A $1.3–1.5 billion theme park is about to open its gates on a promise that sounds like a design flaw: fewer people, deliberately.
What happened
Grupo Vidanta’s BON (short for “Beauty of Nature”) will soft-open on 24 October 2026 at its VidantaWorld resort in Vallarta-Nuevo Nayarit, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. For an “extended period of exclusive access”, only guests staying at the resort can go in. Several outlets, including Main Street Magic and Wikipedia, give April 2027 for the public opening; we could not find that date in a Vidanta statement, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed.
Vidanta calls BON “the world’s first luxury theme park”. Iván Chávez, an executive vice president of Grupo Vidanta, said the aim is for guests not to be “exhausted or forced to choose between relaxation and entertainment”. The company plans to cap attendance to match.
The detail
Vidanta’s figures are 23 attractions, 25 restaurants and 16 shops. Five of the park’s themed worlds open first: Laguna Feliz, Celebration Lagoon, Crystal Star Plaza, Discovery Jungle and Adventure Valley. Reported investment varies between outlets, from about $1.3 billion to about $1.5 billion, so we give a range.
The ride line-up is the interesting bit. Vekoma’s own announcement at the IAAPA Expo in 2024 listed five rides it is building for BON:
- Tecuani Beast, a double launch coaster
- Ashara: Goddess of Fire, a switchback coaster
- Izari’s Flight, a Horus family coaster
- Speed of Light, a suspended family coaster
- Toco Tambo Falls, a water ride
Intamin is reported to supply a 40 m (131 ft) drop tower, Floresta Drop. Main Street Magic also lists a Vekoma coaster called The Rise of Soluma, with 372 m (1,220 ft) of track, a 20 m (66 ft) height and a 54 km/h (34 mph) top speed. That name does not appear in Vekoma’s list, so we cannot say which ride it is, or whether it was renamed.
| Tecuani Beast | |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Vekoma |
| Model | Double Launch Coaster 1200 |
| Track length | 1,200 m (3,937 ft) |
| Top speed | 105 km/h (65 mph), per Vekoma |
| Inversions | 6 |
| Launch | Linear synchronous motors, twice |
| Train | 16 riders, two across |
Vekoma says the ride has 20 track elements, more than 16 seconds of airtime, and “a world’s first Double Roll-Over Tophat”. No source we found says whether Tecuani Beast will be running on 24 October; the soft-opening ride lists we saw do not mention it, and RCDB still lists it as under construction.
What it actually means
Start with “luxury”. In engineering terms it is mostly a capacity decision. Every park’s queue is set by how many riders its rides can swing through per hour against how many people are let in, a sum we walk through in how theme parks calculate ride capacity. Most parks fill the gate and live with the queue. BON restricts the gate, and a restricted gate on a 16-seat coaster means short waits without anyone needing a clever queue system.
As for “world’s first”, read it as a positioning claim, not a technical one. Nobody measures luxury the way they measure height, and premium tiers such as paid queue-skipping already exist at many parks. We would call BON an unusually committed attempt at the idea rather than proof of a category. Its first year as a resort-guests-only park is also a clever way to test the model before anyone buys a day ticket, which is the soft opening logic taken to a whole park.
The coaster is the stronger story. A double launch coaster accelerates the train with a launch section twice in one circuit, rather than relying on one lift hill and gravity. Vekoma says both launches use linear synchronous motors, magnets in the track that pull the train along, as explained in how launch coasters work. The “world’s first Double Roll-Over Tophat” is Vekoma’s own wording for one of its elements, and we could not verify it independently; element names are branding as much as geometry, so we will wait for RCDB’s element data.
Compare the claims, too. Vekoma calls Tecuani Beast “Latin America’s only Double Launch Coaster”, which is narrower than “fastest”. At 105 km/h it is slower than the 120 km/h the park quotes for Brazil’s Dreams at Cacau Park, another Vekoma launch coaster. For the manufacturer, BON is a large Latin American order alongside its work at Efteling; see our guide to the manufacturers for how it stacks up against its rivals.
The Dispatch verdict
BON is worth watching for the business model as much as the rides: a park that sells empty space. The coaster list is credible on paper, but until Tecuani Beast carries passengers, and the park publishes opening-day ride status, this is a plan with a date on it. We will check back when the gates open.
Further reading: how launch coasters work, how theme parks calculate ride capacity, why parks soft-open rides, and Cacau Park’s Dreams.