Top 10(ish): 2024 Edition - page 124

RcTmix · Aug 12, 2024

RcTmix said:
1. Steel Vengeance
2. Voyage (+2)
3. Iron Gwazi
4. Fury 325
5. Millennium Force
6. ArieForce One
7. Storm Chaser
8. Mystic Timbers
9. Maverick
10. Orion
11. Afterburn
12. Top Thrill Dragster
13. Montu
14. Phantom’s Revenge
15. Lightning Run

Bold credits are new
Credits in italics aren’t new, but are new to my “top” rankings

1. Steel Vengeance
2. Voyage
3. Iron Gwazi
4. Fury 325
5. ArieForce One (+1)
6. Maverick (+3)
7. Outlaw Run
8. Storm Chaser (-1)
9. Top Thrill 2
10. Millennium Force (-5)
11. Afterburn
12. Orion (-2)
13. Time Traveler
14. Montu (-1)
15. Magnum XL200
16. Mystic Timbers (-8)
17. Phantom’s Revenge (-3)
18. Raptor
19. Lightning Run (-4)
20. Legend

cc: 146

So yeah. My first visit to Silver Dollar City was a success.

Matt N · Aug 19, 2024

Matt N said:
Following my recent trip to Florida, my top 10 has changed quite a bit. The composition of this new list did take a fair amount of deliberation, and even now, I should add that I'm still slightly undecided on some of the placements.

This trip presented me with some very interesting conundrums in terms of coaster ranking, as in many cases, I was comparing incredibly different types of ride that were all truly, truly excellent in their own way. It really did test me, and I often second guessed the relative placements of certain rides. Nonetheless, I think I've managed to come up with a final post-Florida ranking.

For clarity, I gained 8 new roller coaster credits during my trip, taking my total coaster count to 99. Of the new coasters I rode, 4 of these made my top 10 and 10/10 tier (which I should add are now one and the same; my 10/10 tier currently encompasses ranking spots 1-10), and the other "new addition" to my 10/10 tier is a previously ridden coaster that exceeded my previous memories of it.

Some of the placements may seem strange. I'm more than happy to answer questions on any placements you find questionable, but I should state that at a basic level, my favourite coasters are rides that have the perfect blend of fun, thrills and rerideability. Out and out intensity is not everything for me; it's the fun factor and rerideability that ultimately matters. There are certainly tangible things that typically correlate with me ranking a coaster highly (for instance, most rides in this list have notable airtime moments to at least a certain extent), but the most important thing for me is a good blend of fun, thrills and rerideability, and I think one entry to my top 10 in particular taught me that the qualities of "what I like in a coaster" are perhaps less tangible than I had previously thought they were.

So, without further ado, my current top 10 is as follows... (new entries are in italics, relocated coasters are underlined)

Mako - SeaWorld Orlando: Even 7 years after my first ride, this coaster still reigns supreme for me, and my recent revisit to SeaWorld (where I had 5 rides on it) reinforced that! The sustained airtime is absolutely biblical (particularly in moments like the first drop, first airtime hill and speed hill), the sense of speed is wonderful, it's blissfully smooth, and overall, it's just such a fun, thrilling and rerideable coaster that I could (and indeed tried my darnedest to) sit on all day! I truly love this ride, and on my recent revisit to SeaWorld, it didn't disappoint! 10/10

Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Islands of Adventure: It may not quite be #1, but my goodness was it close, and VelociCoaster would certainly be a worthy contender for the top spot! There is so much that this ride does well; it packs a great sense of speed throughout, with the second section in particular feeling ridiculously fast, there are quite a few sublime moments of ejector airtime that really whip you out of the seat, there are some truly brilliant inversions, and overall, it's just a truly stunning, spectacular coaster, in my view! In terms of some specific highlights; it's hard to pick from the wonderful array of sensations on offer. But if I had to choose a few, the second launch is absolutely obscene, packing a euphoric thrill like few other rides I've ever experienced, the top hat is sublime, packing some breathtaking ejector airtime on the back in particular, and the mosasaurus roll is an absolutely mind-blowing inversion that throws you out of the seat with some sublime sustained negative g-forces and ensures that you fly into the final brakes blown away! Overall, VelociCoaster is a truly stunning coaster, in my opinion; its blend of stunning airtime, impactful elements, fun, comfort and rerideability certainly make it a firm favourite of mine! 10/10

Silver Star - Europa Park: I had quite low expectations for this coaster given that it's not overly well liked, but I have to say that I was blown away; I absolutely adored this coaster! It has wonderful sustained airtime, it's smooth and comfortable, it has an awesome sense of speed, the ending is absolutely brilliant, packing some phenomenal ejector airtime (particularly the MCBR exit), and overall, this is a stunning coaster that I absolutely loved! I did rank this below Mako of the two B&M Hypers I've ridden due to my feeling that its airtime, while stunning, never has quite the same impact as some of Mako's strongest moments, in my view, and while smooth in its own right, it isn't quite as blissfully smooth as Mako. I also felt it to be slightly less consistent, as I did have 1 or 2 slightly weaker rides on it during my trip to Europa. Nonetheless, Silver Star is a stunning coaster with phenomenal sustained airtime, and I love how it is incredibly rerideable and keeps the thrills going right to the end with that awesome post-MCBR section! 10/10

Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Islands of Adventure: Dismiss this as a “family” coaster all you want, but I think such quick dismissal would be a huge mistake, because this ride is phenomenal, in my view! Of the rides in my top 10, I’ll admit that this one probably has the least tangible reason to be there. However, the key reason why Hagrid’s ranks so highly for me is that purely and simply, it is a phenomenally, impeccably fun roller coaster! In terms of some specifics, the low-to-the-ground turns were a lot more thrilling than I expected and the launches were surprisingly punchy and great fun, but unlike many coasters, my love of Hagrid’s is for a much broader reason than any specific features of the ride layout. It is just so, so fun, and the ride will always leave you laughing hysterically and smiling on the final brake run, and that for me is really important. Riding Hagrid’s taught me a crucial lesson about my taste in coasters; it taught me that a coaster does not necessarily need greatness in the form of tangible elements for me to love it, and that fundamentally, all a coaster needs to be is fun. Hagrid’s is not the most intense ride by any means, but if you want pure fun, I’d struggle to recommend many better coasters than this one! 10/10

Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park: Wodan strikes the perfect balance between pure demented insanity and amazing fun factor and rerideability, in my view! It’s an absolutely relentless coaster, with phenomenal pacing right to the end, and it has quite a few really surprising pops of ejector airtime, including an excellent first drop, but it’s also a really smooth and comfortable wooden coaster, and it just manages to be a ridiculous amount of fun! Overall, Wodan is such a fast, airtime-filled and fun coaster that I absolutely loved on my visit to Europa Park! 10/10

Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa: This ride is phenomenal! In terms of some key strengths, it’s absolutely relentless in pacing and has some of the strongest ejector airtime I’ve ever experienced, and some of the big hitters in the layout like the first drop, outerbanked turn, death roll and wave turn are truly sensational elements that are right up there with the best, in my opinion! The first drop in particular is insane; whipping you far out of the seat with ejector airtime for a surprisingly sustained period of time never gets old! However, my reason for not ranking this coaster higher is that it’s almost a little… much at times. Iron Gwazi is not a rough coaster by any stretch, but it’s certainly fierce in places, and I did find the final few elements in particular to be toeing the line in terms of what I can handle from a violence and intensity standpoint. It does quite a bit of what I’d refer to as “snapping”, where it changes direction and exerts high forces very rapidly, and while this looks good on paper and probably looks good in NoLimits or whatever, it doesn’t ride quite so well in practice for me, and I did find Iron Gwazi ever so slightly uncomfortable in those snappier portions of the layout. If I’m being picky, I also wasn’t the biggest lover of the trains (and these could well have contributed to the slight discomfort I experienced in areas), although they’re admittedly far from the worst trains I’ve ever sat in. Nevertheless, these are minor niggles rather than total deal breakers for me, and the high points of the ride are high enough for me to override them to a certain extent; while I perhaps didn’t love Iron Gwazi quite as much as I’d hoped to for the aforementioned reasons, it’s still a phenomenal ride that I thought very highly of! 10/10

SheiKra - Busch Gardens Tampa: I had remembered liking this ride back in 2016, but my reride in 2023 was even better than I’d previously remembered! I love a B&M Dive Coaster, and this was a fantastic one! The sustained airtime over both drops was absolutely phenomenal, and the sheer size of them produced a brilliant sensation of speed throughout the ride! You typically think of Dive Coasters for their initial vertical drop, but interestingly, I actually thought that the second vertical drop on SheiKra delivered just as much as the first if not more! Overall, SheiKra was phenomenal, and a really pleasant surprise; I often said that I preferred Oblivion, but I’d now say that I comfortably prefer SheiKra, as I do feel that the added height and length really add something to it! 10/10

Icon - Blackpool Pleasure Beach: Icon is often maligned, but I absolutely love it, personally! Yes, the ride is not the most intense coaster by any means, but I just find it incredibly good fun! There’s some excellent ejector airtime on there, with some particular highlight moments being the top hat, the drop down into the second launch and one incredibly fun drop during the second half of the layout! I also think that the ride is fast-paced and thrilling throughout, and it’s also incredibly smooth and comfortable, with the overhead lap bars ensuring that the inversions in particular are negotiated comfortably in a way that ensures maximum floaty negatives! Overall, I love Icon for its fun airtime, fast pace, fun twists and turns and overall rerideability; it’s just such a wonderfully fun coaster, in my opinion! 10/10

Ice Breaker - SeaWorld Orlando: I had pretty low expectations for Ice Breaker, as its reviews are generally middling to negative, but I have to say that it massively exceeded expectations for me; it was a phenomenal little ride that I absolutely loved! I should say that the much-maligned “comfort collars” have been removed, so I experienced the ride without them, but I found it to be fantastic, with a fun and punchy swing launch, a backwards spike with some brilliant floater airtime, some surprisingly excellent pops of ejector airtime in places, some fun twists and turns, and a smooth and fun ride experience throughout! The trains are a little tight to get into and out of, but I found the restraints unobtrusive when I was sat down enjoying the ride, so I didn’t find them to be an issue overall. All in all, I thought Ice Breaker was a fantastic ride that hugely exceeded my expectations; it may not have quite been my favourite coaster I rode in Florida, but I dare say that coaster-wise, it was possibly the sleeper hit of the trip in terms of how much it exceeded my expectations! I expected very little, but I ended up absolutely loving the ride, personally! 10/10

Wicker Man - Alton Towers: It may now only be in my top 10 by the skin of its teeth, but Wicker Man is a fantastic GCI coaster that I absolutely love! It may not look like much on paper, but I find it to be an enormously fun and rerideable coaster that never fails to put a huge smile on my face! I find it to be a really fast-paced coaster with some really fun twists and turns and some surprising pops of airtime, with some particular favourite elements of mine being the initial s-bend drop, where you gain brilliant speed incredibly quickly, and the big drop out of the high u-turn and following airtime hill, with both elements providing some excellent airtime that really whips you out of the seat! Overall, I find Wicker Man a hugely fun and rerideable wooden coaster with awesome airtime, twists and pacing, and I think it’s a ride that is definitely far more than the sum of its parts, personally! 10/10

In terms of other notable new Florida additions, the only major new coaster addition I can think of that is missing is Pipeline: The Surf Coaster, which I found to be a big disappointment and is ranked at #52 out of 99.

