This has to be a bucket-list ride for any historically-minded enthusiast (a scenic-railway coaster from 1914, one of the last efforts of the great LaM...
This has to be a bucket-list ride for any historically-minded enthusiast (a scenic-railway coaster from 1914, one of the last efforts of the great LaMarcus A. Thompson!), but it's also charming and a good ride. I didn't get the huge ejector air some report (this seems to depend heavily on the brake operator's hand and they may have been going easy for the kiddies at that hour), but there WAS airtime on some drops and it's incredible that there can be any on such a ride. Not only that, you're riding through weird vintage theming and dark tunnels in an imposing fake mountain, and the powerful laterals in the dark do throw you from side to side. I wasn't overwhelmed but found myself wanting to ride it over and over to a degree that rarely happens.
The main interest here is how they managed to fit a kind of intense B&M floorless with 3 inversions into Tivoli Gardens; it has to be one of the small...
The main interest here is how they managed to fit a kind of intense B&M floorless with 3 inversions into Tivoli Gardens; it has to be one of the smaller ones out there. Instead of a big drop, it goes into a helix off the lift hill then does a modest drop into the loop. And the rest of the ride is basically inversions, then you're done. Pretty good and pretty intense given the constraints of the site, though it wouldn't measure up to bigger B&M loopers. A slightly awkward detail is that exiting riders have to leave the station out the same side they came in, which can create issues with crowd flow and capacity (the ops have to tell you to stay put for a while after the air gates open).
Across the street from Tivoli Gardens is the Ny Carlsberg Glyptoteket, a museum devoted to the collection of a 19th-century gentleman who was obsessed with Roman statuary. At one point in the gallery, among the crumbled statues of gods, emperors and hippopotami, you can distinctly hear the screams of people riding Dæmonen.
Whimsically space-themed powered family coaster that actually packs some force. You get a LONG ride because they send you around three times on a layo...
Whimsically space-themed powered family coaster that actually packs some force. You get a LONG ride because they send you around three times on a layout that could probably get away with one. Very smooth, but all those helixes may actually have you feeling a bit dizzy afterward.
This classic woodie is over 100 years old and runs as smoothly as many new coasters. Not super forceful, but the layout is interesting with a surprisi...
This classic woodie is over 100 years old and runs as smoothly as many new coasters. Not super forceful, but the layout is interesting with a surprising amount of variety, beginning with a first drop with a bit of an unusual lateral bend, crossing under itself on the return leg to follow the dips in the terrain, and ending with a turn into a long tunnel that contains a surprise drop in the dark. Great fun. The station feels like going back in time-- no air gates, long wooden brake levers (though I hear they're really controlling a modern electronic system). This is a must-ride for any vintage wooden fan.
This family coaster, built in the 1950s and enhanced to its current form in the early 60s, has to be one of the weirdest creds I have. It's a twisting...
This family coaster, built in the 1950s and enhanced to its current form in the early 60s, has to be one of the weirdest creds I have. It's a twisting tubular steel ride (a very early one) in a wooden frame, with a lot of little dips and a wild helix in the middle, with cars themed like bobsleds. You feel some air on these dips. An unusual feature is the series of little pre-lift bumps, a thing I associate with RMCs! A note for riders larger than children: you have a seat belt and the ops won't staple you: trust this and do *not* pull the bar back, because iespecially in the rear seats, it'll hit you in the belly and be quite uncomfortable unless you actively hold it away from you. If you give yourself the space, this ride is a lot of fun.
This is Disney's themed take on a Flight of Fear-type spaghetti bowl launch coaster. The theming in the pre-show, queue and station about meeting Aero...
This is Disney's themed take on a Flight of Fear-type spaghetti bowl launch coaster. The theming in the pre-show, queue and station about meeting Aerosmith and following them through the crazy streets of LA to their concert are extremely impressive, but the theming in the ride building itself is kind of cheesy, a bunch of simple fluorescent-painted flats in the darkness. At least you have Aerosmith songs to listen to, though some of those have aged better than others. Sounds like this is going to get rethemed to Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem from the Muppet Show, which technically might actually make it even more obsolete, but I'm looking forward to what it's like. Anyway, I liked the ride itself. It's easily the most intense coaster at Disney World, being the only one with inversions.
