100 meter long Wooden Ball Tracks: individually planned and themed

The children's and family attractions at Madrisa Kinderland (Klosters, Switzerland) are all about the mascot chicken Hanna and her four friends - the Madrisa gang.

"The storytelling around the mascot chicken Hanna also formed the starting point for the conception of Hanna's egg ball track": Hanna the chicken has somewhat lost the desire to lay eggs because of her past as a hen in a battery farm. The new ball track is designed to show Hanna that laying eggs can be fun again. And so every "egg" she lays in the form of a ball travels a turbulent path along the 100 m long ball track until it finally lands in the soft "hen's nest" - i.e. has reached the end of the ball track. Children who want to help Hanna must accompany the egg balls on their way to their destination. [...]

"One of our basic ideas was to create an interactive game in which children move along the ball track and actively intervene in the action. The children should have to pick up the balls again and again," explains Nadine Zeilinger, the project manager for Madrisa Kinderland. [...]

Madrisa did not want a run-of-the-mill solution for the ball track, so the track was initially planned completely independently. "We decided to work with Borer Lift AG and the Sunkid partner company Almholz primarily because of their experience in building marble runs, their well-known high quality and a balanced price-performance ratio," explains Nadine Zeilinger. In addition, there has been a good business relationship with Borer for a long time because the Klosters-Madrisa mountain railroads operate Moving Carpets from Sunkid in winter.

The solution offered by Borer for the marble run included proven standard elements from Almholz, which were extensively adapted to the individual requirements of the Madrisa Kinderland. "Among other things, we digitized hand drawings of the various animal mascots that we received from Madrisa and produced them in an optimal size for the task on the ball track," explains Axel Halder, Managing Director of Borer Lift AG.

Borer received the formal order to build the marble run in mid-March 2023. When it became clear during the production of the ball track elements during a joint inspection that a different location would be more suitable for the track, the company reacted quickly to the changed situation and adapted the existing elements to the new location.

Despite these subsequent changes, both the budget and the schedule were met. The new "Hanna's Egg Ball Run" in Madrisa Kinderland officially opened at the end of June 2023.

One ball costs two Swiss francs. These are available from a vending machine and in restaurants. The balls can be kept by the players and used as often as they like on the ball track. To encourage the "collector's effect", there are five different types of balls with motifs of the mascots. In total, Madrisa Kinderland expects to sell around 10,000 balls per year. After a few years, the marble run should be financially self-sustaining."

Source: Dieter Krestel, International Cable Car Review, Switzerland Special 2023