Beast - Kings Island. It may not be the tallest, fastest, or smoothest. It many not have a lot of airtime. What it does have is a long furious layout through the forest and an amazing double helix at the end. Beast at night is one of the best coasters in the world, flying through the back woods in pitch dark on an old school wooden coaster having no idea where you are or where your going, that is what it's all about folks.
Goliath - Six Flags Over Georgia The best way to describe Goliath is that it's is a B&M hyper-coaster with an Intamin hyper-coaster layout. I've ridden all the B&M hypers in North America with the one exception of Intimidator at Carowinds, and Goliath blows all of them out of the water. This rides got it all: ejector airtime, floater airtime, intense helix, hill after hill after hill after hill is packed with airtime. Great ride at a great park.
Well then, my #3 coaster would have to be Balder at Liseberg. Of course it's a Ing.-Holzbau Cordes GmbH prefab woodie. It's got a bunch of faults that I look past. Mainly it feels nothing like a wood coaster, it literally has no soul what so ever, the layout is very basic and repetitive, turn, one or 2 hills, turn, over and over, so basically it's a one trick pony, but that trick is pretty amazing, the airtime will take your breath away. Maybe I'm just easily impressed, I I liked it enough to put it all the way up at #3.
Then #3 on my Steel list would have to be Olympia Looping. This BHS looping coaster designed by Anton Schwarzkopf is simply one of the smoothest and most intense coasters I've ridden in my entire life. The ride itself is an amazing sight to behold even if it wasn't portable. When it runs all 5, 7 car, trains, the trains duel several times throughout the ride and it achieves a breathtaking actual capacity of 3,000 people an hour, which is good when it costs in the neighborhood of $8 for each ride.
Favorite Wood Coasters: The Voyage, Ravine Flyer II, Thunderhead, Balder Favorite Steel: Voltron Nevera, Steel Vengeance, Expedition GeForce, Olympia Looping Parks visited: 232, Coasters Ridden: Steel: 894, Wood: 179, Total: 1073
Yeah - things with my new job have been a little insane, so my apologies.
My #3 coaster was discovered last year when I lived in NYC. I made a trip to Six Flags Great Adventure to discover what ended up to be the most insane, smoothest wooden roller coaster I've ever been on. El Toro.
I wasn't quite prepared for the amount of airtime that El Toro delivers on the first few hills. Sitting near the front of the train delivered that ejector airtime that was almost scary. Like, I should probably not have my arms in the air and instinct is telling me to grab the bar type airtime. I loved this ride. I had a day at SFGAdv and I remember riding El Toro 12 times (No queue on a full day on Friday for Fright Fest) while grabbing the rest of the rides once or twice.
Notice the "Oh jesus lord I'm going to crap my pants" look on a few of the people on that train. Good times.
Anyway - the one weird part of El Toro is the smoothness of this ride. I have a bit of a rule when it comes to wooden roller coasters, after a certain height they tend to be more painful and less enjoyable. You see it on Mean Streak, SOB (or did until it ripped itself apart) and occasionally The Boss. El Toro is taller than all of those rides but it rides like a steel hyper coaster. Honestly its hard for me to even describe this as a wooden coaster because it lacks of the rattle and jerkiness that they have. I love wooden coasters, but El Toro is different.
Top 5 wood-5-Goliath 4-Ravine Flyer II 3-Phoenix 2-Voyage 1-El Toro Top 5 Steel- 5-Velocicoaster 4- Maverick 3- Fury 325 2-Steel Vengeance 1-X2 Coaster Count: 444
