50 years of coasters – 2005

This year has produced an unusual list of coasters for me, one that bucks the trend from a lot of what we’ve seen recently in the series. Most notable is the absence of B&M – they had a relatively quiet year with only two coasters built, neither of which I’ve managed to ride yet. Rivals Intamin seemingly had a good time however, shifting seven unique units over the same time frame, though these mostly seem to fit a certain style that I’m not the biggest fan of. The result is a top 5 that looks rather different from what we’ve come to expect over the past few years.

A primarily visual spectacle that showed off Mack’s new turntable trick for their water coaster for the first time. What you see is what you get and there’s not really much to it, particularly with those large, lumbering boats, but it’s a definite upgrade over the standard shoot the chute water rides that came before it. Plus, being able to ‘count’ it is always a bonus for someone like myself.

Mountain, or Alpine Coasters, are a generally unsung side of the coasting world, mainly due to their highly contentious status as ‘coasters’ as well as perhaps their largely European domination and the fact that they rarely tend to feature alongside or within anything we’d consider a traditional coaster or theme park. The rollercoaster database currently lists 376 of the things, 349 of which are still operating, so they have the potential to make up a pretty sizeable chunk of the hobby if you’re that way inclined. Ever since 1996 they’d seen some pretty exponential growth and another 12 were built in 2005. Of those twelve, I’ve only experienced one, but it was a beast. They generally lead to a very long, sometimes exhausting ride time full of mild peril and this particular layout was almost succumbing to nature again by the time we reached it last year, with foliage scraping my lever-operating hands on several occasions.

A string of Intamin launch coasters begins with one of my locals, Rita (formerly the self-professed Queen of Speed). There’s a plaque up somewhere that declares it ‘best ride of 2005’ which has become a source of entertainment over multiple visits now by bringing up the discussion of how true that actually is. This list should put that to rights at least, Rita fires riders at just over 60Mph into a alternating series of turns and twisted hills that simply don’t deliver as much as I would personally like them to.

The relatively miniature Kanonen was a solid staple of Liseberg for a good number of years, with a punchy little launch, top hat and an interesting mix of elements. The rest of the lineup seemed to outgrow it however and the park made the wise decision to retire the ride after just 11 seasons in favour of continual growth and improvement. The hardware itself lives on and is destined to open in Iowa next year where I’m sure it will gain some new fans and appreciation.

Kanonen couldn’t really seem more miniature when up against this thing, opening less than a month later. To this day, Kingda Ka remains the tallest coaster in the world and was, unsurprisingly, the fastest for a number of years as well. It stole both records from the almost identically designed predecessor, Top Thrill Dragster, gaining a sprawling ‘airtime’ hill but also awkward shoulder restraints which, when there’s very little else to compare, make it a bit of a downgrade to be honest. The ride is stupidly huge and impressive, but I’m not all that fussed about it really – height and speed on their own just aren’t my thing.

Crazy, airtime filled Pax machines are much more my style and the now closed Formule 1 was certainly one of those. This particular model was a highly unusual wild mouse type affair with an unnervingly steep lift hill and set of drops. Sadly it had a bit of a troubled career that eventually ended in tragedy, but it managed to provide some great entertainment during our visits to the park.

Pax were clearly on a roll this year, or perhaps its just the coincidental fact that I’ve managed to catch up with more than one of them from 2005. For the next in the line of their ‘Wild Train’ designs, the off track shaping and overly sharp hill transitions pack an incredible punch for what was likely intended to be a bit of a family coaster and the resultant insanity has the potential to scare even the hardiest of thrill seekers.

The most accomplished and well rounded of the Intamin Accelerators this year for me, Superman has an extended tyre driven dark ride section before reaching the launch track. The layout draws on a very similar design to Rita from earlier in the year, but also includes a large top hat which is surprisingly powerful for one of these and takes those same remaining elements with a bit more pace than I had come to expect.

The grand opening of Hong Kong Disneyland this year brought another Space Mountain to the world. I just love the simple but effective layout here, which cranks up the disorientation levels of a ride in total darkness to the absolute max. Endless hairpin turns and downhill slopes just build and build the momentum, with each corner leaving you guessing as to which way you’re going to be thrown next. If anything, it was a welcome shelter from the relentless rain that day, hence the lack of a good photo.

