There is a brand new Bolliger & Mabillard inverted roller coaster coming to Gröna Lund in 2021, the first ride of its type to open in six years.

Monster is the largest ever investment at the park in Sweden, at a total cost of 450 million Swedish Krona (44 million Euros). It will be 111.5 ft tall, reach a top speed of 55.9 mph and feature three inversions; two Zero-G Rolls and a Corkscrew, plus a Jr. Immelmann.

We spoke with Peter Osbeck, the Senior Ride Manager at Parks and Resorts Scandinavia, about this exciting project.

Project of a lifetime 

We asked Peter how he started out at Gröna Lund:

"When I was born, my father worked at Gröna Lund as the financial director, and so I grew up at the park. I was there playing around from three or four years old, with my parents, of course. Then I started to work there with whatever there was to do. I think I was 10 or 11, so it's been about 50 years. I started to do things, whatever they had, because I thought it was fun and I earned."

"In the beginning, I earned one crown per hour. When you say that today, people say whoa, that's terrible. But it wasn't then, it was enough for one chocolate bar or 100 of these very small toffee caramels. For us being kids, it was not that bad and we had a lot of fun! I was changing lightbulbs on the Ferris wheel and whatever. Then as a teenager, I started working with IT and technical things when I was on school holidays."

"Before I did my military service, I worked there for a couple of years after school. Then in 1980 I was full time employed. I did my first business trip to Germany 1979. I went to the Oktoberfest, because that was the showroom. Many people say I was partying. Yes, we did. But it was the showroom where everybody met. It was a little bit like EAS or IAAPA today. I got to know most of the important people there due to my mentor, who was the technical manager for so many years. He knew all the factories and all the travelling showmen as there weren't really many parks in those days. I think Europa-Park was only a few years old. I met Roland Mack and his father Franz Mack."

"My role now is about developing new attractions and theming, together with the two owners Johan Tidstrand and Mattias Banker. The three of us work on those things, we work very well together, and have done since 2006 when they came in and bought Gröna Lund."

"We have done many projects, and a lot of fun things. It's been very hectic to get these things done and it's almost always special things that we do. I mean, at Gröna Lund you have to make special versions of everything to get it to fit in. I mean, like Ikaros standing on a bridge, that doesn't really need any space in the park. You can still walk underneath. Monster is the most compact B&M I think ever, and it's been so squeezed together. It's going to be a super action-packed coaster and with its station underground."

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Peter Osbeck with Peter Andersson, in charge of the erection of the ride, and Nisse Nilsson, the crane driver, inside one of the big supports. Together they have well over 100 years of ride experience.

A technical challenge

"Johan Tidstrand, the majority owner (of Parks and Resorts Scandinavia), wanted to have a B&M, and he really wanted us to build it at Gröna Lund. We have a parking lot, and we are going to build there as soon as we have the building permits, so in the beginning the idea was to have it there. But when we realised that it was going to be very difficult to get everything in hand, then he said 'can't we put it in the existing space' and I said it's going to be really tough because it's so big and wide with the four people in a row and so on. I said the only way to do it, is to put the station underground, otherwise we can't have it, and so we've done that."

We asked how B&M felt about the project when they were initially approached:

"In the beginning, they were very sceptical, and when we wanted to put the station underground, it was again a little bit of 'well, I don't know how we can do this'. We told them several times what we wanted to do, and how they were going to do it. We said to them, 'we can't have all these columns coming down in the park because then no guests can walk around there', so I said that we need to have a column at a certain place that is huge, taking away maybe between six and eight normal columns."

"There were a lot of discussions. I said to them, we need to have that and I know you can, and they came back and said 'okay, we can do it'. Then, our architect and myself said this is great, let's do three more! Now it's there and it works very well, even though the columns look like the giant drop tower, as it's very close to the same diameter."

On excavating for the underground station, Peter explained:

"It's been a challenge, of course, as we're about 40 metres from the Baltic Sea. The amount of water coming in was one of the worries, but we were lucky that it wasn't that much. There was a lot of mud before we hit the rock in one corner, which was a bit difficult because it was really wet mud. It was like a soup! That was difficult to transport. Then we started to blast rock, and it took about 3,500 trucks to get everything out because you need to use normal trucks since it's in the middle of the city."

"We had a very good company doing the excavation work and another, maybe the best company in Sweden, to blast the rock. Another big company was doing the concrete and pile driving. They were all really good. Almost every company was Swedish. Several of them we have worked with before, so we know how capable they are, and that makes a huge difference when you have a tight time schedule."

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Years in the planning

"It's taken a long time. I mean, we started talking about the B&M coaster outside on the parking lot, maybe the end of 2007 beginning of 2008. So it's been on the table for 12 years. Our plan is to open at the end of April 2021."

Prior to Monster, Peter worked on Wildfire at Kolmården, the hybrid wooden coaster from Rocky Mountain Construction that opened in 2016.

"Wildfire is one of the most fantastic projects I've ever worked on. If you compare everything, I think it's the best in the world because of the environment; the weather, the sea, the mountain, the woods and how it's laid out there. It's just great."

Impact of the coronavirus

We asked about the impact of the coronavirus:

"Since the new owners came in 2006 we went from about 1 million visitors up to 1.7 million in 2019. The problem right now is that we haven't had one single day open so far this year. Which is, of course, a catastrophe for the park. So now we are just focusing on Monster and not investing in anything else at the moment."

Origin of the name

"We were thinking a lot about different names. But we thought of this story about a hidden subway station, and when they filled up the station because something bad happened at the turn of the century. That was a good story, and so we started thinking, why did they fill it up? Because there was a monster!

Peter told us that other names were considered:

"We thought about Ghost, we thought about Monster. We had several others but after a while we said that Monster is good. Let's go for it!"

The first ride of its type in six years

Batman: The Ride opened at Six Flags Great America (Illinois, USA) in 1992 as the first Bolliger & Mabillard inverted coaster in the world. 22 years later and after more than 30 installations, the most recent was Banshee at Kings Island (Ohio, USA) in 2014.

Elsewhere in Europe, this popular coaster type can be found at theme parks such as Alton Towers (UK), Parc Asterix (France), Parque Warner (Spain), Phantasialand (Germany) and Mirabilandia (Italy), but Monster will be the first in Sweden.

We asked Peter what makes Monster different and distinctive:

"I would say it's an extremely compact coaster and it's about where it's located. It's very, very narrow. You will pass things, coasters and buildings constantly during the ride, and you probably won't know where you are when you come into the station. Gröna Lund has a fantastic view over Stockholm, so when you go up the lift hill you will look over the city in a fantastic way before you plunge down and into all the elements."

"The number one thing I think about Gröna Lund, is that we do everything differently, and the surroundings are just amazing."

Monster will open at Gröna Lund in April 2021.