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The Official "TPR Coaster Poll" Thread!


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Not sure what we'll do (yet), but some of my own thoughts for discussion:

 

There is certainly some precedent to eliminating or grouping those low-ranking clones like the suspended looping coasters, boomerangs, and Volares of the world, for sure! But, to me, choosing to include the outliers like Great Nor'Easter and Speed of Sound introduces a level of curation that -might- come across as snobbery (Robb and Chase, please give your input on this too). Sooner or later I'd bet that everyone will ask us the question, "Why isn't my favorite SLC an individual entry on the list anymore?!?" and we'll be right back where we started.

 

Also, consider that, to a casual user that wants to participate, a boomerang might be only one of twenty coasters that they've ridden in their life. To them, it's Sidewinder at Hersheypark. A casual fan might not even know what a Vekoma Boomerang is, so if we were to do it Mitch-style and treat the entry as "favorite Vekoma Boomerang", that user could search for Sidewinder and get no results.

 

98 to 99 percent (don't know exactly) of the 1,000+ coasters on the poll last year received at least one vote, and a bunch of the lower-ranked clones did have enough votes to receive numbered rankings. The coasters that didn't receive any votes at all were from some new Fantawild parks, Energylandia, and Legendia, among others.

 

We now have sorting and filtering on the big list, and you can even scroll through parks in alphabetical order and click one to get all of the coasters we have listed for it. But we're certainly continuing to look at ways to make the experience friendlier than it currently is.

 

And just as a refresher, our listing includes any coaster that is the size of a wild mouse or larger. So, no Zyklons, no Wildcats, no Wacky Worms, no Vekoma junior coasters (with exceptions), no SBF spinners, no Miler coasters (also with exceptions)...

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There is certainly some precedent to eliminating or grouping those low-ranking clones like the suspended looping coasters, boomerangs, and Volares of the world, for sure! But, to me, choosing to include the outliers like Great Nor'Easter and Speed of Sound introduces a level of curation that -might- come across as snobbery (Robb and Chase, please give your input on this too). Sooner or later I'd bet that everyone will ask us the question, "Why isn't my favorite SLC an individual entry on the list anymore?!?" and we'll be right back where we started.

My feeling is this...

 

While there are some SLC's I've ridden that are better than others... and some Boomerangs I've ridden that are better than others...

 

I'm not really sure that, for me personally, even "my favorite SLC or Boomerang" really ranks THAT much higher than every other SLC or Boomerang I've ridden, and if we followed the example of the Mitch Hawker poll of just including "My favorite Boomerang" as a ranking, then shouldn't that suffice?

 

Honestly, in all the years I've hung out with coaster enthusiasts, I'm not sure I have ever once heard the question asked "Oh, really? So... what exactly IS your favorite Boomerang or SLC?"

 

Because I think we all know that... most of us don't really care.

 

If you're riding a Boomerang or SLC, even if it is your favorite one, for anything more than a "credit" then you have something seriously wrong with you and you need to go in for repairs!

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I've only ever ranked the top 20% of coasters I've ridden (Which means for every 5 coasters I ride, only 1 is ever worth getting compared against others). I don't think the inclusion of most credits is necessary in a poll like this.

 

99% of people who look at the poll will only care about which coasters made the Top 25 or so anyway, right?

 

My ballot only really consists of these top 20% coasters that I care to rank. But to be fair, I do include some coasters I find particularly overrated and put them at the end (even though I don't otherwise rank them). Just to voice my opinion a little bit.

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I’m in favor of including “favorite x.” As far as the sediment that not everyone will be familiar with what ”x” is, I think most people who would actually want to take the poll are enough of enthiasts to know what they are. If possible, it could be useful to either have a section of the site dedicated to these clones where all the “favorite x”s are listed.

 

If possible, it would also be useful to have the site designed so that if you search for a specific example of one of these clones the site automatically pulls up the option of “favorite x” or at least redirects to it. If not being familiar with the terminology is a concern, it may be useful to have a built in text area where it tells you what an SlC is, or what a Boomerange is, etc. Idk if that’s something the website can support though.

 

I know that I personally would be interested in where the favorite “x”s would be ranked.

