During the ’90s, one of the most enduring battles of all time was waged right before our eyes: the Coaster Wars. As ride manufacturers and the most daring theme park operators raced to build taller, faster, and more extreme rides, thrillseekers found themselves surrounded in new record-breakers year after year. With unthinkable innovations, new ride technologies, and cutting edge coasters debuting, it seemed that the Coaster Wars Crown could be anyone’s.
Today, most parks have calmed their quest to break records. It makes sense. After decades of focusing exclusively on thrillseekers, most operators “woke up” in the mid-2000s to find that they’d kind of forgotten everything else you need to operate a great park – like, y’know, restaurants and shows and family coasters and dark rides… Oops.
While the breakneck speed and ultra-extremes of the Coaster Wars may have quelled, if you’re up to tackle some of the icons of the era, look no further. Here’s our suggested Bucket List for roadtrip-ready ride warriors who want to ride through history and experience landmarks of the Coaster Wars firsthand…
10. Batman: The Ride
Location: Six Flags Great America (Gurnee, Illinois)
Manufacturer: Bolliger & Mabillard
Opened: 1992
Probably the ride most reliably called the start of the Coaster Wars, Batman: The Ride was a revolution. Though it was actually the fourth coaster designed by then-newcomer Bolliger & Mabillard, their first three had all been stand-up coasters. But – at the request of the general manager of Six Flags Great America – their next was something entirely new. Sure, coasters had hung beneath the track before, via Arrow’s swinging and swaying suspended coasters. But B&M’s inverted model was an action-packed, high-intensity, inverting thrill machine with all of B&M’s staples – a pre-drop, four-across seating, wild inversions, and post-Arrow smoothness.
Believe it or not, there are twelve identical copies of Batman: The Ride around the globe (and seven of them carry the “Batman” name). Each is a coaster fans’ dream – if only because the tight inversions, low elements, compact layout, and high intensity represent the best of “early” B&M versus their modern tendancy to default to widely appealing, graceful, giant elements, and less-intense installations. But only Six Flags Great America’s is the first, and the “shot heard ’round the world” for the Coaster Wars.
9. X2
Location: Six Flags Magic Mountain (Valencia, California)
Manufacturer: Arrow
Opened: 2002
With B&M and Intamin bursting onto the scene in the early ’90s, classic coaster manufacturer Arrow went on the offensive. After decades of being the big name in town – first with mine trains in the ’60s, then Double Loops and Corkscrews as standards of the ’70s, and multi-loopers of the ’80s – the arrival of new manufacturers with big ideas pushed Arrow to innovate, too. The ’90s saw some legendary flops from the company, including the Declassified Disaster: Drachen Fire – Arrow’s best imitation of B&M’s look and feel.
2002’s X was supposed to be the company’s magnum opus. X was an unheard of “4th dimension coaster” with riders cantilevered on either side of the track like a B&M wing coaster. The difference is that X’s seats could also rotate (like a modern S&S freespin coaster). However, rather than freely flipping through the ride’s course, a third rail embedded in the track controlled the exact direction riders faced at each moment of the ride, mechanically rotating seats foward, backwards, and upside down relative to the direction of travel.
With the opening of the ultra-complex coaster delayed for more than a year, Arrow ended up filing for bankruptcy, leaving the pink and yellow California coaster as their last. In 2008, a $10 million rebuild saw new trains designed by S&S (who inherited Arrow’s assets) and special effects added along its course, yeilding its current name: X². An absolutely mind-bending experience, X² has to be ridden to be believed… and that’s the power of the Coaster Wars.
8. Flight of Fear
Location: Kings Island (Mason, Ohio)
Manufacturer: Premier Rides
Opened: 1996
For most of coaster history, “launching” trains look a whole lot of effort. In some cases, acceleration was achieved by spinning drive tires worn down by friction over time. In others (like Schwartzkopf’s fabled shuttle loops), heavy counterweights would be dropped or tightly-wound flywheels released, rapidly pulling cables that likewise could fray, splinter, or snap over time due to friction. Premier Rides had an alternative: linear induction motors (LIMs).
