Wooden roller coasters. The very idea may strike fear into the heart of some thrill ride enthusiasts. But for the better part of a century, these thrill machines reigned supreme. Wooden roller coasters were the bread-and-butter of amusement parks; in fact, they were the only roller coasters.
Of course, the advent of the modern steel coaster (Disneyland’s Matterhorn, by the way) redefined what roller coasters could be, do, and feel like and ushered in the half-century leading unto today: an era of super-fast, super-smooth steel giants capable of unthinkable acrobatics, lightning-fast launches, and gravity-defying inversions that have changed the industry.
But don’t count wooden coasters out. From the dominant thrills on the planet to rough, niche artifacts of a bygone era, wooden roller coasters are now entering a resurgence of their own.
Wooden roller coasters that feel smooth as steel…
Wooden roller coasters that twist riders upside-down…
Wooden roller coasters that launch…
As we enter a new era of what “woodies” can do, let’s trace a century-long timeline to explore nine of the wildest wooden rollers of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Would you tackle these wooden behemoths?
Note: We’ll include an embedded on-ride, point-of-view video for each coaster. You’ll notice that each is recorded via a camera mounted to the train and approved by the park. It’s dangerous and often unlawful to record a roller coaster using a hand-held camera or phone. Don’t do it. Basically any ride you’d ever care to record was already filmed professionally and is posted on YouTube.
1. Thunderbolt
Image: Fen Labalme, Flickr (license)
Location: Kennywood (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania)
Opened: 1924
Kennywood – located just outside of Pittsburg – is a true American classic. Not only does the park feature the world’s oldest operating dark ride (dating to 1901), it offers three classic coasters dating to the 1920s. Though not the oldest of the three, Thunderbolt is perhaps the wildest. Though it opened in 1927 as the Pippin, the ride was majorly expanded in 1968 and reopened as the Thunderbolt.
Kennywood itself is built on steep ravines and cliffs over the Monongahela River, as used expertly by the park’s starring modern coaster, Phantom’s Revenge (which features a 160 foot lift hill, but a second drop of 228 feet, diving over the cliff’s edge). There along that same drop-off rests the Thunderbolt’s station… evidence of its near century of service, the ride features no gates in the station, and even still uses a manual brake for the station attendant to slow and release the train.
And perhaps the most stunning moment of the ride is its intro, as the train slowly inches its way out of the station… and over the cliff. The Thunderbolt drops 50 feet into the ravine, then circles back to solid ground for the second half (placing the lift hill halfway through the ride) where it dives and helixes before going over the cliff again for its largest drop – 90 feet. Thunderbolt is truly a thundering classic and a Kennywood staple.
2. The Racer
Image: CoasterImage
Location: Kings Island (Cincinnati, Ohio)
Opened: 1972
Any look at legendary wooden roller coasters has to include The Racer, opened alongside Kings Island in 1972. That’s because, in the decades before Kings Island’s opening, the allure of the roller coaster had more or less come to an end. The World Wars had stalled amusements in the first half of the 20th century, with a gradual renaissance through the ’60s. But the Racer – the tallest and fastest roller coaster ever at the time of its opening – is credited by the American Coaster Enthusiasts as a Coaster Landmark for kicking off the Second Golden Age of the Roller Coaster.
The ultra-classic, twin-tracked out-and-back ride coasts along the park’s Coney Mall (a midway dedicated to Cincinnatti’s Coney Island, which the new park replaced). In 1982, the red and blue sides instead became “forwards” and “backwards” – the first racing roller coaster to ever have one of its tracks run backwards. The ride was put in forward motion again in 2007.
Even still, the Racer’s biggest claim to fame may be that it was the site of an on-location episode shoot of The Brady Bunch in 1973. That episode – “The Cincinnatti Kids” – famously featured the blended family riding the Racer together. Believe it or not, though, the Bradys weren’t the first famous family to ride the Racer for TV. The Bradys’ competitors, The Patridge Family, filmed their own Kings Island episode – “I Left My Heart in Cincinnatti” – during the park’s opening year in 1972.