Overall, I thought that this trip was brilliant, personally!

Following my visit to Thorpe Park yesterday, the first new addition of 2024 has graced my top 10!

Since I last posted an updated list in this thread, I’ve also rejigged the order of my rankings a bit, so the order is slightly different to what it was before.

With this in mind, my current top 10, with a coaster count of 123, is as follows (new addition in italics, altered placements underlined):

Mako - SeaWorld Orlando: Even 8 years after my first ride, this coaster still reigns supreme for me, and my 2023 revisit to SeaWorld (where I had 5 rides on it) reinforced that! The sustained airtime is absolutely biblical (particularly in moments like the first drop, first airtime hill and speed hill), the sense of speed is wonderful, it's blissfully smooth, and overall, it's just such a fun, thrilling and rerideable coaster that I could (and indeed tried my darnedest to) sit on all day! I truly love this ride, and on my 2023 revisit to SeaWorld, it didn't disappoint! 10/10
Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Universal’s Islands of Adventure: It may not quite be #1, but my goodness was it close, and VelociCoaster would certainly be a worthy contender for the top spot! There is so much that this ride does well; it packs a great sense of speed throughout, with the second section in particular feeling ridiculously fast, there are quite a few sublime moments of ejector airtime that really whip you out of the seat, there are some truly brilliant inversions, and overall, it's just a truly stunning, spectacular coaster, in my view! In terms of some specific highlights; it's hard to pick from the wonderful array of sensations on offer. But if I had to choose a few, the second launch is absolutely obscene, packing a euphoric thrill like few other rides I've ever experienced, the top hat is sublime, packing some breathtaking ejector airtime on the back in particular, and the mosasaurus roll is an absolutely mind-blowing inversion that throws you out of the seat with some sublime sustained negative g-forces and ensures that you fly into the final brakes blown away! Overall, VelociCoaster is a truly stunning coaster, in my opinion; its blend of stunning airtime, impactful elements, fun, comfort and rerideability certainly make it a firm favourite of mine! 10/10
Silver Star - Europa Park: I had quite low expectations for this coaster given that it's not overly well liked, but I have to say that I was blown away; I absolutely adored this coaster! It has wonderful sustained airtime, it's smooth and comfortable, it has an awesome sense of speed, the ending is absolutely brilliant, packing some phenomenal ejector airtime (particularly the MCBR exit), and overall, this is a stunning coaster that I absolutely loved! I did rank this below Mako of the two B&M Hypers I've ridden due to my feeling that its airtime, while stunning, never has quite the same impact as some of Mako's strongest moments, in my view, and while smooth in its own right, it isn't quite as blissfully smooth as Mako. I also felt it to be slightly less consistent, as I did have 1 or 2 slightly weaker rides on it during my trip to Europa. Nonetheless, Silver Star is a stunning coaster with phenomenal sustained airtime, and I love how it is incredibly rerideable and keeps the thrills going right to the end with that awesome post-MCBR section! 10/10
Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa: This ride is phenomenal! In terms of some key strengths, it’s absolutely relentless in pacing and has some of the strongest ejector airtime I’ve ever experienced, and some of the big hitters in the layout like the first drop, outerbanked turn, death roll and wave turn are truly sensational elements that are right up there with the best, in my opinion! The first drop in particular is insane; whipping you far out of the seat with ejector airtime for a surprisingly sustained period of time never gets old! There are also some absolutely top-drawer moments of ejector airtime elsewhere in the layout, and the ride is smooth and rerideable! In terms of why I moved it up when I haven’t reridden it, this is because in retrospect, I think I was overly harsh on Iron Gwazi at the time, fixating on its very tiniest imperfections to try and quantify the slight disappointment of it not quite living up to my wildly high expectations on the very first go. This is going to sound odd, but Iron Gwazi is a coaster where the more I sit back and think about it, the more I actually love it. Thinking back, it grew on me considerably the second and third times I did it once the weight of expectation was off its shoulders, and it is genuinely a top tier ride that is more than deserving of a top 5 placement for me! 10/10
Hyperia - Thorpe Park: What a sublime ride! I was excited for Hyperia, and it did not disappoint! I love a good hyper, and Hyperia is a phenomenal one! For starters, the ride is primarily designed around weightlessness, and it delivers this excellently; you seem to spend half of the ride pinned out of the seat in some capacity! The first three big elements on the ride are an obscenely perfect sequence. The first drop is absolutely unhinged and so, so good, delivering excellent sustained ejector, the non-inverting Immelmann is sublime and offers both brilliant speed rushing up into it and top-drawer sustained ejector coming out of it, and that outerbanked turn into the inversion is wild and pins you right of your seat with top-tier sustained sideways ejector! The zero-g stall is not quite up there with the other elements, but it is still excellent, with sustained hangtime, and the final two elements after the trim were surprisingly excellent, with both the outerbanked turn and the final airtime hill delivering! Overall, then, Hyperia is an absolutely sublime coaster, in my view, and it definitely lived up to the hype for me. It’s so good to have a coaster this brilliant 2 hours from home, that I can most probably ride at least once annually! 10/10
Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park: Wodan strikes the perfect balance between pure demented insanity and amazing fun factor and rerideability, in my view! It’s an absolutely relentless coaster, with phenomenal pacing right to the end, and it has quite a few really surprising pops of ejector airtime, including an excellent first drop, but it’s also a really smooth and comfortable wooden coaster, and it just manages to be a ridiculous amount of fun! Overall, Wodan is such a fast, airtime-filled and fun coaster that I absolutely loved on my visit to Europa Park! 10/10
Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Universal’s Islands of Adventure: Dismiss this as a “family” coaster all you want, but I think such quick dismissal would be a huge mistake, because this ride is phenomenal, in my view! Of the rides in my top 10, I’ll admit that this one probably has the least tangible reason to be there. However, the key reason why Hagrid’s ranks so highly for me is that purely and simply, it is a phenomenally, impeccably fun roller coaster! In terms of some specifics, the low-to-the-ground turns were a lot more thrilling than I expected and the launches were surprisingly punchy and great fun, but unlike many coasters, my love of Hagrid’s is for a much broader reason than any specific features of the ride layout. It is just so, so fun, and the ride will always leave you laughing hysterically and smiling on the final brake run, and that for me is really important. Riding Hagrid’s taught me a crucial lesson about my taste in coasters; it taught me that a coaster does not necessarily need greatness in the form of tangible elements for me to love it, and that fundamentally, all a coaster needs to be is fun. Hagrid’s is not the most intense ride by any means, but if you want pure fun, I’d struggle to recommend many better coasters than this one! 10/10
SheiKra - Busch Gardens Tampa: I had remembered liking this ride back in 2016, but my reride in 2023 was even better than I’d previously remembered! I love a B&M Dive Coaster, and this was a fantastic one! The sustained airtime over both drops was absolutely phenomenal, and the sheer size of them produced a brilliant sensation of speed throughout the ride! You typically think of Dive Coasters for their initial vertical drop, but interestingly, I actually thought that the second vertical drop on SheiKra delivered just as much as the first if not more! Overall, SheiKra was phenomenal, and a really pleasant surprise; I often said that I preferred Oblivion, but I’d now say that I comfortably prefer SheiKra, as I do feel that the added height and length really add something to it! 10/10
Wicker Man - Alton Towers: Wicker Man is a fantastic GCI coaster that I absolutely love! It may not look like much on paper, but I find it to be an enormously fun and rerideable coaster that never fails to put a huge smile on my face! I find it to be a really fast-paced coaster with some really fun twists and turns and some surprising pops of airtime, with some particular favourite elements of mine being the initial s-bend drop, where you gain brilliant speed incredibly quickly, and the big drop out of the high u-turn and following airtime hill, with both elements providing some excellent airtime that really whips you out of the seat! Overall, I find Wicker Man a hugely fun and rerideable wooden coaster with awesome airtime, twists and pacing, and I think it’s a ride that is definitely far more than the sum of its parts, personally! I decided to bump it up a few spots after my most recent visit in 2024, where it was running so well on the 2 rides I had; the airtime was kicking, the ride was blisteringly fast-paced, and it just made me laugh and smile so much! Somewhat similarly to Hagrid’s, Wicker Man just takes the raw fun factor to a whole new level for me! 10/10
Ice Breaker - SeaWorld Orlando: I had pretty low expectations for Ice Breaker, as its reviews are generally middling to negative, but I have to say that it massively exceeded expectations for me; it was a phenomenal little ride that I absolutely loved! I should say that the much-maligned “comfort collars” have been removed, so I experienced the ride without them, but I found it to be fantastic, with a fun and punchy swing launch, a backwards spike with some brilliant floater airtime, some surprisingly excellent pops of ejector airtime in places, some fun twists and turns, and a smooth and fun ride experience throughout! The trains are a little tight to get into and out of, but I found the restraints unobtrusive when I was sat down enjoying the ride, so I didn’t find them to be an issue overall. All in all, I thought Ice Breaker was a fantastic ride that hugely exceeded my expectations; it may not have quite been my favourite coaster I rode in Florida, but I dare say that coaster-wise, it was possibly the sleeper hit of my 2023 trip in terms of how much it exceeded my expectations! I expected very little, but I ended up absolutely loving the ride, personally! 10/10

The unfortunate casualty of the most recent addition to my top 10 has been Icon, which has now dropped out. I do love Icon to bits, and it’s still just about a 10/10 tier ride for me (it’s now the lowest ranking ride in this tier), but it’s the ride that’s tended to bear the brunt of the collateral damage of new additions to my top 10 in recent years. I do love the airtime, the fun factor and the way it all flows and meshes together wonderfully and encapsulates a lot of different elements, but one thing that’s become more evident as I’ve ridden more coasters is that it lacks any particular standout “wow” elements compared to things I rank more highly. For a ride to really stand out for me these days, it has to either take the fun factor to an entirely new level (e.g. Hagrid’s, Wicker Man) or it needs a couple of real standout elements, and compared to other rides in the 10/10 tier, I don’t think Icon delivers on either of those things quite as well, so I have found it sliding down the rankings in recent years. There could be a bit of recency bias at play here, as it’s easily the 10/10 tier ride I last rode the longest ago (my last ride was in 2019), but those are my current thoughts.

