50 years of coasters – 1981 to 1990

I think from looking at the ’80s the growth in coaster design was more gradual than I expected. Ideas were being refined and developed, but there’s Knott an obvious moment of xceleration when it suddenly ‘got good’, just yet. When comparing standouts to that of the previous decade, there’s still nothing exceptional that I would say holds up to the experience of what we get these days, or even a certain coaster from the 1910s, just some solid efforts and well thought out concepts that build on the recent past.
There was a changing of the guard in manufacturing. Many of the biggest names still present today started kicking around – Vekoma and Intamin were just out of the gate and we have B&M ready and fired up right by the end of the list while we simultaneously saw the loss of Schwarzkopf industries and the beginning of the end for Arrow.
Here’s another set of year by year highlights based on what I’ve actually ridden, along with a few speculations of what else would have contested for an annual coaster award, if there was such a thing back then.

On paper, nothing special these days. This style of loop and corkscrew layout now exists amongst the most common inverting coasters in the world thanks to other manufacturers (particularly in China) latching on to the simplicity of the design. Python has heritage though, as an original, and the park themselves have recently acknowledged this by providing some TLC of the highest order – most of the track was outright replaced for the 2018 season in order to keep it alive for a good while longer.
Looks like I haven’t got a great personal selection here, in terms of other happenings this year across the pond, I think Intamin kicking off their wooden coaster career at Six Flags Great America and the debut of Arrow’s suspended coaster look to have been the most intriguing developments.

And again, I’m just rattling around more Schwarzkopf looping models, this time the most common variant of compact, often travelling design. Like a few winners that came before it, the lap bar really sets this apart in the era and taught us all that you just dont need an overbearing parent of a restraint clamping down on your shoulders to keep you in your seat for a high thrill ride and it’s a pity that lesson still hasn’t been fully taken on board to this day.
Dare I say this was a slow year? The only examples I can see could have come straight out of any of the past 5 years. The odd Arrow, Corkscrew, even the fantastic Fantastic Coaster Rowdy is looking strong in ’82.

This was the year that the world renowned Tokyo Disneyland opened and with it came another Space Mountain. They’re just really cool rides and I’m a sucker for good music, theming and a general ambience that should always comes with indoor coasters – it disguises and elevates what is often some pretty bog standard hardware underneath. But the layout here is surprisingly good, building a sense of speed continuously throughout and constantly leaving you guessing which way the next hairpin turn is going to throw you. These were also very technlogically advanced behind the scenes and often a bit cranky – even in recent times our train ended up taking us to the maintenance shed instead of the lift hill!
The obvious name to me for 1983 is Moonsault Scramble. One of those ridiculous builds that you can barely believe existed at all. It broke ridiculous records in height, (probably) broke people with unprecedented G-forces and it laughs in the face of the future. I don’t understand how it happened, but I sorely wish that I could have tried it. Meisho you madmen, come back to us.

Sticking in Japan for yet another year my personal pick is a quaint little jet coaster from Senyo Kogyo. It wouldnt be my first choice to represent the type as it’s far from the most impressive around, but I’ll take this style of ride over what has now become generic looping sit down coaster by this stage any day.
Ah yes, this year was the debut of the dreaded Boomerang of which there are now over 50 worldwide. The compact shuttle coaster, with 3 physical inversions that become an boastful (for the time) 6 with both forwards and backwards direction of travel through the layout, became a huge success. In terms of rides that would actually have been good though, Big Bad Wolf was a likely candidate as a build on the Arrow suspended concept – like many of the type it eluded me and is sadly no longer with us, though its legacy lives on through Verbolten today. King Cobra at King’s Island was the original version of my all-time favourite stand-up coaster, though I may be in the minority in loving that one.

Intamin had been knocking out several bobsled coasters in the previous year, but I’ve ridden one of those and wasn’t particularly impressed with the execution. Along came Mack the following season with their own version of the design that uses a full length train and it gives a much more cohesive and well paced ride experience. The attraction went straight to their own personal showcase more commonly known as Europa Park, though we only ever got 5 more examples out of it, with the most recent in 2001.
The now unfortunately infamous Mindbender in a mall in Canada could well have put Schwarzkopf at the top for yet another entry (and with the same name no less) and the aforementioned actual installation of the Togo stand-up also opened in Canada this year, eventually moving to Italy where I caught up with it. I’m now torn on how I should count relocations because in the opposite vein there’s the hugely popular Phoenix at Knoebels which was relocated in 1985 and still reportedly performs amongst the best of the best today. I guess we’ll try and keep it simple for now.