3. The Beast
Image: Kings Island
Location: Kings Island (Cincinnati, Ohio)
Opened: 1977
Perhaps the most legendary wooden roller coaster of all time, The Beast at Kings Island lives up to its name. Set on the outskirts of the park’s Rivertown settlement, the ride’s station is an old, decaying mill on the edge of the forest where bloodied signs warn of sightings of a nondescript “Beast.” Fittingly, the ride is perhaps best known for how little is known about it…! Though its 110 foot tall lift hill can be seen from certain angles inside of the park, the rest of the ride’s course is buried below the tree line of the dense Ohio hillsides that the ride calls home. The Beast rumbles along at ground-level, darting in and out of tunnels and banking along hillsides in a one-of-a-kind ride experience spread over 35 acres, roaring through the landscape at speeds up to 65 miles per hour.
The Beast is especially renowned for its legendary night rides, where trains are dispatched one-by-one, leaving the warm lights of Rivertown behind and entering the forest where – without a single light in sight – the ride howls through the dark woods with nothing but moonlight as a guide. The ride’s equally-astounding finale is a 540° enclosed helix accessed by way of a seemingly-innocuous, gradually-tilting drop that’s absolutely mind-blowing.
Celebrating its 40th birthday next year, the Beast is still the longest wooden roller coaster on Earth at 7,359 feet long – nearly a mile and a half, with a 4:30 second ride time.
And we can’t forget about its sequel (opened when the park was the more cinematic Paramount’s Kings Island). That Lost Legend: Son of Beast, was the world’s tallest, fastest, steepest, and only looping wooden roller coaster when it opened in 2000. Of course, the ride is a Lost Legend for a reason… if only Paramount had held out another year, they would’ve seen the complete revolution of wooden roller coasters… And our next entry is the perfect example… Read on…
4. El Toro
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr
Location: Six Flags Great Adventure (Jackson, New Jersey)
Opened: 2006
“What makes a roller coaster wooden?” At least for most of thrill ride history, that dichotomy has been rather straightforward… Wooden roller coasters are very different from their steel counterparts. Sure, they’re made of wood. But they’re also associated with a very particular experience: bumping, shuffling, rumbling, roaring, rough, and wild.
The “signature” of a wooden roller coaster is – in many ways – its chaos, created inherently by the way it’s built: with wood that’s sawed, cut, hammered, and bolted on-site. The roughness of wooden roller coasters is built-in by way of the imperfections that arise in this process as well as the way wood naturally ages and wears. Whether you love or hate the sensation, when you’re on a wooden roller coaster, you know it… Right?
Image: Joel A. Rogers, CoasterGallery.com
Swiss manufacturer Intamin – risk-taking creators of ground- and record-breaking rides like Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster, and Maverick – came up with an alternative. El Toro is the third roller coaster made of their pre-fabricated track (sometimes called a “Plug and Play” model). Highly engineered, the supports and track for these coasters are literally laser-cut in a laboratory and shipped to the site with assembly instructions (“Insert slot A on piece 881 into slot A on piece 882 and tighten with bolt 9F”), piecing together almost like LEGO blocks.
The precision of this process minimizes the inherent errors in other wooden roller coasters, creating a beautiful, powerful, and smooth wooden roller coaster that begins with a high-speed elevator cable lift, tackles a 181 foot, 75° drop like it’s nothing, sails over out-and-back airtime hills like butter, then races into a twisting, banking, wild finale. So while you’re definitely on a wooden roller coaster, you might not guess it with your eyes closed.
5. The Voyage
Image: Holiday World
Location: Holiday World (Santa Claus, Indiana)
Opened: 2006
Predating Disneyland and opening in 1946 as Santa Claus Land, Indiana’s premier theme park (known for its free parking, free sunscreen, and free soft drinks) has since expanded to include holidays well beyond its Christmastime origins. Along the way, the famous family park has evolved into a Mecca for wooden coaster fans. First came 1995’s Raven, a harrowing 85 foot coaster in the park’s Halloween area. It was joined by the 99 foot tall Legend in 2000.