Disney are back on top after 13 years, proving that they can still sometimes go toe to toe with the coaster world (although they also made a major misstep in that department this year) and not just the dark rides. This was also the year that Disneyland in California opened their own completely overhauled version of Space Mountain with completely new track and trains inside the original building of the 1977 version. Everything was just running perfectly when I came to ride this one, it gave that same Hong Kong experience cranked up to the max from every perspective – audial, visual and physical – all things a certain record breaker in this list is lacking. Throw in some soundtrack and magical ambience and you’re left with a killer attraction.

The obvious missing rides for me here are the B&Ms alluded to in the introduction.
Sheikra was the first time their Dive Machine went big in America. I’ve already experienced the slightly less well presented Chinese clone of the layout and would already likely crack the top three here.
Hydra the Revenge is a more unknown quantity for me, their next Floorless coaster that doesn’t always seem to receive the best of attention.
Given the success of the indoor (space themed) coasters this year, Galaxy Express 999, the Intamin that bucked the trend for the year by using tyre launch rather than their hydraulic system, looked fascinating. Sadly it’s no longer with us.
Skycar is the elusive Intamin I’m missing from the set and have actively tried not to learn much about for the sake of spoilers.
A ride I’m easily the most excited about and that has the potential to blow everything else here out of the water would be Hades 360, the debut build of my current favourite coaster manufacturer the Gravity Group. It’s worth noting that back in 2005 it was rather different from the experience it has since become, however.
Probably the best place to end it.

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50 years of coasters – 2004

There’s a bit of a mild mannered start to this year’s list as we continue to ride the downturn that seems to be following that millennium boom. The sheer numbers of new coasters opening across the world are back up again, but it generally looks like a quieter year for big spend on the big name manufacturers with Swiss stars Intamin only having two rides to their name (one of which is a stock model clone) compared to an impressive seven the previous year. Will they make it count?

I remember, somewhat tongue in cheek, declaring this the best coaster in Belgium back in 2016, so it’s alarming to think that this custom Vekoma Junior had a potential twelve years at the top of the game. Of course they had some bigger and badder stuff around, just nothing that really jumped out as worthy of recognition for me. Luckily the country has had a massive coaster revolution that’s looking to take the world by storm and I now find myself constantly thinking ‘I’ve got to get to Belgium as soon as possible.’

A consecutive annual appearance for French manufacturer Soquet, this fun little mine train gives a solid and characterful ride experience. Since my last visit the coaster has received an elaborate decorative overhaul and looks barely recognisable. New love for an old attraction is something that’s always great to see.

It’s starting to look like white/cream was the ‘in’ colour in 2004. After five years slowly gathering momentum in Europe, this was the year that Gerstlauer went global, breaking into both America and Asia with several different types of family coaster model that showed off their already diverse offerings. Aqua Wind was the next of the Bobsled model and brought some welcome thrills to this recently established Japanese theme park/water park hybrid.

This unsuspecting Senyo Kogyo coaster is cropping up everywhere on here, both from being one of my major milestones and a backwards blast. It ticks all the various boxes to stand out amongst a crowd of filler for me, with that custom layout, jet coaster aesthetic and circumstantial hilarity of an intense thunderstorm that all give it an edge over the competition.

The saga of S&S wooden coasters concludes just one year after it started. Only one of these made it outside the US and it’s the only one I’ve tried so far. It’s surprisingly good for the size, with decent tracking and agood range of forces. Not a game changer by any means and perhaps a reason they failed to stand out in this market, but I admire the attempt.

GCI were continuing to build that momentum however, with what were becoming their signature fast paced, twisted layouts. If anything there was too much emphasis put on that with a ride like Thunderhead, which laid claim to some form of world record for number of crossing points and turns. The end result is the basic aggression of wooden tracking is the overbearing sensation, with little else in the way of notable forces. This was also their first model to make use of the station flythrough element though, a moment I’ve come to love over the years.

A recent visit reminded me that I had left it far too long before becoming reacquainted with my local Maurer spinner. As far as I’m concerned it’s the best of the bunch for having that unique sprawling layout that just whips up a storm in a very natural manner, with none of those wild mouse turns that try and sometimes fail to get a rotation going. It sets Dragon’s Fury apart from your standard off the shelf spinning coasters by a significant distance.