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I don't know about anyone else, but I basically rank my top 50, my bottom 10, and everything in the middle gets lumped together into categories that could be distilled down to:

 

"Good"

 

"Whatever"

 

"Meh"

 

Because I sort of just feel that I would never need to know or care about what my number one hundred and fifty second coaster ranking is.

Edited by robbalvey
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At least with the 2017 poll, we felt that each user's privacy was more important. Anyone who wishes to post their top ten coasters can do so in a thread or in their forum signature if they so choose. There's no need for that sort of information to be posted publicly without users' consent.

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Here's a question I have for all of you....

 

Do you think there is a breaking point of having so many coasters on the list that fewer people take the poll just because the list is so daunting to sort through?

 

I get that having "as many coasters as possible" gives the best end results, but let's be honest here, is anyone REALLY going to care where the "FC80 Model Pinfari" at Wiener Prater ranks on the overall list?

 

Are we just listing these to satisfy some people's OCD or are we listing them because people REALLY HONESTLY CARE where that Pinfari ranks among all the coasters in the world.

 

Honest question.

 

Please respond.

 

I vote for as simple as possible.

 

I loved having all the options available for the Beta last year, but honestly, it *did* become daunting to have to scroll thru in order to rank. I was thinking I might just pick my top 20-30, as well as bottom 10, and just ignore everything else.

 

would that terribly skew the results? (or is this the kind of feedback y'all are looking for)?

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I was thinking I might just pick my top 20-30, as well as bottom 10, and just ignore everything else.

 

would that terribly skew the results? (or is this the kind of feedback y'all are looking for)?

I'm not sure how much it would skew things, but for example, expanding more from what I wrote above, what I'll do is the following....

 

Figure out what my top 50 is.... then my bottom ten. and let's say, just for the sake of argument, I have 400 coaters left over. I basically assign them to the following numbers:

 

1-50 - The best coasters I've ever been on!!!

100 - I like that coaster!

200 - I didn't hate it, but I don't need to ride it again.

300 - I don't need to ride it again.

400 - I did not like that coaster!

401 - 410 - The worst coasters I've ever been on!

 

It's just an easy way for me to rank things. And by putting all those middle coasters in "buckets" it does help the overall poll.

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^I had no idea that was a way to do it, when i re-evaluate and add the couple of new coasters I think i'd like to group them.

 

On that note, i'm surprised people really want to rank pinifaris, and things like boomerang clones and slcs and put them in there. I have a fairly small amount of coaster ridden, I think around 80-90 and apart from maybe 15 at the top and 10 at the bottom, and even then it was fairly hard with forgettable or even good coasters to try and sort them into order. I had a bunch of coasters that all were just fun but nothing special that I had no idea which order i'd put those 20-30, I didn't know I could just group them so that will make it much easier this time.

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Yeah I really wouldn't mind if Boomerangs, Pinfaris, and SLCs were omited from the list entirely. The only SLCs I thought were noteworthy at all were Thunderhawk at Michigan's Adventure and Nor'Easter at Morey's, and in both cases, I'm sure it's just in comparison to what else is there. If they had a Batman, I doubt I'd even care about those.

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I admit that I definitely care more about rankings/stats than the average enthusiast (and more than I should), but not including any SLCs or Boomerangs feels like an oversight to me. I think "Fav SLC" is a good option for enthusiasts with high ride numbers, but I agree with AJ that it isn't super friendly to casual enthusiasts.

 

With that said, even I can't imagine caring about the ratings of specific Pinfaris or other small random rides. Not grouping rides and filtering out anything too small/insignificant, which I think is how the list is currently set up, avoids catering to the extreme completists while also not eliminating significant rides for being unpopular.

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So, from the start we set a cutoff as to which coasters were "rankable". That cutoff is the approximate size of a Mack / Maurer wild mouse. We generally don't include anything smaller than that unless it has some significance in the coaster world.

 

The whole "ranking Pinfari coasters" got blown out of proportion a bit. As of the time I write this, there will be only two Pinfari coasters on the list - Tornado at M&Ds in Scotland, and Super 8er at the Prater in Austria. Both of these coasters are compact but certainly above our cutoff in terms of size, and Tornado has two vertical loops to boot. Will they rank on the low end? Most likely. But they fit what our working definition of a "rankable" coaster is, and so they'll be there.