For those interested, my wider top 30 is currently as follows (I’ve also done a bit of rejigging here…):

Mako - SeaWorld Orlando (10/10)
Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Universal’s Islands of Adventure (10/10)
Silver Star - Europa Park (10/10)
Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa (10/10)
Hyperia - Thorpe Park (10/10)
Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park (10/10)
Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Universal’s Islands of Adventure (10/10)
SheiKra - Busch Gardens Tampa (10/10)
Wicker Man - Alton Towers (10/10)
Ice Breaker - SeaWorld Orlando (10/10)
Icon - Blackpool Pleasure Beach (10/10)
Oblivion - Alton Towers (9/10)
Stealth - Thorpe Park (9/10)
Montu - Busch Gardens Tampa (9/10)
Nemesis Reborn - Alton Towers (9/10)
Nemesis Inferno - Thorpe Park (9/10)
Revenge of the Mummy - Universal Studios Florida (9/10)
Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts - Universal Studios Florida (9/10)
Blue Fire - Europa Park (9/10)
Mine Blower - Fun Spot Kissimmee (9/10)
The Swarm - Thorpe Park (8/10)
Kumba - Busch Gardens Tampa (8/10)
Kraken - SeaWorld Orlando (8/10)
Megafobia - Oakwood Theme Park (8/10)
Rock’n’Rollercoaster - Disney’s Hollywood Studios (8/10)
Cheetah Hunt - Busch Gardens Tampa (8/10)
Sik - Flamingo Land (8/10)
Thirteen - Alton Towers (8/10)
Rita - Alton Towers (8/10)
Eurosat CanCan Coaster - Europa Park (7/10)

addy2503 · Aug 29, 2024

addy2503 said:
Finally feel like I have a decent top 20 after a European trip this year

1: Untamed, Walibi Holland
2: Nemesis, Alton Towers
3: Taron, Phantasialand
4: Silver Star, Europa Park
5: Shambhala, PortAventura
6: Blue Fire, Europa Park
7: Wodan Timbur Coaster, Europa Park
8: Lost Gravity, Walibi Holland
9: Goliath, Walibi Holland
10: Stealth, Thorpe Park
11: Oblivion, Alton Towers
12: Nemesis Inferno, Thorpe Park
13: F.L.Y, Phantasialand
14: Wicker Man, Alton Towers
15: Star Trek: Operation Enterprise, Movie Park Germany
16: Dragon Khan, PortAventura
17: Fēnix, Toverland
18: Smiler, Alton Towers
19: Red Force, PortAventura
20: Swarm, Thorpe Park

Update after visiting Poland & revisiting Europa this year, plus some (fairly basic...) thoughts on the top 10 below:

1: Voltron, Europa Park
2: Zadra, Energylandia
3: Untamed, Walibi Holland
4: Lech Coaster, Legendia
5: Hyperion, Energylandia
6: Nemesis, Alton Towers
7: Taron, Phantasialand
8: Silver Star, Europa Park
9: Shambhala, PortAventura
10: Wodan Timbur Coaster, Europa Park
11: Nemesis Inferno, Thorpe Park
12: Blue Fire Megacoaster, Europa Park
13: Lost Gravity, Walibi Holland
14: Goliath, Walibi Holland
15: Abyssus, Energylandia
16: Stealth, Thorpe Park
17: Oblivion, Alton Towers
18: F.L.Y, Phantasialand
19: Formula, Energylandia
20: Wicker Man, Alton Towers

1: Voltron, Europa Park
Had thought that RMC would have a firm hold on my top position for some time, but then in comes Voltron, aggressively them down into second & third place. Just an incredible coaster, relentless pacing, insane airtime & hangtime (felt like the train was trying to eject me most of the way round). First launch & Zero-G stall are my highlights I think, but the whole thing is insane. Feels like it takes a lot of design cues from RMC, and I think that part of the reason it beats them in my ranking is partly the level of theming, but also the much more comfortable Mack trains & restraints (I'm 6'4" and a fairly large stomach/waist, so the RMC restraints are very restrictive for me). Also didn't notice a rattle or anything across my 6 rides in every row and both outer and inner seats.
Basically Smiler if it were actually good...

2: Zadra, Energylandia
My 100th coaster, and what a coaster! First drop is brilliant, and the Zero-G Stall is a particular standout. Think Untamed is close to beating it, but the sheer scale of Zadra just beats it out.

3: Untamed, Walibi Holland
My first RMC and such a good coaster. Whole thing is great, but think the return run from the turnaround back to the station is the best bit, particularly the final inversion and the bunny hops & headchoppers through the structure.

4: Lech Coaster, Legendia
Such a great little coaster, love all the quick positive to negative transitions and the roll through the station. Brilliant intense machine.
First 4 in my list are very close.

5: Hyperion, Energylandia
Brilliant mix of 'standard' hyper coaster elements and fast snappy turns and airtime moments, plus a great inversion.

6: Nemesis, Alton Towers
Bit sad to see this drop out of the top 5 as it had been my #1 from 2016 when I first rode it until last year, but everything above very much deserves it. Will always be my #0 coaster though as was the 1 coaster I always aspired to ride as I was growing up, and the one that got rid of my fear of riding coasters. Still a great coaster in such a unique location. Helix through Zero-G is one of the best sequences of elements on anything I've ridden.

7: Taron, Phantasialand
Love the launches, and a great layout with some good moments of airtime and in a brilliantly themed area.

8: Silver Star, Europa Park
Great fun B&M Hyper, great floater through the first half then a nice twisty second half with a couple of ejector moments (maybe helped by only having ridden it in the back row?). Would like to see it get a retheme at some point though, as it currently feels like a missing link at Europa in terms of theming.
Took a while to decide whether this or Shambhala were better, probably not helped by not having ridden Shambhala since 2017, so could flip positions whenever I get back to Spain.

9: Shambhala, PortAventura
See above... Great fun B&M Hyper layout with a huge amount of floater, main memory is it trying to undress me every time I rode it

10: Wodan Timbur Coaster, Europa Park
Feels like this could easily be higher, but a brilliant layout with some great almost RMC-ish moments, particularly towards the end, like Wicker Man on steroids, and similar to Zadra vs Untamed, shows that sometimes taller and faster are better.

Coasterfreck · Sep 19, 2024

My top 10ish

Hyperia (Thorpe Park)
Nemesis Inferno (Thorpe Park)
Wicker Man (Alton Towers)
Icon (Blackpool Pleasure Beach)
Colossus (Thorpe Park)
The Swarm (Thorpe Park)
Olympia Looping (Winter Wonderland/Travelling)
The Smiler (Alton Towers)
Mandrill Mayhem (Chessington World Of Adventures)
Nemesis Reborn (Alton Towers)
Vampire (Chessington World Of Adventures)
Avalanche (Blackpool Pleasure Beach)
Th13teen (Alton Towers)

Burniel · Sep 29, 2024

Finally managed to get this into a stable enough state to put my name to it. At least until I change my mind again tomorrow...
(Contextual info: CC 130, UK based, age 23)

1. Iron Gwazi, Busch Gardens Tampa
Not a lot I can say about this ride that others haven't. I'm kind of in that honeymoon phase of starting to travel more widely for parks, and a product of that is riding something of a scale that for years I could only dream of and getting that oh wow, I'm actually here doing this feeling. I can find technical justifications for it being ahead of everything else in the list, but truthfully it's at #1 because it's the one that most made me feel like my childhood dreams were coming true.

2. Zadra, Energylandia
My first RMC, and after 10 years of watching them pop up across the world I was practically wetting myself with excitement to get on one. The experience was everything I'd hoped it would be from years of watching POVs of various IBoxes - pure chaos effortlessly delivered and an easy #1 at the time. It's cruel that it spent so little time at the top and I do wonder if recency bias is involved, but calling it a narrow 2nd feels the most accurate right now.

3. VelociCoaster, Islands of Adventure
This and IG seem to have become a double act in every top 10 ever written, whenever you see one you can be sure the other isn't far behind. It's certainly convenient to have two of the greatest thrill machines ever built within an hour of each other. I was slightly underwhelmed on my first ride (only because I'd set impossible expectations for it), but the second in the front row sealed the deal for me here. Besides being an insane ride experience, it's hard to imagine a more fitting and better integrated high-thrill coaster than this.

4. Taron, Phantasialand
I've seen the word "elite" passed around a fair bit and, until riding this back in January, I didn't really understand it. I'd been on plenty of really good coasters, but where do you draw the line between the great and the elite? Then I caught a front row on this just as it began to snow, the combination of the ride and the cold quite literally taking my breath away, and realised there's no point drawing such a line because you'll just know when it's up there. You could try to break it down and explain it, but why bother when the feeling a ride like this gives is so much greater than the sum of its parts, so beyond statistics and description? Where was I... oh yeah, Taron's great, would recommend.

5. Hyperion, Energylandia
Though the RMC above is worth the trip in itself, Energylandia's #2 should be more than enough to convince anyone on the fence about making the journey. It's got the most classical approach in my top 5, as it's the tallest and fastest coaster I've ever done and, as we all know, tall + fast = good. There's something to be said about Hyperion's execution though, its monstrous layout accommodating both fantastic air and intensity, with its positioning in the park making for the best opening statement I've seen to date.