It wouldn’t be a top 3 these days without at least one B&M. This glorious looking invert is on the lower end of the spectrum amongst its kind, perhaps one of the first to show a softer approach to the model with that gentle build of momentum in the first drop. With 6 inversions it’s obviously no slouch, but I’m not sure it’s as effective as it could have been. The interaction with the surroundings is top notch though.

Squeezing one of their Floorless models into central Copenhagen must have been an interesting challenge to say the least, but once again B&M pulled off an effective demonstration of just how good their rides are, as standard. I love the unnatural layout of Dæmonen and the front row experience is not something to be missed on this one, again, given the location and surroundings.

Yes. Intamin did make it count. In a welcome deviation from raw speed and height on their hydraulic launch coaster, Storm Runner performs a number of fabulous manoeuvres that make it by far the most accomplished version of the model for me. It still has that breathtakingly short ride time, but every moment is packed with something fresh and fun, from powerful airtime to crushing positives, floaty inversions to snappy transitions. Love it.

What are we missing here?
Obviously the other two S&S woodies intrigue me, though one of the 2004 builds, Avalanche, is no longer in action. Hell Cat has just recently been rescued from extinction and shot way up my priority list for the next planned US trip for this very reason.
I keep managing to miss out on Heiße Fahrt whenever I’m in the area, no doubt a worthy rival to the other Gerstlauer that made this list.
Both US editions of Revenge of the Mummy opened this year and though I’d love to see how they hold up against the Singapore version that’s so close to my heart, I’m also apprehensive and have so far actively avoided an encounter with one of them.
I never knew Iran had their own coaster manufacturer, but that’s just the kind of reason I love to trawl through these lists. Obviously something else I need in my life.
Morgan’s Mexican Superman swan song could be another good shout. Some form of conflict between Six Flags and the government dragged this one’s opening out far beyond the time that the company was bought out by the equally elusive (for me at least) Chance Rides.
I already mentioned the sad demise of Twister in the Maurer Spinner rankings but again, just look at that setting.
And in the absence of anything else major to mention (things are looking pretty good for Storm Runner right now), here’s something give you nightmares. It’s now on my list.

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50 years of coasters – 2003

I would go straight to the honourable mentions again but… there don’t appear to be any. 2003 seems to be a down year for output after that Millennium boom and there’s simply nothing I can see that I have both ridden and isn’t in the list below that deserves any particular nod. Are we feeling the loss of the likes of Arrow, Togo and CCI already? Who will step into their shoes, or at least the shadow of the Swiss?

Well Japan have still got Sansei Yusoki on their side, just a tiny bit. Not the most prolific of manufacturers, we last saw them feature 12 years ago and they’ve only built about 20 coasters in total over a span of 50 years! I’ve just noticed that 2003 isn’t even confirmed here as the official opening date, but we’ll roll with the entry for now as it would only otherwise end up being something the same as the one below.
What makes this coaster entertaining, aside from the name, is the more modern steampunk rebrand with screens and effects in a show section which enhance a fairly unremarkable (yet unnecessarily shoulder restrainted) indoor ride. Not that that would have helped in ~2003, though I tend to give bonus points to any old ride in a building anyway.

Apparently this Gerstlauer Bobsled is custom, though it looks and feels awfully familiar. This was one of two of the model to open this year, with popularity seeming to start to pick up since the 1998 debut of the company and ride type. Although the counterpart has some impressive interaction with other coasters, Drachenritt is nicely decorated with this castle theme, watery setting and bonus helix inside a snake. Can’t go wrong with that.

Elsewhere in Europe, French manufacturer Soquet were fleshing out a couple of local establishments like this zoo park that received their next, biggest, though that’s not saying much, coaster in 2003. I like Azteka more than I perhaps should, there’s just something about it that amuses me, from the unusual (and slightly disturbing) train decoration to the way it rides, with an endearing clunkiness that only certain small companies can get right.

