News about Dragon Khan

In March 2026, the announced retrack reached its public payoff: Dragon Khan reopened. During the previous months, PortAventura had removed and rebuilt the cobra roll and vertical loop. These two key elements together represent three inversions and sit right at the heart of the coaster’s identity.

For visitors, the most important point was that the classic ride was back in the line-up. Dragon Khan stands in the Chinese themed area, reaches 45 metres, stretches 1,270 metres and runs at around 105 kilometres per hour. Its eight inversions were a world record until 2002. At the same time, the coaster had built up a reputation among fans as intense and at times rough, making every technical improvement closely watched.

The reopening showed that PortAventura was not simply preserving the ride for nostalgia. The resort was investing in its future. After the repaint, the fan documentary and the announced rebuild, this return felt like the final chapter of Dragon Khan’s thirtieth anniversary period: an icon back in service, with renewed key sections in its track.

In October 2025 it became clear that PortAventura was going beyond repainting and routine maintenance. Dragon Khan, now thirty years old, would be partly rebuilt. The park announced that the cobra roll and vertical loop would be removed after the Christmas holidays and replaced. Together, those elements account for three of the coaster’s eight inversions.

Technical director Sergio Fraile described the operation as complex and unusual for the resort. The new track sections were expected to arrive in the weeks after the announcement, with the main work scheduled for the seasonal closure. Notably, Bolliger & Mabillard was involved again, the same Swiss manufacturer that built Dragon Khan in 1995.

For visitors and fans, this was major news. Dragon Khan is not just another coaster in PortAventura’s line-up; it is one of the rides that gave the park international status. Reworking some of its most distinctive inversions showed that the resort wanted to extend the coaster’s life seriously. The project was both practical and historic: an investment to keep a classic operational while preserving the identity that made it famous.

In August 2025, Dragon Khan received its own documentary. It was not a standard park marketing piece, but a fan-driven project: the YouTube channel Parque a Parque released Dragon Khan: Símbolo de una Aventura, an almost two-hour film about the coaster that has been tied to PortAventura since 1995.

The documentary went beyond ride footage. Looopings reported that it covered the construction, design, maintenance and daily operation of the attraction. The interview list gave the film extra weight, with names including Walter Bolliger of Bolliger & Mabillard, designer John Wardley and PortAventura director Fernando Aldecoa. Archive material and amateur footage from the park’s early years added a strong historical layer.

For Dragon Khan’s attraction history, this matters because the ride was treated as more than a machine. When it opened, it broke international records with eight inversions and quickly became one of Spain’s best-known roller coasters. The documentary underlined that wider meaning: for many fans, Dragon Khan is not just a looping coaster, but a symbol of PortAventura’s emergence as a major European resort.

Dragon Khan entered 2025 with very visible maintenance. PortAventura started repainting the famous red-and-blue coaster, a job that technical director Sergio Fraile described as covering around 10,000 square metres of steel and requiring more than a thousand litres of paint. At the same time, the park replaced the lift chain, turning the winter work into both a cosmetic and technical intervention.

For visitors, the news showed that PortAventura was not allowing one of its signature rides to age quietly. When Dragon Khan opened in 1995, it was a sensation: eight inversions, a commanding place in the Chinese themed area and, for years, the coaster that defined the park’s skyline. A major refresh in its thirtieth year therefore carried real symbolic weight.

The maintenance also revealed how the park was modernising its inspections. Where track sections were previously checked metre by metre by people climbing onto the structure, drones were now being used to assess the steel more quickly and efficiently. The repaint brought two stories together: nostalgia for a European coaster landmark and the practical reality of keeping such a machine in strong condition after three decades.