I just rode my first looper again for the first time in 30 years, after a major refurbishment in which it got some nice theming upgrades. It still hol...
I just rode my first looper again for the first time in 30 years, after a major refurbishment in which it got some nice theming upgrades. It still holds up. Arrow made maximum use of the river valley terrain to make the most photogenic ride at the park, with a first drop that felt like it went on forever when I first rode it and is still good. This ride avoids doing anything that would cause headbanging, at least for me (your experience may vary); the famous inversions are vertical loops and the transitions are all gentle and don't involve a lot of twisting, so it holds up better than many old Arrow loopers. A standout element is the long, long dark helix tunnel. I miss the fog and strobe lights that used to be in here long ago, but they put some fun video screens showing the monster in there, and a statue of Nessie that you see right at the end of the ride. There's also a lot of new, clever theming in the queue, and trackside audio on the lift hill. These additions all give it a storyline of sorts, about how you're going out on the loch to look for the mysterious monster. This aspect reminds me a little bit of Disney's Expedition Everest, which is a remarkable thing to say about a 1970s Arrow looper.
This is a fun ride for me since it's one of the most intense coasters my daughter will ride. Some memorable headchopper moments, particularly the stee...
This is a fun ride for me since it's one of the most intense coasters my daughter will ride. Some memorable headchopper moments, particularly the steel bar you ride under at the bottom of the modest first drop. I had a back row ride and there, you feel some forces. It's got some rattle to it that hurts the re-rideability.
Wild Intamin hypercoaster with a layout that keeps delivering strong surprises and thrills all the way up to the end, never flagging. It's like a play...
Wild Intamin hypercoaster with a layout that keeps delivering strong surprises and thrills all the way up to the end, never flagging. It's like a play with multiple acts. The first act is about airtime and size, with a giant drop into a tunnel leading to a huge camelback, then a turnaround into a series of ejector speed hills. The coaster then blows past the station into a twister section, with strong positive Gs as it goes around a pair of big fast helixes. Finally, it dips into a second tunnel, then pops out into a series of strong bunny hills cutting diagonally through the twister area into the short, abrupt brake run. The theming is Six Flags minimal, mostly consisting of some flats and cutouts in comic-book style, and speakers on the lift hill playing John Williams' iconic Superman theme.
Enthusiasts like to complain about the restraints on this ride to the point that I think it's currently over-hated. They are certainly less comfortable than the restraints on a B&M hyper, or a modern Intamin LSM coaster. However, I think they're not that bad and not really worse than RMC restraints. They certainly shouldn't scare you off the ride.
Yes, the supposed Roman mythical theming of this coaster is a bit sparse, and it ends too soon, but everything else about it is great. The lap restrai...
Yes, the supposed Roman mythical theming of this coaster is a bit sparse, and it ends too soon, but everything else about it is great. The lap restraint seemed actually incapable of stapling me so I had a lot of room to levitate from my seat during all of this ride's crazy outerbanked airtime hills and hangtimey inversions. The airtime hill in the middle of the swing launch gives you a bunch of bonus pops. I was a bit surprised afterwards to realize that it had only 2 inversions, but they are both memorable: a corkscrew right out of the station to show you it means business, and a long, long zero-g stall that is basically an airtime hill taken upside down. This is my current favorite ride in a park packed with great coasters. It gets less attention from enthusiasts in general than it probably should, because the COVID pandemic delayed it such that it was beaten to opening by Universal's similar but longer Velocicoaster. Europeans also like to compare it to the very similar Toutatis at Parc Astérix.
Griffon is my first B&M dive coaster and it surprised me-- objectively it doesn't have a lot of what modern coaster enthusiasts regard as the hallmark...