A massive looping Intamin in a mall in Malaysia seems a bit out of place, particularly when you visit these days and find that over half of the floors and premises in said mall are completely deserted and unoccupied. Someone obviously had some cash to splash back in 2003 and this fascinating piece of hardware was the result. It doesn’t quite have the elegance of the multi inversion layouts that were being built over the last couple of years (an elegance those have also since lost), particularly with the older, extra clunky trains on this one, but I find myself endlessly admiring the way it integrates into the surroundings.

B&M followed up their first year of flying coasters with two more copies of their second design, identically named and themed, in true Six Flags fashion. This layout made a name for itself with the ridiculously intense pretzel loop element, a polarising inversion that has riders diving head first towards the ground before pulling out at high speeds onto their back and up into the air again. It remains one of the most hard hitting parts of any coaster, still to this day. The rest? Still needs work.

Magic Mountain also received a mirrored clone of another ride in the chain, the first ever B&M floorless Medusa at Six Flags Great Adventure to be precise. As both Superman and Batman were already accounted for elsewhere in the park, Scream! got to start out with it’s own identity as an attraction, rather than being assigned a superhero name tag, although it’s probably more commonly known as ‘the car park coaster’ instead now.

This densely situated amusement park next to the Tokyo Dome has been thrilling riders with crazy coaster concepts since 1968 and Thunder Dolphin was the spiritual successor to a humble Togo jet coaster that used to run the park perimeter. Intamin kicked it up a gear of course, reaching 262ft into the sky, amongst the skyscrapers, and attempted to weave in some of that hyper coaster magic they’d been spreading over the last few years. The layout comes off a little strange with the obvious limitations and it doesn’t quite live up to that magic, but it’s a ton of fun and a spectacular visual experience nonetheless.

The old faithful inverts are still generally outperforming the other B&M ride types (for now) and the UK’s second installation took a bold chance by opting to share the name of a British legend. In the eyes of most fans of the original, the association didn’t pay off. It has none of the storytelling grandeur or gamechanging aesthetic of OG Nemesis, but it’s a damn good rollercoaster regardless and one that seems to only ever get better with age.

Intamin had the monopoly on Asian capital city projects this year it seems. We’ve seen Seoul’s Lotte World before in this series of course and once again it’s thanks to the Swiss manufacturer with that special ability to cram something spectacular into an impossible place. Situated in and around the rockwork beneath the park’s signature ‘inspired’ castle centrepiece, the world’s only Aquatrax (a fact that’s often lamented) features a powerful launch, an unusual mid course lift hill and a collection of fantastic moments in comfy, open seating. It’s supposed to also feature water jets that hit the track, hence the name, though unfortunately I’ve never seen them in action.

Not the first time Liseberg have topped the list for a year and, spoilers, it certainly won’t be the last. Intamin’s second pre-fab woodie is much more compact than the original and yet, with brutal efficiency, it manages to pack in far more of that signature ejector airtime. It’s a very by the numbers design (other than that extremely wild first drop) of corner, hill, corner, hill that effectively showcases what the manufacturer was doing better than anyone else at this particular time in history and why they’re really starting to place so highly here.

As with the lack of honourable mentions I’m not finding a huge amount that’s potentially missing from this list either, so it’s a good thing we’ve had such solid examples already or I’d be starting to get worried for the future I already know the outcome to.
The obvious headline for the year was Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point, the first ever 400ft monster, undoubtely an exhilarating experience, particularly with those lap bars, though it feels like I know exactly what to expect having done most of Intamin’s other accelerators of the same ilk.
Perhaps seeing an opening in the market, S&S tried their hand at their first wooden coaster with Timberhawk: Ride of Prey.
In other, slow, wooden news, Nicco Park in India decided that they wanted to replicate the Cyclone from England’s Southport Pleasureland by working with the original’s owners at the time, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, as consultants, and following in the footsteps of another Indian Park, Esselworld, who had pulled off this process 8 years prior.
It’s distressing going through these lists and finding old Pax relics I probably can’t ride any more. The silly looking Looping is the only known powered coaster with an inversion and, as we’ve come to expect from the Russian manufacturer, comes across as entirely mad, in the best way. There is hope for me though, this one’s still on the travelling circuit somewhere, waiting for me.