 

We absolutely do not believe that it is worth anyone's time to rank every blasted coaster in the entire world. But at the same time, we don't want to discriminate either, as we want anyone to be able to vote and have their vote counted.

 

As for the SLCs, Boomerangs, etc thing, we're working on a solution that we hope will satisfy both sides of the argument.

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Realizing that I may very well be in the minority, I am one of those that enjoys ranking each individual coaster down to the worst of the worst. I find it interesting to see where people rank rides at my favorite parks, not just see what everyone's top ten consist of. We have a separate thread for that. I don't think there is anything wrong with giving everyone the opportunity to rank as many as possible.

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One issue I did have with Mitch Hawker's (and he acknowledged this in an email I sent him and claimed he'd think about it but well lol) was the Intamin Mega-lites were all individual rides, and far as I know most were exactly the same, layout, stats, everything. I did feel it should be "Fav intamin mega-lite" just so we didnt have 3 or 4 clogging up high spots when they are the same ride.

OFC this would only apply if they were indeed copies of the same ride. Any that is different is fair game! Not a huge deal but something that IDK if its been addressed or not, and if not its just my 2 cents.

 

Glad this is back! I have a lot of new coasters this year, over 25 I believe, and many top 15's Im ready to rank

As always kudos for all the monumental work this must've needed.

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Realizing that I may very well be in the minority, I am one of those that enjoys ranking each individual coaster down to the worst of the worst. I find it interesting to see where people rank rides at my favorite parks, not just see what everyone's top ten consist of. We have a separate thread for that. I don't think there is anything wrong with giving everyone the opportunity to rank as many as possible.

 

While I can imagine why someone would want to rank every coaster we also got to be honest here, what are the odds of the ranking in the mid and lower end to really say anything. I can imagine that most people with more than 150 coasters only really rank the top 20 or so and group the rest. Also, I think that only picking the 'bigger/beter' rides is a smart idea. I for one really don't care about ranking all the wild mouse coasters I've ridden, all the small junior coasters. How fair would the ranking be if people didn't put it in since they don't care?

 

All in, I can see why someone wants to rank all coasters, but I have the feeling the bigger group just want the best ranked and the rest sort of sorted.

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I only have 150 creds but I ranked every single one of them that was included in the list provided, that included deciding which SLC and boomerangs I liked better, because imo there are definitely some installations (Nor'easter @ Moreys) that are not just better, but are like totally different rides from others (Mind Eraser @ SFA).

 

However, I know the Hawker poll just had us pick our fave SLC, boomerang etc and I was fine with that then, so whatever you guys do is fine by me. Either way I'm super stoked for voting to open up, thanks to everyone involved.

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OFC this would only apply if they were indeed copies of the same ride. Any that is different is fair game! Not a huge deal but something that IDK if its been addressed or not, and if not its just my 2 cents.

That's where a bit of curation comes in. Being the team that's making this thing happen, we also have to ask ourselves about coasters that aren't clones, but are so freaking similar that they might as well be. Perhaps every variation of the Intamin Half Pipe (Half Pipe, Surfrider, RC Racer), or every Arrow mine train, or Mack water coasters and SuperSplashes.

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^ When the SLC is the only coaster operating at SFNE when it's 15 degrees out, I'll marathon it. Granted I probably should be checked for even going to a park on a day like that.

 

I look at it as dedication LOL. Plus it’s now a fun SLC. Overall I agree though a lot of these clones are what they are and ranking them is not very necessary.

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Going back to the cloned coaster discussion, my thoughts on this are to break it up by restraints. Obviously, some cloned coasters with different restraints are going to ride better than others.

 

For example, we should have individual rankings for

- SLCs with the old restraints

- SLCs with the KumbaK restraints

- SLCs with the new vest restraints

- Boomerangs with Vekoma trains

- Boomerangs with Arrow trains

- Boomerangs with vest restraints (Carolina Cobra, Speed of Sound, etc.)

- Boomerangs with lap bars

 

You know, like that. Thoughts?

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