Amusement Park News

SeaWorld Orlando has opened its much-anticipated Penguin Trek ride. The July intro of the coaster collaboration between Bolliger & Mabillard and the resort drew crowds eager to ride.

The coaster towers 65-feet in height and runs over 3,020-feet in length. Reaching a speed of up to 43 miles per hour, the coaster is billed as a family ride, allowing parkgoers 42” and up to enjoy the experience, making it ideally designed for a family with kids starting at perhaps age 7. The coaster is a true original as a steel dual LSM-launched attraction.

The indoor queue line has an immersive, themed setting: a base camp in the Antarctic designed for penguin observation and studies set up with winter gear, tools, and signage that help to set the theme of entering an icy climate. Here at the camp, riders board the coaster. Cars are designed to loosely resemble snowmobiles, and riders are seated in pairs, which makes Penguin Trek quite different from traditional four-seater coaster rows. The trains are not as heavily themed as are other coasters at SeaWorld but are geared toward providing a smooth rider experience.


The coaster story unfolds as taking riders on a search for a penguin colony. As the cars leave the base camp departure station, an indoor dark ride unfolds with a journey that passes through a series of set pieces and projections that depict a snow-covered land. Riders then pass into a twisting part of the track that takes them into an icy tunnel that's filled with special effects and introduces a first launch. The cars then burst outdoors, where the dark ride experience morphs into an outdoor coaster.

Outdoors, the cars travel a variety of twists, drops, turns, and a second booster launch, before returning indoors to experience a completely different part of the attraction: a real, live penguin encounter. This polar trek concludes with the discovery of a live penguin habitat, where guests can observe six different penguin species, up close once disembarking from the ride itself. In the penguinarium they'll visit with the Rockhopper, King, Adelie, Chinstrap, Gentoo and Magellanic penguins, the latter of which live in temperate waters. The coaster journey itself lasts approximately 3 minutes.

According to Conner Carr, corporate director of rides and engineering for United Parks and Resorts, the new attraction was “born out of what rides the park needs.” While not affecting the names of specific resorts such as SeaWorld Orlando, the parent company changed its name to United Parks and Resorts in February 2024, to be more inclusive of the company's quiver of diverse attractions.

Carr notes that SeaWorld Orlando already offers attractions featuring towering height and impressive speed, such as Mako; the more traditional big thrills of Kraken, the water coaster experience of Journey to Atlantis; a flying coaster, Manta; and even a shuttle coaster, Ice Breaker. Additionally, the park offers the surfing excitement of its Pipeline ride, and the kid-skewing family attraction of Super Grover's Box Car Derby in the Sesame Street area of the park.

Penguin Trek is entirely different, as Carr says, offering a truly inventive and exciting family ride experience. He describes the ride as “a coaster for all or an adventure for all, a kind of attraction for everyone to ride and experience together.” Fitting that needed niche was an important facet of developing the ride, as was determining the best way to put that type of coaster experience at SeaWorld, in a way that was “a good fit and makes sense.”


After considerable brainstorming, the Antarctica section of the park seemed the perfect fit.

As the location of the park's penguinarium, it was also missing a major attraction. The area was once where Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin was housed. This ride was a trackless dark ride which invited passengers to follow a penguin named Puck, on his first journeys into the sea.

Guests could choose their own type of ride sensory experience: mild or wild. As the ride ended, guests could view the penguinarium itself through the glass windows of the penguinarium. Once leaving their vehicles, they could enter the penguinarium, which replicated the natural environment of penguins. Unfortunately, the attraction was expensive to maintain, and it was also frequently shuttered from technical challenges during its 7-year run, which ended with the pandemic shutdown of the park in March 2020.

When the park reopened, SeaWorld guests visited the penguinarium through an existing ride bypass, reachable through Empire of the Penguin's former queue line. The bypass existed originally to serve guests who didn't want to participate in the dark ride portion of the attraction. That bypass remains in place today for any guests who prefer to skip the roller coaster section of the new Penguin Trek.


Most of the original Empire of the Penguin's building has been revamped and reused, Carr says. The structure itself required “very little adjustment other than a couple of holes in the wall for trains to exit and reenter the building. In fact, the station platform is what was the finale room for Empire and the station exit ramp passes directly by the final reveal windows of the former attraction.”

All in all, the coaster is designed to provide a memorable family-friendly experience. The reinvention of the previous Empire space allows park guests to experience real penguins personally while also enjoying the fun of a relatively tame roller coaster experience. As the park's PR says “Prepare for the coolest family coaster mission you'll ever join.”