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50 years of coasters – 2002

I’m currently contemplating foregoing the usual introductions from here on out in favour of a few honourable/dishonourable mentions that didn’t make the cut for me. This year, for example, finds a triple threat from Vekoma who were, in this era in particular, struggling to match the quality of certain other major manufacturers.
After 8 years of terrorising guests with the standard suspended looping coaster, two brand new layouts were thrown into the mix. Odyssey at Fantasy Island became and still is the tallest in the world of this particular model and I can’t really say that this does it any favours.
Snow Mountain Flying Dragon was just a little taller yet slightly shorter in length than the standard model and is surprisingly inoffensive in comparison, but inoffensive isn’t enough to make the list any more now that things have hotted up significantly.
Disney’s own take on the launched indoor spaghetti bowl of a coaster first seen from Premier in 1996 had spawned the world famous Rock’n’Rollercoaster from Vekoma, in Florida, back in 1999. The Paris park got in on the (moteurs) action in 2002 and, some 13 years later when I finally found the courage to ride it, the on-board speakers were broken and it just hasn’t stood the test of time. Hopefully the revamp that’s currently taking place will breathe some new life into it.

Speaking of rides that haven’t stood the test of time, we begin with this old classic, my local ten-looping sensation that I can’t really find the motivation to ride any more. I used to have a real fondness for it, we have a lot of history together, it’s just slowly deteriorated both in presentation and ride quality, while at the same time I’ve become infinitely fussier.

Intamin were going all out this year alongside breaking that inversion record. This was the start of something big for them, the birth of the hydraulic launch coaster that would eventually see them take the reins on many more world records. The story goes that this propulsion method was born out of a local lack of juice to fuel those LSM launches that had been steadily taking over the industry (ridiculous S&S air launches aside) and the alternative engineering solution is quite something to behold in both speed and power.

Move aside Vekoma, B&M want to have a crack at that flying coaster concept. For passenger loading alone, they had it sorted – none of that tilting back onto your head nonsense, well, until halfway through the layout at least. The layout was competent, swoopy and fun but as the years went by we started to see that this prototype played things a little safe. They’ve come a long way with this model (and subsequently Vekoma decided not to touch it again for a good 20 years).

Both Swiss manufacturers were keeping themselves busy on both sides of the pond. This floorless B&M was the smallest of its type to date and goes through the standard formula of inversions for these, minus the cobra roll, giving it somewhat of a different pacing. Solid fun, if a little predictable, the world was now crying out for this concept to step things up a gear as well.

The first time Maurer have cracked the list since their 1996 debut and they did it in style with this one. With tricks and insanity like the world have never seen before, these two indoor coasters (Fear and Force) took the spinner to another level and put the German manufacturer at the top of the game for this style of ride for a good many years to come.

Riding on the back of pure insanity, the legendary X (no ‘2’ at the time of opening of course) should have walked this year and probably would if anyone else was making this list. I came at it from the unusual angle of having ridden both of S&S’s follow up models of the ridiculous 4D coaster and this really highlighted how relatively pedestrian the Arrow prototype was. It’s a mindblowing experience by default, with that face first drop of doom and the bouncy rotations that will grind your calves down to the bone, but this one doesn’t even scare me any more. The other two do.

Big year for Batman, he’s landed himself multiple entries. We’ve been seeing this infamous cloned layout of the B&M invert for a few years already now, but this one happens to be my favourite of the bunch, it had that extra little spark that rode just that much better (to the point that it was almost too much). If anything it’s testament to how good this ride type is by default that it can just keep on delivering the goods.

Just next door we’ve got his rival Superman. Parque Warner Madrid must have really splashed out for their park’s opening year with this double trouble of B&Ms. Unlike the earlier Batman, this one is far from little. It has all the classics, the 7 inversions that make the staple. It has a couple of other moments that help it stand out from the crowd though, namely an extra little punch in the first drop, an unexpected airtime hill and a trim brake with some genius comedic timing.

The ride that taught me what airtime was for the very first time has faded into obscurity over the years. It was a top ten for sure, when I could barely scrape ten together, but that formulaic sequence of hills has worn down over time both in delivery and by proxy. Considering how Expedition GeForce was ruling the world one year prior, I’d say Goliath was actually a step down for the design, even though it’s still an impressive ride and, like the B&M invert, is testament to how good any Intamin ‘airtime machine’ is by default.