The idea is simple. Attach aluminum fins to the sides or undercarriage of a roller coaster train. Line a portion of track with electric motors with a slot perfectly positioned for those fins to slide though. Because aluminum is magnetic only in the presence of an electromagnetic field, when the motors are powered, they’ll magnetically attract the fins into the motors, then repel them out – a launch! Because magnetism is a non-contact force, there’s no flywheel; no cable; no friction! Just a delightful “hum” of electricity as the motors activate and away you go.
Flight of Fear actually co-debuted at both Kings Island and Kings Dominion in 1996. LIM technology had never been applied to a coaster before, but now, LIMs and their sisters, LSM (linear synchronous motors) are tried-and-true, tested technology that powers most modern launched coasters. The power of electromagnetism allows for rolling launches and boosts that a wound cable and catch car never could, so without LIM and LSM technology, there would be no VelociCoaster, Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure, Pantheon, Cosmic Rewind, or Slinky Dog Dash as we know it.
7. Superman: Escape from Krypton
Location: Six Flags Magic Mountain (Valencia, California)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 1997
Speaking of launches, though fabled ride manufacturer Intamin has technically been making roller coasters since the ’70s (in fact, their first coaster might surprise you…), their first serious thrill coaster was 1997’s Superman: The Escape at Six Flags Magic Mountain – the same park that would later host X, and was always a contender for the Coaster Wars crown. Superman: The Escape used LSMs (just a year after the concept’s debut on Flight of Fear) to rocket guests to then-unthinkable height and speed.
Racing down a long straightaway lined with LSMs, Superman’s carts (and twin tracks for higher capacity) accelerated from 0 to 100 mph before turning skyward and racing headlong 328 feet up a 415 foot tower before reversing and falling back to Earth. Superman is literally an icon of the Coaster Wars, and a huge entrance to the market for Intamin, who would continue with boundary-pushing, technological, and ultra-extreme experiences up to and including Superman’s clear relative, Top Thrill Dragster.
Superman is very interesting because technically it’s the first coaster to drop riders over 300-feet and 100 mph… but it’s generally not considered a gigacoaster since it’s not a full-circuit coaster, but a shuttle. Also interesting: because of the limitations of LSMs (relatively gradual acceleration needing lots and lots of motors), it takes Superman 7 seconds to reach top speed. (Which is why, for example, Intamin’s Accelerator coasters like Top Thrill Dragster default to high-pressure hydraulic cable-launched systems to reach their top speeds more quickly.) In 2011, the ride was re-subtitled “Escape from Krypton” and its carts were reversed for a backwards launch and then a forward drop and return to the station (above). But this Coaster Wars icon is still going strong…
6. Apollo’s Chariot
Location: Busch Gardens Williamsburg (Williamsburg, Virginia)
Manufacturer: Bolliger & Mabillard
Opened: 1999
As is typical in B&M’s playbook, they weren’t the first to build a coaster over 200 feet tall (that would be Arrow, with 1989’s Magnum XL-200 at Cedar Point), but they did master the model and make their version the standard across the industry. That started in 1999, with Apollo’s Chariot at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. (That same summer, a second B&M hypercoaster – Raging Bull at Six Flags Great America – also debuted.)
Today, it seems like just about every major amusement park has a 200-foot-tall coaster with an out-and-back layout of airtime hills and bunny hops, and most of them are B&M’s. But after all these years, there’s still something special about Apollo’s Chariot, which arcs gracefully over the forests of Virginia, dipping down and rising along hillsides in a graceful yet powerful ride. (It’s also a perfect name – in Greek mythology, Helios carried the sun across the sky in his chariot each day, until his boastful son Apollo stole it, rising and falling chaotically as he scorched and froze the earth in turn.)
While Cedar Point’s Magnum XL-200 was probably a major first spark of the Coaster Wars, B&M’s popularization of the 200-foot coaster model made it attainable as a headlining ride across the globe, kicking off the mass manufacture of these thrill rides. So when you ride Apollo’s Chariot, you really are riding history… and not just because it’s the ride where Italian supermodel Fabio got hit in a face with a flying goose while taking the first ceremonial ride.