Image: Holiday World
For many coaster fans, though, Holiday World’s magnum opus opened in 2006 in the park’s Thanksgiving section. The Voyage is a 160 foot tall coaster whose pricetag topped $8 million. And while – at first glance – it may look like your standard out-and-back wooden coaster, the airtime machine quickly morphs into something else.
It races out into the park’s remote woods, twisting and turning and darting through hidden tunnels. Just when you think it must be over, The Voyage has more up its sleeves. The ride is seemingly endless, measuring in at 6,442 feet (well over a mile) with an almost-inconcievable 24.3 cumulative seconds of weightlessness. Fans especially gush over its legendary underground triple-down, when the coaster races down a series of quick drops, flipping stomaches and earning screams.
6. Outlaw Run
Image: Silver Dollar City
Location: Silver Dollar City (Branson, Missouri)
Opened: 2013
Though Intamin may have played with the conventions of wooden coasters with their Plug and Play track, newcomers Rocky Mountain Construction (RMC) re-wrote the rulebook a decade later. In 2011, RMC overhauled the infamously rough Texas Giant at Six Flags Over Texas, tearing out the aging giant’s wooden track and using the leftover structure beneath to install new “IBox” steel track.
The reborn New Texas Giant was smooth, wild, twisted, unpredictable… and steel. In 2013, Six Flags ordered the same IBox treatment for Six Flags Fiesta Texas’ Rattler, creating the equally extreme Iron Rattler – also steel. RMC’s IBox overhauls became a way for parks to turn their aging wooden giants from the ‘70s and ‘80s into anchoring attractions once more via a steel conversion (with 8 such rebuilds to date).
Image: Joel A. Rogers, CoasterGallery.com
But in 2013, they also debuted Outlaw Run, their first from-scratch creation (above). Unlike the IBox steel track, Outlaw Run uses what RMC called “Topper Track.”
While all wooden roller coasters have a thin metal running strip for the train’s wheels, Topper Track replaces the top two layers of wood entirely with a steel “box” set atop six layers of laminated wood. Naturally, that caused enthusiasts to wonder, how thick can that top layer be before a wooden coaster becomes a steel coaster?
In the years since, the consensus has more or less been reached that Outlaw Run – and other Topper Track RMC coasters – do count as wooden roller coasters, even if by nature of their composition, they can do what no other wooden coasters can. And with that in mind, Outlaw Run’s three inversions (a 153° overbanked turn and a double heartline roll) would make it the first wooden roller coaster after Son of Beast to turn riders upside down… albeit, much more gracefully.
7. Flying Turns
Image: Knoebels
Location: Knoebels Amusement Resort (Elysburg, Pennsylvania)
Opened: 2013
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, seaside amusement piers and family picnic parks began to add classic “leap-the-dips” style “scenic railroads” and other early versions of the wooden coaster. One example of such thrills in the era was the bobsled coaster, especially popular in the 1930s. On-board, a lift hill would carry riders to the top of a twisting trough, somewhat like a halved pipe. In this freewheeling ride arrangement, the weight of the loaded vehicle would dictate the path of the ride as the car swerves and slaloms up and down along the curved walls of the trough.
The last of the classic wooden bobsleds closed in 1974, but the ride style made a resurgence in the 1980s and ’90s in steel form, including Kings Dominion’s Avalanche, Six Flags Over Texas’ La Vibora, and Cedar Point’s Declassified Disaster: Disaster Transport. But one park was dedicated to reviving the lost craft of wooden bobsled coasters. In 2006, Knoebels – a beloved, classic family amusement park in eastern Pennsylvania – announced that it would build the first modern wooden bobsled, Flying Turns.
