Tornado

The Tornado was a steel roller coaster at the Belgian amusement park Walibi Belgium. The Tornado was built in 1979 by Vekoma and was demolished in 2006 after more than 3 years of inactivity. In 1979, Eddy Meeùs wanted to build a roller coaster in his amusement park modeled after several American parks he had visited. He approached the Dutch company Vekoma, which at the time only sold roller coasters from the American manufacturer Arrow Dynamics and had never created one itself before. Tornado became the first roller coaster built by Vekoma itself. Meeùs was warned in advance by several other parks that a roller coaster of such nature would attract the wrong kind of visitors. However, Tornado turned out to be a success, and Alton Towers later opened Corkscrew followed by Efteling with Python. With this move, Walibi Waver was regarded as the most leading amusement park in Europe, and a fierce competition began in Europe, but especially in Belgium, among the major parks to install innovative and modern attractions in their parks. Many theme park fans refer to that period as 'the golden years of Belgian amusement parks', a competition that has become hardly noticeable in Belgium in recent years.

Wikipedia