texcoaster

Speaking of stupid people... Boardwalk Bullet was ridden by 21 people, 19 of whom rode it in 2007. Um.....

Really? Thunderhead ranked considerably higher in the poll. I haven't ridden Thunderhead yet, but I was not all that impressed with K-Rumbler. I ranked it at 27.

I'm sure the number of those ballots were probably countered by the ET fanboys who did the same thing. Honestly, who really cares if your personal #1 matches the poll's?

This format might make it easier to read: The ones that I've ridden are in bold face with my ranking in parenthesis afterward. Note that my rankings after Voyage would be moved up one spot if you disregard "fave steelie", which was my #2 coaster. 1 The Voyage Holiday World (1) 2 El Toro SFGAd 3 Thunderhead Dollywood 4 Troy Toverland 5 Balder Liseberg 6 Boulder Dash Lake Compounce (6) 7 Phoenix Knoebel's (11) 8 Tremors Silverwood 9 Hades Mount Olympus 10 Thunderbird PowerPark 11 Aska (S) Nara Dreamland 12 Avalanche Timber Falls 13 Raven Holiday World (8) 14 Rampage Alabama Adventure (12) 15 Shivering Timbers Michigan's Adventure (5) 16 Ozark Wildcat Celebration City (23) 17 Colossos Heide Park (34) 18 Kentucky Rumbler Beech Bend (27) 19 Renegade Valleyfair! 20 Coaster Playland 21 Boardwalk Bullet Kemah Boardwalk (3) 22tComet Great Escape (13) 22tTimber Terror Silverwood 24 Cornball Express Indiana Beach 25 Megafobia Oakwood

I didn't miss your point. I was typing my list when you posted your note. I was cutting and pasting the top 25 list when you posted this.

Here ya go: 1 The Voyage Holiday World 2 El Toro SFGAd 3 Thunderhead Dollywood 4 Troy Toverland 5 Balder Liseberg 6 Boulder Dash Lake Compounce 7 Phoenix Knoebel's 8 Tremors Silverwood 9 Hades Mount Olympus 10 Thunderbird PowerPark 11 Aska (S) Nara Dreamland 12 Avalanche Timber Falls 13 Raven Holiday World 14 Rampage Alabama Adventure 15 Shivering Timbers Michigan's Adventure 16 Ozark Wildcat Celebration City 17 Colossos Heide Park 18 Kentucky Rumbler Beech Bend 19 Renegade Valleyfair! 20 Coaster Playland 21 Boardwalk Bullet Kemah Boardwalk 22tComet Great Escape 22tTimber Terror Silverwood 24 Cornball Express Indiana Beach 25 Megafobia Oakwood

Here's mine: I've been on eleven of the top 25 woodies Of those, here was my ranking of them: [1] Voyage [3] Boardwalk Bullet [5] Shivering Timbers [6] Boulder Dash [8] Raven [11] Phoenix [12] Rampage [13] Comet [23] Ozark Wildcat [27] Kentucky Rumbler [34] Colossus

Now that the 2007 results are in, how many of the top 25 woodies have you ridden? Of those that you've ridden, list them in the order that YOU preferred.

^^ exactly. It is VERY costly and time consuming to dismantle a coaster in this manner. If they were not planning to rebuild it, they would've taken a bulldozer to it and they'd already be done. Texas Cyclone went from beautiful structure to pile of rubble in a half day.

A couple of interesting things: Boardwalk Bullet, even though it still hasn't been tweaked to run like it was designed to, came in a pretty impressive #21. It is the highest ranking woodie in Texas, with the next in line being Texas Giant at #69. If more people had ridden Giant this year, it wouldn't have fared as well. If you check out the results only including the votes for rides that were ridden this year, Giant comes in at #147!!! I'm actually surprised it was that high. It was pretty much unridable this year. As for Avalanche, I hadn't heard much at all about this ride, but after watching the video on "Coasters in the Raw" I was convinced that I need to go ride this thing. It probably won't be next year, though. I'm hitting El Toro next summer.

While I have the Voyage solidly at #1, I'm not at all opposed to having it fall from that spot when I ride something that I like better. My beef comes from the folks on here who try to tell me that my opinion is wrong. Yeah, whatever. It's impossible for an opinion to be wrong, it just might be different that someone else's. Elissa ranked Boulder Dash lower than most people. Robb put Boardwalk Bullet down pretty far on his list. Downunder ranked The Beast ahead of Kennywood's Thunderbolt. ...and on and on. Do I agree with their opinions? Hell no! Are their opinions WRONG? Hell no! Everyone likes different things. Big deal.

While we're talking about getting all hyped up over something that really isn't a threat, perhaps I should point out this little tidbit from the article: It will die. Next topic.

OMG, we actually agree on something. I'll mark the calendar. Bite me. SFOT isn't my home park. Hell, it's not even my home SF park. SFFT is the closest SF to me.

^^^ Me! Have been to both on several occasions. Don't much care for either of them, actually. If we're just talking about the coaster packages, that's one thing, but to ask which is the "better park" or the "crown jewel", you need to take every part of the park experience into play... the rides, the scenery, the cleanliness, the employees, the food, the atmosphere, etc etc etc. SFMM and SFGAd, when looking at the whole package, aren't what I'd call the best SF parks. It's too bad that we can't pick the best of the best and create a single badass SF park... one with SFGAd's coasters, SFFT's terrain, SFOT's atmosphere, SFNO's food, SFMM's climate, etc. If I had to pick one SF park as the "best", I'd probably go with SFOT.