Griffon is my first B&M dive coaster and it surprised me-- objectively it doesn't have a lot of what modern coaster enthusiasts regard as the hallmarks of a good ride, but I still had to think hard about whether to rate Griffon or Pantheon best at the park. The theatrics of it are just so awe-inspiring: everything about it from the station on seems scaled to cyclopean beings rather than normal humans. The train is this freakish ten-across thing like flying stadium bleachers. The ride is simple: the centerpiece is a gigantic vertical drop, with a brake hold at the top, that resembles a drop tower more than a conventional coaster. I had a front-row ride that gave me a prime view into the abyss. Then there's a huge swooping Immelmann, then the ride does it all again (without a holding brake). There's a nice airtime hill, a "splashdown" that you can really only see off-ride, then you're done. What helps the theatrics is that instead of being off in the periphery like most of the coasters at Busch Gardens, this one's layout is all right in public view--it's the second most photographable and photogenic coaster there after Loch Ness Monster. More recent B&M dives seem to be trending toward Eurofighter/Infinity style layouts, but this one keeps it to the fundamentals, and it works better than you'd expect, just intimidating you with sheer scale.
Wildcat used to be, by all accounts, a painfully rough ride, but now it is smooth and has real airtime and is a wonderful starter coaster for someone ...
Wildcat used to be, by all accounts, a painfully rough ride, but now it is smooth and has real airtime and is a wonderful starter coaster for someone trying out big rides for the first time. (It convinced my daughter that she could love a major coaster.) This has a classic figure-8 layout with many bunny hills and headchopper moments and some odd lateral jinks.
Discount all reviews of Wildcat from before its extended closure in 2023, when Gravity Group worked their magic, replacing much of the track with their precut retrack and rebuilding large chunks of the structure. (In the 2024-25 offseason, they came back to finish the job, doing the last few hundred feet of the ride. So reviews from 2024 may mention that it gets rough at the end, but this is no longer the case.)
Solid B&M hyper that I feel is better than its current reputation. For some reason, a lot of people who won't do the hardest-core coasters are willing...
Solid B&M hyper that I feel is better than its current reputation. For some reason, a lot of people who won't do the hardest-core coasters are willing to ride this one because it has no inversions or vertical drops, but it's far from forceless. Maybe it was because it was the end of a very hot day and I was wiped out, but I found myself starting to gray out from the positive Gs in the turnaround helix. Aside from that, it's a nice succession of floater hills in the lovely Virginia countryside, and then right at the end they get you with an unexpected, powerful dip where the on-ride photo is shot. The seats have the usual B&M hyper clamshells, wonderfully comfortable restraints that leave you a bit of room.
Mild B&M family invert that isn't nearly as thrilling as the defunct Arrow suspended coaster it honors, but does offer cleverly upgraded theming in it...
Mild B&M family invert that isn't nearly as thrilling as the defunct Arrow suspended coaster it honors, but does offer cleverly upgraded theming in its bucolic German village set. The thrills primarily consist of foot chopper illusions, which the original's seating didn't allow. As a fairly tall guy with long legs, these were disconcerting for me. Lots of kids will love this as their first major coaster. They may need a boost up, though-- the station has nothing like a retracting floor, so getting in and out of the seats is a significant hop. Make use of the test seat, too-- the seats are pretty snug and this is one of the less accommodating rides for larger riders.
This large CCI wooden coaster is maybe the most underrated woodie in the Northeast because few enthusiasts get out to this park. Funtown has had Grav...
This large CCI wooden coaster is maybe the most underrated woodie in the Northeast because few enthusiasts get out to this park. Funtown has had Gravity Group put some of their precut wooden track on it, so they're clearly invested in keeping this ride running great. It's remarkably smooth for a big woodie of its Coaster War-era vintage.
It's got an exciting twisty layout back in a wooded area next to Funtown's parking lot, with a great straight first drop, some good airtime in the first half and strong laterals from the underbanked turns in the second half. It's effortlessly re-rideable especially since this park often gets short lines.
It's not as large or thrilling as Boulder Dash, but it beats Boulder Dash easily for comfort and smoothness, so I call it currently the best all-around wooden coaster in New England.
There is also some nice theming, for a small local park---you get to it from the back of the park by taking a themed "Camelot Bridge" through a pretty wooded area, which feels like you're leaving the park entirely. The station is themed like a castle, with a lot of pseudo-medieval signage, and the seats are labeled with the names of the Knights of the Round Table.
This brilliant suspended family coaster was the ride that really got me liking coasters. The best thing about it was its sense of drama: it started wi...
