There’s a new coaster in town.
C.J. Barrymore’s opened a new, family-friendly roller coaster on July 1 at its popular Clinton Township entertainment center.
The Coaster, a black-and-white custom steel coaster, replaces The Loop, a blue coaster with a loop that took riders upside down. The new ride fits into the old coaster’s footprint, minus the upside-down portion of the loop, said David Dalpizzol, the center’s vice president and one of the owners.
The Coaster came from SPF VISA Group in Italy, he said, with the specifications the same as The Loop: about 35 feet tall and 1,100 linear feet of track. It’s a chain-driven coaster that cost $1.4 million, he said.
“It was fantastic,” said Kelli Fritz, of Clarkston, who comes to the center once a year with her best friend, Cari Fleming, also of Clarkston, and their now college-age sons.
She said she rode The Loop before and the new coaster “is much improved and didn’t knock your head, and I highly recommend it.”
Liam Freiburger of Macomb Township, who celebrated his 14th birthday at the center Tuesday, July 7, said: “It was good, but they took out the loop, so it’s not as fun.”
Dalpizzol said The Coaster runs two trains with eight total seats for shorter queue lines and higher volumes per day. He said the new coaster was ordered in November 2024 and was scheduled to be open at the year-round Hall Road business in the spring of this year, but showed up a little late because of manufacturing delays.
“Ridership on coasters that don’t go upside down are much higher than ones that do,” he said, adding that when dealing with a family coaster “speed, drops are not a premium because you want everybody to enjoy it.” He didn’t know how fast the new coaster goes.
Dalpizzol said The Coaster is a replacement for The Loop, which was installed in 2016. He said The Loop coaster was disassembled after Labor Day in 2025, sold to a broker that the center bought the new coaster from, and it was shipped to a park in Panama City, Fla.
Dalpizzol said riders need to be 52 inches tall to ride The Coaster on their own or 44 inches tall to ride with a parent, with children possibly as young as 6 or 7 years old able to ride with a parent or grandparent.
2 new rides planned for 2027
The popular Macomb County complex, which opened in 1974, has expanded with indoor and outdoor attractions. It has plans for two new rides, hopefully opening by May 1, 2027, in a total project estimated at about $3 million, Dalpizzol said.
He said they are planning a new ride called Zero Gravity, a rotor ride where people load in, there are no seat belts, the floor drops out when it starts spinning and there’s zero gravity so people can climb the walls, go upside down and sideways.
Dalpizzol said that ride will replace Eurobungy, which is low-volume because of the nature of the ride with four trampolines, needing to get people set up in the harnesses and then do the ride. Eurobungy maybe handles 25 people per hour, he said, while the new ride will be able to handle 25 people per ride, so about 125 people per hour.
The batting cages will be replaced with a dueling coaster, another family coaster that will be two coasters, similar to Gemini at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, Dalpizzol said, in that “you are racing against the other coaster.”
There will be 24 people at a time, 12 on each coaster, racing each other, he said, which will be better volume than the batting cages, where the volume can fluctuate. The new dueling coaster ride will be included with the wristband, where the batting cages are not, he said.
“We’re really trying to pay attention to the value that we can bring with our unlimited pass, the wristband pass. And making sure that the queue lines are shorter,” he said. “We’re a 25-acre park, and we’re starting to really draw large crowds. We do about 500,000 people per season through the door. And we want to make sure that our queue lines are not too long on each of the rides so you can get the maximum amount of rides for your unlimited wristband.”
An unlimited ride, all-day wristband costs $52, according to the center’s website.
The rides planned for 2027 are not expected to be any taller than the existing attractions, Dalpizzol said.
He said the center tries to do something new every three years, keeping things fresh and having people see something different every time they come. It’s always looking at expansion, getting more people in the door and having shorter queue lines.
The two new rides anticipated for 2027 come after the center added a $3 million, three-level Indy SkyTrack attraction in 2024. It proposed the tall drop tower and saddle sling rides, Ferris wheel, and spinning coaster in 2018 in what was then a $2.5-million expansion, with millions spent in prior expansions.
Contact Christina Hall: chall@freepress.com. Follow her on X: @challreporter.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: New coaster brings fun to C.J. Barrymore’s in Clinton Township
Reporting by Christina Hall, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Christina Hall, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
