Flying Cobras

The Flying Cobras has one of the more circuitous histories of any coaster at Carowinds. The Vekoma Boomerang shuttle first opened in 1996 at Geauga Lake in Ohio as Mind Eraser, was renamed Head Spin in 2004 after Cedar Fair bought the park, and then sat idle in 2008 after Geauga Lake's ride side closed for good. Rather than scrap it, Cedar Fair trucked the track to Carowinds and fitted it with all-new, more comfortable Vekoma trains.

It reopened in March 2009 as Carolina Cobra — the first coaster Cedar Fair added to Carowinds since taking over the park, built on the County Fair site of the removed Flying Super Saturator. The ride runs the same way every Boomerang does: a slow backward pull up a 125-foot lift hill, a forward plunge through the station into a tight cobra roll and vertical loop, and then a full backward repeat of the same elements — six inversions total across both directions.

For the 2017 season, Carowinds refurbished the ride and renamed it The Flying Cobras, giving it a new blue-and-white paint job and an air-show theme built around seven fictional stunt pilots, each with their own car and backstory. The queue's vintage propeller props and pilot bios turned a generic shuttle-loop coaster into one of County Fair's more fully realized theme experiences.