I've seen this pop up in discussions from time to time, but it has never really been on-topic to discuss it, so I figured to make a separate thread this time instead of derailing another thread.
The thread in question was the "Next RMC model?" thread, wherein some people have suggested that an Invert could be a nice addition to RMC's product catalogue. And that makes sense, at a glance. Lots of coaster manufacturers offer Inverts. They're a sort of staple concept of coaster design. B&M were the first to build one, but Vekoma had great success with the SLC, Intamin offers an underappreciated model, Vekoma has tried to atone for the SLC with the new STC, and now Gerstlauer appears to enter the market too. But ... well, none of them appear to sell very well. It seems like the market for thrilling Inverted coasters - outside China, at least - has collapsed completely. Is that just my impression, or is there some truth to it?
Consider B&M as a case, for instance. They've sold five Inverted coasters in the past 15 years. In 1999 alone, they sold four. Vekoma built 7 SLCs in 1997, but only 5 since 2010 - and two of those were relocations. However, Golden Horse and BSA in China seems to be doing well, to the point that we should probably exclude China from the statistics and focus on trends elsewhere.
I decided to head to RCDB to look at Inverted coasters in the "Extreme" category over the past couple decades. There's no easy way to ask RCDB for coasters not in China, but we can get a world total and a list of Chinese inverts separately, then subtract the latter from the former:
So, yeah, the thrill coaster market has all but collapsed outside China. The observant among you may notice that this happened around 2008 and connect it to the great financial crisis. For whatever reason, Inverts were generally considered the bee's knees until then, and the bee's ... I don't know, toenails? ... after that. This is actually the exhaustive list of extreme Inverts manufactured for parks outside China since 2009:
The coasters are still offered by the various manufacturers. You can go right to their websites and find brochures. It's not like parks in those places have stopped building thrill coasters either. But they don't seem to choose to build Inverted thrill coasters anymore. Why is that?
I'm not sure if I can point to a definite answer, but there are some theories (all with gaping holes in them):
1. The market is saturated. The idea is that every park that could want an Invert already has one. However, most of us could probably name some candidates if given a minute or two to think. Dollywood, for instance. PortAventura. Most of the SeaWorld and Universal parks. Europa Park. Nagashima Spaland. Kings Dominion. And those are just the biggest parks around. Parks were so eager to put Inverts in their lineups a couple decades ago, so why did the remaining parks suddenly stop doing that?
2. Competition from other coaster types. After all, B&M in particular has bolstered their catalogue with Flying, Dive, and Wing coasters over the past decade-and-a-half-and-then-some. Perhaps they are pushing those models on customers, rather than Inverts? I mean, a winged train looks a bit more fancy than an inverted train, after all. Vekoma, likewise, could have been more willing to get their new sit-down coasters to market rather than clunky old SLC and Invertigo designs. The problem with this theory is that the size and scope of B&M's more modern coaster types is much bigger than that of smaller Inverts. It's not like a park considering to buy a Batman clone would suddenly order a Manta or Griffon clone instead, as those coasters are quite a bit larger and more expensive. Likewise, Vekoma SLCs are vastly smaller and presumably cheaper than their launch coasters. I doubt there is that much direct competition between the coaster types - certainly not to the point of the near-total elimination we are observing.
3. Inverts are out of fashion. Again a theory that seems tempting until you consider it for a bit. Would fashion really dictate a park's coaster preferences that much? Worldwide? Surely guests would hardly be involved enough to consider a coaster type "unpopular" and unworthy of attention, and surely there must be some parks out there who would order the coaster type regardless of the trends in the market.
4. Something external. This category might as well say "anything else". Have the industry standards changed, to make Inverts more expensive than they used to be? Are they more expensive to build than before for other reasons? Is there a safety record thing? Availability of parts? Evacuation procedures? And why aren't Wing coasters affected by any of this?
5. Competition from other manufacturers. I'm listing this after the "other" category because I'm pretty sure this is not the answer. Granted, it might apply on a small scale in China. B&M hasn't sold a single thrill Invert in that country despite an evidently thriving scene, and it's ten years since Vekoma sold an SLC or GIB there too. But as mentioned above, the only Golden Horse Invert to make it out of China went to Uzbekistan, and nobody is competing for Inverts in Europe or the US at this point.