This brilliant suspended family coaster was the ride that really got me liking coasters. The best thing about it was its sense of drama: it started with a mild first drop, went through the initial themed area where it had the swinging near-misses with buildings. Then it hit some brakes seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and went up a much taller lift on which where you were going was entirely hidden by trees. Only upon reaching the top would you really see the climax of the ride: a much larger drop to the river, which seemed nearly vertical, though as far as I can tell it was not actually all that steep. It was a brilliant surprise if you didn't know it was coming. More swinging turns in the woods, then to the station. It wasn't super intense, was a ride that people not keen on coasters could experience as their first big coaster and come away smiling.
This 1930s PTC classic has been pleasingly smooth ever since a major retrack that happened around 2017, though it's not the biggest or most forceful c...
This 1930s PTC classic has been pleasingly smooth ever since a major retrack that happened around 2017, though it's not the biggest or most forceful classic woodie in the area. It's the most popular ride in the park and has one-train operations, so the lines are often long-ish. I have a special fondness for this coaster, as it's at my home park and is the ride that got me back into riding coasters around 2010 or so.
It's a parking-lot coaster, but the interesting thing about it is that it's one of the FIRST parking-lot coasters--in fact, you could argue that that was its rationale. Canobie Lake Park was originally a trolley park, built by a transit company to draw riders to the end of its line. When the trolley line shut down, Canobie needed to adapt to draw in visitors by automobile, and this coaster (then called "Greyhound") was its big draw for 1936, bending around the new parking lot--and one of the first things you see on the way in is still a sign on its far turnaround proudly advertising FREE PARKING. It was "relocated" from a defunct park in Connecticut, but judging from surviving photographs, the layout there seems to have been completely different, so it's probably best described as a new coaster constructed from the same wood.
This ride is no more, and I wasn't fond of it, but it was mildly historic, being one of the first modern-era coasters to have an inversion when built ...
This ride is no more, and I wasn't fond of it, but it was mildly historic, being one of the first modern-era coasters to have an inversion when built at its original location in Illinois (I think it was the second Arrow corkscrew produced, after Knotts' Corkscrew, now at Silverwood). There wasn't much to it: just a lift, a drop and a double corkscrew, folded into a compact layout by turns, all of which was rather janky and jerked you around a bit. But it was also Canobie's first inverting coaster, so, a big deal at the time.
Shambhala is an elegant, floater-air-filled hypercoaster offering wonderful views of the Catalonian seashore and exciting visual interactions with the...
Shambhala is an elegant, floater-air-filled hypercoaster offering wonderful views of the Catalonian seashore and exciting visual interactions with the looper Dragon Khan, which it arches over the top of. The first drop may be the best first drop I've ever ridden; the turnaround is a unique "ampersand" element that feels like an inversion but isn't. Immediately after that is a short speed hill that provides the ride's one pop of ejector air (mostly it is graceful and floaty).
This is also a physically beautiful ride, with the "Himalayan" theming around the station and its sky-blue and white paint job. There's a fake "splashdown" element that is really just for show, but it's a nice visual effect. The trains are lovely and comfortable, with staggered seats bearing B&M clamshell restraints that leave you feeling remarkably free and exposed. Toward the end of the ride, there is a midcourse brake run, and after that there's a turnaround and hill that don't do much. If I have one complaint it's that this ending is a tad anticlimactic.
My favorite Disney coaster. It's not super intense (apart from building up a fair bit of force on its dark backwards helix), and it suffers from its h...
My favorite Disney coaster. It's not super intense (apart from building up a fair bit of force on its dark backwards helix), and it suffers from its headlining animatronic effect having been broken since only a few months after it started running. But it still tells its story with great flair, using everything from rockwork to animation. I love the little theming touches like the temple full of spinning prayer wheels halfway up the lift, and the steam apparently rising from the trains in the station (when they work).
