The Official Mitch Hawker 2012 Steel Coaster Poll Thread!

[MNCoasterlover]

I believe Valleyfair's Wild Thing will win, and MH will announce it as meteors fall and dinosaurs roam.

[robbalvey]

We can also disagree on whether or not coasters are better at night.

I have never said that I don't feel some rides are "better" at night, I just don't think any ride I've been on is "significantly" better at night.

 

Phoenix is a great example. I could sit in the middle seat at 3pm in the afternoon, and it ranks the same for me as if I rode it at night with a bunch of glow sticks and crazy people.

 

One of the most important factor for me when I rank a coaster is consistency. It's tough sometimes because I might only get in a few rides, but on a coaster that it somewhat major, I always try to ride in at least the front, middle, and back, and different times of day, if possible, just to see how consistent it is.

 

OzIris, for example, I rode in front, middle, and back, and also went back later on in the afternoon after it had warmed up. While it was "better" in the afternoon, it wasn't "significantly better", and it was most consistent in the fact that it was "lame" during all rides.

 

OzIris debuted at #34. I guess I wasn't alone in thinking the ride was "meh."

 

--Robb

[65skylark]

I've only been on 4 coasters out of the top 20. Still suprises me Maverick ranks that high, though. I seriously need to get my sorry ass on another coaster trip. it's been since '09 that I have been to a theme park other than Silverwood

[MINICoupe]

Millennium Forceless finally out of the top 10? Hallelujah! Still, yes, it will end up at #1 in the Golden Tickets.

 

Also, GTs are voted on by subscribers to Amusement Today, which are by and large people in the industry rather than enthusiasts. Thus, "how much fun/thrilling/scary is it" often takes a back seat to other factors like how it impacted the park's attendance, how much downtime it had, how the public perceives it, how well it "fits" into the overall park scheme, etc etc etc. Those are factors that really don't play in Mitch's poll, it's about the ride as a RIDE.

 

As much as I like Voyage, I think quite a few of those GTs were given due to the impact that ride had on the park as a whole. It was a truly world-class envelope-pushing coaster at a little non-chain mom-n-pop park. "The Little Park that Could" is something that really gets industry folks voting with their heartstrings.

[MINICoupe]

We can also disagree on whether or not coasters are better at night.

I have never said that I don't feel some rides are "better" at night, I just don't think any ride I've been on is "significantly" better at night.

 

The Beast.

[Skycoastin Steve]

I'm still blown away at the number of people that get upset over these results. It's just a combination of opinions, it shouldn't affect you negatively or positively in any way, shape, or form. If you think Boomerangs are awesome? Great! If you think some "popular" ride sucks? Awesome! That's what makes us human, difference in opinion. No need to get butthurt because some ride halfway around the world that you've never ridden ranks higher than your home park's/favorite manufacturer's shiny new ride.

 

Edit: And please. Conspiracy theories involving online coaster polls???

[robbalvey]

We can also disagree on whether or not coasters are better at night.

I have never said that I don't feel some rides are "better" at night, I just don't think any ride I've been on is "significantly" better at night.

 

The Beast.

Oh, please. The Beast beats the crap out of you during the day just as much as it does at night. The Beast has always been "consistent" in that regard.

[azza29]

I'm still blown away at the number of people that get upset over these results. It's just a combination of opinions, it shouldn't affect you negatively or positively in any way, shape, or form.

 

It's the same reason people get upset over video game reviews where the reviewer hated something they liked or vice versa. Some people just need others to agree with them in order to validate their own opinion.

[Swimace]

We can also disagree on whether or not coasters are better at night.

I have never said that I don't feel some rides are "better" at night, I just don't think any ride I've been on is "significantly" better at night.

 

The Beast.

 

I agree, and would also give a nod to Boulder Dash in that regard.

 

But the thing about the Beast is that I think it is a really fun ride IF I am riding it at night and IF I am in a non-wheel seat. There are simply too many "ifs" in that statement. Overall, I rank a ride like that as pretty crappy.

[David H]

Millennium Forceless finally out of the top 10? Hallelujah! Still, yes, it will end up at #1 in the Golden Tickets.

 

Also, GTs are voted on by subscribers to Amusement Today, which are by and large people in the industry rather than enthusiasts. Thus, "how much fun/thrilling/scary is it" often takes a back seat to other factors like how it impacted the park's attendance, how much downtime it had, how the public perceives it, how well it "fits" into the overall park scheme, etc etc etc. Those are factors that really don't play in Mitch's poll, it's about the ride as a RIDE.

