Photo: Jeffrey Seifert. View full-sized image.
A clear industry trend is the strong push for family attractions. There will always be a place for towering thrill-seeker extreme rides — which are great for marketing — but parks have demonstrated great effort in adding rides that most of the family can enjoy together.
SeaWorld San Antonio (Texas) has embraced this philosophy, but in its own way has pushed family attractions to the edge. In 2023, the park opened Catapult Falls, an Intamin flume ride. That attraction included innovative features like an elevator lift, a record-setting drop for steepness and a launch (on a flume!). In 2025, the park replaced its small children’s coaster with another one, but this time Beach Rescue Racer was considerably taller and faster than its predecessor. Now SeaWorld is at it again.
Photo: courtesy of SeaWorld San Antonio. View full-sized image.
Opening March 7, Barracuda Strike is the tallest “family inverted coaster” from Bolliger & Mabillard (B&M). The layout wonderfully delivers. It is so thrilling, in fact, it begs the question: “What defines a ‘family’ coaster?” It is a term that honestly has no defined criteria. No inversions? Okay. A 42-inch height requirement? That’s good. But … dang! Barracuda Strike is no kiddie coaster. At 90 feet tall, it nears the height of the other B&M inverted coaster across the lake, Great White.
Diving deeper, this is the third family inverted coaster from B&M that United Parks has invested in. Phoenix Rising opened at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay (Florida) in 2024. Last year, Big Bad Wolf: The Wolf’s Revenge howled its way into Busch Gardens Williamsburg (Virginia). Now it’s a trio, with each of the three having an older inverted sibling with inversions in the park.
Barracuda Strike is the tallest of the three, making it the fastest. With just the single lift, its length is similar to Phoenix Rising. Still, at 1,800 feet, it delivers a punch.
Riders fly above the park’s central lake on Barracuda Strike.
What makes it even better is the placement of the coaster. The lift climbs directly toward the park’s central lake, and in so doing, the first drop heads directly for the water. (It was masterfully planned.) Taking advantage of the water’s edge, the coaster flies riders above the surface on two runs, which is dramatically fun to see below one’s feet. Over land, the coaster plunges into an artistic, sculptural construct — somewhat of an abstracted coral formation — twice.
In this view, the tracks of Barracuda Strike, Wave Breaker: The Rescue Coaster and Steel Eel can be seen.
Photo: courtesy of SeaWorld San Antonio. View full-sized image.
There are no upside-down moments (that whole “family” thing), but there are wildly banked turns that offer wildly strong forces. The coaster crosses over the midway twice — and bisects Steel Eel’s lift — and the section on the waterfront side of the midway is compact, keeping the action nonstop.
Onboard sound provides dramatic music from dispatch to brake run.
A single train of 20 riders has passengers seated in pairs in a side-by-side configuration. (Great White is four-across.) This gives everyone a great view.
For those who consider the Journey to Atlantis splashwater ride a coaster, this brings the park’s count to seven. Barracuda Strike finds that sweet spot from kids growing into larger rides from Beach Rescue Racer to Wave Breaker and now to Barracuda Strike.
“We've done so much over the last five years of adding new attractions to the park that sometimes I kind of feel like we're running out of space already,” joked Ray Gonzales, director of marketing. “We're starting to get pretty strategic with where we're putting our rides. This one just worked to kind of put it underneath Steel Eel. Now when you come to the park, you get to see this beautiful spaghetti of steel between Barracuda Strike, Steel Eel and Wave Breaker.”
Seeing the fish “swimming” under the pier is a nice reminder of the aquatic theme.
Photo: Tim Baldwin. View full-sized image.
Aesthetic touches, such as a school of fish living under the pier (which serves as the station), give the attraction a bit of flair in comparison to some of the park’s other stations. Ambient music while in the queue is also par for the course for United Parks.
Barracuda Strike is one of six significant new coasters opening in Texas this year.
— Tim Baldwin, ACE News
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