BEAVER — Debbie and Randy Bennett, who operate Team Forks Twilight Tours, now are making it their business to roll giant balls down a hill — with people inside the balls.
Cojones NW LLC is scheduled for a grand opening Thursday.
On a Magnolia Road hillside between Sappho and Beaver, visitors 8 and older can ride down a 600-foot track inside a giant double-walled plastic bubble in a thrill ride known as zorbing, globe-riding, sphering or orbing.
For $20, people can bounce inside the ball, “screaming all the way,” said Debbie Bennett.
Riders launch off a 16-foot-high roof, she said.
Riders can either be strapped in and roll with the ball, or — during warmer months — slosh around in warm water inside.
Either way, the rider is protected, Debbie Bennett said.
“It’s kind of like being wrapped in bubble wrap,” she said.
The ball is 10 feet high, and a 2-foot buffer exists between the outside plastic wall and the inside plastic wall.
“You are inside a bubble suspended inside another bubble,” Debbie Bennett said.
“Once they see a few people do it, they’ll realize how safe it is,” she added. “Even if you fell off the roof, you’d bounce.”
The business at 60 Magnolia Road will be open Thursdays through Sundays from noon to dusk.
It is just off U.S. Highway 101 near the fourth bridge over the Sol Duc River, and the entrance will be well-marked, Debbie Bennett said.
Participants will be asked to sign liability waivers before riding in the balls.
The track has been smoothed and prepared with bevels and berms to keep the ball on course.
The attraction will open with just one track, but the business has three balls, and there are plans to build two additional tracks so more people can ride at a time.
A new draw to the area
Debbie Bennett said she and her husband wanted to open an attraction that would give Twilight fans drawn to Forks a different kind of excitement.
Thousands of fans have visited Forks and LaPush to see areas immortalized in Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling four-novel series of teen romance, vampires and werewolves, which also has prompted four movies, with a fifth to be out in November.
When people are done with all of the Twilight activities in nearby Forks, there is an inevitable question of, “What else is there to do here?” she said at a recent Forks Chamber of Commerce meeting.
Later, she explained: “We were sitting here thinking, ‘What can you do in the rain?’ Then we saw Jackie Chan in ‘Operation Condor’ where he goes off a cliff, and we thought, ‘Hmmm.’”
The Forks Chamber of Commerce website’s blog at www.forkswa.com/visitingforks/blog said the activity was invented by Dwayne van der Sluis and Andrew Akers in New Zealand in 1995.
“We here at Cojones NW are delighted to offer an American version of this outrageous, addictive and also very affordable adventure,” the business owners say on the website.
For more information, phone 360-374-2123.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
