Napa family who built Matterhorn-inspired backyard roller coaster featured on ’The Kelly Clarkson Show’

While many baked banana bread or did puzzles in quarantine, the LaRochelle family in Napa built their own backyard roller coaster.

The family recreated Disneyland’s “Matterhorn Bobsleds” on their property in Carneros. On Wednesday, Dec. 2, two of the creative minds behind the project were invited onto “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” where Clarkson interviewed them about their process and even gave the family a gift.

“I wanted to bring a little bit of that normalcy back to the family,” said Sean LaRochelle, who has three kids of his own. “You know, I had this idea to build this coaster. I got my family on board, talked to my brother, drew up a plan, he came up with the track design and pretty soon we had this ride called the ‘Matterhorn Alpine Escape.’” Sean is an architecture graduate student, the Napa Valley Register reported.

The coaster is 20 feet tall and its track runs 400 feet. The whole ride takes 50 seconds.

Jacques LaRochelle, Sean’s father, said on Clarkson’s show that he didn’t anticipate how big the project would get.

“When he approached me, I thought to was going to be a simple little play structure in the backyard and as we started building it, it sort of grew and grew,” Jacques said.

At the end of the interview, Clarkson announced her show had partnered with Pilot Pens to award the family with $1,000 “for being awesome,” she said. Watch the full interview here: