New Entries in the CoasterBuzz Top 100

Vater said:
Perhaps because it's set for American English?

Siri actually is set on New Zealand.

GoBucks89 said:

Isn't American English redundant?

If it were set to American English, tons would be preferred.

If it had been set to (proper?) British English, then tonnes would be appropriate.

So no, not at all.

Believe me. American English is not redundant.

All of these posts are redundant because they say the same thing over and over and also repeat themselves. In addition, they convey a similar point multiple times.

You should take this issue up with the Department of Redundancy Department.

Anyone thinking Valravn will get on the list tomorrow? When the list is updated?

The algorithm requires that half of the "experienced" riders have ridden a ride. I doubt that has happened for Valravn yet. It usually takes about a year for a very popular ride to qualify.

^ Fury 325, Thunderbird, and others got on almost instantly

If by "almost instantly" you mean about 5 and 4 months respectively, then yes.

California Screamin' is at the number 100 spot right now.

El Toro also inched back into the top spot.

Well hello, Valravn at #53. That's much lower than Griffon and Sheikra at the moment. I expect an upward trend throughout the summer.

After this past weekend, I've got 3 new rides (maybe 4?) that rank VERY highly in my admittedly disorganized book of great rides.

Lightning Run was new-to-me, but I'm honestly a little surprised there aren't multiple copies around the country already. Price, size, and quality make this an ideal ride for small-to-midsize parks looking for a star attraction. Thunderbird is something the major themers should seriously consider - the wingrider genre always felt like something was missing - and the launch seems to fit perfectly. Legend's refurb/rehab turned it into a MUCH more re-rideable option for me.

But the real gem, the true STAR, the unbelievably fantastic ride of the HWN '16 trip...Storm Chaser. It's beyond ridiculous....and I have the bruises to prove it. My thighs feel like hamburger, and I mean that in the very best way.

Agreed. Storm Chaser is simply amazing. And that was only my first RMC. If this is indicative of what they can do, by all means, RMC Mean Streak. Heck, I'd even be happy with an RMC'd Voyage with the same layout, but with the original corkscrew that was intended.

I don't think I've ridden this many new coasters in their inaugural year since 2000 and that was only because SFO debuted 4 new coasters at the same park.

~Rob

Pagoda Gift Shop said:

Well hello, Valravn at #53. That's much lower than Griffon and Sheikra at the moment. I expect an upward trend throughout the summer.

I'm guessing that's likely. I wonder if Valravn's presence among CP's already stacked steel coaster lineup might affect initial ratings downward slightly compared to the BG versions. The genre's relative lack of novelty might also have something to do with it, at least among initial reviewers.

I just had a wonderful trip through Orlando and Tampa. I'm putting in raves for new-to-me coasters Cheetah Hunt, White Lightning, and Sheikra. I was pretty meh on Manta, Kraken, Gringotts, and Seven Dwarfs. I depressingly missed the recent soft open for Mako by a couple days. :-(

Pagoda Gift Shop said:

Well hello, Valravn at #53. That's much lower than Griffon and Sheikra at the moment. I expect an upward trend throughout the summer.

I'll counter you on that- the overall trend has been and usually is to go down the list over time. Here are my educated guesses why:

1. More people ride more coasters as time goes on. There will always be more competition to be on the list than there was the week before.
2. Typically the most enthusiastic people ride first, and then the people who have more modest interest in a new coaster ride it, well eventually. There are people who traveled great distances to be one of the first on Valravn. It stands to reason they would rate higher than average joe enthusiast who plans to ride it one day when he's visiting Ohio. There is a good likelihood he would rate it high, but perhaps not as high of a likelihood as the super-enthusiasts who bought their plane tickets well before it was sane to do so for a new ride :)

Coasterbuzz in general has a pretty heavy Mid-West / East Coast bias, at least compared to some of the other active coaster forums. Is it more likely that people riding Valravn early are people enthusiastically traveling to the park to ride, or is it more locals who are near the park already? I have no answer either way, and Jeff probably wouldn't want to reveal that to avoid vote rigging (assuming Jeff could do some crosswalking between user locations and votes), but it's an interesting question regardless.

Here's a way to get some more anecdotal evidence - has anybody reading this been on all 3 US divers yet? I've now been on both Griffon and Sheikra as of last week and I think Griffon is significantly better. But frankly I can't imagine any of the 3 to be different enough to have wildly different rankings in to 100 once the dust has settled.

To be fair, most of the coasters are in the eastern half of the country, so it's not just the population. As far as local bias, one of the things I did early on with this algorithm was look specifically at Cedar Point data, since fans of that park tend to be, uh, robustly enthusiastic. If I look at the sample of votes that are not included in the calculation due to inexperience, they tend to average higher than those who do have a lot of experience. Despite this, the CP rides are about where I think we would expect them to be. Valravn is scoring just over 4, which seems (in my mind) to align pretty well with what people have described. The feeling is that it's a really good ride, but not one of the best overall. As much as I enjoyed it and gave it a 5, I'm probably not the most refined rider.

By the way, tastes change, and you're always free to change your vote. I like to go through my track record once a year and see if any of my votes should change. Sometimes they change because a ride has declined in experience, and some get better. Others just aren't what I thought they were relative to other rides.

This part of the discussion makes me think about the difference between age and experience.

My "rankings" reflect how I felt about the ride *at the time I rode it.*

As I've gotten older, I find my appreciation for airtime versus inversions grows. I grow less tolerant of roughness on wooden coasters. I used to enjoy what I (still) consider to be aggressive rather than rough. I still do....but don't tolerate Extremely "snappy" transitions are more likely to give me an unpleasant jolt.

It's not the rides themselves....it's me. Getting older sucks.

edit: Also, it means that rides I totally loved back five years ago might be total **** now...but people in better physical condition or 20 years younger than me might still love....or at least love for a greater number of rides.

matt. said:

Here's a way to get some more anecdotal evidence - has anybody reading this been on all 3 US divers yet? I've now been on both Griffon and Sheikra as of last week and I think Griffon is significantly better. But frankly I can't imagine any of the 3 to be different enough to have wildly different rankings in to 100 once the dust has settled.

I have, and I agree with the last sentence entirely - I have all 3 ranked of the US dive machines ranked together in my track record. Valravn is probably the "best" out of the 3 because of the additional elements after the MCBR. They're all really fun rides though.

The top 100 rankings are likely affected by each individuals perception of what constitutes a 5-star coaster. I have about 10% of the coasters I've ridden listed as 5-stars. Others may only have a handful of coasters they consider to be in that category, and some may have 20% of their ranked coasters in that group. I'd love to see a breakdown as to how many 5-star coasters are in track records as a percentage of coasters ridden to get a sense as to how hard it is for a coaster to make an individual's 5-star coaster list. I'd also like to meet the 15+ people out of the 70 Fury 325 riders that gave it less than 5-stars.