6. Hyperia, Thorpe Park
The ride whose announcement brought me back to the hobby. A local park getting something world-class after such a drought brings an enormous feeling of pride (which is weird, having nothing to do with the project) and potential bias, so I've deliberately held off on placing it until riding it to death. Unlike those right at the top of this list, the ride has very noticeable flaws, but I simply can't ignore how good some of its individual elements are. For as much as I dislike burning to death in its single rider queue and the fact it's all over in the blink of an eye, I would put up with a lot worse to experience that drop and those inversions. It's tempting to think what if, but when it's already so far ahead of what could realistically have been expected, those thoughts are easily silenced.

7. Mako, SeaWorld Orlando
Crazy to think this spent 7 years at my top spot only to fall to 7th in the last 12 months. My feelings on it are largely unchanged: it's a beautifully smooth floater factory that fits in its park ridiculously well. It's my only B&M hyper, though I gather one of the most popular, and it seems like the perfect advert for the model as it's so good at what it does. It's probably the first entry in this list that's perfect at what it does and that's all, but it's amazing nonetheless.

8. Lech Coaster, Legendia
A truly brilliant coaster its park doesn't deserve. It may only have operated for an hour on my visit, but it more than earned its place in that time. Relatively unassuming to the untrained eye, Lech's tight inversions taken at high speed (and yet with such comfort) are not to be underestimated. And not to mention the ride is beautiful, sticking out like a sore thumb in this glorified fairground.

9. Cú Chulainn, Emerald Park
Brutally difficult to place as I last rode it on a family holiday in 2015, whereas everything else on here has been ridden or re-ridden this year (I'm well aware of how lucky I am to be able to say this). I already liked coasters back then, but marathoning this on a quiet day was the first I want to travel around and chase moments like this feeling I ever had. So in a way it all comes from here and the "dream come true" moments I get on rides like Iron Gwazi are basically just Ratatouille flashbacks to Cú Chulainn. No doubt it's got rougher over the years, and I have some anxiety about heading out to redo it next year for that reason, but on vague memories alone it lands here.

10. Montu, Busch Gardens Tampa
Imagine being so good that everything else in the top 10 was built 19+ years after you. While my top 4 make it pretty clear what my favourite coaster models are, the B&M Invert is easily the model with the most class. Face-rippingly intense yet supremely comfortable, Montu embodies everything that inverts (and 1990s B&M as a whole) stand for. The sustained intensity of the first half, peaking at that brutal batwing, followed by a second half that just keeps hitting even when you think it's done, is a masterclass in "traditional" coaster design.

And a less fixed 11-20:
11. Kumba, Busch Gardens Tampa
12. Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, Islands of Adventure
13. Expedition Everest, Disney's Animal Kingdom
14. Incredible Hulk, Islands of Adventure
15. FLY, Phantasialand
16. Nemesis, Alton Towers
17. Cheetah Hunt, Busch Gardens Tampa
18. Manta, SeaWorld Orlando
19. The Swarm, Thorpe Park
20. Abyssus, Energylandia

Peet · Oct 1, 2024

It was a fairly modest year for new creds +22 in total but it included 3 huge new entries to my top ten (Hyperia, Wildfire and Zadra) so here's my new-look top 25:
1. Velocicoaster
2. Zadra
3. Iron Gwazi
4. Ride to Happiness
5. Hyperion
6. Wildfire
7. Helix
8. Hyperia
9. Untamed
10. Fury 325
11. El Toro
12. Expedition Ge Force
13. Taron
14. Troy
15. Shambhala
16. Cú Chulainn
17. Flying Aces
18. Nemesis
19. Twisted Colossus
20. Wodan
21. Colossos
22. Lech
23. Kondaa
24. Thundercoaster
25. Mako

Matt N · Oct 3, 2024

Matt N said:
Following my visit to Thorpe Park yesterday, the first new addition of 2024 has graced my top 10!

Since I last posted an updated list in this thread, I’ve also rejigged the order of my rankings a bit, so the order is slightly different to what it was before.

With this in mind, my current top 10, with a coaster count of 123, is as follows (new addition in italics, altered placements underlined):

Mako - SeaWorld Orlando: Even 8 years after my first ride, this coaster still reigns supreme for me, and my 2023 revisit to SeaWorld (where I had 5 rides on it) reinforced that! The sustained airtime is absolutely biblical (particularly in moments like the first drop, first airtime hill and speed hill), the sense of speed is wonderful, it's blissfully smooth, and overall, it's just such a fun, thrilling and rerideable coaster that I could (and indeed tried my darnedest to) sit on all day! I truly love this ride, and on my 2023 revisit to SeaWorld, it didn't disappoint! 10/10

Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Universal’s Islands of Adventure: It may not quite be #1, but my goodness was it close, and VelociCoaster would certainly be a worthy contender for the top spot! There is so much that this ride does well; it packs a great sense of speed throughout, with the second section in particular feeling ridiculously fast, there are quite a few sublime moments of ejector airtime that really whip you out of the seat, there are some truly brilliant inversions, and overall, it's just a truly stunning, spectacular coaster, in my view! In terms of some specific highlights; it's hard to pick from the wonderful array of sensations on offer. But if I had to choose a few, the second launch is absolutely obscene, packing a euphoric thrill like few other rides I've ever experienced, the top hat is sublime, packing some breathtaking ejector airtime on the back in particular, and the mosasaurus roll is an absolutely mind-blowing inversion that throws you out of the seat with some sublime sustained negative g-forces and ensures that you fly into the final brakes blown away! Overall, VelociCoaster is a truly stunning coaster, in my opinion; its blend of stunning airtime, impactful elements, fun, comfort and rerideability certainly make it a firm favourite of mine! 10/10

Silver Star - Europa Park: I had quite low expectations for this coaster given that it's not overly well liked, but I have to say that I was blown away; I absolutely adored this coaster! It has wonderful sustained airtime, it's smooth and comfortable, it has an awesome sense of speed, the ending is absolutely brilliant, packing some phenomenal ejector airtime (particularly the MCBR exit), and overall, this is a stunning coaster that I absolutely loved! I did rank this below Mako of the two B&M Hypers I've ridden due to my feeling that its airtime, while stunning, never has quite the same impact as some of Mako's strongest moments, in my view, and while smooth in its own right, it isn't quite as blissfully smooth as Mako. I also felt it to be slightly less consistent, as I did have 1 or 2 slightly weaker rides on it during my trip to Europa. Nonetheless, Silver Star is a stunning coaster with phenomenal sustained airtime, and I love how it is incredibly rerideable and keeps the thrills going right to the end with that awesome post-MCBR section! 10/10

Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa: This ride is phenomenal! In terms of some key strengths, it’s absolutely relentless in pacing and has some of the strongest ejector airtime I’ve ever experienced, and some of the big hitters in the layout like the first drop, outerbanked turn, death roll and wave turn are truly sensational elements that are right up there with the best, in my opinion! The first drop in particular is insane; whipping you far out of the seat with ejector airtime for a surprisingly sustained period of time never gets old! There are also some absolutely top-drawer moments of ejector airtime elsewhere in the layout, and the ride is smooth and rerideable! In terms of why I moved it up when I haven’t reridden it, this is because in retrospect, I think I was overly harsh on Iron Gwazi at the time, fixating on its very tiniest imperfections to try and quantify the slight disappointment of it not quite living up to my wildly high expectations on the very first go. This is going to sound odd, but Iron Gwazi is a coaster where the more I sit back and think about it, the more I actually love it. Thinking back, it grew on me considerably the second and third times I did it once the weight of expectation was off its shoulders, and it is genuinely a top tier ride that is more than deserving of a top 5 placement for me! 10/10

Hyperia - Thorpe Park: What a sublime ride! I was excited for Hyperia, and it did not disappoint! I love a good hyper, and Hyperia is a phenomenal one! For starters, the ride is primarily designed around weightlessness, and it delivers this excellently; you seem to spend half of the ride pinned out of the seat in some capacity! The first three big elements on the ride are an obscenely perfect sequence. The first drop is absolutely unhinged and so, so good, delivering excellent sustained ejector, the non-inverting Immelmann is sublime and offers both brilliant speed rushing up into it and top-drawer sustained ejector coming out of it, and that outerbanked turn into the inversion is wild and pins you right of your seat with top-tier sustained sideways ejector! The zero-g stall is not quite up there with the other elements, but it is still excellent, with sustained hangtime, and the final two elements after the trim were surprisingly excellent, with both the outerbanked turn and the final airtime hill delivering! Overall, then, Hyperia is an absolutely sublime coaster, in my view, and it definitely lived up to the hype for me. It’s so good to have a coaster this brilliant 2 hours from home, that I can most probably ride at least once annually! 10/10

Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park: Wodan strikes the perfect balance between pure demented insanity and amazing fun factor and rerideability, in my view! It’s an absolutely relentless coaster, with phenomenal pacing right to the end, and it has quite a few really surprising pops of ejector airtime, including an excellent first drop, but it’s also a really smooth and comfortable wooden coaster, and it just manages to be a ridiculous amount of fun! Overall, Wodan is such a fast, airtime-filled and fun coaster that I absolutely loved on my visit to Europa Park! 10/10

Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Universal’s Islands of Adventure: Dismiss this as a “family” coaster all you want, but I think such quick dismissal would be a huge mistake, because this ride is phenomenal, in my view! Of the rides in my top 10, I’ll admit that this one probably has the least tangible reason to be there. However, the key reason why Hagrid’s ranks so highly for me is that purely and simply, it is a phenomenally, impeccably fun roller coaster! In terms of some specifics, the low-to-the-ground turns were a lot more thrilling than I expected and the launches were surprisingly punchy and great fun, but unlike many coasters, my love of Hagrid’s is for a much broader reason than any specific features of the ride layout. It is just so, so fun, and the ride will always leave you laughing hysterically and smiling on the final brake run, and that for me is really important. Riding Hagrid’s taught me a crucial lesson about my taste in coasters; it taught me that a coaster does not necessarily need greatness in the form of tangible elements for me to love it, and that fundamentally, all a coaster needs to be is fun. Hagrid’s is not the most intense ride by any means, but if you want pure fun, I’d struggle to recommend many better coasters than this one! 10/10

SheiKra - Busch Gardens Tampa: I had remembered liking this ride back in 2016, but my reride in 2023 was even better than I’d previously remembered! I love a B&M Dive Coaster, and this was a fantastic one! The sustained airtime over both drops was absolutely phenomenal, and the sheer size of them produced a brilliant sensation of speed throughout the ride! You typically think of Dive Coasters for their initial vertical drop, but interestingly, I actually thought that the second vertical drop on SheiKra delivered just as much as the first if not more! Overall, SheiKra was phenomenal, and a really pleasant surprise; I often said that I preferred Oblivion, but I’d now say that I comfortably prefer SheiKra, as I do feel that the added height and length really add something to it! 10/10

