Shot Tower

Shot Tower was a drop tower ride located at Carwardine Colony in, operating from March 20, 1988 until August 28, 2002. It held the record for tallest drop tower in the world for several years, and was one of the earliest modern-style drop towers.

History
Shot Tower represented a $1.7 million investment for the park and was the brainchild of Carwardine Parks founder Christopher R. Carwardine. The design was finalized by Palazzi & Sons Engineering, a -based company that specialized in the design, engineering and manufacturing of mining equipment, as Carwardine did not have an engineering degree. The tower itself was built by Coudray Enterprises, Inc. of, a company that mainly built TV & radio transmission towers, while the "brake chamber" was made by Palazzi and the ride vehicle was made in-house by Carwardine Parks. With the exception of the tower which was installed by Coudray, everything else was installed by either Palazzi & Sons or Carwardine themselves.

From 1996-2003, the attraction was sponsored by PepsiCo's All Sport sports drink, and was repainted from the ride's original silver with a golden ride vehicle to blue and green with a blue ride vehicle. The All Sport sponsorship remained for the ride's final year of operation despite PepsiCo's sale of the brand to The Monarch Beverage Company in 2001.

The ride was closed on August 28, 2002, and the tower was imploded in January 2003 during the off-season. It was replaced by Redwall: Slagar's Challenge.

Design and ride experience
Passengers would start by boarding the ride vehicle, which sat three people at a time. The ride vehicle had over-the-shoulder seatbelts and leg restraint bars to keep riders in place. The vehicle would then be lifted by a elevator cable towards the top of the tower. Upon reaching the peak, riders would be given two options - wait 10 seconds for the drop or push a button within the vehicle that triggered the drop automatically. Both of these options would lead to a 100 mph descent down the tower. Instead of brakes, the ride had a "brake chamber". The size of the ride vehicle was relative to that of the "brake chamber", so when the ride vehicle re-entered the "chamber", very little air was allowed to escape, and the build-up of air pressure within the "chamber" prevented the vehicle from crashing to the ground. The only way air could escape was through specially-placed holes on the exterior of the "chamber".

Trivia

 * The ride was originally going to be an Intamin 1st Generation freefall with the addition of an extended layout, having one small drop before the main lift and an airtime hill after the main drop, this was cancelled due to being considered too intense of a ride for Kids Kountry and Carwardine already planning other rides from Intamin.
 * This variation of the model would be attempted to be sold to other parks, but failed.
 * The ride was the fastest ride at the park for a period of time.
 * The ride held the original webcams (that reloaded every 30 seconds and were in black & white) that can be seen on Carwardine Colony's website from 1999 to December 2002 when the cameras were removed. In March 2003, newer color webcams with a reload time of only 5 seconds were installed atop Cyberchase: Hack Attack, Monstar and Sky Tower.
 * However, all of the ride footage from the original webcams were saved and archived on the Internet, as well as uploaded to YouTube in the late 2010's.