And now we head into the top 5…
5. El Toro
Location: Six Flags Great Adventure (Jackson, New Jersey)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2006
Though so much of the Coaster Wars tends to be focused on the massive steel creations that came of the era, the ’90s and 2000s were also a time when wooden coasters got upsized dramatically. Obviously, the go-to example is the genre’s literal peak: the Lost Legend: Son of Beast which, in 2000, opened as the world’s tallest, fastest, and only looping wooden roller coaster. Son of Beast ended up a bust, but in the years that followed its opening, several innovations in wooden coaster technology came online that changed the industry.
One was Intamin’s entry into wooden coasters: pre-fabricated rides. Practically all wooden roller coasters are built on-site, where wood is sawed and hammered and installed during a coaster’s construction. But Intamin’s supposition was that wooden coasters – like steel – could be pre-fabricated; laser-cut, labeled, and shipped to construction sites ready to be pieced together like LEGO blocks. Pre-fab (sometimes called “plug-and-play”) wooden coasters would remove the imperfections inherent in hand-cut coasters, making a wooden coaster that felt like a steel one; precise, powerful, packed with airtime and – weirdest of all – surprisingly smooth.
Ultimately, only four pre-fabs were built, with El Toro being the third. (The others are in Sweden, Germany, and South Korea.) True to promise, they opened as butter smooth, wildly powerful, and incredibly cool rides capable of reaching immense heights and speeds. Even as Son of Beast was being demolished, El Toro was still a world class ride.
But major issues have befallen two of the four pre-fabs. Germany’s Colossos was closed for three years, requiring extensive rebuilding. El Toro, meanwhile, was closed through nearly all of 2021 after a train partially derailed. It reopened in 2022, only to experience a major malfunction (reportedly, a structural failure) in August 2022, with state investigators determining that the ride was “structurally compromised.” The jury’s out on whether or not El Toro will ever re-open, but as an example of Intamin’s innovation during the Coaster Wars, it’s still a landmark.
4. Xcelerator
Location: Knott’s Berry Farm (Buena Park, California)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2002
In 2002, Knott’s Berry Farm served as the test bed for a whole new model by Intamin – the Accelerator coaster. Conveniently called Xcelerator, the ride was all about the launch. Using a wound cable launch system powered by hydraulic fluid, the ride launched trains from 0 to 82 miles per hour in just over 2 seconds – an absolutely stunning rate of acceleration compared to Superman: The Escape just five years earlier. Then, it turned skyward, racing up a 205 foot top hat and plummeting back down to Earth.
What’s most fascinating about Xcelerator, though, is that it represents Intamin’s first foray into what we know became its most infamous Accelerator – Top Thrill Dragster. In fact, in 2002, Xcelerator was overpowered after hours, with empty trains pumped up to the system’s maximum speed just to see if the hydraulic technology could actually reach the speeds needed to crest a tower twice as high…
To date, Intamin has built 14 Accelerators, and like all of Intamin’s most boundary-pushing installations, most have been plagued with some amount of misfortune, downtime, and outright disaster. As we explored in our in-depth Lost Legends: Top Thrill Dragster feature, the launch cable used on Xcelerator has shredded from friction twice, spraying riders with metallic shrapnel. (One of those instances was caught on camera, but it is distressing to watch.) Xcelerator closed in March 2022 for an unknown mechanical issue and hasn’t re-opened as of press time. Will it? Or, like Top Thrill Dragster itself, will Xcelerator end up being modified or redesigned to lessen its issues? We’ll see…
3. Superman: The Ride
Location: Six Flags New England (Agawam, Massachusetts)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2000
When Intamin launched (no pun intended) onto the scene with Superman: The Escape in 1997, no one could’ve predicted that by time the New Millennium arrived, they “launched coaster” mavens would be generating incredible, world-renowned full circuit coasters, too. But in 2000, Intamin unveiled Superman: Ride of Steel at Six Flags New England (not to be confused with the Superman: Ride of Steel at Six Flags America in Maryland, or Superman: Ride of Steel at Six Flags Darien Lake in New York, which are mirrored twins of each other, but quite different from the Superman: Ride of Steel at Six Flags New England in Massachusetts. Oh, Six Flags…)
Clearly built on the same DNA found in the same year’s Millennium Force, Superman is just a non-stop, adrenaline packed, tear-jerking installation. Though it’s “only” got a 221 foot drop, the ride absolutely flies over a series of out-and-back airtime hills at a relentless 77 mph. For people used to B&M’s ever-present hypercoasters and their graceful, delightful airtime hills, it’s hard to describe how unrelenting Superman is as it charges forward in continuous bouts of weightlessness.
