IAAPA Brass Ring Awards 2023: Numerous Honors Go to Europe
Photo: Courtesy of Intamin
(eap) During the IAAPA Expo last week, the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) announced the winners of this year’s “Brass Ring Awards”, special honors for outstanding projects and product developments in the global leisure industry. Again, also numerous European manufacturing companies got acknowledged with a Brass Ring Award: with a prize in the “Best New Product: Major Ride/Attraction” category (product costs over three million US dollars), the Liechtenstein-based company Intamin Amusement Rides was honored for the “Hypersphere 360°” Dome Ride Theatre, which was realised in collaboration with Attraktion! at the new SeaWorld park in Abu Dhabi. Intamin was also honored with the coveted Impact Award for Hypersphere. Another award in the Best New Product category went to Sally Dark Rides for the rollercoaster dark ride “Uncharted: El Enigma de Penitence” at PortAventura World in Spain (joint project with Intamin, read also our article in EAP 5/2023).
In the category of “Best New Product: Major Ride/Attraction” with product costs of less than two million US dollars, Triotech and BoldMove Nation were honored for the first installation of a Smash & Reload dark ride: “Champi'Folies”, opened this spring at French theme park Le PAL (c.f. EAP 4/2023). A prize in the “Best New Product: Family Ride/Attraction” category went to the Swiss attraction manufacturer Ride Engineers Switzerland for its “Crazy Professor” vertical dark ride in Conny-Land (c.f. EAP 3/2023). In the water attraction category, ProSlide received a Brass Ring Award for the Dueling PIPElineBLAST Water Coaster “Saifa”, which opened this past summer at Siam Park on Tenerife island (see EAP 5/2023). WhiteWater West received an award for its new product “AquaForms 12” (read our interview with Mark Weston, product specialist at WhiteWater West for water play structures in our latest magazine issue).
In the field of product development, the German company Josef Wiegand was also honored with a Brass Ring for the rain shield specially developed for the AlpineCoaster 2.0 and the sister company Wiegand.Waterrides with another award for the X-Slide presented last year (see EAP 1/2023). The Italian SELA Group received an award for the “Ufo” mini bumper car, while the Turkish waterslide manufacturer Polin was honoured for its new “Triango” water slide concept (read more in our trade show report, which will be featured in our upcoming Jan/Feb issue).
A complete overview of this year’s Brass Ring Award winners can be found here. For the first time, the official presentation of the awards will take place outside of the IAAPA Expo trade show event on a separate date: On 3 March 2024, the award winners will be celebrated in a festive setting in Las Vegas. IAAPA is thus including the awards ceremony in its paid event program, tickets are already available. ■