I just ... don't understand this. Anybody else willing to put forward an explanation for why the entire Western theme park industry suddenly has stopped building thrilling inverted coasters?
The thread in question was the "Next RMC model?" thread, wherein some people have suggested that an Invert could be a nice addition to RMC's product catalogue. And that makes sense, at a glance. Lots of coaster manufacturers offer Inverts. They're a sort of staple concept of coaster design. B&M were the first to build one, but Vekoma had great success with the SLC, Intamin offers an underappreciated model, Vekoma has tried to atone for the SLC with the new STC, and now Gerstlauer appears to enter the market too. But ... well, none of them appear to sell very well. It seems like the market for thrilling Inverted coasters - outside China, at least - has collapsed completely. Is that just my impression, or is there some truth to it?
Consider B&M as a case, for instance. They've sold five Inverted coasters in the past 15 years. In 1999 alone, they sold four. Vekoma built 7 SLCs in 1997, but only 5 since 2010 - and two of those were relocations. However, Golden Horse and BSA in China seems to be doing well, to the point that we should probably exclude China from the statistics and focus on trends elsewhere.
I decided to head to RCDB to look at Inverted coasters in the "Extreme" category over the past couple decades. There's no easy way to ask RCDB for coasters not in China, but we can get a world total and a list of Chinese inverts separately, then subtract the latter from the former:
| Year | New Extreme inverted coasters - world | New Extreme inverted coasters - China | New Extreme inverted coasters - outside China | Notes |
| 1992 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Batman The Ride, the first Batman clone. Oh, and the first Inverted coaster. |
| 1993 | 2 | 0 | 2 | |
| 1994 | 5 | 0 | 5 | |
| 1995 | 11 | 0 | 11 | Four of these go to Japan ... where no Extreme inverts have been built since 1998. |
| 1996 | 2 | 0 | 2 | |
| 1997 | 13 | 0 | 13 | The year of Alpengeist, last full-circuit Invert to take the height record. |
| 1998 | 8 | 0 | 8 | Volcano at Kings Dominion is built, still the fastest full-circuit Invert to this day. |
| 1999 | 14 | 0 | 14 | |
| 2000 | 3 | 0 | 3 | |
| 2001 | 10 | 0 | 10 | |
| 2002 | 7 | 1 | 6 | Snow Mountain Flying Dragon, China's first Invert of this scale. |
| 2003 | 5 | 1 | 4 | |
| 2004 | 4 | 0 | 4 | Lightning at Kuwait Entertainment City is the last Batman clone manufactured so far. |
| 2005 | 5 | 1 | 4 | |
| 2006 | 5 | 2 | 3 | |
| 2007 | 7 | 2 | 5 | |
| 2008 | 9 | 1 | 8 | |
| 2009 | 4 | 3 | 1 | First year China built more inverts than the rest of the world. Or rather, the first year the rest of the world didn't build any Inverts - the one in question is Sky Mountain, which has been in storage in Brazil since it was relocated from SFOG in 2009, and never opened. |
| 2010 | 6 | 6 | 0 | |
| 2011 | 7 | 7 | 0 | |
| 2012 | 8 | 4 | 4 | Three of the four "rest-of-the-world" Inverts were relocations. The last is OzIris. |
| 2013 | 5 | 5 | 0 | |
| 2014 | 11 | 9 | 2 | Year of Banshee, the last of the huge B&M Inverts (and the most recently opened one before Monster). Longest Invert to date. The other one is the GIB in Sochi, Russia. |
| 2015 | 11 | 9 | 2 | The two outside China are Mayan (Energylandia) and Diabolik (Movieland Park, relocated from SFA). |
| 2016 | 2 | 2 | 0 | |
| 2017 | 6 | 5 | 1 | Queen Cobra at Sun World Danang Wonders (Vietnam) is the most recent SLC to be manufactured. |
| 2018 | 4 | 4 | 0 | |
| 2019 | 7 | 5 | 2 | The two are Euro-Star, relocated to Krasnodar in Russia, and a Golden Horse SLC in Uzbekistan. |
| 2020 | 6 | 5 | 1 | The one in question is Hals-über-Kopf, the first Extreme invert in Europe since Mayan five years earlier. |
| 2021 | 7 | 5 | 2 | The one that isn't Monster at Gröna Lund is the aforementioned GIB lying in storage at Mirabilandia in Brazil. China takes the speed and height record for Inverts from Wicked Twister, with Legendary Twin Dragon at Chongqing Sunac Land. |
| 2022 | 1 | 0 | 1 | The relocated SLC from Ratanga Junction in SA, headed for Lost Island in the US. |
