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Situation Confort

With the VR firmly in the bin where it belongs, this landmark of a ride remains is hugely enjoyable. In a park full of monster coasters, it naturally looks rather tame these days. Nontheless it's in a good location, uses the trees and hills to good effect, and saves the big trick to the end. It also serves a very important role of being a bridge between kiddie coasters and todays 200 foot tall scream machines. Hugely historically important and deserves looking after for a long time to come.

Inversions Intensité Baffes

Dragon Khan has unfortunately, seen better days. It is exhibiting signs of high mileage, rattles, bangs and, by B&M standards the trains are not tracking nearly as well as they could be. It's intensity is high, as with most of the early B&M's, and still a good ride, but in present condition not the excellent one that it could and should be. Would be an easy 5 star if better looked after.

Inversions Fluidité

Scream! In any other park or location this ride would rate so much better. Decently intense for a post Y2K B&M, and actually, the unassuming "it's just a ride come and play" mentality is fun. At SFMM, it's job is to be a capacity sink, a job which it does very well. We didn't even have to get off the back row on our last visit! Anything sat next to Twisted Colossus was always going to have a tough time of it in the rankings. A bit of planting up wouldn't go amiss to dress it up a bit and give something other than the bare-concrete to look at? it is quite literally the car-park coaster. The rise of lapbar-only coasters is perhaps also starting to make B&M's older restraint designs look a little obsolescent; you never know we may see something to compete in time.

Inversions Launch Baffes

Had the privilege to ride the Hulk in both it's original and retracked form. Both were best from the back seat, by a country mile. Both are headbangy, but smoother in the back seat, and both demand the ride be ridden not ragdolled. I dare say I thought the retracked variant may be rougher than the original! That said, the triple whammy out of the station and quick-fire inversion sequence are hard to beat. Second half utterly forgettable after the mid-course brakes - but then keeping up the pace of the first half would be a near impossible task. One of the better coasters in Florida, even in spite of the roughness. Go on Universal, I dare you, figure out a way to put the B&M Hyper restrains onto the Hulk... Somehow...?!

Situation Harnais

Oh, I want to like Cheetah Hunt more than I do. As a concept, it is kind of clever but unless you are listening to the nerdy explanation in the cattle-pen queue line you'll miss that. Multiple high powered launches are always a good thing, and Intamin are never shy of putting force into their coasters. The awful restraints and vibration spoil unfortunately detract from the rest of the circuit.

Théma Intensité Fluidité

Wodan was a real surprise for me. I'm not exactly what you call a conventional enthusiast with regards wooden coasters, but GCI are consistently an exception. We had the luxury of staying at Europa Park a couple of days, and had plenty of time to take in it's nuances. The hard-to-remember layout, much airtime and laterals handled well all contribute to it being a blast. Night riding with Fenrir roaring into the sky highly recommended (and impressive).

Confort Hangtime Trop court

An excellent ride, and of different style to everything else at SFMM, not an easy achievement given the variety they have. I can think of nothing bad about Full Throttle really; but it's not a coaster you'd travel a long way to visit by itself.

Confort Temps mort Layout

Icon is a bit of a first for Blackpool. Almost all of their coasters to date had their origins in pre-CAD design; whereas Icon is very obviously a finely tuned laser-cut precision machine. Unfortunately, it is also well known that the park's owner is not much of a big coaster fan (oh, the irony!) which might have biased some of the decisions on layout. The launches on Icon are functional but insipid. The trains are like other Mack Megas excellent hardware; and the inversions effective, but not earth shattering. The ride is better once it's warmed up it has to be said. A punchier launch up to a slightly higher speed might still be possible; and would improve matters greatly. The main downside is that there is an awful lot of pointless left-to-right swaying - might have been better to sacrifice a bit of length to fit in an inversion or two extra instead. The ride has done it's job of putting Blackpool on the map; and is hopefully a good sign for future investments.

Situation Fun Fluidité

Best coaster in Seaworld, well paced and makes good use of the flying coaster tech. The pretzel loop is forceful and memorable, but this ride more than just a G-machine. I really like how Seaworld don't big their rides up as terror machines, rather, instead, dress it up as "come fly with us" - much more fun and inviting to a wider audience. My only dislike comes from the mid course brakes, which are largely unnecessary for anything other than 2-train-on-track simultaneous operation, which I have never seen occur!

Situation Chef d'oeuvre Layout

Most flying coasters built to date have been plonked out on flat, open land. Not so, with Tatsu, which makes excellent use of the hills on "Samurai Summit". Much of the ride's "outside facing" time is spent at high altitude, cleverly interspersed with dives at speed into the woods. I loved Air when it opened (one of the few that did!), and it has of course been completely superceded now, but Tatsu is something else entirely. 2nd best coaster at Magic Mountain IMO.

Launch Harnais Inconfort

Ooooh! Owww! Kingda Cow! The OTSR's and rough track spoiled this ride for me. The airtime hill on the return is real redout territory - military pilots are taught to not pull heavy negative G because it's seriously uncomfortable having blood jammed into your eyes. Kingda Ka gave me a massive headache almost immediately. What a come down from the masterpiece that is Top Thrill Dragster. in fact on the day I remember clearly stating that I preferred the little vekoma booster bike at Flamingo Land. Still a lot of fun to try once, but there are better rides at SFGAdv.

Inversions Situation Intensité Temps mort

Old school B&M from a time before restrictions on G-loading. The only real fault are the heavy mid-course brakes to take the sting out of it's batwing, one of the heaviest loaded elements you'll find anywhere. On last visit we had the back rows to ourselves; to the point where we could repeat ride without getting off. The cool kids can muck about on Cheetah Hunt's gimmicks, more space for the us here on a ride really worth travelling half way round the world to see!

Confort Fun Fluidité

Oziris really saved my last visit to Parc Asterix. The layout is very decent, no annoying mid course brake run, but like almost B&M's could use an extra half a G in places to throw some intensity into the mix.

Inversions Chef d'oeuvre Intensité Baffes Trop court

Nemesis is the reason I'm a coaster fan, closely followed by Rollercoaster Tycoon. It may well have been responsible for staving off insanity! The ride is highly original, substituting raw speed for high rates of turn and close proximity to the ground. For such a simple and effective trick not to be used widely elsewhere is a travesty. If by some miracle you can catch Nemesis on a cold, wet night you will hardly ever find a better time on a rollercoaster. Watching the Towers Fireworks from Nemesis is highly recommended!

Airtimes First Drop Layout

Mako is a welcome change in Florida; which has lacked a steel airtime machine for far too long. I am hoping there are more to come! The layout is functional but not exactly inspired; a straight forward out-and-back rather than attempting to do too much clever with all that power. Row 3 seems to offer the most airtime (bizarre, yes!)

Situation Launch Trop court

My number one for well over a decade; TTD is a very simple, no nonsense blast. Lap bars are a massive plus over almost all the other Intamin Accelerators. Simple but very effective theming and banging 90's alt-rock on the front gate. Ready to go? :-)

Airtimes Déception !

The Phoenix is a much loved coaster, in a great setting. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, however I just don't find it "all that". Sorry!