Southwest Missouri News--Branson

by Carol Harris, Branson area, and Mary Engler-Guccione, Joplin area

Silver Dollar City Inc. has announced its largest attraction investment ever a new $7 million roller coaster adventure ride at its Branson theme park.

Ripsaw Falls is scheduled to open April 7, 1999. Jason Blain, the park's director of corporate design and development, said the creative concept is based on guests embarking on a john-boat ride from an old logging camp to an abandoned Ozarks sawmill and logging operation, where they are propelled along raging log sluices toward a gigantic, active ripsaw.

He said the ride continues as the boat becomes a dry coaster, drops nine stories at more than 50 miles per hour, heads straight for a bank of trees, rounds sharp turns, races up a conveyor track into the treetops, and plummets head first down a six-story plunge before returning safely to the mill house.