What's new

My Coaster-Count Debacle or: Am I the only one who thinks Coaster-Count sucks?

Mrsupersonic8

Roller Poster
Let's start this debacle from the beginning...

I registered my account a while ago out of some vague curiosity to see what kind of coaster counting they offer. I got to the page that said it would take about a week to confirm my e-mail address. So I checked back a week later; nothing in the inbox, nothing in the spam folder. I decided at this point that it wasn't really worth it and gave up. That was until I finally received my confirmation email almost a month later. I figured I'd give it a shot, so I clicked on the link and went to the login screen.

However, I summarily realized that I had forgotten my password. I clicked "recover password", entered my email address, and opened my inbox. I refreshed a few times, but nothing came up. One hour later, I check my inbox again; still, there was nothing. I then checked the spam box and lo and behold, it had gotten caught by the spam filter. Fine then, I'll mark it not spam, click the link, delete the message, enter a new password, and login.

The debacle continued when I started inputting my creds. At first, I struggled to figure out how to add them, but then discovered clicking the red circle was how you added them. A little unintuitive IMO, but I guess it makes sense. Then came the dating system. Really? I don't need to date my creds, I just want to record the order ridden. This then lead my count to be screwed up by the clunky and tedious UI. You have to search for every single cred, which is tedious. Instead, I searched for each park, (again, tedious) and added from the page that disappears every time you add a cred. (Did I mention it was tedious?) Thus, without thinking, I ended up plunking the in creds from the appeared order in the pages instead of the intended order. OK, my bad, I'll just fix the order from my list.

...Or so I though. It was then that I discovered that there's no easy way to change the order from your list. You have to remove and then re-add if you're doing it manually without dates. At this point I just gave up and decided to keep my own count in my own spreadsheet.

While there might be some cool features on the site, it just gets muddled by the terrible user experience. They really need to improve a lot before they can get me back on board. For now, I'll just count my own coasters instead of relying on a badly designed website.

All of this begs this question: am I doing something wrong here, or could it really be the case that Coaster-Count sucks?
 
Last edited:

gavin

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
Really not sure why you're searching for individual coasters when the parks are all listed alphabetically for each country. Just scroll down.

Personally, I don't care about the order. I've dated the stuff I've ridden over the last couple of years, but didn't bother when I first signed up and added a load.

It's not perfect, but it's by far the best site for keeping track.
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
Spreadsheets are always going to be better, you get exactly what you want out of them.
The site isn't great to use, I mostly enjoy it for the 'rare points' score.
Instead, I searched for each park, (again, tedious) and added from the page that disappears every time you add a cred.
Does sound like you're doing something wrong here.
Once you've gone to catalogue, continent, country, parks, you should just be able to click the dots and 'no date' without any pages disappearing.
You are however putting yourself at a disadvantage by not including dates but wanting to have it in order. If you can at least tie it to the year or month it will look better.
 

davidm

Strata Poster
PEBKAS I reckon.

If you are not going to add a date to get stuff in order (date doesn't need to be exact even, can be the year for example) then just add them in order that you rode them - if order doesn't matter to you, then just add them in any order... its not hard to understand. Searching by coaster name on the mobile site is the easiest to add the thing you have just ridden as you can just check it off from the search, but of course if you are checking off stuff you've ridden in the past then search by park is easiest.
Would suggest that effort wise its far easier to tick a thing on the website than it is to manually maintain a spreadsheet, but I would think that most goons would do both anyway?
 

TilenB

Strata Poster
Yeah, I did like the old site a bit better. It was a bit basic, but a bit simpler to use. Saying that, the new site is still a good way of keeping track of my coasters, heck I've even based my spreadsheet off it. I think the database is really good, especially when it comes to the fairground coasters, where it's often hard to distinguish between different coasters...
 

Hixee

Flojector
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
Yeah, this sounds like a PICNIC error to me. ;)

I use Coaster Count mostly for the "rare coasters" and "completed countries" data, which is impossible and difficult (respectively) to do in your own spreadsheet.

Everything else is done in my spreadsheet. It lets me input the data I want, and process the results any way I choose.

Spreadsheets are life.
 

sKrATcher

Roller Poster
I just joined coaster-count the other day. After figuring out how to use it, not too bad. The rare credits part is fun, AND I discovered there were a couple coasters I had completely forgotten about (that I rode years ago). I only started the spreadsheet about 3-4 years ago
 
Top