Cal Poly took home two top honors at the national 2026 Ride Engineering Competition, winning first place in the West Division and the Impact Award. At an event that drew more than 370 students from universities across the country, the result marked a major moment for Cal Poly Amusement Park Engineers and Designers, or CAPED.
The annual competition gives university teams six months to design and build an attraction around a shared prompt, then present it for judging on the ride itself, its documentation and the team’s outreach. This year, CAPED responded with Round Table Twirl: A Knight’s Ascension.
The ride combines a medieval theme with a welded steel structure and a vehicle built for a dramatic ride cycle. First place recognized the ride itself. The Impact Award honored the team effort around it, from outreach to volunteer service.
Months of preparation shaped CAPED’s trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania. When the team arrived, Round Table Twirl already looked like a standout — a fully realized ride shaped by story and made to command attention. “By the time competition came around, there was already some buzz about us,” said Fredy Herrarte, CAPED’s REC design assurance lead.
That buzz had been building since September, when CAPED received this year’s prompt. The portable ride challenge came with tight limits. Teams had to create an attraction for candy riders that could tilt 45 degrees, lift riders about a foot and fit inside a narrow transport sleeve. They also had to take the ride apart and put it back together, with the electronics and power supply packed into the same sleeve.
Even within those limits, CAPED chose a concept that still aimed high. Through a clubwide vote, the team settled on an Arthurian design built around a disk-style ride and a sword-in-the-stone theme. Jolly Rancher Fruit Chews served as the riders, seated in spots inspired by the Knights of the Round Table. Along steel track, the vehicle swung through its cycle and spun before coming to a stop. Then the sword rose from the stone.
“One challenge was powering the ride vehicle,” said Raegan Fordemwalt, CAPED’s REC project lead. “We were trying to figure out what was feasible, but we chose a very complicated ride.”
That decision shaped the rest of the year. Students spent fall quarter refining the theme and materials while testing prototypes, then moved deeper into manufacturing in winter. The all-steel design made the build heavier and harder to manage. Some nights stretched to midnight in the shop. By the time Round Table Twirl was finished, the attraction weighed well over 100 pounds.
Getting it to Pennsylvania became the next challenge. CAPED packed the ride into a plywood box that Jake Schuman, the club’s president, said looked like “an Indiana Jones crate,” then sealed and tagged it for travel. At the airport, the team realized the box had been routed with cargo and started to panic. Fordemwalt said airline executives ultimately had to get involved before the missing crate was tracked down in another wing of the airport.
The Impact Award recognized the work CAPED carried beyond the ride itself. The club logged 180 hours of outreach, including 100 hours of beach cleanup with the Central Coast Aquarium in Avila Beach and visits to seven schools from San Luis Obispo to Santa Maria. At those schools, students brought last year’s ride into classrooms and invited children to design restraints for candy riders before voting on the ideas together.
Fordemwalt said that outreach became one of the most rewarding parts of the project. “It was so much fun,” she said. “It was our first time doing it on this scale.”
CAPED’s membership also reflected that vision. Fordemwalt, Herrarte and Schuman are all mechanical engineering majors, but the club reaches well beyond one discipline. Members come from electrical engineering, architecture, industrial engineering, statistics and other majors across campus. “We want to show that any major can enter the theme park industry,” Fordemwalt said.
Schuman said that starts with the newest members. “I want to make freshmen feel welcomed,” he said. “I want to teach them the skills and knowledge so they want to stay.” That kind of continuity matters in a student organization where each year’s project depends on the next group being ready to step in.
CAPED’s mix of ambition and openness helped define its week in Hershey. Herrarte said members made a point of asking questions and sharing what they had learned, an approach that drew people in around Round Table Twirl. By the next day, students from other schools were stopping to offer congratulations. “More than anything, it felt good knowing people respected us,” he said.
By Emily Slater
Support student organizations like CAPED through the CENG Student Activities Fund, which helps College of Engineering students pursue hands-on projects, travel to competitions and grow as leaders.
