Five roller coasters, one manufacturer, no exceptions: that’s the record BELANTIS is about to extend, and it tells you more about how the park is run than any single ride ever could.
What happened
BELANTIS, the theme park on Leipzig’s southern edge, has broken ground on a new family launch coaster from Gerstlauer, due to open in 2027. The ceremony — Saxony’s Minister for Economic Affairs, Labour, Energy and Climate Protection Dirk Panter, park managing director Filip De Witte and park director Martin Endruhn, with Asterix and Obelix in costume for the cameras — marks the start of a full rebuild of Strand der Götter (“Beach of the Gods”), the park’s Greek-mythology zone between Land der Grafen and Tal der Pharaonen.
The area, and the coaster inside it, aren’t a one-off. BELANTIS was bought by French leisure group Compagnie des Alpes in April 2025, in partnership with Asterix licensor Les Éditions Albert René, with an explicit long-term goal: turning BELANTIS into the first Asterix Park outside France by 2030 or 2031. Idéfix’s Abenteuerland, a children’s area built around Asterix’s dog, opened in spring 2026 as the first step. The Strand der Götter rebuild — folding Greek mythology and the Odyssey into the Gaulish universe Asterix has always parodied — is the second.
Neither the coaster nor the area has a public name yet, and BELANTIS hasn’t released a height, speed, length or investment figure. What the park has confirmed is the model: a Gerstlauer family launch coaster, the same broad type Gerstlauer calls its Airtime Coaster.
The detail
That “no name yet” caveat matters less than it might, because BELANTIS’s own coaster history tells you almost everything about what to expect. Every coaster the park has ever built is a Gerstlauer.
| Coaster | Gerstlauer model | Opened | Height | Speed | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drachenritt | Bobsled Coaster | 2003 | — | — | — |
| Huracan | Euro-Fighter | 2010 | 32 m (105 ft) | 85 km/h (53 mph) | 560 m (1,840 ft) |
| Huracanito | Kiddy Racer | 2014 | — | — | — |
| Cobra des Amun Ra | Family Coaster 360 | 2015 | — | — | — |
| New for 2027 | Family launch coaster (unnamed) | 2027 | tbc | tbc | tbc |
The new ride’s closest existing sibling is Mecalodon, which opened at Walibi Belgium in 2025 as Gerstlauer’s first Airtime Coaster: 15 m (49 ft) tall, a top speed of 65 km/h (40 mph) and 925 m (3,035 ft) of track, launched three times around the circuit. That’s a reference point for the category BELANTIS is buying into, not a spec sheet for BELANTIS’s own ride — the two are built to a customer’s brief, not off a single fixed mould.
What it actually means
Start with the ride itself. Gerstlauer’s Airtime Coaster platform is built to launch small trains without a conventional lift hill, using either a chain, a friction-wheel launch (spinning tyres gripping a fin under the car — real acceleration from grip alone, no electromagnets involved) or an LSM, a linear synchronous motor that fires the vehicle using trackside electromagnets timed against magnets on the train itself — how both systems actually work is explained here. Mecalodon uses LSMs; BELANTIS hasn’t said which system its own ride will carry. Either way, the appeal for a family park is the same: real acceleration, real airtime, on riders as short as a metre tall, without the footprint or the cost of a full-height structure.
Then there’s the manufacturer story, which is the more interesting one. An entire coaster collection from a single builder is unusual for a park this size — most mid-sized European parks mix manufacturers as their budgets and ambitions grow. BELANTIS hasn’t. Gerstlauer’s whole business, as covered in our manufacturer guide, is built on compact coasters that pack real thrills — beyond-vertical drops, tight launches — onto small plots and modest budgets, which happens to describe exactly what a 27-hectare regional park boxed in near Leipzig has always needed. Four rides in, that relationship also means BELANTIS’s maintenance crews, spare-parts supply chain and ride-ops training are already built around one manufacturer’s engineering, which lowers the operational risk of committing to a decade-long rebrand rather than adding it.
That rebrand is the real headline, and this coaster is a small piece of a much bigger bet. Compagnie des Alpes isn’t chasing a single opening-day splash; it’s laying down themed areas one at a time — Idéfix’s world in 2026, Strand der Götter in 2027 — on the way to a full Asterix Park by 2030 or 2031, a patient, decades-scale approach from a French leisure conglomerate applied to a German park it’s owned for barely eighteen months. Legoland has been running a comparable playbook lately, rolling the same Mack Rides spinning coaster out across three continents rather than commissioning something new for every site. BELANTIS’s version is the same instinct — repeat what works, with the manufacturer you already trust — pointed at branding rather than a single ride model.
The Dispatch verdict
Judged purely as a coaster, this is a modest family ride from a manufacturer that specialises in exactly that — nothing here will trouble a “world’s first” headline, and BELANTIS hasn’t tried to claim one. Judged as a piece of long-term strategy, it’s a tidy data point: a park betting its next five years on one licensor and one manufacturer, both relationships it clearly trusts enough to keep deepening. Worth returning to once the name, the launch system and the theming are actually confirmed.
Further reading: our guide to Gerstlauer and the rest of the roller coaster manufacturers, how LSM and hydraulic launch systems actually work, and Legoland Windsor’s own Mack Rides spinning coaster, filed through a rather different route.