Wicker Man - Alton Towers: Wicker Man is a fantastic GCI coaster that I absolutely love! It may not look like much on paper, but I find it to be an enormously fun and rerideable coaster that never fails to put a huge smile on my face! I find it to be a really fast-paced coaster with some really fun twists and turns and some surprising pops of airtime, with some particular favourite elements of mine being the initial s-bend drop, where you gain brilliant speed incredibly quickly, and the big drop out of the high u-turn and following airtime hill, with both elements providing some excellent airtime that really whips you out of the seat! Overall, I find Wicker Man a hugely fun and rerideable wooden coaster with awesome airtime, twists and pacing, and I think it’s a ride that is definitely far more than the sum of its parts, personally! I decided to bump it up a few spots after my most recent visit in 2024, where it was running so well on the 2 rides I had; the airtime was kicking, the ride was blisteringly fast-paced, and it just made me laugh and smile so much! Somewhat similarly to Hagrid’s, Wicker Man just takes the raw fun factor to a whole new level for me! 10/10

Ice Breaker - SeaWorld Orlando: I had pretty low expectations for Ice Breaker, as its reviews are generally middling to negative, but I have to say that it massively exceeded expectations for me; it was a phenomenal little ride that I absolutely loved! I should say that the much-maligned “comfort collars” have been removed, so I experienced the ride without them, but I found it to be fantastic, with a fun and punchy swing launch, a backwards spike with some brilliant floater airtime, some surprisingly excellent pops of ejector airtime in places, some fun twists and turns, and a smooth and fun ride experience throughout! The trains are a little tight to get into and out of, but I found the restraints unobtrusive when I was sat down enjoying the ride, so I didn’t find them to be an issue overall. All in all, I thought Ice Breaker was a fantastic ride that hugely exceeded my expectations; it may not have quite been my favourite coaster I rode in Florida, but I dare say that coaster-wise, it was possibly the sleeper hit of my 2023 trip in terms of how much it exceeded my expectations! I expected very little, but I ended up absolutely loving the ride, personally! 10/10

The unfortunate casualty of the most recent addition to my top 10 has been Icon, which has now dropped out. I do love Icon to bits, and it’s still just about a 10/10 tier ride for me (it’s now the lowest ranking ride in this tier), but it’s the ride that’s tended to bear the brunt of the collateral damage of new additions to my top 10 in recent years. I do love the airtime, the fun factor and the way it all flows and meshes together wonderfully and encapsulates a lot of different elements, but one thing that’s become more evident as I’ve ridden more coasters is that it lacks any particular standout “wow” elements compared to things I rank more highly. For a ride to really stand out for me these days, it has to either take the fun factor to an entirely new level (e.g. Hagrid’s, Wicker Man) or it needs a couple of real standout elements, and compared to other rides in the 10/10 tier, I don’t think Icon delivers on either of those things quite as well, so I have found it sliding down the rankings in recent years. There could be a bit of recency bias at play here, as it’s easily the 10/10 tier ride I last rode the longest ago (my last ride was in 2019), but those are my current thoughts.

For those interested, my wider top 30 is currently as follows (I’ve also done a bit of rejigging here…):

Mako - SeaWorld Orlando (10/10)

Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Universal’s Islands of Adventure (10/10)

Silver Star - Europa Park (10/10)

Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa (10/10)

Hyperia - Thorpe Park (10/10)

Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park (10/10)

Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Universal’s Islands of Adventure (10/10)

SheiKra - Busch Gardens Tampa (10/10)

Wicker Man - Alton Towers (10/10)

Ice Breaker - SeaWorld Orlando (10/10)

Icon - Blackpool Pleasure Beach (10/10)

Oblivion - Alton Towers (9/10)

Stealth - Thorpe Park (9/10)

Montu - Busch Gardens Tampa (9/10)

Nemesis Reborn - Alton Towers (9/10)

Nemesis Inferno - Thorpe Park (9/10)

Revenge of the Mummy - Universal Studios Florida (9/10)

Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts - Universal Studios Florida (9/10)

Blue Fire - Europa Park (9/10)

Mine Blower - Fun Spot Kissimmee (9/10)

The Swarm - Thorpe Park (8/10)

Kumba - Busch Gardens Tampa (8/10)

Kraken - SeaWorld Orlando (8/10)

Megafobia - Oakwood Theme Park (8/10)

Rock’n’Rollercoaster - Disney’s Hollywood Studios (8/10)

Cheetah Hunt - Busch Gardens Tampa (8/10)

Sik - Flamingo Land (8/10)

Thirteen - Alton Towers (8/10)

Rita - Alton Towers (8/10)

Eurosat CanCan Coaster - Europa Park (7/10)

Following my recent (well, nearly a month ago…) trip to PortAventura World in Spain to close out the year, I can now update my top 10 and top 30 yet again, with a rather big new entry at the very top being the icing on the cake…

My current top 10, with a coaster count of 134, is now as follows (new in italics):

Shambhala - PortAventura Park: It’s finally happened… after 8 years, a new top dog is in town! I had very high expectations for Shambhala, and it did not disappoint; it’s an absolutely sublime coaster! As with Mako, the sustained airtime is glorious; the first drop is wonderful, and every single hill had brilliant sustained air! But there were a few little things that pushed it the distance above Mako for me. Unlike Mako, Shambhala keeps the thrills going right to the end, with every hill delivering, and as a result, I think it flows a bit better. The enhanced height and speed also really added to the ride compared to Mako and Silver Star for me, and another aspect I loved on Shambhala was the speed hill, which seemed much more notable in my mind than the similar element on Mako. Overall, though, Shambhala was just wonderful, and I loved every single one of the 7 rides I had on it while in Spain. Mako had a good 8 years at the top, but Shambhala is a very deserving successor!
Mako - SeaWorld Orlando: It may not be top dog anymore, but Mako has held a special place in my heart ever since I first rode it back in 2016, and my 2023 revisit to SeaWorld (where I had 5 rides on it) reinforced my love for it! The sustained airtime is absolutely biblical (particularly in moments like the first drop, first airtime hill and speed hill), the sense of speed is wonderful, it's blissfully smooth, and overall, it's just such a fun, thrilling and rerideable coaster that I could (and indeed tried my darnedest to) sit on all day! I truly love this ride, and on my 2023 revisit to SeaWorld, it didn't disappoint! 10/10
Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Universal’s Islands of Adventure: It may not quite be #1, but my goodness was it close, and VelociCoaster would certainly be a worthy contender for the top spot! There is so much that this ride does well; it packs a great sense of speed throughout, with the second section in particular feeling ridiculously fast, there are quite a few sublime moments of ejector airtime that really whip you out of the seat, there are some truly brilliant inversions, and overall, it's just a truly stunning, spectacular coaster, in my view! In terms of some specific highlights; it's hard to pick from the wonderful array of sensations on offer. But if I had to choose a few, the second launch is absolutely obscene, packing a euphoric thrill like few other rides I've ever experienced, the top hat is sublime, packing some breathtaking ejector airtime on the back in particular, and the mosasaurus roll is an absolutely mind-blowing inversion that throws you out of the seat with some sublime sustained negative g-forces and ensures that you fly into the final brakes blown away! Overall, VelociCoaster is a truly stunning coaster, in my opinion; its blend of stunning airtime, impactful elements, fun, comfort and rerideability certainly make it a firm favourite of mine! 10/10
Silver Star - Europa Park: I had quite low expectations for this coaster given that it's not overly well liked, but I have to say that I was blown away; I absolutely adored this coaster! It has wonderful sustained airtime, it's smooth and comfortable, it has an awesome sense of speed, the ending is absolutely brilliant, packing some phenomenal ejector airtime (particularly the MCBR exit), and overall, this is a stunning coaster that I absolutely loved! I did rank this below Mako of the two B&M Hypers I've ridden due to my feeling that its airtime, while stunning, never has quite the same impact as some of Mako's strongest moments, in my view, and while smooth in its own right, it isn't quite as blissfully smooth as Mako. I also felt it to be slightly less consistent, as I did have 1 or 2 slightly weaker rides on it during my trip to Europa. Nonetheless, Silver Star is a stunning coaster with phenomenal sustained airtime, and I love how it is incredibly rerideable and keeps the thrills going right to the end with that awesome post-MCBR section! 10/10
Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa: This ride is phenomenal! In terms of some key strengths, it’s absolutely relentless in pacing and has some of the strongest ejector airtime I’ve ever experienced, and some of the big hitters in the layout like the first drop, outerbanked turn, death roll and wave turn are truly sensational elements that are right up there with the best, in my opinion! The first drop in particular is insane; whipping you far out of the seat with ejector airtime for a surprisingly sustained period of time never gets old! There are also some absolutely top-drawer moments of ejector airtime elsewhere in the layout, and the ride is smooth and rerideable! In terms of why I moved it up when I haven’t reridden it, this is because in retrospect, I think I was overly harsh on Iron Gwazi at the time, fixating on its very tiniest imperfections to try and quantify the slight disappointment of it not quite living up to my wildly high expectations on the very first go. This is going to sound odd, but Iron Gwazi is a coaster where the more I sit back and think about it, the more I actually love it. Thinking back, it grew on me considerably the second and third times I did it once the weight of expectation was off its shoulders, and it is genuinely a top tier ride that is more than deserving of a top 5 placement for me! 10/10
Hyperia - Thorpe Park: What a sublime ride! I was excited for Hyperia, and it did not disappoint! I love a good hyper, and Hyperia is a phenomenal one! For starters, the ride is primarily designed around weightlessness, and it delivers this excellently; you seem to spend half of the ride pinned out of the seat in some capacity! The first three big elements on the ride are an obscenely perfect sequence. The first drop is absolutely unhinged and so, so good, delivering excellent sustained ejector, the non-inverting Immelmann is sublime and offers both brilliant speed rushing up into it and top-drawer sustained ejector coming out of it, and that outerbanked turn into the inversion is wild and pins you right of your seat with top-tier sustained sideways ejector! The zero-g stall is not quite up there with the other elements, but it is still excellent, with sustained hangtime, and the final two elements after the trim were surprisingly excellent, with both the outerbanked turn and the final airtime hill delivering! Overall, then, Hyperia is an absolutely sublime coaster, in my view, and it definitely lived up to the hype for me. It’s so good to have a coaster this brilliant 2 hours from home, that I can most probably ride at least once annually! 10/10
Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park: Wodan strikes the perfect balance between pure demented insanity and amazing fun factor and rerideability, in my view! It’s an absolutely relentless coaster, with phenomenal pacing right to the end, and it has quite a few really surprising pops of ejector airtime, including an excellent first drop, but it’s also a really smooth and comfortable wooden coaster, and it just manages to be a ridiculous amount of fun! Overall, Wodan is such a fast, airtime-filled and fun coaster that I absolutely loved on my visit to Europa Park! 10/10
Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Universal’s Islands of Adventure: Dismiss this as a “family” coaster all you want, but I think such quick dismissal would be a huge mistake, because this ride is phenomenal, in my view! Of the rides in my top 10, I’ll admit that this one probably has the least tangible reason to be there. However, the key reason why Hagrid’s ranks so highly for me is that purely and simply, it is a phenomenally, impeccably fun roller coaster! In terms of some specifics, the low-to-the-ground turns were a lot more thrilling than I expected and the launches were surprisingly punchy and great fun, but unlike many coasters, my love of Hagrid’s is for a much broader reason than any specific features of the ride layout. It is just so, so fun, and the ride will always leave you laughing hysterically and smiling on the final brake run, and that for me is really important. Riding Hagrid’s taught me a crucial lesson about my taste in coasters; it taught me that a coaster does not necessarily need greatness in the form of tangible elements for me to love it, and that fundamentally, all a coaster needs to be is fun. Hagrid’s is not the most intense ride by any means, but if you want pure fun, I’d struggle to recommend many better coasters than this one! 10/10
SheiKra - Busch Gardens Tampa: I had remembered liking this ride back in 2016, but my reride in 2023 was even better than I’d previously remembered! I love a B&M Dive Coaster, and this was a fantastic one! The sustained airtime over both drops was absolutely phenomenal, and the sheer size of them produced a brilliant sensation of speed throughout the ride! You typically think of Dive Coasters for their initial vertical drop, but interestingly, I actually thought that the second vertical drop on SheiKra delivered just as much as the first if not more! Overall, SheiKra was phenomenal, and a really pleasant surprise; I often said that I preferred Oblivion, but I’d now say that I comfortably prefer SheiKra, as I do feel that the added height and length really add something to it! 10/10
Wicker Man - Alton Towers: Wicker Man is a fantastic GCI coaster that I absolutely love! It may not look like much on paper, but I find it to be an enormously fun and rerideable coaster that never fails to put a huge smile on my face! I find it to be a really fast-paced coaster with some really fun twists and turns and some surprising pops of airtime, with some particular favourite elements of mine being the initial s-bend drop, where you gain brilliant speed incredibly quickly, and the big drop out of the high u-turn and following airtime hill, with both elements providing some excellent airtime that really whips you out of the seat! Overall, I find Wicker Man a hugely fun and rerideable wooden coaster with awesome airtime, twists and pacing, and I think it’s a ride that is definitely far more than the sum of its parts, personally! I decided to bump it up a few spots after my most recent visit in 2024, where it was running so well on the 2 rides I had; the airtime was kicking, the ride was blisteringly fast-paced, and it just made me laugh and smile so much! Somewhat similarly to Hagrid’s, Wicker Man just takes the raw fun factor to a whole new level for me! 10/10

