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TMNT Shellraiser at Nickelodeon Universe!

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Opened: 2019 (Standing but not operating since 2024) Manufacturer: Gerstlauer Height: 141 ft (43 m) Speed: 62.1 mph (99.9 kph) Length: 3,280.8 ft (1,000.0 m) My most recent ride: 2019

By far the biggest coaster at Nickelodeon Universe at the American Dream mall is TMNT Shellraiser, this massive Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter. And it might surprise you, but this roller coaster in a mall here in New Jersey holds a pretty substantial world record. That record being the steepest drop on any coaster in the world at a ridiculous 121.5°!

Shellraiser is a near clone of Takabisha at Fuji-Q Highland in Japan, which opened back in 2011 with a max angle of 121°. The only real difference in Shellraiser's design from Takabisha is that extra half a degree that gives Shellraiser the record. But Shellraiser is no one-trick pony! This ride has tons of elements, both a launch and a lift hill, and all indoors. How they managed to fit this ride inside a building, let alone intertwine another roller coaster through it, really is an impressive feat.

I'm not gonna be super thorough with an element by element breakdown for this one since, with an inversion focused ride like this one, it can be hard to not repeat myself over and over talking about each of the ride's seven inversions lol. There are a couple of moments that I think are really great that I will point out though. Shellraiser starts off with a bang though by having an inversion almost immediately out of the station. This slow-mo heartline roll offers some great hangtime and is right up against the floor, making for a cool sensation. It's not quite as slow as something like the jojo roll on Hydra at Dorney Park, but it feels more similar to the final heartline roll on Impulse at Knoebels.

After that roll, you go down a dip and hit the ride's launch, and this is a launch I think a lot of people sleep on. I was caught off guard the first time I rode Shellraiser by just how powerful this launch feels. Magnetic launches like this, especially rolling launches where you don't start from a complete standstill, can be kinda hit or miss with force. But not this one. Shellraiser's launch is super strong and punchy and I love it. After the launch, you go flying through the rest of the ride's first half and immediately into a MASSIVE corkscrew. This element is so big, they had to raise a section of the ceiling up higher than the rest in order to accommodate it lol. Two more inversions follow with a banana roll and a second smaller corkscrew along with a quick and twisted airtime hill. You then hit a set of brakes, but don't be mistaken, the ride is far from over hehe.

You then round a turn and find yourself face to face with the ride's vertical lift hill, and you know what's on the other side of that. As you rise up the lift, you go into another section of ceiling that had to be raised to fit the ride, but this one has an awesome bonus to it. As you crest the lift and creep down the pre-drop, some brakes stop you for about 15 seconds or so. Not only does this increase the anticipation for the drop, but in front of you are huge windows looking out of this raised section of roof and straight ahead through those windows is the skyline of New York City. How they managed to place this ride so perfectly to get that view of Manhattan is absolutely fantastic.

But of course, you're only held up there for so long before the brakes release and you're sent down that record-breaking 121.5° drop. This drop, being so steep, gives some fantastic ejector airtime on the way down. This sends you into the second half of the ride with three more inversions: a dive loop, an inverted top hat and an immelmann. These elements feel similar to the inversions in the first half in that they're really big, very well profiled and offer some good forces all around.

Shellraiser has a very dynamic layout and is surprisingly disorienting. One thing I also want to highlight is how Shellraiser is intertwined with another coaster: the park's Gerstlauer spinning coaster Shredder. This makes for a really cool visual both on and off ride as the two coasters cross over and under each other and both have ride vehicles going at the same time.

Shellraiser does have one big downside though, and that's the fact that the ride is definitely not the smoothest. Even when I rode it in its opening year, the ride had some nasty potholes. There was one particularly jarring one immediately after the beyond vertical drop that really shouldn't have been on a brand new ride. I've heard that particular pothole has been fixed over the last few years, but the fact that it was there at all is odd.

This roughness problem may have been part of a larger issue with the ride as a whole. As of writing this post in September of 2025, Shellraiser has been closed since early January of 2024, so nearly a year and a half at this point. As far as I'm aware, no specific reason has been given for its closure beyond "extensive renovations" but what those entail is anyone's guess. A lot of people have speculated that the ride's problems, and by extension its roughness, comes from its support structure. Most coasters' supports are built on concrete footers with one on each support. Shellraiser however had off its supports stuck directly into the massive concrete floor that makes up the building's foundation. I'd imagine this could prevent the ride from moving and flexing like it was designed to in order to accommodate the forces of the trains, making the ride rougher and potentially causing more wear and tear on the structure.

To have your park's headline coaster shut down like this after only about 5 years of operation is just not a great look. But with the fact that the American Dream mall as a whole has kind of struggled since it opened in 2019 (and took almost 15 years to get built and opened in the first place), I don't know how soon they might get this ride back open unfortunately. I really hope that Nickelodeon Universe and Gerstlauer are able to fix the ride and get it back open at some point, because this ride really is awesome and I'd love to ride it again one day.