My biggest quibble with the ride is that the treatment of the infamous Disco Yeti makes it difficult for me to even see it at all. The ride has been dropping hints from the beginning that a gigantic yeti has been ripping up the tracks, blocking your way both forward and reverse. At the climax of the ride, you pass through the dark chamber where the yeti lives, and at this moment, the yeti was originally supposed to lunge at the coaster train. Since it's broken, they instead chose to disguise the figure's immobility by only illuminating it with intermittent strobe lights. But to my eyes, that means that most of the time, I can't even work out what I'm looking at or if I'm looking at anything. There are just a few vague flashes of light that may or may not be illuminating a thing. I think I'd actually prefer a view that doesn't try so hard to hide its brokenness. Still, this actually doesn't ruin the ride for me--everything else in it is so well-done.
At its heart, Orlando's Space Mountain is a small Wild Mouse-like coaster in near-total darkness, with a few stars and galaxies and things projected o...
At its heart, Orlando's Space Mountain is a small Wild Mouse-like coaster in near-total darkness, with a few stars and galaxies and things projected on the ceiling, and some music in the enclosure that can get a bit faint because the speakers aren't onboard. But the elaborate science-fiction theming of the queue, station, pre-lift and lift hill really hypes you up for that experience, and things like strategically placed fans make it seem like you're going much faster than you are. The feel of the ride is a bit jerky and janky, and the drops are quite small, like a Wild Mouse coaster, but you can't see them coming at all. But this makes this one of the more fun Disney rides for thrill-seeking coaster fans, though its stats are modest.
This is mostly a dark ride, with some coaster elements. The cars can rotate to the sides under ride control to affect your view. The dark ride is very...
This is mostly a dark ride, with some coaster elements. The cars can rotate to the sides under ride control to affect your view. The dark ride is very elaborate, having to do with a raid on the vaults of Gringotts Wizarding Bank that happens in, I think, the final Harry Potter book. Characters and creatures from the books/movies appear and menace you or help you along. For reasons outside of Universal's control, Harry Potter doesn't quite hit the same for me as it used to, but technically this material is excellent, if a bit overly dependent on screen displays. The coaster elements are mostly near the beginning: there is a tire launch and a tilt track that tilts you into a short coaster drop (making this, technically, the first tilt coaster in the Americas!). The dark-ride material can be a bit motion-sickness-inducing.
(For people wondering why "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey" doesn't appear on this site: That's not a roller coaster at all, whereas this arguably is.)
This is a cute little coaster for families with small children, sort of halfway between a Mine Train and a very mild Mouse, but it manages to be more ...
This is a cute little coaster for families with small children, sort of halfway between a Mine Train and a very mild Mouse, but it manages to be more impressive than the usual portable kiddie coaster. It has a gentle terrain layout, winding its way down a hillside to a helix at the bottom. The theming is pretty elaborate--the station looks like an ice cave and has an observation area for non-riders on top, and the train is themed like a walrus. The seats can be a bit hard for large adults to squeeze into.
This is one of those rides I love because it's a thrill ride that my whole family will go on, so I can share the experience with them. My wife uses th...
This is one of those rides I love because it's a thrill ride that my whole family will go on, so I can share the experience with them. My wife uses this as her thrill benchmark: Big Thunder is the most thrilling ride that she can stand, so if it's more intense than BTMR she's not riding.
It's actually got some intensity to it, with its fast turns and crazy little dips. And the elaborate Wild West theming of this mine train is just top-notch. It's getting new trains so the following statement may be obsolete, but one thing my daughter always found a little disconcerting was that the two-across lap bars meant she had a *lot* of space between her lap and the bar if she was riding with an adult. She wasn't that into experiencing airtime in full.
This is the only Vekoma Boomerang I've ridden. It's not bad, actually. I started to gray out a bit on the vertical loop--I think the force of that loo...
This is the only Vekoma Boomerang I've ridden. It's not bad, actually. I started to gray out a bit on the vertical loop--I think the force of that loop is underrated. Maybe the scariest thing about it is being pulled backwards up the lift at the beginning, seeing where you're going all the while. However, I haven't re-ridden it lately because Lake Compounce now has a better compact steel looper (granted, one with not nearly as many inversions).
I remember seeing sooperdooperLooper run in the 70s when it was brand new and a very big deal: the only vertical-loop coaster in the Eastern US, and o...