Shambhala was the only ride at PortAventura to make my top 10. I had an outside hope that Red Force might make it in there based on some of the more positive comments I’d heard about it, but alas, it was “only” top 20 material for me! Perhaps controversially, I actually ended up marginally preferring Stealth…

In terms of the top 30 following PortAventura, this now looks as follows (new in bold):

Shambhala - PortAventura Park (10/10)
Mako - SeaWorld Orlando (10/10)
Jurassic World VelociCoaster - Universal’s Islands of Adventure (10/10)
Silver Star - Europa Park (10/10)
Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa (10/10)
Hyperia - Thorpe Park (10/10)
Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park (10/10)
Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure - Universal’s Islands of Adventure (10/10)
SheiKra - Busch Gardens Tampa (10/10)
Wicker Man - Alton Towers (10/10)
Ice Breaker - SeaWorld Orlando (10/10)
Icon - Blackpool Pleasure Beach (10/10)
Oblivion - Alton Towers (9/10)
Stealth - Thorpe Park (9/10)
Red Force - Ferrari Land (9/10)
Montu - Busch Gardens Tampa (9/10)
Nemesis Reborn - Alton Towers (9/10)
Nemesis Inferno - Thorpe Park (9/10)
Revenge of the Mummy - Universal Studios Florida (9/10)
Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts - Universal Studios Florida (9/10)
Blue Fire - Europa Park (9/10)
Mine Blower - Fun Spot Kissimmee (9/10)
The Swarm - Thorpe Park (8/10)
Kumba - Busch Gardens Tampa (8/10)
Kraken - SeaWorld Orlando (8/10)
Megafobia - Oakwood Theme Park (8/10)
Rock’n’Rollercoaster - Disney’s Hollywood Studios (8/10)
Cheetah Hunt - Busch Gardens Tampa (8/10)
Sik - Flamingo Land (8/10)
Uncharted: El Enigma de Penitence - PortAventura Park (8/10)

Another surprise contender since my last update that only narrowly missed out, sitting in the #32 spot, was Gold Rush at Drayton Manor! That was an unexpectedly excellent family coaster!

It has been an excellent year for me, on the whole. It’s been my most cred-tastic year ever, with 23 new credits ridden this year in total (the first time I’ve ever gone over 20 new credits in a year!), and I’ve also had 2 new top 10 additions in Shambhala and Hyperia (not quite as good as last year, where I had 4 new top 10 additions and a resurgent previously ridden coaster that re-entered my top 10 after a particularly strong performance on my revisit, but still pretty good, in my view!). For those interested, I would rank all 23 new coasters I rode this year as follows:

Shambhala - PortAventura Park (10/10, #1/134)
Hyperia - Thorpe Park (10/10, #6/134)
Red Force - Ferrari Land (9/10, #15/134)
Uncharted: El Enigma de Penitence - PortAventura Park (8/10, #30/134)
Gold Rush - Drayton Manor (8/10, #32/134)
Roller Coaster - Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach (7/10, #39/134)
Dragon Khan - PortAventura Park (6/10, #50/134)
Minifigure Speedway (Legends) - Legoland Windsor (5/10, #65/134)
Minifigure Speedway (Allstars) - Legoland Windsor (5/10, #66/134)
El Diablo: Tren de la Mina - PortAventura Park (5/10, #67/134)
Tomahawk - PortAventura Park (5/10, #68/134)
Furius Baco - PortAventura Park (4/10, #87/134)
Stampida (Red) - PortAventura Park (4/10, #88/134)
Stampida (Blue) - PortAventura Park (4/10, #89/134)
Spook Express - Joyland Children’s Fun Park (4/10, #95/134)
Tami Tami - PortAventura Park (4/10, #96/134)
Egg-Spress - Pleasurewood Hills (4/10, #101/134)
Cannonball Express - Pleasurewood Hills (3/10, #108/134)
Wipeout - Pleasurewood Hills (3/10,#112/134)
Whirlwind - Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach (3/10, #114/134)
Big Apple - Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach (3/10, #118/134)
Family Star - Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach (2/10, #127/134)
Tyrolean Tubtwist - Joyland Children’s Fun Park (1/10, #134/134)

I’m not sensing that next year will be quite as fruitful due to me having to do an MSc dissertation over the summer, but me and my parents are still pondering another new foreign park visit next year, so who knows!

JamesB · Oct 5, 2024

As I don't have anymore park trips planned for this year, here's my updated top 20:

1. Ride to Happiness, Plopsaland
2. Helix, Liseberg
3. Zadra, Energylandia
4. Batman Gotham City Escape, Parque Warner
5. Taron, Phantasialand
6. Taiga, Linnanmaki
7. Dive Coaster, Chimelong Paradise
8. Lech Coaster, Legendia
9. Kondaa, Walibi Belgium
10. Hyperia, Thorpe Park

11. Stealth, Thorpe Park
12. Swarm, Thorpe Park
13. Tornado, Sarkanniemi
14. F.L.Y., Phantasialand
15. Hyperion, Energylandia
16. Wildfire, Kolmarden
17. Icon, Blackpool Pleasure Beach
18. Black Mamba, Phantasialand
19. Fianna Force, Emerald Park
20. Baron 1989, Efteling

Cred count now stands at 205 - not sure why Captain Coaster has it wrong in my signature

The_bullgod · Oct 5, 2024

After last weeks trip to Belgium, this will be my updated list:

1. Wildfire - Kolmarden
2. Ride to Happiness - Plopsaland de Panne
3. Zadra - Engerylandia
4. Helix - Liseberg
5. Lech Coaster - Legendia
6. Shambhala - PortAventura
7. Nemesis - Alton Towers
8. Hyperion - Energylandia
9. Batman Gotham City Escape - Parque Warner Madrid
10. Katun - Mirabilandia

11. Montu – Busch Gardens Tampa
12. Tatsu - Six Flags Magic Mountain
13. Troy – Toverland
14. Kondaa - Walibi Belgium
15. Rutschebanen - Tivoli Gardens
16. Deja Vu - SFMM / Stuntfall - PWM
17. Sheikra - Busch Gardens Tampa
18. Wild Mouse - Blackpool Pleasure Beach
19. Gesengte Sau - Wiener Prater
20. Manta - Seaworld Orlando

ScottLann · Oct 6, 2024

My final Top 10-15 List for this year :

1. Zadra
2. Taron
3. Iron Gwazi
4. Velocicoaster
5. Hyperion
6. F.L.Y
7. Balder
8. Helix
9. Mako
10. Hyperia

11. Untamed
12. Shambhala
13. Abyssus
14. Incredible Hulk
15. Red Force

I'm confident on where I've placed my Top 5 but after that it does get harder to firmly decide where coasters rank on my list as the majority of them below that have moved around so much over this past year with certain re-rides.

I can't wait to see what new coasters 2025 brings!

soleil · Oct 7, 2024

After two trips this year, Parc Asterix (again) and Cedar Point (first time) - my favourite coasters are now in a basic list based on enjoyment - basically those I loved straight away and would happily ride right now.