He says, immediately breaking his own rule. I’ve got very little to offer from this year other than several Zierer Tivoli family coasters so I feel to keep this interesting we’ll have to go for Wild One which actually dates back to 1917. The ride was rebuilt at Six Flags America in ’86 and was by far my favourite coaster in the park. It does all the things a classic woodie should do just right.
Was this another genuinely run of the mill year? The list got significantly shorter again and I can’t find anything that would have helped me much here, particularly nothing the likes of which we haven’t already seen or talked about before in this series.

I adore this ride, it plays a major role in establishing my favourite area of a park on earth – the Helix hillside. It’s hard for me to imagine one without the other, but for a whole 27 years this wonderful terrain layout stood alone, is still a fantastic experience by its own merit and easily amongst the strongest we’ve seen so far.
Elsewhere in 1987, Tokyo Disneyland got their Big Thunder Mountain, which happens to be a little tamer than I would have liked and the amazingly atmospheric Raptor Attack (or Rat Ride as it was then), which was sadly confirmed to be closed forever just recently, proved again that stock models can be something truly special if you pay particular attention to the presentation.
I think this was a pretty big year, a bit of a turning point, there’s some actual competition amongst attractions I’ve ridden and serious contemplation going on now.

Togo responded to this terrain coaster concept in extraordinary fashion with this monster that reportedly covers over 250ft in overall elevation from top to bottom. It only begins with the weakest of drops, in true Japanese jet coaster style, but the resulting ride is spectacular and far more intense than anything of this nature seen before.
The new Zierer-Schwarzkopf team followed up with Jetline this year – a solid ride that unfortunately couldn’t play to the same strengths as its predecessor. Aside from that, location seems to be a bit of a running theme, with the unusual layout of Ninja off the side of the Magic Mountain, the notorious Orphan Rocker barely existing and this fascinating looking Hopkins looper up in the sky. Boundaries were clearly being pushed in 1988, and with varying success.

We’re back indoors with what on the surface appears to be a standard family sit down but ended up being a ridiculously wild ride and another personal favourite of mine. I think from what we’ve seen so far, outside of Disney at least, the use of media and music wasn’t prevalent enough in olden times and Eurosat made particular good use of it with a track that still holds fond memories for me today, even if the fundamentals of the attraction have since changed.
Vekoma made some big waves this year with Goudurix taking the world record for number of inversions and the ambitious French Revolution being squeezed into Lotte World’s wondrous indoor area ready for the park’s opening day. I think the obvious pick for most this year would be Magnum XL-200 at Cedar Point, the now legendary first of the Arrow hyper coasters, of any hyper coaster as they have become known in the traditional sense (Moonsault says hi again).
Yes, I have a thing for rollercoasters. No, I still haven’t been to the rollercoaster capital of the world.

Arrow managed to match that number of inversions the very next year, though perhaps not quite so elegantly as far as presentation is concerned. It is a marginally better ride though that contains a superior drop, is intense for the right reasons this time and has an overall nicer pace.
It generally appears to be a bit of a down year over the previous, for my tastes, a calm before the storm as it were. Woodies were having a bit of a revival thanks to the Dinn Corporation, Reverchon made their coaster debut with a custom layout way before their deep dive into spinning fairground attractions and, as importantly, the very first B&M came into being, with a stand-up no less, widely regarded as their worst type of ride. Don’t worry, they’ll find their dangling feet soon enough and from here on out I’ll actually have ten separate entries to talk about in each and every year.

That’s right, there’s another 30 list topics still to come. Isn’t that exciting.

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50 years of coasters – 1971 to 1980

As of tracking down some fresh creations in 2020, it turns out that I have now ridden at least one coaster that was opened in each year from the last 50 years. 1970 still eludes me and most likely will forever now, as it seems there are no rides from that particular year currently operating in their original locations. Even if we start considering relocations, there is only one surviving Schwarzkopf Wildcat, that started out at Cedar Point that year and has since moved around a lot, currently residing in Maryland. It’s not high on the agenda.

