In Queenstown, New Zealand, the stakes have been raised in the adrenaline experience market. There’s now a “catapult” that launches participants almost 500 feet into the air at a speed of up to 60 miles per hour.
It’s not for the faint of heart, or those with a fear of heights, necessarily.
On a bungee jump, it’s your decision when and how to step off the elevated platform and let the thick elasticized cord yank you back up—requiring you to push past your nerves. But once you are secured into the Nevis Catapult “you’re kind of committed,” says Henry van Asch, co-founder of A.J. Hackett Bungy New Zealand, the company behind the new thrill ride, and which first introduced commercial bungee jumping 30 years ago.
The idea for the catapult, has been on van Asch’s mind for longer. Before he and Hackett became the bane of nervous parents everywhere, they were bungee jumping through France. “At one point I stretched the bungee out between two big bridges and did a similar thing,” says van Asch of the inspiration for today’s mechanism.
“We started designing it in earnest three years ago,” says van Asch. “First, it took about a year to work through what we wanted people to experience in terms of emotional, physical, and intellectual processes. Then two years ago we really got into the technical and mechanical design of it.”
After a year of testing the machinery, first at an accredited facility in the city of Christchurch and then out on the actual valley site, van Asch and team unveiled the Nevis Catapult to the public on Wednesday, with local tourism leaders, along with friends and family being among the first to buckle in. The technology was partly funded by a NZD $500,000 ($330,300) grant from the government.
“People who didn’t know anything about it came and tried it and they all came off with a big grin on their face and eyes wide open,” he says.
How It Works
Named for the river the new ride floats above, the Nevis Catapult is not a simple fling and catch. Once outfitted with a harness, thrill seekers are secured to a computerized winch system strung with a bungee cord. Before expulsion, riders are lifted off the platform into a horizontal position.
As time surely must appear to stand still, the other end of the bungee “shoots out across the cables in front of you and the tension is then increased,” says van Asch.