Amusement Park News

Glendale, Ariz.'s Mattel Adventure Park will be opening their indoor-outdoor amusements with a lot of zoom-zooming fun. Two Hot Wheels attractions are being constructed to join the life-size Barbie Beach House at the nine-acre park.

The appropriately zippy rides are Hot Wheels Twin Mill Racer and Hot Wheels Bone Shaker: The Ultimate Ride. The former will be the first coaster of its kind in Arizona featuring a double loop and two corkscrews, and is designed to provide plenty of racing excitement. The latter, which is billed as a family roller coaster, will also offer a first: the popular hot rod car's skull design, which will be used in a family coaster for the very first time.

According to Julie Freeland, the senior director of global location-based entertainment for Matttel, the upcoming new adventure park is currently under full-steam-ahead construction and shaping “an amazing opportunity to bring our beloved brands to life… We're especially excited for families to experience the Hot Wheels Bone Shaker rollercoaster – a dream come true for any Hot Wheels fan.”



The park will open near the State Farm Stadium in Glendale at VAI Resort, and is designed to operate year ‘round, even in the summer heat, as it is primarily indoors and air-conditioned.

Along with featuring the iconic skull design making its first family coaster debut, Hot Wheels Bone Shaker will also reach a whopping 84 feet in the air, a rush for both kids and adults. The double loops of Hot Wheels Twin Mill Racer should up the ante even more on thrills with its loops and corkscrews.

According to Mark Cornell, president of Epic Resort Destinations, of which Mattel Adventure Park is a part, the park design will provide acres of air-conditioned space to “ensure a cool guest experience... [it's an] indoor park with outside benefits.” The park's development team, he attests, is working hard to bring “Mattel's powerhouse, evergreen brands to life like never before,” and doing this in “truly innovative ways to create pioneering attractions that are certain to bring continuous fun for the whole family.”

Cornell adds that “You've never seen a park quite like this one,” noting that while the coasters will all load in “cool air-conditioned space,” Bone Shaker will then undergo “a lift climb through the roof, peaking at a height of 84 feet for a ride of a lifetime.” But perhaps the Bone Shaker coaster cars will be the most unique aspect of the ride, sporting their skull design.

According to Cornell, the coaster will be the first launching coaster in Arizona, and making it even more unique, it will utilize magnetic propulsion, the same unique tech that can be used to launch airplanes from an aircraft carrier. He terms the mechanics of the ride to be “very fast, very quiet, very efficient.”

After loading indoors and rising through the roof on the lift, Bone Shaker will race all around the roof before returning “into a double downward helix of 660 degrees.” And if this isn't exciting enough, the cars will then re-enter the inside space, braking abruptly for what Cornell calls “the ultimate in Hot Wheels experience.” And despite all these thrills, Bone Shaker is indeed a family coaster, he attests.



Certainly, the whole family will ooh and ahh over the meticulous creation of the car design. “This is a super themed car... the front end of this this vehicle is chromed carbon fiber,” Cornell explains. He notes that Mattel worked hand-in-hand with the park to make sure the cars were “as authentic to the Hot Wheels car as they possibly could be.”

Geared to even higher-octane excitement, Hot Wheels Twin Mill Racer will up the ante on thrills with its construction. Another popular model, the Twin Mill car is “a C six modeled Corvette dual engine car that's completely themed,” as described by Cornell. The launch coaster loads indoors and then “shoots out of a tunnel, [moving from] zero to 50 [miles per hour] in under three seconds,” before immediately going into a double loop, and turning around in a helix, a double corkscrew that reaches all the way to the far end of the park before the car comes inside.

Family-friendly, experiential worlds will also unfold beyond the Hot Wheels brand at Mattel Adventure Park, providing fun for kids of all ages “Watching the excitement build as these mega attractions are being installed in Glendale has been tremendous, and we promise, you've never seen a park quite like this…” Cornell says.


Beyond the Hot Wheels racing excitement, park guests will get to experience Thomas & Friends: World of Sodor, seven different family attractions that should be especially appealing to the youngest park guests. It will include an indoor play space for little kids, also themed to Thomas and his pals.

The pink world of Barbie will come to life with holographic technology in the Barbie Dream Closet Experience. The full-scale Barbie Beach House should be immensely popular with fans of the 2023 Barbie film directed by Greta Gerwig, and little and big girls everywhere. There's a roof top restaurant and bar (for those big girls) that will offer a broad view of the park and area landscape beyond. The Barbie Beach House will be free of charge to enter, with whatever experiences guests choose to enjoy being individually fee-based.

Action players will get to take on Masters of the Universe Laser Tag and fight for Eternia. The attraction will be set in a 4,500 square-foot laser tag arena created to represent the universe's towering Castle Grayskull fortress.

The park will also offer mini golf, in a unique, Mattel branded fashion, of course. The golf course will feature nine holes inspired by the Magic 8 Ball and Pictionary among other Mattel games.

An Uno-themed climbing structure will be another attraction at the park. The larger-than-life custom-climb structure will offer climbing adventures along with some nostalgia for those who may have or are growing up with playing the classic game.

The adventure park will offer an all-day pass, providing unlimited rides and experiences other than those located at the free-to-enter Barbie Beach House, with its individually selected experiences.