A roller coaster you can experience in your swimwear? France's O'Gliss Park has revealed Manakai - Typhoon Coaster, a world-first attraction combining a spinning family coaster with an immersive water ride.
The ambitious new attraction was unveiled during IAAPA Expo Europe 2026 in London and is scheduled to open at O'Gliss Park in 2028.
Developed with BoldMove Nation, Manakai will introduce the company's first Spinfinity Splash Coaster, with spinning vehicles travelling through a tropical aquatic environment packed with water effects.
And unlike most roller coasters, guests won't necessarily be watching all the action from behind a fence. The entire area is being designed so visitors can explore around and underneath the attraction.
What is Manakai - Typhoon Coaster?
Manakai will become the centrepiece of a completely new themed area at O'Gliss Park, a major water park in western France.
The attraction combines the layout and movement of a roller coaster with the interactive environment you'd expect from a water park.
Current plans call for approximately 465 metres of track, reaching heights of up to 19 metres.
Guests will ride in spinning vehicles with passengers seated facing one another. Rather than spinning completely at random, the rotation can be controlled to help direct riders towards key scenes and effects throughout the experience.
A roller coaster built for a water park
That's where Manakai gets particularly interesting.
O'Gliss Park isn't attempting to place a conventional family coaster next to its slides and pools. Instead, the attraction has been developed specifically around its water park setting.
The coaster will weave through an aquatic island environment featuring themed rockwork, vegetation and integrated water effects.
Guests outside the ride will also be able to move around, underneath and through sections of the attraction, helping turn Manakai into part of the wider area rather than an isolated roller coaster.
BoldMove Nation describes the concept as combining the thrill of a coaster with the refreshing nature of a water attraction.
Exactly how wet riders will get remains to be seen, but the attraction is clearly being designed with swimwear rather than rain ponchos in mind.
What is a Spinfinity Splash Coaster?
Manakai will be the world's first installation of BoldMove Nation's Spinfinity Splash Coaster concept.
The system uses compact spinning coaster vehicles alongside multimedia, theming and physical effects to create an experience that can be adapted to different environments.
For O'Gliss Park, that environment is water.
The controlled spinning system means vehicles can be positioned to face particular moments during the ride, allowing Manakai to combine coaster elements with more deliberately staged scenes.
That could make it feel closer to a themed attraction than a traditional spinning coaster.
More than just a roller coaster
The wider Manakai development is arguably just as important as the coaster itself.
Concept artwork shows the attraction surrounded by a heavily themed tropical environment rather than sitting separately from the rest of the water park.
BoldMove Nation says visitors will be able to walk around, below and through the attraction, creating different viewpoints and interactions between riders and other water park guests.
That should also mean Manakai contributes to the atmosphere of the area even for visitors who don't actually ride.
It's an interesting approach for a water park, where major investments have traditionally focused on increasingly elaborate slides, water coasters and pools rather than conventional roller coaster technology.
Where is O'Gliss Park?
O'Gliss Park is located in the Vendée region of western France, around 20 minutes from the Atlantic coast.
It's one of France's largest water parks, featuring a mixture of high-speed slides, family attractions, pools and relaxation areas.
Manakai represents a significant step beyond the traditional water park attraction line-up and should give the park something genuinely distinctive within the European market.
When will Manakai open?
Manakai - Typhoon Coaster is currently scheduled to open in 2028.
There's therefore plenty still to be revealed before anyone climbs aboard.
Detailed information about the coaster's individual elements, speed, ride duration and exactly how the water effects will interact with riders hasn't yet been announced.
We'll also be interested to see just how intense the spinning becomes and whether riders have any influence over it themselves.
A fascinating world-first for Europe
World-first claims are increasingly common in the theme park industry, but Manakai genuinely appears to be trying something unusual.
We've seen water coasters. We've seen spinning roller coasters. And we've seen increasingly elaborate themed water rides.
Combining those ideas into a coaster designed from the outset to sit at the centre of a water park is much less familiar.
More importantly, O'Gliss Park and BoldMove Nation appear to be thinking beyond the ride itself, creating an environment where Manakai becomes something the entire water park can interact with.
If the finished attraction looks anything like the concept artwork, France could have one of Europe's most unusual new attractions when Manakai - Typhoon Coaster opens in 2028.
