.
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“We usually have 15-20 people from the team from the Netherlands and we have a lot of meetings with our clients,” the expo said. “We usually have at least one vehicle on display,” he said, produced by the Orlando-based International Entertainment Association and attraction.
There are other projects in the work, but they remain quiet.
“We need to always wait until the park announces a ride so that we can talk about it,” Etis said. “But there are some surprises at IAAPA this year.”
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