Great Past

In June 1967, Reinhold and Robert Spieldiener and their friend Ali Saiko decided to set up their own company for production and creation of amusement and theme park attractions. With their ambitions and aspirations in mind, they established the company name “Intamin,” which is a combination of letters from the phrase INTernational AMusement INstallations.

Already with experience in designing and supplying high tension overhead cables and ski lifts, as well as Observation Gyro Towers, the founders quickly got their first contract to build a 100 meter high Oil Derrick for Six Flags Over Texas. Shortly after, they also built an Eiffel Tower for Kings Island. As business transactions in those days were less formal, the first contracts consisted solely of a sketch, a price, two signatures, and a handshake.

More Funicular Railways and Gondola Cableways followed before the first “amusement ride,” as such, was built. This attraction, a Drunken Barrels ride, was commissioned by Six Flags. Proving very popular, a further handful was then supplied to the same company.

As one may notice, the early history of Intamin is closely linked to that of Six Flags, since it was often with Six Flags that Intamin’s ideas were brought to fruition. For more than forty years now, over 50 attractions have been supplied to this famous group. Many of the rides supplied were moved between parks and most of the rides are still operating somewhere in the world.

In 1974, Intamin started representing Anton Schwarzkopf outside Germany. This relationship depended on Intamin generating ideas, then working with Schwarzkopf and Stengel to turn them into reality. Intamin rapidly became renowned for its ‘can do’ attitude and one prototype after another ensued. One result was the first steel looping coaster which resides in Magic Mountain USA. This coaster is conceivably the most seen and recognized coaster in the world, due to its starring role in the film ‘Roller Coaster’.

This relationship lasted until Schwarzkopf finally succumbed to events that overtook them and forced them into bankruptcy. To ensure that the existing customers were still able to get spare parts for their rides, Intamin bought the drawings, rights, and patents from Schwarzkopf. Among the unique rides being produced at the time were favourites such as: The Flying Dutchman, Looping Starships, Tow Boats, Double and Triple Wheels, and Bounties of all sizes, including a gigantic 320 seat version for Japan.

Subsequently, the legendary Rapids Ride was designed and constructed for Astroworld. This ride, perhaps more than any other, commenced a new phase for Intamin since such rides embodied a huge technical risk at the outset. Despite over 40 years of supplying Rapids Rides in every possible configuration without repeating a design, Intamin continues to develop innovative features to plausibly, the most popular ride in any park today.

Water rides are always well-received by the public and the company has achieved a reputation for quality and originality in this specific area. With Flumes, Spillwaters, Splashes of all sizes, and Reversing Boat Rides all contributing to a complete palette of products.

Since Intamin was already very busy with several rides, Robert Spieldiener decided to create a separate company, based in his home town in Liechtenstein, and focus on different types of attractions. Teaming up with a Californian large format film projection system supplier, Intamin was at the forefront of the emerging simulator market and quickly became the market leader with over 50 motion cinemas to their name, including the exotic Back to the Future for Universal, Multi Motion Dark Rides for Leo Foo and Lotte World, and other specialized simulators.

At the same time, Intamin was also a main player in developing such unique rides as Stand-Up Coasters, Swiss Bobs, and the Space Diver.

The two companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein attained an identity for adventurous thinking and also for providing superior rides to the industry. In turn, this enabled them to establish larger projects where they supplied virtually all of the rides for a new park. This trend continues and many new parks will still buy considerable packages of rides from Intamin. The record is a contract for 55 rides for one customer to be supplied within 12 months! By the mid 1980s, Intamin could provide a package of rides ranging from water rides, to towers, wheels and roller coasters, as well as a number of rotating rides. Not to mention various Monorails. Moreover, the first Free Fall was supplied to Magic Mountain for the 1982 season and it was still operating in 2006! A total of 15 such rides were delivered to the USA, Canada, and Japan.

This was a major high profile ride which pushed the envelope as far as technical achievement in the amusement industry, however due to its popularity and long lasting commercial life, it was imperative to increase the capacity and decrease the maintenance costs. It was a full 12 years of hard work from Robert with a handful of tireless partners before Intamin was able to enhance the technology, adapt it, and patent it, in order to improve on the traditional free fall design.

Finally, in 1995, birth was given to the tremendously successful, and often copied, Giant Drop. This new technology employed rare earth magnets, utilizing the phenomena by passing an inert blade between two rare earth magnets creating an eddy current consequently increasing the resistance and thus a braking of the movement, which results in a failsafe system without any friction or wear and tear.

So successful was this development that Intamin shortly thereafter was also allowed to use the technology in Roller Coasters, dramatically increasing safety while concurrently lowering maintenance costs in operation.

In the mid 1990s a trend towards Roller Coasters started to appear. At the same time, a number of new markets were emerging, such as Egypt, Brazil, and Malaysia. Intamin Amusement Rides Int. Corp. Est. is able not only to provide custom designed rides for each of the new parks, but also to cultivate an extensive range of Roller Coasters.

Between 1994 and 2004 the company designed and built:

The world’s first and largest travelling Inverted Coaster, the Eurostar. It is transportable using over 90 trucks and still making appearances all over Europe! As well as an Inverted Coaster, an Indoor Spiral Coaster, a Spinning Coaster, a Runaway Mine Train, the first Roller Coaster over 100mph which subsequently was also the first Linear Motor powered coaster and not to forget, the World’s record 10 Inversion Coaster.