Obviously the quantities are a lot lower for the further we go back in history, as only the lucky few rollercoasters get well looked after and manage to live to a ripe old age, so today I’ll be picking just one highlight installation from each of the first 10 years, ones that I’ve personally ridden at some point and as I continue the series and head towards modern times we can begin to look at each subsequent year in much more depth.

The ’70s appear to be a time when the modern industry was still being shaped and finding its feet. For at least the last decade, steel had been steadily taking over the world as the primary material of choice for coaster track and alongside the market being padded out with many common stock builds, the big names we still look back on with fondness now – Arrow, Schwarzkopf and Togo (sadly all no longer with us today) were innovating and paving the way to a brighter future for theme parks with their ever bigger and better custom designs.

We begin with a mine train from Arrow Dynamics which happens to be my only coaster from this year. It opened with the park back on 29th May 1971 and it’s hard to believe that Magic Mountain, currently home to more rollercoasters than anywhere else on earth, had only two to begin with, the other being a second hand kiddie coaster from Bradley and Kaye, one that’s notoriously difficult to add to the count these days.
Gold Rusher appears to be amongst the strongest builds to open this year anyway, with most of what was going on back then being multiple stock models of Zyklon Galaxis and yet more Schwarzkopf Wildcats. This was a fully custom layout integrated into the unique terrain of the park, with two chain lifts and some thrilling sections of track that wind their way up and down the hillside. Arrow mine trains are always solid family fun and this one was a fine addition to the collection.

As the second and last of the default picks for the whole series, Racing is my only experience with a 1972 coaster and has unfortunately been retired as of the end of last season. This Zierer Flitzer became a fairly common sight across the world over a surprisingly long time frame mainly because they were fundamentally designed as travelling coasters and moved round different parks all the time or fairground circuits all the time.
It’s a simple layout with single file seated cars that traverse banked drops and turns, spiralling their way through a compact plot of land and it was alright, nothing to write home about. Glancing through the 1972 list there are a few more coasters that interest me a lot more, ones that I will hopefully pick up in the near future: Fire in the Hole is a vintage dark ride coaster at Silver Dollar City from the same year and Kings Island also has 3 wooden coasters from ’72 – two racing Racers and family woodie Woodstock Express which from my previous experience at fellow Paramount/Cedar Fair park Kings Dominion should all be decent entertainment.

As we enter 1973 I finally have a choice in the matter, though admittedly not a good one just yet. It was between another Arrow mine train and a certain wooden coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia that tried to injure me. Just like the last mine train in the list, this one debuted with the opening of the park back on 31st March 1973 as Carowinds’ one and only rollercoaster.
While this one doesn’t have much in the way of terrain to help it along there’s still two chain lifts and a tunnel to keep things playful! However I think the most enticing installation for me from this year looks to be this wild looking Japanese jet coaster that has since found a new home in Mexico and is definitely an attraction I want to pick up one day, sooner rather than later.

And here it is, the family woodie I alluded to just moments ago. Kings Dominion actually opened a year later than this ride in 1975 and acquired the already existing ‘Scooby Doo’ at that time. For the size, this ride is surprisingly thrilling and one of the main contributing factors to this is the lap bar restraints that only have one closed position – the smaller you are, the further you can fly out of the seat.
The rest of 1974 looks all too familiar with mostly the same names we’ve already seen popping up yet again – Galaxis, Flitzers, Wildcats, when will it end? There were a further two Arrow mine trains at Hersheypark and Six Flags Great Adventure, both of which I have also ridden and neither of which happen to stand out as much as this little woodie. The only other notable installation back in Europe was the world’s first Zierer Tivoli at Tivoli Gardens, another ride type that went on to be an extremely prolific clone, particularly in my own personal catalogue.