I really need to get back and ride this thing again. It keeps winning out in lists and I keep doubting myself on that because I already know it’s inherently flawed. Unless we were sat near or at the back, this just wasn’t that impressive a ride, though that can equally be said for the previous two entries. 2002 is an extremely solid year for sure, although there’s no real gamechanging outliers this time around and, just like within Europa Park, being above average is enough to scrape top spot. Something about that combination of the usual B&M hyper stuff that doesn’t really get me going, along with some actual surprise ejection sprinkled in for good measure just makes for a happy rider and Silver Star always get those bonus points for the theme song (a song which is no longer played, maybe I shouldn’t go back).

Elsewhere in the world, an almost-Colossus opened in Guatemala with 8 inversions instead of 10. The original trains look astonishingly hideous, but the rest of it seems rather nice.
Along with the other Spanish entries we saw, Coaster Express opened up with the park, a woodie with a not so good reputation that we didn’t get the chance to try as it wasn’t up and running. It can’t be that bad, surely?
Pax are back again with this striking looking creation, I just love their creativity and wish it was still with us.
Of course the original Tilt Coaster has to make the cut, I really need to get around to doing Taiwan one day if only for this marvellous contraption, you’d think I would have by now.
What were CCI up to this year? Sadly 2002 was when it all ended for them, and their Swan Song was the New Mexico Rattler, a ride I hadn’t actually even heard of until today. Hope they went out with a bang (and not a rattle).
The Roller Soaker concept always fascinated me, even though it didn’t last very long and would never threaten anything else in the list. The modern equivalent was a blast at least.
Sahara Twist looks suspiciously like our 1995 winner. The ride type is the same but it’s much shorter in track length. The fact that there’s a massive Comet strapped to the front of the train and it looks hilariously out of place in a field in Taiwan. I’d be fascinated to find out how much the setting impacts the performance of the model.
Hmm… I don’t see many real threats there, looks like it’s all hinging on that Europa revisit.

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50 years of coasters – 2001

There’s an interesting lull in the number of pages of entries on the Roller Coaster DataBase for 2001. The quantities had been building and building up to that big millennium spend we saw in the previous year, but it won’t hit that peak again for a good while yet, almost as if some parks just wanted to get it out of their system. Importantly though, the quality hasn’t dipped, consolidation and improvement could well be the focuses of the day, yet there’s still plenty of innovation going on too.

As things stand today, Japan’s most recent wooden coaster was built more than 20 years ago. Interestingly as a nation they only ever used manufacturer Intamin when it came to constructing coasters of this material and this became Intamin’s last traditional build before they transitioned to their critically acclaimed pre-fab style of woodie.
The result here was a humble affair, a reasonably small family coaster with unremarkable forces and a reasonably generic layout but that’s not to say it doesn’t fit the park perfectly. In the context of this list, it’s an example of how fast times were changing.

I anticipated more out of the theming from this rare Morgan mine train and instead got much more out of the layout than expected. The tame first half lulls you into a false sense of security before hitting the second obscured lift hill that leads to another section of layout that runs with a surprisingly enjoyable vigour throughout the terrain. I also like the rustic look of this one, you wouldn’t necessarily think it was from 2001.

Vekoma’s second attempt at their Flying Dutchman model appeared to have worked out most of the unfortunate kinks of the prototype and having suffered through the original on the very same trip, I was surprised by how much more enjoyable Batwing was. It allowed for an appreciation of the anticipation brought about by ascending the lift hill on your back, facing away from what’s to come. It allowed for appreciation of the swift changes in elevation and spectacular sensation of actual flight. It allowed for appreciation of the intense inversions without causing physical harm. In a way it’s sad that the design ended here, I’d like to have seen them battle it out with B&M on this concept over the next decade at least.

Previously known as California Screamin’ (loved that name), this is the signature coaster that opened with the second gate of the Disney California resort and has remained one of the focal points of the park ever since. I do admire the boardwalk aesthetic, the highly unusual layout and the sheer scale of the project – at over 6,000ft it’s still among the top ten longest operating coasters today. All that track makes the pacing of the ride a very mixed bag, but it’s a lot of fun regardless.