I remember seeing sooperdooperLooper run in the 70s when it was brand new and a very big deal: the only vertical-loop coaster in the Eastern US, and one of the first modern loopers in the world. Of course, as a coaster-phobic kid, I was far too freaked out to ride on it. But it fascinated me.
In 2011, I finally got on it. It's an interesting ride, unusual by modern standards: the loop happens right off the first drop, and it's pretty forceful, a classic Schwarzkopf-style loop. Then the coaster track knots through the loop (passing low over the Coal Cracker flume immediately afterward), then heads into a tunnel... and the rest of the ride is a mild terrain coaster, almost relaxing. It's as if the ride feels the need to give you a chance to recover from what you've just experienced. Modern riders can wonder what is so sooperdooper about this thing. But you have to understand that most riders in the 70s had never even seen such a thing before, or if they had, it was in pictures of horrifying jank machines from the early 20th century. This was probably the first time they had ever ridden one. Anyway, I was greatly pleased to finally experience the one that got away. It was also the first time I'd ever ridden an inversion with nothing but a lap restraint (much less common in 2011 than it is now), and I loved that.
Fahrenheit is a great vertical-lift/beyond-vertical-drop multi-looper that you could succinctly describe as Intamin's take on a Gerstlauer Eurofighter...
Fahrenheit is a great vertical-lift/beyond-vertical-drop multi-looper that you could succinctly describe as Intamin's take on a Gerstlauer Eurofighter. The drop leads into a peculiar element called a Norwegian Loop, basically a vertical loop twisted upside down with rolls at the entrance and exit. This is followed by a cobra roll and a couple of corkscrews, adding up to 6 inversions, which are fairly forceful. There's also a little airtime hill at the end. I enjoyed it a lot, but like most Eurofighters, the capacity actually isn't great for a park as big as Hersheypark. So the biggest problem for me was having to wait in an immensely long queue, much of which was unshaded in the hot sun, to ride it. The line can be much longer than it looks from the entrance.
Very intense early B&M looper in the "China" area of the park, with more inversions that they'd ever done before or would ever do again: 8. Other manu...
Very intense early B&M looper in the "China" area of the park, with more inversions that they'd ever done before or would ever do again: 8. Other manufacturers have left this record far behind by now, but B&M never did. Eventually, the park built Shambhala arcing over and around this one, so there are visually interesting interactions between the two of them.
Dragon Khan is a rare case of a ride that I suspect is just too much for my aging body. I had to sit down for quite a while after getting off of it. It's not rough or headbangy; it just has 8 of those really forceful early B&M inversions and I got off of it thinking I'd have done fine with just about two fewer--maybe leave off those final corkscrews.
This classic woodie has a pretty interesting history, being a reconstruction of a model that ran temporarily at the two big American expositions of 19...
This classic woodie has a pretty interesting history, being a reconstruction of a model that ran temporarily at the two big American expositions of 1939-40: the New York World's Fair in Flushing, and the Golden Gate International Exposition on San Francisco's Treasure Island. It's sometimes described as a relocation of the New York one, and it did initially have its trains and possibly the track, but the interesting thing is that the layouts were mirror images of each other, and as far as I can tell, the layout at Riverside/Six Flags matched the San Francisco one. Anyway, it's a fairly entertaining ride. This is another woodie that people often describe as rough and I'm not sure what they're talking about, because to me it just had a little woodie rumble. It's not super intense but there is a nice airtime bunny hill in the back that you hit toward the end. But I think my favorite moment is the double-down earlier in the ride. It runs with one train and the lines can get rather long. The ops lay down the law and do *not* let you pick your seat.
Oh boy... This legendary defunct disaster has to be rated by default as one of the worst coasters I've ever ridden, because it hurt me and it hurt mos...
Oh boy... This legendary defunct disaster has to be rated by default as one of the worst coasters I've ever ridden, because it hurt me and it hurt most other people who rode it... But at the same time, I can't deny that it was extremely thrilling and had a great layout. So I had all the mixed feelings. I came off of it sore, thinking both that it was the greatest coaster I'd ridden up to that point and that it made me reluctant to ride coasters again.
I don't normally have issues with headbanging on over-the-shoulder restraints, even on very janky coasters that have this problem for most riders. I banged my head on this one. A lot.