 

As much as I like Voyage, I think quite a few of those GTs were given due to the impact that ride had on the park as a whole. It was a truly world-class envelope-pushing coaster at a little non-chain mom-n-pop park. "The Little Park that Could" is something that really gets industry folks voting with their heartstrings.

 

Except that that's not really true. The GT's have a panel of experts they use. It's not at all the subscribers. Yes, there are some industry people on it, I'm sure. But the panel is mostly made up of a hand-selected group of fairly well-travelled enthusiasts. Many of the people on the panel come from people who've taken ACE's or the ECC's international trips. I know that Robb has said that's given them lists of people from TPR he thinks would be good for the panel. They also take suggestions and requests to be on the panel. They try hard to get more well-traveled to enthusiasts on the panel to try to partially compensate for the bias towards parks where more people have visited, but it doesn't have all that much impact. After all, there are only so many people who've been certain places who are willing to take a poll. For the Asian coasters, less than 20 people who took Mitch's poll this year have ridden each of Asia's coasters. And even Bizarro -- known for over a decade as one of the best coasters in the world, and relatively easy to get to from most of the US -- only had 3/5 as many riders as the Cedar Point coasters on Mitch's poll. That's a significant handicap that the GT's have to overcome, but can't.

 

For better or for worse, MF IS the most popular coaster on the planet. Just looking at this year's results, it had 246 riders vote on it, which is more than any other single coaster on the ballot, other than Florida's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which isn't likely to be making any top 10 lists. But more importantly, nearly 3/4 of those who voted for it put it in their top 10, although admittedly some of those are the result of groupings. It had more top 10 votes than any other coaster in the top 10 (other than Maverick) even had votes of any kind. 48 people ranked it as their number 1 steel coaster. GeForce had 38 #1 votes. Bizarro had 43.

 

The main difference is the methodology used to get the results. The Golden Tickets use a popularity contest, where the top ranked coaster on each ballot gets 10 points down to 1 point for the #10. This is a pretty typical model used in many popularity polls. It does actually get the sense of which items are the most POPULAR. After all, if more people vote for something highly, then it's obviously popular. Coasters that are in places that few enthusiasts have visited are going to be severely handicapped in such a poll. But by definition, doesn't that make them less popular among enthusiasts, if few have bothered to ride them?

 

Mitch's poll compares how each coaster ranks in comparison to each other. By doing so, his poll reflects which coasters are BETTER than the others, at least in the opinions of those enthusiasts who bother to take the poll. That's why we like this poll. Because popularity isn't always a sign of quality. Otherwise sports games would be scored by how many fans show up. And Carly Rae Jepson and Psy were the best singers in the world of last year.

 

That's not to say that there isn't value in the Golden Tickets. Amusement Today is an industry publication. And let's face it, the industry is much more interested in what is popular among its customers than in what some group of people think is the "best". And in our world "popular" is generally more important than "best", if only because "best" is still very subjective.

 

If you were to take the ballots from Mitch's poll, and use the AT algorithm, you'd actually get fairly similar results to what the AT gets. (He actually did this once many years ago, with the results posted somewhere on his page.) And yes, based on this year's ballots, Millennium Force would likely come out at number one, just because of the sheer number of top 10 and number 1 votes it gets.

[larrygator]

You understand that I wasn't being confrontational or doubting your opinion. I was genuinely curious, since we seem to have similar tastes in coasters.

 

No offense taken. One other point to keep in mind. Although I make a mental note of each coaster and what other coasters it is similar to I only update my rankings once a year when the poll comes out. There was no steel poll last year so my memory may be off a little, but I just do't remember getting off Pyrenees and saying wow this is Top 10-20 stuff. Granted when I'm ranking over 300 unique coasters anything under #75 is a damn good coaster and in the top 10% of those I've ridden.

[Atadritaata]

As someone who has actually ridden Shambhala, I think it's fully deserving of its high ranking. I preferred it to Nemesis but would put it behind Expedition GeForce, so these results reflect my opinion quite nicely.

 

I think it's worth saying that I didn't expect Shambhala to be that great at all. Having ridden Silverstar and finding it forceless and boring I was expecting more of the same, but Shambhala pleasantly surprised me. It's not an intense coaster as such but the first drop lasts forever and the amount of sustained floater airtime it offers is incredible. And for people that say that B&M don't do ejector airtime, the speed hill has it in spades.