For literally years, Knoebels worked diligently to perfect the exact specifications required of a wooden version of the ride (an art last practiced in 1941). The results speak for themselves by way of the spectacular Flying Turns. Don’t let its miniscule statistics fool you. Flying Turns is a destination for wooden coaster enthusiasts, providing what can truly be described as a one-of-a-kind ride experience, twisting and swaying through the beautiful wooden interior of this bobsled coaster.
8. Wicker Man
Image: Alton Towers
Location: Alton Towers (Staffordshire, England)
Opened: 2018
Great Coasters International (or GCI) has been building wooden roller coasters since 1996, when their Wildcat debuted at Hersheypark. In the two decades since, more than two dozen GCI coasters have been built, each packed with personality. While Intamin and RMC test the limits of what wooden coasters can do, GCI is content sticking to what works. Their roller coasters are renowned for their lateral Gs and airtime, sending riders sailing through low-to-the-ground manuevers, slaloming and snaking along the terrain in relentlessly quick layouts.
GCIs aren’t about intensity, they’re about being nimble and aerodynamic; twisting and snaking and hopping over the landscape. Most any GCI creation exemplifies this unique role, including Prowler at Worlds of Fun, Wodan Timbur Coaster at Europa Park, Apocolypse at Six Flags Magic Mountain, Invadr at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Mystic Timbers at Kings Island, and the ill-fated Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa. For our highlight today, though, consider one of GCI’s newest.
Image: Alton Towers
Alton Towers in the U.K. is a themed thrill park centered around a centuries-old historic estate and gardens – ingredients for a one-of-a-kind park, anyway. Then, add in the unique restrictions the park faces (including keeping all coasters hidden more or less beneath the treeline) and you arrive at some clever solutions for thrills. Naturally, GCI’s terrain-hugging coaster is the perfect match for such a park, and overlaid with a theme based on the British 1973 horror mystery film The Wicker Man, it’s the perfect candidate for our ranking.
The ride’s ornate preshow sets the scene. Set to be sacrified to the burning, 60-foot wooden effigy, riders careen across the British countryside, dart through tunnels of light and smoke, and smash through the 6-story ram-headed centerpiece as it crackles, burns, and smokes. The coaster dips, dives, and intertwines within itself, turning GCI’s out-and-back layout on its head to create a smouldering, steaming, coiled collection of lumber that creates a stunning family coaster.
9. Lightning Rod
Image: Marcus Dorsey, Flickr
Location: Dollywood (Pigeon Forge, Tennessee)
Opened: 2016
Lightning Rod at Dollywood has been… well… a lightning rod for controversy.
When the ride opened in 2016, it was (and remains) the only launched wooden roller coaster ever. While the idea might conjure images of jackhammering and splintering wood, Lightning Rod is yet another RMC original utilizing that “Topper Track” that helps smooth out wooden roller coasters (perhaps too much, if you ask some enthusiasts).
Image: SmokyMountains.com
Lightning Rod’s launch – produced by linear synchronous motors lining the lift hill, like Cedar Point’s Maverick – accelerates the ride to 45 miles per hour, cresting it over the initial hill and sending it racing through a terrain-hugging, extreme course that includes an outside banked turn, a legendary “quadruple down” airtime maneuver, a 165 foot drop, and top speeds of 73 miles per hour – making it the fastest wooden roller coaster on Earth, too.
But innovation comes at a price – and we don’t just mean the ride’s $22 million price tag. Originally set to open in March 2016, the ride’s opening was frustratingly delayed until June. One week later, it closed again, opening sporadically for “technical rehearsal” throughout summer 2016 – the last thing either Dollywood or RMC would want for their summer blockbuster.
The ride similarly went down in early July 2018, missing the bulk of the park’s summer season. Though rumors suggested that the ride’s signature and allegedly troublesome launch would be replaced with a traditional chain lift, the ride re-opened unexpected in mid-October with a new zero-car on each train, some light reprofiling in one notorious spot, and a few LSM motors removed from the end of the launch. Whatever the case, those lucky enough to have ridden Lightning Rod proclaim it as one of the best roller coasters on Earth, period, and certainly an icon of wild wooden roller coasters.
