The story
Roots
Walter Bolliger and Claude Mabillard started working for Giovanola, a manufacturing company which supplied rides to Intamin, in the 1970s. During their time at Giovanola, they helped design the company's first stand-up roller coaster, Shockwave at Six Flags Magic Mountain. They also worked on other projects, such as Z-Force at Six Flags Great America. Bolliger & Mabillard left Giovanola, but the company continued to use that track design; Giovanola roller coasters, Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain and Titan at Six Flags Over Texas, use a track style very similar to B&M's.
Launch
In 1987, the pair decided to leave and create their own company. At the time, B&M employed four people, including themselves as two draftsmen. When B&M was created, the pair had agreed not to make any more amusement attractions. However, Robert Mampe, Six Flags Great America's staff engineer, had worked with both men during the construction of Z-Force; he contacted the newly-formed company and asked them to reconfigure the cars for its Giovanola-built, Intamin bobsled coaster, to be relocated from Six Flags Great Adventure.
Following that project, Mampe asked the new company to design and build a stand-up roller coaster for Six Flags Great America, similar to Shockwave at Six Flags Magic Mountain. B&M accepted the offer and hired two more draftsmen. But B&M had a problem regarding how and where to manufacture the track pieces for the roller coaster. With the favorable history of the work done by Clermont Steel Fabricators (on Vortex at Kings Island and Shockwave at Six Flags Great America), Walter Bolliger went to the steel plant and asked if they would be interested in manufacturing the track. Clermont Steel Fabricators accepted, and to this day, manufactures all of B&M's roller coaster track pieces for all of North America. Now with a company to manufacture the track, B&M built its first roller coaster, a stand-up roller coaster, Iron Wolf, which opened in 1990 at Six Flags Great America. Two years later, Bolliger & Mabillard built another project for Six Flags Great America, Batman: The Ride, the world's first inverted roller coaster, which brought them to prominence in the industry.
Development
Bolliger & Mabillard also invented the Floorless Coaster and the Dive Coaster. The company also built its first launched roller coaster, The Incredible Hulk Coaster which is at Universal Islands of Adventure. In 2010, B&M unveiled its new Wing Coaster and premiered the prototype model, named Raptor, at Gardaland in 2011. It has two seats on each side on the car that hang riders over the sides of the track. In 2015, B&M constructed Thunderbird at Holiday World & Splashin' Safari, its first in-house launched coaster. As of 2019 there are fifteen in operation.
By 2010, B&M employed twelve engineers, twelve draftsmen and two draftswomen. The company has made other contributions to the roller coaster industry. The company built the trains for the Psyclone, a now-demolished wooden roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain. The trains were later used on the park's Colossus wooden roller coaster (until it was refurbished by Rocky Mountain Construction), but were only used during October each year. The trains faced backward and usually raced against trains on the second track, which ran forward.
In 2013, the company launched the construction of Banshee, the world's longest inverted roller coaster. B&M supplied new trains for Steel Dragon 2000, built by D. H. Morgan Manufacturing in 2000. As of 2025, Bolliger & Mabillard has built 124 operating roller coasters worldwide. Of these, twelve were listed in Amusement Today Golden Ticket Awards Top 50 Steel Coasters List, including the number one selection, Fury 325.
Bolliger & Mabillard completed its 100th coaster in 2016.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bolliger & Mabillard, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4