We’re now staying at Kings Dominion for a second year running as, in continuing with their parellels with Kings Island, they opened this larger pair of racing wooden coasters. I do love a bit of racing and interaction on a coaster so this concept is perfect for me. The simple out and back layout is effective, consisting of just many hills and one big flat turnaround and the only downside for us, 44 years later, was that they chose not to run both tracks at the same time during our first visit.
What else happened in 1975? The Arrow Dynamics Corkscrew coaster hit the scene, making its namesake corkscrew element the first example of a ‘modern inversion’ to be seen. The atttraction that jumps out to me more though is the legendary Space Mountain at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Yes, I’m still basic and haven’t been to Florida yet, but don’t worry, it’s not the last time that name will appear in this series.

Speaking of modern inversions, this iconic vertical loop was constructed back over at Magic Mountain in 1976. While obviously at the time it didn’t have an attractive looking B&M dominating the surround hillside with some extra interaction, this Schwarzkopf is a really good coaster experience, especially for the era, no doubt as butter smooth then as it is now and full of terrain based goodness. I liked it a lot.
The world of coasters was definitely opening up in 1976, it’s the first year to have multiple page entries on RCDB so bear with me while I trawl through those… Arrow continued their campaign with several more Corkscrew installations but, more importantly, started building fully custom looping coasters too – this world record was only taken by a matter of weeks. Perhaps even more important than anything else this year was the debut of Valle degli Gnomi, the amazing, custom, terrain, dark ride sectioned inspiration to what is now the simple Wacky Worm, currently the most common coaster on the planet.

The Schwarzkopf streak continues over in the land of chocolate. Again at the time it wouldn’t have been dominated by a monster of a B&M, this was just another humble looping terrain coaster built onto the side of a slightly less impressive landscape. It may have even been better back then as the construction of Great Bear seemed to have opened up the land a bit more, making it rather bare and perhaps less quaint, though I do of course appreciate the interaction we got instead.
It was also in 1977 that the manufacturer first unleashed their Shuttle Loop model, with the inspired ‘weight drop’ launch system. Arrow also released their own Launched Loop the same year, using a high up station and gravity to their advantage. North Korea acquired their first rollercoasters this year too, thanks to Japanese manufacturer Meisho – they’re somewhere on my to do list, because why not. And finally California got their own Space Mountain, a version which lasted for 26 years before the entire coaster was replaced and rebuilt into the modern equivalent I know today.

Hat trick! While I wasn’t perhaps as enthralled with this Schwarzkpof looper as some are, I can definitely appreciate that, at the time, these were likely the best rides out there – with the superior quality of finish that Arrow lacked a little on their equivalent custom looping coasters, as evidenced by Loch Ness Monster the same year. As much as I enjoyed that classic too, the charm predominantly came from how questionable the design process was. Mindbender uses the terrain rather nicely, also came with two vertical loops and almost feels too well refined in comparison.
Elsewhere in the country, the monster racing woodies of Colossus were born back at Magic Mountain, a structure that was destined to become one of my all time favourite coasters at the hands of RMC some 40 years later. The other Schwarzkopf from the same year, Shockwave in Texas seems like a good rival to this one and I look forward to seeing which one comes out on top at some point.

I can now finally get a Disney coaster on here and show that sometimes the hardware of this era was secondary to the surrounding theming and overall experience. The Big Thunder Mountain rides are perfect testament to that, a joyous experience of thrill and adventure from start to finish. California was the first to get one this time and while it’s no longer the best of the bunch, it’s the clear standout for me in 1979.
The notorious Beast opened at Kings Island in this year, remaining to this day the longest wooden coaster in existence – with the mixed reception it will be an interesting contender for me to say the least. Over in Japan, the world’s first Stand Up coaster was born and in Europe, Vekoma were breaking onto the scene with their Arrow inspired compact corkscrew coasters.

And it’s back over to Europe that we now go in order to bring in the ’80s. Schwarzkopf are at it again with their consistently rewarding custom looping coasters and for me it was the fish mouth tunnel at the end of the ride (sadly now gone) and the interaction with the neighbouring Vekoma junior coaster (which wouldn’t have existed at the time) that made this one a standout in an already amazing park.
This was another big year for the manufacturer with many more Shuttle Loops and Looping Stars being spread around along with stateside rival Scorpion which could well be a contender here. It also seems to have been a huge year for Meisho in Japan, theyre absolutely everywhere in the database for 1980, I’ve got just one of the jet coasters from the list but there’s another that has just caught my eye. Looks like I’ve found yet another way to do some obsessive trip planning.

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