Rollercoaster Dreaming

Ok, so I have quibbles with any awards. These, like the Golden Tickets, are fairly popularity based, which has some disadvantages. The three jaw dropping ones that I'd like to mention is that The Beast is very, very far from the best wood coaster in the country, Cedar Point does not have the best food in the country, in fact it's nowhere close to the best and is nearly bad, and Kings Island does not, on any planet in the country, have the best themeing. In those categories, look for the ones that didn't win (the runnerups) if you're curious as to some more accurate selections in those categories.

Posted by Mike | Comments (49) 000405

Awards and Records

09.17.04

Mike's Favorite Amusement Park List (The Best! The Worst! The Mediocore!):

Here is the list of my favorite to least favorite parks of the trip. I should probably preface it more then this, but... nah. Here it goes:

01) Cedar Point, Ohio
02) Kennywood, Pennsylvania
03) Disneyland/California Adventure (as one park in one day on one $65 ticket), California
04) Indiana Beach, Indiana
05) Islands of Adventure, Florida
06) Coney Island, New York
07) Six Flags Over Texas, Texas
08) Knoebels, Pennsylvania
09) Dorney Park, Pennsylvania
10) Hersheypark, Pennsylvania
11) Big Chief's Mt. Olympus Theme Park, Wisconsin
12) Kings Dominion, Virginia
13) Lakside, Colorado
14) Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, California
15) Schlitterbahn, Texas
16) Busch Gardens Tampa, Florida
17) Great America, Illinois
18) Fiesta Texas, Texas
19) Morey's Pier, New Jersey
20) Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Virginia
21) Holiday World, Indiana
22) Lake Compounce, Connecticut
23) Las Vegas (all rides plus Primm combined), Nevada
24) Six Flags Over Georgia, Georgia
25) Great Adventure, New Jersey
26) Knotts Berry Farm, California
27) Astroworld, Texas
28) Magic Mountain, California
29) Michigan's Adventure, Michigan
30) Timber Falls Adventure Park, Wisconsin
31) Belmont Park, California
32) Kings Island, Ohio
33) Six Flags New England (2nd visit, w/Superman & water park open), Massachussets
34) Great America, California
35) Worlds of Fun, Missouri
36) Marine World, California
37) Carowinds, North Carolina
38) Cliff's Amusement Park, New Mexico
39) Dollywood, Tennessee
40) Celebration City, Missouri
41) Seaworld Orlando, Florida
42) Geauga Lake, Ohio
43) Valleyfair, Minnesota
44) Kentucky Kingdom, Kentucky
45) Six Flags America, Maryland
46) Visionland, Alabama
47) Great Escape, New York
48) Lagoon, Utah
49) Rye Playland, New York
50) Universal Studios, Florida
51) Six Flags New Orleans, Louisiana
52) Silver Dollar City, Missouri
53) Fantasy Island, New York
54) Darien Lake, New York
55) Miracle Strip, Florida
56) Six Flags New England (1st visit - with Superman and water park closed), Massachussets
57) Lakemont, Pennsylvania
58) Six Flags St. Louis, Missouri
59) Boomers (D Beach Hurricane), Florida
60) Elitch Gardens, Colorado
61) Old Town, Florida
62) Seabreeze, New York
63) Legoland, California
64) Seaside Heights (2 parks combined), New Jersey
65) Quassy, Connecticut
66) Waterville, Alabama

I'm forgetting a few parks, but this is pretty close to it, and whatever parks I'm forgetting are I believe more near the bottom.

Posted by Mike | Comments (53) 000403

Awards and Records

09.14.04

Oldest operating parks and roller coasters:

Here is a link to the oldest operating parks and roller coasters in the world.

Posted by Mike | Comments (251) 000400

Awards and Records

09.13.04

DAFE Awards :

A link to the DAFE (Darkride and Funhouse Enthusiasts) awards.

I'm not sure about these. We saw a lot of dark rides on our trip and on the way from one place to another, and the dark rides on this list seem rather conveniently connected to parks that also happen to have good coasters in them, making me wonder how accurate these awards really are. Also, some stuff that wins is really, really cheezy, making me wonder what the criteria these guys (and gals) use actually is. Regardless, this is the only one like it out there, and as I wouldn't describe myself in any way as a "dark ride enthusiast," then what the hell would I know?

Posted by Mike | Comments (16) 000397

Awards and Records

09.11.04

Roller coaster records:

Records for the tallest, fastest, and highest steel and wood roller coasters can be found via this link

Posted by Mike | Comments (281) 000392

Awards and Records

09.10.04

The Internet Roller Coaster Poll:

The Internet Roller Coaster Poll and it's results have so far been the best rating system for roller coasters out there.

While, of course, I don't agree with all the results, they at least seem to come from the correct planet, with outright bad roller coasters like The Beast and The Boss coming nowhere near the top 20 coasters (though the Dells coasters are still ranked rather low, which kind of annoys me).

There's nothing in the top 25 here that is a bad coaster, everything that I have ridden in the top 25 is good, so this is a poll well worth checking out. Unfortunately, the layout is lacking so you'll need to get past that to see and get around the very well done polling and results.

Posted by Mike | Comments (60) 000389

Awards and Records

09.09.04

2004 Golden Ticket Awards:

The 2004 Golden Ticket Awards Results

Direct download to the complete results - PDF file - 3.5mb

The Golden Tickets are the most popular of the various awards, polls and lists created every year. Parks are also most likely to use this poll/award in their publicity when their coaster does well. In this way, you can kind of think of them as the Oscars or something.

And like the Oscars, they are flawed. Their main flaw is popularity. A fair amount of coasters that are unknown or many people have not ridden that are excellent either do not appear in the Golden Ticket results or appear very low. The other problem with the accuracy of the Golden Tickets as an arbiter of quality is the placement of a few coasters that were once good, but are now mediocore, in the top 10 and top 20 coasters of each type. Either many people who vote never get back to the parks in question to re-ride these coasters, or these coasters simply remain high on thier lists every year due to emotional attachment taking precedence over the actual quality of the ride. The most glaring examples of this is The Beast, a painful, unexceptional wood coaster, appearing as the number 7 wood coaster and Magnum, a good but no longer fantastic steel coaster, appearing as a number 3 steel coaster.

Regardless, the list is certainly a good way to start if you are just getting into this stuff. In my first draft of planning my cross-country trip, I used the Golden Tickets top 25 wood and steel lists as the way to figure out where I needed to go. Though that list was, in the end, nowhere near as comprehensive, it did get me started in the right direction.

And, of course, it's a great list to argue about and whine about to friends with similar interests. In that sense, it's partial innacuracy is kind of charming.

Posted by Mike | Comments (50) 000388

Awards and Records

09.08.04

Gutting:

Due to this list becoming way too innacurate way too quickly, I'll be gutting and revising the awards in the coming weeks to simply link to the results that are on the corresponding sites. I'll also keep a private copy so that if the sites pull the results for some reason (i.e: high bandwidth costs for the Internet Coaster Poll results) I will quickly mirror the information. It's up to you, the anonymous reader, to let me know when the coming links stop working.

Posted by Mike | Comments (44) 000385

Awards and Records

10.29.03