1. Space Mountain (v1) @ Disneyland Paris , Vekoma
2. Thunderhead @ Dollywood, GCI
3. ˄Toutatis @ Parc Asterix, Intamin
4. *Volcano Blast Coaster @ Kings Dominion, Intamin
5. Swarm @ Thorpe Park, B&M
6. Silver Star @ Europa Park, B&M
6. Oziris @ Parc Asterix, B&M
8. Piraten @ Djurs Sommerland, Intamin
9. Megafobia (v1) @ Oakwood, CCI
10. Cheetah Hunt @ Busch Gardens Tampa, Intamin
*(If I can only include existing/operating coasters, then next would be Montu @ BGT)

Honourable mentions for 11-20 in no particular order…
Kraken @ Sea World Orlando, B&M
Montu @ Busch Gardens Tampa, B&M
Millennium Force @ Cedar Point, Intamin
Furius Baco @ Port Aventura, Intamin
Shambhala @ Port Aventura, B&M
Wodan @ Europa Park, GCI
Intimidator 305 @ Kings Dominion, Intamin
Thunder Dolphin @ Tokyo Dome City, Intamin
Tonnerre de Zeus (original) @ Parc Asterix, CCI
Juvelen @ Djurs Sommerland, Intamin

I hold a soft spot for my number one, still my favourite. I grin from ear to ear before, during and after this. The original musical score, theming inside and out - a bit rough and jerky, but I love it.
Thunderhead - the best woodie I have ridden. Brilliant. Fast-paced, wild and shows what can be packed in. Rode this one again, again, again and again.
Toutatis - straight in here at 3. Superb. Fast, twisty, full of airtime and out of seat moments; rode this three times - row 4, 8 and the back. All great, especially the rear.
Volcano, am I a sucker for launched coasters? With this you got two good ones. Great fun and I was able to re-ride with little/no queue.
Swarm - great first twist drop and I get off wanting more - always a good sign.
Silver Star and Oziris positions are interchangeable. Loved Silver Star’s airtime, drops and (surprisingly) mid-brake section which was enough not to kill the speed over the following drop down which added to the fun. Oziris - the dive loop is amazing, great theming and smooth to ride.
Piraten - awesome what can be done without massive height. Plenty of airtime, FUN
Megafobia - great pacing, airtime. One time I could ride again and again without having to get off.
Cheetah Hunt - a great idea, good launches and a fun ride from start to finish - even if the brake at the end was/is very sharp.

I have to mention:
Lightning Rod @ Dollywood - down both days I was there some years ago
Steel Vengeance @ Cedar Point - rode once, early, before it went down
Maverick @ Cedar Point, went down for the day before I got to ride
I anticipated these may have influenced my favourite 10...

coaster count - 130 park count - 31

Rob Coasters · Oct 15, 2024

Believe the hype.

#1 Taron - Phantasialand
#2 Voltron Nevera - Europa Park
#3 Ride to Happiness - Plopsaland De Panne
#4 Toutatis - Parc Astérix
#5 Untamed - Walibi Holland
#6 Storm - The Dragon Legend - Tusenfryd
#7 Helix - Liseberg
#8 FLY - Phantasialand
#9 Expedition GeForce - Holiday Park
#10 Piraten - Djurs Sommerland
#11 Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park
#12 Rutschebanen - Tivoli Gardens
#13 Hyperia - Thorpe Park
#14 Balder - Liseberg
#15 Karacho - Erlebnispark Tripsdrill
#16 Juvelen - Djurs Sommerland
#17 Joris (Water) - Efteling
#18 Joris (Vuur) - Efteling
#19 Silver Star - Europa Park
#20 Kondaa - Walibi Belgium
#21 Cú Chulainn - Emerald Park
#22 Megafobia - Oakwood Theme Park
#23 Smiler - Alton Towers
#24 Black Mamba - Phantasialand
#25 Nemesis Reborn - Alton Towers

Goliath is out of the top 25.

James F · Oct 15, 2024

My list for this year. New entries in Bold.

1: Hyperion - Energylandia
2: Helix - Liseberg
3: Taiga - Linnanmäki
4: Zadra - Energylandia
5: Untamed - Walibi Holland
6: Toutatis - Parc Astérix
7: Schwur Des Kärnan - Hansa Park
8: Kondaa - Walibi Belgium
9: Wildfire - Kolmården
10: Shambhala - Port Aventura Park
11: Taron - Phantasialand
12: Ride to Happiness - Plopsaland DePanne
13: Hyperia - Thorpe Park
14: Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park
15: Sheikra - Busch Gardens Tampa
16: F.L.Y - Phantasialand
17: Silver Star - Europa Park
18: Icon - Blackpool Pleasure Beach
19: Kraken - Sea World Orlando
20: Abyssus - Energylandia
21: Stealth - Thorpe Park
22: Golaith - Walibi Holland
23: Rock N Roller Coaster - Disney's Hollywood Studios
24: Balder - Liseberg
25: Cú Chulainn - Emerald Park

Rush · Oct 15, 2024

Done for the year, quite a few additions to my Top 25:

1. Eejanaika - Fuji-Q Highland
2. Schwur Des Kärnan - Hansa Park
3. Kondaa - Walibi Belgium
4. ArieForce One - Fun Spot America Atlanta
5. Taron - Phantasialand
6. Zadra - Energylandia
7. Shambhala - PortAventura
8. Lightning Rod - Dollywood
9. Hakugei - Nagashima Spa Land
10. Helix - Liseberg
11. Untamed - Walibi Holland
12. Goliath - Six Flags over Georgia
13. Batman Gotham City Escape - Parque Warner Madrid
14. Wodan - Europa Park
15. Voltron - Europa Park
16. Hyperia - Thorpe Park
17. Expedition GeForce - Holiday Park
18. Balder - Liseberg
19. Goliath - Six Flags Great America
20. Lech Coaster - Legendia
21. Ride to Happiness - Plopsaland de Panne
22. Kumba - Busch Gardens Tampa Bay
23. Troy - Toverland
24. Alpengeist - Busch Gardens Williamsburg
25. Thunderhead - Dollywood

My Top 8 is pretty much set-in stone, but the next nine or ten positions are all pretty interchangeable depending on vibes. Eejanaika was really something special, I really can't see anything topping it for me anytime soon.

Howie · Oct 16, 2024

Oh my Goddddd, this is so hard now. How some of you can somehow rank all of your ridden coasters with pinpoint accuracy is beyond me.
For the longest time I've been a big advocate of the Top 10% method - whatever your cred count is, you just take the assumption that at any given time, the coasters in the top 10% of it can more or less be considered to be your favourites. I mean sure, you can single out a handful of your absolute bangers, but generally speaking, when you get old and miserable and can't be arsed anymore like me you just plonk your coasters into 3 or 4 main categories:

Category 1. "Holy crap, that might be the best coaster I've ever ridden!" (Number 1).

Category 2. "Holy crap, that's one of the best coasters I've ever ridden (Top 10ish).

Category 3. "That was really good, let's go again" (Top 10%)

Category 4. Literally everything else. From wacky worms to towering gigas, if it doesn't make one of the above 3 categories, it goes in here. End of.

But I'm on 531 now. That means to form a Top 10% I'd have to pick out 53 of my favourite coasters and put them into some sort of order. Sod that. Can't be arsed.
However, I do like to have an input into the annual CF poll so today, partly because I'm rained off from work and bored, I'm gonna approach it from a different angle. Without looking at my signature or checking to see what I've written in previous posts, I'm just gonna make up a Top 10 on the spot, based entirely on which of those 531 coasters I wish I could be riding right now. No spreadsheets, no elaborate scoring techniques, just gut feeling, where I wish I was today. Here goes.

1. Steel Vengeance. The biggest, the baddest and still the best. There was a time when SteVe was so far out in front of everything else that I thought it could never be topped. I don't know whether it's recency bias or if other rides are genuinely catching up, but I do question how long it's supremacy will last. For me, it's still on top... but the gap is closing.

2. The one and only The Ride to Happiness. No other coaster makes me feel warm and fuzzy like this one does. The vibe, the station soundtrack, the onboard audio, sexy robot lady, the spinning, the airtime... oh my god, the airtime, it's just... euphoric. No other word for it.

I'm confident about those first two - the absolute King and Queen of rollercoasters, but now it gets tricky. I've got at least 5 rides in my head that could quite easily take the number 3 spot but I think I'm gonna go with....

3. Wildcat's Revenge. This ride totally kicked my ass. I only had 2 rides on it, but I'm absolutely desperate to get back there and ride it some more. So, soooo good.

4. Shambhala. I keep flip-flopping between this and Fury 325 for world's greatest B&M. They're similar, and yet so different, it's really hard to pick one over the other. Today though, if I could instantaneously teleport to one of them right now, I think it would be Shammy, but only because the weather will probably be better.

5. Fury 325. I mean yeah.. it's just an awesome, powerhouse of a coaster innit.

6. Helix. Gosh, seems quite weird seeing my beloved Helix, a former number 1 coaster of mine, being pushed all the way down to 6th place, but here we are. I still love it as much as I always have, it's just that the rides above it really are that good.

7. ArieForce One. Again, it might be in 7th place today, but ask me another day and it could just as easily be in 3rd place, we're still in ultra elite territory here, an astoundingly good rollercoaster. Loved it.

8. Kingda Ka. Don't care, I'm placing it. Thou shalt not bow to peer pressure, groupthink or public ridicule. It's my list and I'll place it where I want. I like tall rollercoasters, I like fast rollercoasters and right now, it's not physically possible to go taller or faster on any rollercoaster, anywhere in the world. Yes, it's a gimmick, a one trick pony, a big green penis, call it what you like, it's still a ridiculous blast of pure adrenaline like nothing else on Earth. Objectively speaking, Top Thrill Dragster was, of course, a better ride, but it didn't scare me the way Kingda Ka did, and that's why it's in my list. And that launch... man, best in the world, easily.
KK didn't just push my goon button, it smashed it with a giant, green, comedy mallet. Take that, puny human!

9. X2. Much like KK, this is one of those absurd, over the top, one-of-a-kind and ridiculously terrifying coasters that just stands out in the memory as being particularly outrageous, even 14 years after riding the thing. Objectively speaking there are loads of 'better' coasters out there, but as an 'experience' this is still one of the most mind-blowing rides I've ever been on.

10. Only one space left? Blimey, this is tough. I've got loads more coasters in my mind that I'd genuinely class as Top 10 'worthy' but again, right now, today, I could really get on board with a few laps on Iron Gwazi. Yeah, that'd be proper cheer me up, that would. It's a beast!

