Coming back from my trip to Scandi, I feel that I've finally been properly converted into the RMC religion.
1. Ride to Happiness, Plopsaland De Panne
2. Wildfire, Kolmården
3. Taron, Phantasialand
4. Kondaa, Walibi Belgium
5. Flying Aces, Ferrari World Abu Dhabi
6. Helix, Liseberg
7. Untamed, Walibi Holland
8. Shambhala, PortAventura Park
9. Katun, Mirabilandia
10. Troy, Toverland
11. Expedition GeForce, Holiday Park
12. iSpeed, Mirabilandia
13. Black Mamba, Phantasialand
14. Wild Mouse. Luna Park
15. Silver Star, Europa Park
16. Hair Raiser, Ocean Park
17. Wodan Timbur Coaster, Europa Park
18. Balder, Liseberg
19. Giant Dipper, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
20. Monster, Gröna Lund
21. Goliath, Walibi Holland
22. Oblivion - The Black Hole, Gardaland
23. Gravity Max, Discovery World
24. Pulsar, Walibi Belgium
25. Lost Gravity, Walibi Holland
26. Fēnix, Toverland
27. Superman Escape, Warner Bros. Movie World
28. Karacho, Erlebnispark Tripsdrill
29. Hyperspace Mountain, Hong Kong Disneyland
30. Valkyria, Liseberg
Yeah, Wildfire was absolutely phenomenal from the get go and it only got progressively better through the day, culminating in some properly wack night rides right before the park closed at 7pm. The middle part was taken in almost complete darkness and was properly disorienting, even if I've already done it tons of times during the day. I ended up my day with 15 rides on it, finsihing out with two back row rides without needing to leave my seat in a row. I didn't think another ride could come close to RtH so soon, but this one really pushed it close. To make it even better, I didn't seem to have any problems with the restraints pushing on my thighs, which caused me to ride fairly defensively on the only other RMC I've done before, which also makes me even more excited to try more of these babies in the future. Bring it on!
Helix was another world class coaster, but i just didn't feel it had as many stand-out moments as Wildfire did. That airtime hill over the city is the clear highlight and might be one of the all-time greatest coaster elements on night rides. But it also has some downsides, mostly to do with rattle on one of the trains in particular, which gave me a bit of a headache that only cleared a few hours after our early afternoon rides. And also some of the staff were pretty happy to push down the restraints as hard as possible, which made some of the rides less enjoyable. Luckily Mack has seemingly figured a workaround with the automatic restraints that are used on RtH.
Balder offered some amazing airtime, but that was about all that the ride did. The layout could easily be summarized by hill-hill-turn and so on into eternity. And some of the hills could have been taken with a bit more speed as I felt it wasn't reaching its full potential in parts. Still a world class ride, don't get me wrong, but I feel like there was easily some potential to do more here. The design is kind of showing its age.
And love me a good old-school B&M Invert in Monster. Even though this little beastling only opened fairly recently it still offered the good old B&M experienced that I grew to love as a kid on the older B&M inverts. If you make it to Gröna Lund anytime soon, be sure to give this one a night ride in the back. Twister was sadly down for maintenance, but I feel Monster filled its big thrill coaster hole rather well.
And Valkyria is one of the better B&M Dive coasters out there. That night time view over Gothenburg just before the ride leans in for the drop is pretty darn awesome.
I've also dipped my toes into Denmark a bit on this trip (didn't do Faarup and Djurs, since I couldn't feasibly fit them into all this), but both of the coasters that had any sort of top-list potential (Tornado and Tivoli's Rutschebanen) sadly spited, so I'll have to wait for the first top-list worthy Danish coaster till next time.
And yeah, if you compare this list to the one I posted in early May, you can see that some rides in there have gone missing. I've decided to leave out the British/American coasters that I've only done once about a decade ago. It just feels impossible to compare them to the newer entries to my list. I also feel like I was basing my opinion too much on the thoughts of others rather than go with how I felt about them myself back then. Hopefully I get to re-ride them in not too distant future (apart from Wild Mouse, RIP) and form a firm enough opinion to warrant putting them back on the list.