 

Shambhala is like a refined cocktail of airtime. An Intamin coaster such as EGF is more like a hard spirit. If you don't go for cocktails, that's fine but that doesn't mean the people that do are wrong to do so. In any case, I'd recommend riding it before passing judgement, it definitely surprised me.

 

Everything I've heard and read suggests the same thing, that Shambala is a bit of an exception to the rule for new B&M Hypers. Looking forward to trying it out next month to make up my own mind.

not really an exception to the rule but it is more intense than the others and has a wider collection of different types of airtime...

[Randomman295]

^Wasn't Leviathan kind of like that too?

[MitchHawker]

Things I noticed:

 

LaRonde's Goliath fell from 17 to 62t this year. Looks like 44 2012 voters had ridden it vs. only 20 in 2010. Any other reason for such a fall?

 

Millennium Force was preferred over Maverick 112 to 97 among mutual riders but lost mutual rider comparisons to four European coasters and one Canadian coaster that Maverick won mutual rider comparisons against.

 

Leviathan won the comparison with Behemoth 39 to 19

 

All of Shambhala's losing comparisons to higher ranked coasters were close, losing only 9 to 7 to EGF and 3 to 2 to Bizarro, while beating I305 5 to 1. It did also lose comparisons to lower ranked rides iSpeed, Katun, and Maverick.

 

Much has been made of MF's 14th place finish this year. It should be noted that its 2008 and 2009 finishes could be considered lower than this year as 5 or 6 of the rides that finished above it this year were not in the poll in those years.

 

The 12 year chart is now up on the site.

[robbalvey]

Things I noticed:

 

LaRonde's Goliath fell from 17 to 62t this year. Looks like 44 2012 voters had ridden it vs. only 20 in 2010. Any other reason for such a fall?

 

Millennium Force was preferred over Maverick 112 to 97 among mutual riders but lost mutual rider comparisons to four European coasters and one Canadian coaster that Maverick won mutual rider comparisons against.

 

Leviathan won the comparison with Behemoth 39 to 19

 

All of Shambhala's losing comparisons to higher ranked coasters were close, losing only 9 to 7 to EGF and 3 to 2 to Bizarro, while beating I305 5 to 1. It did also lose comparisons to lower ranked rides iSpeed, Katun, and Maverick.

 

Much has been made of MF's 14th place finish this year. It should be noted that its 2008 and 2009 finishes could be considered lower than this year as 5 or 6 of the rides that finished above it this year were not in the poll in those years.

 

The 12 year chart is now up on the site.

 

As always, thank you Mitch for keeping us updated, and for spending the time to do the poll!

[larrygator]

Just noticed that some of my favorite small coasters (al in my Top 25) had huge drops versus the last poll.

Dragon's Fury

Winjas

HeiBe Fahrt

[AstroDan]

Although it's still highy rated, kind of sad to see Nemesis drop from the top 10 for the first time in a LONG time. That said, lots of new coasters so it's kind of expected, and it's still well up there - amazing for a coaster nearly 20 years old!

 

[cfc]

I'd like to add my thanks to Mitch for taking on this poll each year. While some may quibble with the details, I think the overall results make a lot of sense.

[TyRush]

I'd like to add my thanks to Mitch for taking on this poll each year. While some may quibble with the details, I think the overall results make a lot of sense.

Second this!

[chickenbowl]

Another trend, the new B&M Wing Coasters:

58- X-Flight

68- Swarm

87- Wild Eagle

113- Raptor

 

Definitely not as high a rating as the hypers or inverts... I guess we'll see where GateKeeper will fall (I'd guess around the 40's).

[Manic Monte]

^ Yeah those are interesting numbers for the wingriders. It will be interesting to see how Gatekeeper stacks up next year.

[beatle11]

Leviathan won the comparison with Behemoth 39 to 19

 

That's surprising to me. I would have thought it be much closer. Thanks for the info!

[therooboy]

Thanks to Mitch & all those who submitted ballots.

 

With rides on a trimless Expedition GeForce, i can see why it returned to the top.

Having not yet ridden any of the Wing Coaster, the results of those were interesting, as noted.

[SingleRiderCam]

What I never expected is Manta at Sea World SD to almost be in the top 100 part of the list. It got great ratings for a family coaster

[coastermaniac]

We can also disagree on whether or not coasters are better at night.

I have never said that I don't feel some rides are "better" at night, I just don't think any ride I've been on is "significantly" better at night.

 

The Beast.

 

'nough said