WOW. If this list doesn't prove that different people like different things in a coaster, then nothing does. I think it also shows how finicky wood coasters can be, giving some people GREAT rides one day, then giving other people meh rides the next... and giving still other people crappy rides a year or two later. Case in point: Putting Heide Park's Colossus at #5 is something that I'd not even consider. Reasons have been posted in other threads, but suffice to say that I was disappointed in how it felt more like a steel coaster than a woodie. Thus, it wouldn't ever rank this high for me. Different people like different things. MegaZeph got ranked low (grouped with a bunch of 40's). I'd blame this on its roughness, but other rough coasters (Mean Streak, KD Grizzly, etc) ranked higher. I can only attribute this to the possibility that Robb got a meh ride when he was there. I had heard locals say that the coaster was fantastic one week and boring the next, but all of my rides on it were spectacular. It was my #1 wood until this year. And as for a coaster that is good for awhile, then gets crappy? Look no further than TxGiant. Apparently, Robb hasn't been on this one in awhile. It's still up there with Knoebel's Twister and Boardwalk Bullet. I'll bet that if Robb had been able to ride the Giant while he was down here filming the Bullet, those two rides would've been at least 50 points apart. Giant was my #1 wood for a loooooooooong time, but it just drops lower and lower on my list every year now. Even during ERT at Lone Star Coasterthon, I get a ride or two and call it quits.

If I get lightheaded or dizzy (and it happens sometimes on Batman, more often on Titan), it's almost always due to lack of hydration and/or heat combined with lack of food. By the way, hydration means WATER or GATORADE or some such drink... NOT CAFFEINATED SODA OR TEA. Caffeine is a diuretic, and will actually aid in dehydration (so will alcohol). If you MUST have a soda, drink Sprite of 7Up or other caffeine-free drink. As for the food, avoid stuff high in fat or grease right before a ride. Take some saltine crackers with you to the park and eat several before you go in. They will absorb some of the acids and such that can make you nauseous. Plain bread will do it, too. Not eating anything will make you sicker than eating something, no matter what it is. G-forces: I've been able to handle them much better since I started dating the fighter pilot. His advice to me was to "push down" like I'm trying to take a crap (no, really!) which helps keep the blood from leaving your head. Also, grunting or growling a low-pitched scream (like Hulk, not like Jamie Lee Curtis) will help. I thought he was joking, but it was true. Also, the further back you go on the train, the higher the G-forces will be, especially in a helix. I didn't believe that one, either, since I thought front and back would be heavy with the middle being light. I was wrong, and he tried to give me the aeronautical explanation as it related to his F-18, but I don't have enough physics background to understand it. Just know that it's true and on a coaster like Titan, it can mean the difference between two hours of ERT and two rides of ERT!

re: El Toro isn't a wood coaster It is, and it's on the poll, and when I ride it next summer it will find its way into my rankings. I honestly don't hold out much hope for it making my top 5, though. I rode Heide Park's Colossus and I was REALLY disappointed. Yeah, it had great air, fast speeds, and wicked turns... but it just didn't feel like a wood coaster to me. It ranked fairly low on my list. How much a person likes a coaster is just as dependent on how it met expectations as it is how the ride actually was... For example, if I'm really expecting a ride to be a top-10 coaster and I'm not that crazy about it, then it would probably rank a bit low. If I'm expecting the ride to be a "get the credit and move on" ride and I actually have a lot of fun on it, then it would probably rank pretty high. EVEN THOUGH it's the same ride. I'm sure that's one of the reasons that MegaZeph rocketed to the top of my wood list so quickly... and why the Voyage is currently at #1. I really didn't expect much from it, honestly. I'm not a huge fan of out/back rides, I had never been on a Gravity Group coaster, and the layout didn't look that good from the drawings I'd seen. I went, fully expecting Raven to outrank it. Maybe if I had ridden it expecting it to be #1, the results would be different. I dunno. I do know, however, that the second day at the park, I went to ERT with Voyage at #1 and 35 rides later, it was still there.

Guru has a projection TV with a "wall-it" sized screen. I'm definitely heading over there when the DVD hits the mailbox! As soon as I sell my loft and get a house, I'm having my boyfriend make me a mockup of a PTC car for watching videos.

It's fun riding with him. He's soooooooooo laid back and low-key about such things. He took his first ride on Titan at SFOT last year. Everyone on the train was yelling and screaming and laughing. He was simply sitting there, smile on his face. In the upward helix, I greyed out. I looked over at him. He chuckled. "Haven't felt G's like that in awhile. We should ride the back next time, they'll be stronger." When the ride was finished, we hit the brakes and the whole train was going nuts and applauding and such. He looked at me and very calmly said "That's a good ride, Daddy, I like that one."

EPCOT

Lightning Racer

I've got a few of the Coaster Expedition DVDs and some of them have one disc with the "normal" TPR video stuff, and a bonus disc with POV footage. Yes, the footage is set to music and edited to begin and end when the song does, and there is some off-ride footage as well, BUT quite a few of the coasters on your wish list have full POV footage in the Expedition series already. Pick out a handful of coasters you really want to see, look up which Coaster Expedition volume has them, and try it out.

OMG, I love the Hi-Miler. Any coaster put together temporarily with cotter pins, using a piece of old fire hose for a lap bar, that has MASSIVE airtime, has GOT to be experienced. They should have a prayer chapel at the station or something, lol.

My boyfriend has done several hundred landings on carriers. He says that the 400th one was just as scary as the first. He's a bit of a thrill-seeker, too. He preferred the lights-out night landings where you never even see the carrier, you just trust your instruments and wait for the "thump".

In the original versions, I found FL's mountain to be a bit more of a thrill, but Cali's version to be more fun. It gave me giggle fits and I laughed for awhile after leaving the ride. I loved it. I haven't been on the M2 version yet, and I'm hopeful that the general qualities of Fl's version will remain. I like the tandem seating better than the side-by-side. Paris' version is crap.