Theme Park Tourist is a populist website. We care about what our readers think, and that’s why we have an ongoing system in place to hear your voice. Each time you visit, you can vote for your favorite theme park attractions around the world. You can rank each one based on a five-star scoring system. Under this system, we know what you love and what to read about the most. Today, I’m taking one of your dearest topics and writing about your absolute favorites. Here are the nine best roller coasters in the world according to Theme Park Tourist readers.
9. Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride
Much of this site’s content focuses on Disney and Universal attractions. Your vote is more inclusive than that. This is Universal’s only entry, and Disney has only one as well. Neither earns placement in the top three, either. For all the wonderful aspects of both parks, you prefer other places for their roller coasters.
Still, Revenue of the Mummy: The Ride is your 13th favorite attraction overall, which means that it’s close to perfect. It features a brilliant marriage of premises from the original movie trilogy combined with indoor roller coaster design. At one point, you can even smell and touch the flames as the fire threatens your life.
While many of the attractions you love feature the liberating feeling of open air whipping against your face, it’s the claustrophobia of this Universal coaster that makes it great. You truly worry whether you will escape the wrath of the dread mummy.
8. El Toro – Six Flags Great Adventure
Oddly, only one of your favorite nine roller coasters is wooden. You don’t even rank any hybrid coasters as highly as steel coasters. Clearly, you have a type. Given that information, El Toro must be special. After all, it’s the sole wooden roller coaster to earn a spot on the list. When El Toro opened, it broke a lot of records and still stands as one of the tallest and fastest wooden roller coasters in the world. It also has one of the largest drops. El Toro was an instant classic that remains in the conversation for best wooden roller coaster more than a decade later.
7. Cheetah Hunt – Busch Gardens Tampa Bay
Cheetah hunting sounds illegal, but Busch Gardens Tampa Bay somehow makes it thrilling. In 2011, they added this explosive launch coaster that goes from zero to 60 miles per hour in a matter of seconds. That’s the explanation for the theme, too. Nothing’s faster than a cheetah, right? You’ll feel like one as you tear through 4,429 feet worth of track in only three minutes. This one’s all about velocity, and you clearly love it.
One other note: Cheetah Hunt is currently the 11th ranked attraction on the Theme Park Tourist Top 100. So, everything that you read from this point forward is one of your ten favorite attractions overall, too. Suffice to say that Theme Park Tourists are coaster fanatics. These rides comprise more than half of the top ten.
6. Mystery Mine – Dollywood
This is the head-bumping-est ride on the list, and I say that as someone who lives within an hour of the park. Mystery Mine is truly unique by current roller coaster standards, as the goal of the attraction is to mess with your perspective.
At times, you will face straight up, staring at the roof. That’s by design. As much as any roller coaster ever constructed, Mystery Mine controls the line of sight, almost as if it’s a dark ride structure married to the tracks of a standard coaster. Out of all the coasters you’ve voted for, the presence of Mystery Mine is most surprising because it’s clearly not for everyone due to the bumps, bruises, and nausea it causes. Clearly, its diehard supporters have elevated it to the top of Theme Park Tourist’s Top 100 due to the originality, which is commendable.
5. Nemesis – Alton Towers
Ski-lift roller coasters are such a wonderful idea. Your feet dangle helplessly as you experience roller coaster tracks from a different perspective. You’re hanging from them rather than riding on them. It adds a level of excitement that isn’t possible when you’re in a regular seated position with ground under your feet.
Nemesis at Alton Towers is your favorite example of the inverted roller coaster, the one with a ski lift design. This ride is almost 25 years old, but it’s just as good as ever today, which is another aspect of this coaster style. The technology hasn’t improved much since the 1990s, so the best rides then are still the best today. As one of the first hanging coasters, it’s fitting that Nemesis evokes so much passion this long after its debut in 1994.
4. Expedition Everest – Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Disney heard the criticism for years. They didn’t construct thrill rides, and their parks were worse for it. Imagineers resented the implication and eventually took steps to refute that silly argument. They built a sublime steel roller coaster that did more than deliver thrills.
As is the Disney way, Expedition Everest also diverted expectations. Sure, it has that glacial build as the rider climbs almost 200 feet in the air. It doesn’t have tracks that drop you straight down from there…well, not ones that you can see. Instead, Disney sagely chose to shoot riders backwards into the dark, spinning the standard roller coaster format into a reverse thrill ride into the abyss. It’s exactly the sort of combination everyone should have expected from Disney.
On one hand, the ride delivers on its promise as a kickass roller coaster. On the other hand, it does so on Disney’s terms rather than following conventional roller coaster design.
3. The Beast – Kings Island
By far the oldest ride on this list, The Beast’s roots trace all the way back to 1979, the Jimmy Carter administration. In other words, unless you’re over the age of 38, you weren’t even born when Kings Island constructed one of your three favorite roller coasters in the world.
The Beast has stood the test of time for two primary reasons. One is that coaster fanatics love and embrace the classics. The other is the clever design. When it opened in 1979, it was the tallest, fastest, and longest roller coaster in the world. All of those records have long since fallen by the wayside. What hasn’t changed is the visionary design.
The Beast starts you with a turn as you exit the boarding station. Then, it adds a climb 110 feet into the air before plunging the rider 135 feet straight down, a stunning accomplishment for a coaster from 1979. It was once the pinnacle of ride design. Even today, it remains one of the cleverest and most imitated ride structures in the industry.
2. Maverick – Cedar Point
Cedar Point’s marketing team is quick to describe it as the Roller Coaster Capital of the World. Theme Park Tourist readers clearly agree. How else would we explain what I’m about to say? One of Cedar Point’s newer roller coasters, Maverick, is the second highest rated coaster on the Top 100. It’s also only the second highest rated coaster from Cedar Point. Yes, one park claims the top two spots on our charts. If that’s not dominance, I don’t know what is.
Built in 2007, Maverick is a steel roller coaster that launches at tremendous pace. The ride accelerates from zero to 70 miles per hour in roughly three seconds. That’s also its top speed, but I wouldn’t describe the launch as the best feature. Instead, it’s the amazing 95-degree drop that occurs during the ride. Yes, that’s more than straight down.
Perhaps the most stunning part of Maverick is that the version that you love so much isn’t even the intended one. Cedar Point originally had a heartline roll as part of the roller coaster. That element proved too brutal on riders, and so park planners replaced it with an s-curve. Yes, one of the most intense coasters on the planet could have been even more severe. The only limitation was…the human physique. Mankind simply isn’t tough enough for what Maverick was capable of delivering.
1. Millennium Force – Cedar Point
When you’re right, you’re right. It’s a tautology that’s particularly true here. Since its inception in 2000, Millennium Force has lorded over the competition as THE greatest roller coaster of the 21st century. Many imitators and potential successors have followed it. All of them have failed to wrest the title away, though. Millennium Force is unquestionably the best ride in the world for adrenaline junkies.
Perhaps the most impressive part of Millennium Force’s reign of dominance is that so many of its stats are still among the greatest in the world. Almost 17 years after its arrival, this roller coaster is still among the tallest, fastest, and longest in the world. It goes 93 miles per hour, offers an 80-degree drop, covers 6,595 feet worth of track, and contains a top G-force of 4.5. Today, it’s difficult to encapsulate what a quantum leap Millennium Force was back in 2000, but the fact that its metrics are still so impressive is telling. You’re right to vote it the best roller coaster in the world…because it is and it has been since the turn of the millennium.
