Matt N
CF Legend
Hi guys. Once you ride a coaster enough, you start to get a feel for how consistent it is; sometimes, a coaster will hit all the right notes every time, and you'll always come off with a huge smile on your face (Or a huge frown; I guess consistency can go both ways...)! But sometimes a coaster is more variable. Some coasters really blow hot and cold, and a ride on them is strongly influenced by outside factors; the weather, the day, the time of day, the humidity, the row you're in, the train you're on, the seat you're sat in. You name it, it can affect your ride on some coasters, and it can make the most temperamental rides a real challenge to rank! But my question to you today is; what are some of the most inconsistent coasters you've been on?
I'll get the ball rolling with some of my choices...
I'll get the ball rolling with some of my choices...
- Megafobia at Oakwood - Based on my experiences, this one easily wins this category, and was the first coaster that came to mind when talking about the thread title. I've ridden Megafobia 5 separate times on 2 separate visits, and I've done the front row 3 times, the middle once and the back once. Let's start with the difference between visits. I've ridden Megafobia on a sunny school trip in July 2016 and a dreary, overcast day in May 2019, and in 2016, my one front row ride was pretty awesome; the airtime was the strongest I'd experienced at the time (usurped by Mako a month later), and really left an impression on me, and the ride seemed to go around the layout fairly quickly! Fast forward to 2019, when I got on the front row again, and it didn't have quite the same impact; that may be in part down to the fact that the ride was not my first wooden coaster in 2019 as it had been in 2016, but I also thought that while fun, the ride in the front did seem weaker than it did in 2016, with the airtime feeling weaker and the ride notably losing pace in quite a few areas. But let's now move on to the difference between seats, because this was where Megafobia's inconsistency was by far the most apparent for me. Using my 2019 visit as a case study; I got 4 different rides in 3 different rows, and front, middle and back each felt like I was riding a totally different coaster. The front row was my favourite row; there were some fun pops of airtime up front, the ride wasn't overly rough, and all in all, it was quite fun. The middle still wasn't overly rough, but just seemed completely average, and didn't do a whole lot for me; it kind of lacked anything in terms of sensations. The back was more intense, with the first drop in the back providing phenomenally strong ejector, and being quite possibly my favourite individual airtime moment in the UK, and the drop off the turnaround was a pretty strong ejector moment too, but the back was actually my least favourite row... because it was pretty rough back there. Each time you went down a drop, it really bopped you about a fair amount, and the turns and valleys really hurt; the roughness was surprisingly overbearing, and as someone with a fairly low tolerance for roughness, it made the ride pretty hard to enjoy in the back. As much as the back is raved about on Megafobia, I was personally more focused on the aches and pains provided by the roughness on the back row than the airtime, which did mean that the back was controversially my least favourite row.
- The Big One at Blackpool Pleasure Beach - To be honest, a fair few of Blackpool's coasters would fit this thread well (my BPB coaster rankings from my 2nd visit were drastically different to my BPB rankings from my first), but The Big One was the coaster where the inconsistency struck out most for me. Currently, The Big One is my 5th favourite coaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach based on my most recent 2019 experience, but in 2018, I'd have genuinely struggled to place it higher than 8th, with only Steeplechase and Infusion being lower. My first ride, on a dreary day in 2018, was possibly one of my biggest coaster disappointments; I was hoping I'd really enjoy The Big One, but I wasn't keen at all after the first ride. It was possibly one of the roughest coasters I'd ever ridden, being pretty excruciating throughout the ride, and it seemed pretty slow as well, with not much speed after the first drop. Fast forward to my next, and most recent, experience, on a scorching day in 2019, and it shot up the BPB rankings to 5th place; although still not something I was hugely keen on, the ride seemed less rough than in 2018 (although still pretty rough), and notably faster, packing a decent sense of speed and exhiliration throughout the ride! I must admit, I am quite looking forward to getting back on The Big One now that Taziker have done all the retracking, as I genuinely think I'd have quite liked it in 2019 had it not been so rough! As things stand, the Big One is still in my bottom 50%, a little outside of my top 50 (out of 79), and not a coaster I'm hugely keen on, even based on my 2019 ride, but the improvement exhibited in my 2019 ride shows promise, while also exhibiting that the Big One can be a fairly inconsistent ride.
- Saw The Ride at Thorpe Park - Saw is a really interesting one, and I can't pinpoint any hard and fast rule dictating how it rides on any particular ride. There are a few spots that consistently seem to be at least somewhat rough (the first drop and the post-MCBR), and these rough spots do still make it a little too rough for me to rank really highly even when running well, but the rest of the ride's roughness, as well as the relative roughness of the two rough spots, can vary a surprising amount from my experience! My most recent September 2021 ride, on a sunny day in back centre, was by some margin the smoothest ride I've ever had on Saw; the bulk of the ride didn't even seem to have a rattle, and even the notable rough areas, while still a bit rough, seemed less rough than they can sometimes be, meaning that it was the first time I've ever walked off of Saw headache-free! That experience currently means that it sits in 3rd place at Thorpe Park for me, with Stealth and Colossus both being rougher and less enjoyable on my last visit. Rather bafflingly, though, I also had an absolute stinker of a rough ride in July 2020, giving Colossus a run for its money on raw pain factor and leaving me with a pounding headache... that was in the exact same seat; back centre. It was also a sunny day like September 2021. Mind-boggling stuff...
