While in the planning stages for We Were Inverted in the spring of 2020, I knew I would be adding a Favorites page to showcase all my favorite coasters. It seems like when us coaster nerds talk, we always end up asking each other about our favorites. I thought it made perfect sense to include a page dedicated my favorites, so I decided upon these three categories: Favorite Overall, Favorite Steel, and Favorite Wood. You know, the standard categories we all use?
I would have never expected to have so much trouble putting that list together. It didn’t seem to be the case at first, but once I got beyond my first few favorites, I started second guessing every pick. I sometimes found myself dropping something I enjoyed riding more because I knew the other coaster was technically “better” in terms of elements, scale, technology, etc. So yeah, it veered off course from being a favorites list. I kept fighting with myself with that dilemma and moving coasters up and down. Then it just came time that I couldn’t work on it anymore.
I aimed for a June 29, 2020 launch for We Were Inverted because it was the same day as the King-Sized Season Pass Holder, First Rider event for Candymonium at Hersheypark. I wanted to visit Hershey, experience the ride, and have that first impressions blog on the site Day One. And I did. As a matter of fact, of my 10 new credits in 2020, Candymonium is the only one that appears on my current favorite listings. I snuck into my list with just my one ride when I got home that day.
It goes without saying that I’ve now had six months to more fairly judge Candymonium and my feelings have changed quite a bit. It’s just one more thing that made me want to redo my listings. Not even fine tune them. Literally, blow it up and start over.
How I've Been Preparing My Lists
For the past couple of weeks I have been compiling and recompiling my list. I didn’t open the existing one at all, and still haven’t. I’m curious to see how different it will be. I had some really good rides on a number of coasters this year that will surely see some of them rise, namely Hersheypark’s Skyrush. That’s making a huge jump, I’m sure. Even Hershey’s Sidewinder, the park’s Vekoma Boomerang, gave some good rides. While that won’t be jumping up into my top favorites or anything, it’s certainly distancing itself from the other Boomerangs.
To create my new listings, I took my spreadsheet and ranked every single coaster all over again. All 371 one of them, including the kiddie coasters and countless boardwalk coasters are now ranked. Talk about tough and maybe even slightly pointless too once I got into that territory. Still, it felt right to have all my credits represented.
The criteria I insisted on using on this go around was to rank them based off whether I’d rather ride one coaster over those above or below it. Meaning, if I’d rather ride “Coaster C” than “Coaster A” then I ranked it above. Just like last time, I kept moving things around. The difference this time, I didn’t take anything into consideration other than my preference to ride one over another. This created some strange situations too. For example, how can you truly rank something like Knoebels‘ Black Diamond against something like, let’s say Timmy’s Half-Pipe Havoc at Nickelodeon Universe in the American Dream Mall in New Jersey? Timmy’s is probably a better coaster element-wise, although I do find it to be a one-trick pony and not overly exciting. The better ride experience and sentimental value for me is with Black Diamond, so it ranks higher. I’m sure once I publish these listings, there will a number of cases like this one where people say, “Really?” This is why I wrote this blog.
Unveiling The New Lists
Over the course of the following week I will be uploading my all-new listings to the Favorites page, featuring several changes. Instead of just showcasing the Top 50 Overall, Top 25 Steel, and Top 25 Wood, I will be showing every coasters under each category. Yes, that means these lists are going to get quite long, but it will let people find every coasters I’ve experience and where it ranks. I often have people ask me about coasters that fell outside of those Top 25 or 50 ranges.
The only sub-category I will be keeping of the six originals (Top 5: Bobsled, Flying, Inverted, Mountain, Stand-Up, and Wing) will be the one for Mountain Coasters. I am keeping them in a separate category, but will also try my hardest to plug them in on my overall listing as well.
Accompanying each update to the Favorites page, I will publish a blog talking about why I ranked some of the coasters for each where I did. I’ll talk about things that influenced my picks in certain cases and even some of the difficulties I had putting together the particular list. This is the order in which those lists/blogs will be added to the site:
- Mountain Coasters
- Wooden Coasters
- Steel Coasters
- Overall (Combined)