On the subject of aesthetic, the station of Intamin’s next (and surprisingly most recent) full circuit suspended coaster, with it’s organic looking integration into the rockwork, is yet another one to be admired. The highlight of the attraction for me is the heartline roll through this very station, which looks spectacular from both an on- and off-ride perspective, but it also has some other good moments of interaction throughout the surroundings and delivered a significant step up in overall experience over the previous one of these.

This coaster is famed for having the fastest acceleration of any on the planet and the record still stands to this day. Sadly I never experienced OG Dodonpa with it’s notorious airtime spike, in 2017 it was replaced with ‘one of the’ tallest loops in the world and, perhaps unbelievably, the launch system was juiced up even further. As I’d already been built up on S&S air launches (and record breaking loops) prior to riding this one I think I’d have preferred to have tried the hill as there’s really nothing else like it in the world any more. It’s an insane contraption that put some real fear into me before boarding, but now I just see it as a big softy.

In the very same year that Elf ended an era, Colossos burst onto the scene showcasing what Intamin could really do with a wooden coaster. Taller, steeper and with more airtime than ever before, this was already something to rival the steel hypers (and giga) they had been putting out over the last couple of years. Lessons had to be learnt along the way though, I happened to ride this one in its final year before being closed for a highly extensive overhaul and though I could see the potential, it was drowned out by Colossos just not behaving as it should have in the comfort department. Parks need to take good care of these beasts.

It looks like a strange year, knowing what we know now, when the Vekoma woodie beats out the Intamin. This may not have been true of the match up at the time as obviously I didn’t ride either of these last two close to how they initially started out. In the case of Thundercoaster, the trains were upgraded to Timberliners from the Gravity Group over the original rolling stock which, to be honest, were the main issue I had with the only other two wooden coasters ever made by this manufacturer – I didn’t get on with their lap bars. A good deal of credit goes to the layout design as well though as, comfort aside, it’s a far more ambitious, exciting and terrain based sequence that I ended up loving far more than I could ever have anticipated.

Nitro is one of those coasters you’d just grow up knowing if you played RCT2 at all (it had one of those little scenery signs from the Six Flags set that were always far too specific to use in almost any situation). I finally caught up with it many years later and it didn’t disappoint, for what it was. I’m yet to be fully sold on B&M hyper coasters as contenders for the best of the best in the world (he says, after one of them took the win in a previous year) but Nitro was certainly one of the more impressive versions I’ve come across so far, with some solid variety in the forces it delivers.

A gamechanger for sure, Intamin had been trying out these giant hyper coasters for a couple of years now and finally found the potential of this specific ride type to provide clinical airtime like the world had never seen before. The height was dialled back a little, but in order to compensate every single hill delivers in an overwhelming fashion. There’s a reason this ride was considered the best ever for so long and I have a massive amount of respect for it. It deserves all the marathons it can get.

Having less pages to sift through is great when it comes to writing this part, though it technically means there’s less for me to get excited about visiting one day. I’m sure we can come up with something.
Cornball Express leads CCI into yet another charge, these things just keep on coming. News from Indiana Beach was a bit of a rollercoaster in itself last year, but I’m glad they’ve got back on track with some new ownership.
Insane Speed is of course on the hit list. The words ‘custom’, ‘B&M’ and ‘Taiwan’ are more than enough for me.
The excitement ends rather abruptly when defunct entries start to hit home however. HyperSonic XLC seemed like a project that was doomed from the start and it’s surprising how successfully it’s fellow entry in this list has stood the test of time. It also had the spike, so of course it would have been great to experience.
We first met up with Russian manufacturer Pax in the list for last year and they had an insane looking indoor version of the model in Bahrain, the surroundings of which would no doubt have only enhanced the insanity. A terrible loss for the industry.
Back to B&M again, there’s another Invert on the horizon, they’ve always done some damage to these lists so far and I hope Talon is no exception.
Giovanola’s follow up to last year’s Goliath with Titan should be interesting as there’s just so few of this style of ride out there.
Sadly there’s nothing out there at all any more when it comes to Premier’s water coaster model, though Vonkaptuous couldn’t have taken the fall for a better reason.
And we’ll finish on one more positive outlook with Wildfire, the modern yet classic looking looper with the gorgeous looking setting. Soon.

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