So, yeah, the thrill coaster market has all but collapsed outside China. The observant among you may notice that this happened around 2008 and connect it to the great financial crisis. For whatever reason, Inverts were generally considered the bee's knees until then, and the bee's ... I don't know, toenails? ... after that. This is actually the exhaustive list of extreme Inverts manufactured for parks outside China since 2009:
- OzIris - Parc Asterix, France (B&M, 2012)
- Banshee - King's Island, US (B&M, 2014)
- Quantum Leap - Sochi Park, Russia (Vekoma, 2014)
- Roller Coaster Mayan - Energylandia, Poland (Vekoma, 2015)
- Queen Cobra - Sun World Danang Wonders, Vietnam (Vekoma, 2017)
- Unknown - Afsona Land, Uzbekistan (Golden Horse, 2019)
- Hals-über-Kopf, Erlebnispark Tripsdrill, Germany (Vekoma, 2020)
- Monster, Gröna Lund, Sweden (B&M, 2021)
The coasters are still offered by the various manufacturers. You can go right to their websites and find brochures. It's not like parks in those places have stopped building thrill coasters either. But they don't seem to choose to build Inverted thrill coasters anymore. Why is that?
I'm not sure if I can point to a definite answer, but there are some theories (all with gaping holes in them):
1. The market is saturated. The idea is that every park that could want an Invert already has one. However, most of us could probably name some candidates if given a minute or two to think. Dollywood, for instance. PortAventura. Most of the SeaWorld and Universal parks. Europa Park. Nagashima Spaland. Kings Dominion. And those are just the biggest parks around. Parks were so eager to put Inverts in their lineups a couple decades ago, so why did the remaining parks suddenly stop doing that?
2. Competition from other coaster types. After all, B&M in particular has bolstered their catalogue with Flying, Dive, and Wing coasters over the past decade-and-a-half-and-then-some. Perhaps they are pushing those models on customers, rather than Inverts? I mean, a winged train looks a bit more fancy than an inverted train, after all. Vekoma, likewise, could have been more willing to get their new sit-down coasters to market rather than clunky old SLC and Invertigo designs. The problem with this theory is that the size and scope of B&M's more modern coaster types is much bigger than that of smaller Inverts. It's not like a park considering to buy a Batman clone would suddenly order a Manta or Griffon clone instead, as those coasters are quite a bit larger and more expensive. Likewise, Vekoma SLCs are vastly smaller and presumably cheaper than their launch coasters. I doubt there is that much direct competition between the coaster types - certainly not to the point of the near-total elimination we are observing.
3. Inverts are out of fashion. Again a theory that seems tempting until you consider it for a bit. Would fashion really dictate a park's coaster preferences that much? Worldwide? Surely guests would hardly be involved enough to consider a coaster type "unpopular" and unworthy of attention, and surely there must be some parks out there who would order the coaster type regardless of the trends in the market.
4. Something external. This category might as well say "anything else". Have the industry standards changed, to make Inverts more expensive than they used to be? Are they more expensive to build than before for other reasons? Is there a safety record thing? Availability of parts? Evacuation procedures? And why aren't Wing coasters affected by any of this?
5. Competition from other manufacturers. I'm listing this after the "other" category because I'm pretty sure this is not the answer. Granted, it might apply on a small scale in China. B&M hasn't sold a single thrill Invert in that country despite an evidently thriving scene, and it's ten years since Vekoma sold an SLC or GIB there too. But as mentioned above, the only Golden Horse Invert to make it out of China went to Uzbekistan, and nobody is competing for Inverts in Europe or the US at this point.
I just ... don't understand this. Anybody else willing to put forward an explanation for why the entire Western theme park industry suddenly has stopped building thrilling inverted coasters?