Thassit then, my Top 10, as of today. Might change my mind tomorrow but I think that looks about right for now.
In a very approximate order, here are 15 more of my favourites, making up a Top 25, which is just about as far as I can be arsed to go.

Mako
Kondaa
Untamed
Nemesis
El Toro
Hagrid's Word Salad
Wildfire
Behemoth
Taron
Tatsu
VelociCoaster
Phoenix
Twisted Timbers
Top Thrill Dragster
The Voyage

JoshC. · Oct 28, 2024

So it's very unlikely I'll be riding anything that will trouble my Top 10% for the rest of this year, so let's throw that in now. Having hit 400 creds, this is my Top 40...

Rank	Coaster	Park
1	Toutatis	Parc Asterix
2	Taron	Phantasialand
3	Taiga	Linnanmäki
4	Untamed	Walibi Holland
5	Skyrush	Hersheypark
6	Helix	Liseberg
7	Oz'Iris	Parc Asterix
8	Balder	Liseberg
9	Lost Gravity	Walibi Holland
10	Der Schwur des Kärnan	Hansa Park
11	Phoenix	Knoebels
12	Hyperia	Thorpe Park
13	Jersey Devil Coaster	Six Flags Great Adventure
14	Joris en de Draak*	Efteling
15	Colossos - Kampf der Giganten	Heide Park
16	Goliath	Walibi Holland
17	Manta	SeaWorld Abu Dhabi
18	Kingda Ka	Six Flags Great Adventure
19	Candymonium	Hersheypark
20	Nemesis	Alton Towers
21	El Toro (SFGAd)	Six Flags Great Adventure
22	Troy	Toverland
23	Black Mamba	Phantasialand
24	Mahuka	Walibi Rhône-Alpes
25	Fønix	Fårup Sommerland
26	Flying Aces	Ferrari World Abu Dhabi
27	Hyperion	Energylandia
28	Lisebergbanan	Liseberg
29	Van Helsing's Factory	Movie Park Germany
30	Pulsar	Walibi Belgium
31	Juvelen	Djurs Sommerland
32	Batman Gotham City Escape	Parque Warner Madrid
33	Voltron	Europa Park
34	Silver Star	Europa Park
35	Shambhala	PortAventura Park
36	Nitro (SFGAd)	Six Flags Great Adventure
37	Nemesis Inferno	Thorpe Park
38	Storm - The Dragon Legend	TusenFryd
39	Colorado Adventure	Phantasialand
40	The Storm Coaster	Dubai Hills Mall

*Whilst I count duelling coasters separately in my count, I tend to rank them as 1 entry

New entries in bold, with Nemesis (Reborn) in italics to show it's shifted down.

So that's 9 new-to-me coasters in this Top 10%, but 0 in the illustrious Top 10.

General Commentary
Hyperia ranks as the highest new-to-me coaster. I wouldn't be surprised if some people roll their eyes at that, especially me being such a Thorpe-focused goon, but nah, it is that good, and easily re-rideable.

I've now ridden 4 B&M Hypers, and they're all in the Top 10%, with 3 clumped together, and Candymonium a fair few places higher. I finally am able to "get" B&M Hypers now, and they are solid, easy win rides. Why is Candymonium comparatively, noticeably, higher? Simply put, the airtime is a bit more ejector-y and aggressive. The other 3 it is very close. I wouldn't be surprised to see other B&M Hypers around that clump too.

Batman GCE and Voltron are a bit on the low-end, perhaps a bit lower than I expected prior to riding. BGCE I can't fully put my finger on why; possibly just having to queue ages in a slow moving queue didn't help. But it has some incredible airtime and the stall is magnificent. But I don't know, given the choice, I would rather ride every ride above it. I'll expand on Voltron more in my Europa TR, but in short it is a very aggressive, and perhaps a bit too aggressive at times for me.

Manta in Abu Dhabi isn't talked about much, presumably because it hasn't been ridden by that many on here, but it is gorgeous to ride and hopefully more people will come to experience that soon.

There's a few rides up here which I haven't ridden in quite a while, which I reckon could shift around. The Swedish creds, especially Lisbergbanan, I rode when I had a significantly lower cred count, and I was still learning exactly what I wanted in a coaster. Lost Gravity feels very high, but the rides I had on it 5 years ago were absolutely fab, so it deserves it place. I intend to ride that Swedish trio and Lost Gravity next year, anyways, so we'll see if there's any shifting about!

With this update, Lech drops out of my Top 10%, after flirting around the bottom for ages.

Some rides which don't make my Top 10% which may cause some surprise:
-Ride to Happiness (ranked #60). I get why people rate this so highly, but eh, it doesn't do it enough for me
-blue fire (ranked #43). It's a smooth, crisp ride, but it's a conservative layout of its time. Not a bad thing, but doesn't quite slide into the Top 40
-Wodan (ranked #57). Great first drop, and a solid all round ride, but solid isn't enough to be a Top 10%-er

Quick Goon Stats

Manufacturer	Count
Intamin	16
B&M	8
Mack	5
GCI	2
Gerstlauer	3
RMC	2
Vekoma	2
PTC	1
Schwarzkopf	1

Country	Count
Germany	8
USA	7
Netherlands	6
France	3
Sweden	3
UAE	3
UK	3
Denmark	2
Spain	2
Belgium	1
Finland	1
Norway	1
Poland	1

I'll do more goony analysis later, but we all know that I love table

Sticky_T_Wicky · Oct 28, 2024

Sticky_T_Wicky said:
1. Iron Gwazi, Busch Gardens Tampa - I had high expectations for this but I was still blown away. Its first drop, pacing, whip and of course that excellent RMC airtime were perfect. While not near the length of SteVe, its ride time still felt adequate.
2. Steel Vengeance, Cedar Point - Still a nearly perfect ride with seemingly unending length and airtime. I could see this dueling with Iron Gwazi with whatever I rode more recently being #1.
3. VelociCoaster, Islands of Adventure - For a coaster being 3rd out of 174, it is weird to say that I was slightly disappointed by it. That stated, what an incredible overall experience and that 2nd half is likely my favorite half of a coaster and the mosasaurus roll is the craziest inversion I've experienced.
4. Fury 325, Carowinds
5. ArieForce One, Fun Spot Atlanta
6. Voyage, Holiday World
7. Outlaw Run, Silver Dollar City
8. Maverick, Cedar Point
9. Montu, Busch Gardens Tampa - A positive G powerhouse and still glass smooth after nearly 30 years.
10. Mako, SeaWorld Orlando - Airtime for days. I also found Mako's airtime to be stronger than most B&M hyper's sans Goliath at SFOG but this didn't have that obnoxious rattle. Back row, left edge is sublime.

Total Credits: 174

This is difficult. 270 credits.

1. Iron Gwazi - This is more like 1a and #2 is more like 1b and could easily be flipped.

2. Steel Vengeance - See Above

3. Wildcat's Revenge - I feel confident that this is my #3 but from here on out it gets trickier and much less fixed. Also, RMC is basically my personality now.

4. Intimidator 305 - Into the giga's and right now, I slightly prefer this over the next entry.

5. Fury 325 - This is right there with I305.

6. VelociCoaster - Arguably the best ~2,500 feet of track on a coaster starting with its 2nd launch.

7. ArieForce One - This coasters sequencing is nearly perfect. Big and more sustained out of your seat elements at the start that transition to quick and violent pops towards the end.

8. Maverick - A Swiss Army Knife of a coaster that does everything. Airtime, snappy transitions, positive G's.

9. Skyrush - The strength of this things airtime blew me away.

10. - Twisted Timbers - A buffet of ejector airtime.

5 RMC's, 4 Intamin's and 1 B&M.

Others that could easily be in the top 10.
El Toro, Montu, Outlaw Run, Pantheon, Twisted Colossus, Iron Rattler, Mako, Goliath (Over Georgia), The Voyage

Rob Coasters · Nov 2, 2024

#1 Taron - Phantasialand
#2 Voltron Nevera - Europa Park
#3 Ride to Happiness - Plopsaland De Panne
#4 Toutatis - Parc Astérix
#5 Untamed - Walibi Holland
#6 Storm - The Dragon Legend - Tusenfryd
#7 Helix - Liseberg
#8 FLY - Phantasialand
#9 Expedition GeForce - Holiday Park
#10 Piraten - Djurs Sommerland
#11 Wodan Timbur Coaster - Europa Park
#12 Rutschebanen - Tivoli Gardens
#13 Hyperia - Thorpe Park
#14 Balder - Liseberg
#15 Karacho - Erlebnispark Tripsdrill
#16 Juvelen - Djurs Sommerland
#17 Joris (Water) - Efteling
#18 Joris (Vuur) - Efteling
#19 Silver Star - Europa Park
#20 Wild Train - Fantasiana
#21 Kondaa - Walibi Belgium
#22 Cú Chulainn - Emerald Park
#23 Megafobia - Oakwood Theme Park
#24 Smiler - Alton Towers
#25 Black Mamba - Phantasialand

Nemesis Reborn is out of the top 25.

Matt N · Nov 2, 2024

I’ve heard a lot about Wild Train lately, but is it really that good?

I’d never heard much about it before and I assumed it was only a small PAX kiddie coaster, so I’m quite curious about it after hearing a fair amount of hype recently…

Rob Coasters · Nov 2, 2024

Matt N said:
I’ve heard a lot about Wild Train lately, but is it really that good?

I’d never heard much about it before and I assumed it was only a small PAX kiddie coaster, so I’m quite curious about it after hearing a fair amount of hype recently…

Extremely intense ejector airtime and some absolutely wild (no pun intended) transitions that really get you flying around and out of your seat. Trust me - that airtime and those uneven janky f**ked f**ked f**ked transitions are truly something else. As the lap bar pushes down against the middle of your stomach, a ride with a more restrictive lap bar position can venture more into "uncomfortable" territory and can potentially ruin a ride, but if it's slightly further up, that becomes a non-issue and you can freely enjoy the perilous airtime as much as you'd like. Front is by far the best row for the highlights of the ride, and is the only row I went in.

Not to be underestimated. Those airtime moments and unsmootheed lateral moments are utterly stupid. Wild Train will be sorely missed, but its death will be worthwhile as the replacement looks to be ridiculously good.

Top 10(ish): 2024 Edition - page 124

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