The History of Valravn

Valravn holds you still at the top. The train climbs to the crest, rolls to the edge of a vertical drop, and hangs there for a moment with riders staring straight down at the ground before it lets go. When it opened in 2016 it broke six dive coaster records at once.

The held drop

Valravn is a dive coaster, the Bolliger and Mabillard design built around a slow crawl over the top and a ninety-degree plunge held just long enough to make you wait for it. At 223 feet, with a 214-foot vertical drop and a top speed of 75 miles per hour, it opened as the tallest, fastest, and longest dive coaster in the world, breaking ten records for the type in a single day. It was also the first dive coaster to use B&M's vest-style shoulder restraints.

A raven of the slain

The name comes from Danish folklore. A valravn is a mythological raven said to feast on the bodies of those who fall in battle, a dark image that suits a ride themed around a plunge into nothing. It fit a run of Cedar Point coasters named for grim legends in these years, alongside the werewolf Rougarou that opened just a season earlier.

Sister coasters

Valravn is one of B&M's dive coasters, joining SheiKra at Busch Gardens Tampa and Griffon at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. In 2019 Yukon Striker at Canada's Wonderland, a sister park, opened and surpassed several of the records Valravn had set, but Valravn remains one of the largest dive coasters ever built.

One thing to know

Valravn flips you upside down before you even reach its signature drop. Its 165-foot Immelmann is itself an inversion, unusual for a dive coaster, whose defining moment is the held vertical plunge that comes afterward.

Valravn is one chapter in the history of Cedar Point.

Valravn at a glance