Then, after its first half, the coaster transitions entirely into a weaving, winding, low-to-the-ground course more similar to Intamin’s Maverick (2007) or Intimidator 305 (2010), banking, helixing, rising, twisting, and threading through tunnels. Many of the moves “practiced” on Superman would become Intamin standards. You can feel its influence on VelociCoaster and Pantheon, for example, and in Intamin’s new wild, unpredictable, and odd manuevers like banked airtime hills, stalls, and unexpected directional changes.
Interestingly, in 2009, Superman: Ride of Steel was painted purple, given on-ride audio, “plussed” with new effects, flamethrowers, and scenery, and renamed “Bizarro” after Superman’s mirror image nemesis. (Such “reintroductions” were a common Six Flags tactic in the era, allowing them to re-market an existing coaster as new without too much investment.) In 2016, the Bizarro overlay was removed and the ride was renamed Superman: The Ride (probably to differentiate it from the Rides of Steel in Maryland and New York). Between 2001 and 2015, the ride was consistently ranked either 1st or 2nd on Amusement Today’s Best Steel Coaster awards, never even dipping to third place until 2016. So if you’re looking for a Coaster Wars landmark, here it is.
2. Kingda Ka
Location: Six Flags Great Adventure (Jackson, New Jersey)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2005
In the blinding speed of the Coaster Wars, Cedar Point debuted Top Thrill Dragster in 2003. The ride was plagued by downtime and notoriously unreliable, with then-CEO of Cedar Fair Dick Kinzel calling the ride the “worst mistake” he ever made. It makes sense… the most ultra-extreme, statistically-insane ride on the planet, Kinzel suspected that “half” of Cedar Point guests didn’t even have any interest in riding it at all. In other words, Top Thrill Dragster’s 120 mph, 420 foot tall double-dog-dare-ya experience was a one-step-too-far; a “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should” sign that the Coaster Wars couldn’t go on much longer, and that they’d hit a ceiling.
So naturally, Six Flags decided they wanted one, too. In 2005, Great Adventure unleashed Kingda Ka – a ride that looks suspiciously identical to Top Thrill Dragster but for a different paint job, 36 extra feet, and 8 more miles per hour speed. The tallest and fastest coaster on Earth at the time (today surpassed in speed by Abu Dhabi’s Formula Rossa – another Intamin Accelerator) Kingda Ka has been expectedly plagued by downtime itself. There’s no word on if it will be modified like Top Thrill Dragster, but considering it’s still running, it looks like Six Flags doesn’t have any plans to change that.
Interestingly, if you’re lucky enough to have ridden both Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka, then congratulations – you’ve experienced the only two stratacoasters on Earth. No one else has tried to build a roller coaster over 400 feet, and since these two Accelerators are very extreme, very temperamental, and very difficult-to-maintain, it’s unlikely anyone will again. Frankly, it’s no surprise that for both Cedar Fair and Six Flags, their respective stratacoasters sort of served as the end of their Coaster Wars ambitions.
1. Millennium Force
Location: Cedar Point (Sandusky, Ohio)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2000
If you want to distill the Coaster Wars of the ’90s and 2000s down to a single ride – one, iconic landmark that represents the tug-of-war between statistics, quality, marketing, and longevity, there can be only one must-ride icon: Millennium Force. If you haven’t yet, you absolutely have to make the jump to our in-depth Modern Marvels: Millennium Force feature, exploring the design and construction of this then-incomprehensible coaster. The first true “gigacoaster,” Millennium shattered the 300-foot height barrier (and at the same park that had broken the 100-, 200-, and would soon break the 400-foot ceilings, no less)!
Intamin’s engineering marvel is a work of art. It’s also a relative anomoly in that it seemingly intentionally ignores the conventions you expect of a statistically-enormous ride. Instead of quick transitions and ejector air, Millennium Force is graceful; a soaring, sweeping ride that takes real Mississippi seconds to transition between giant elements. It’s incredibly forceful, but poetic. It hums with power, but glides through its course. By time the coaster reaches the end of its 6,595 foot long course, it feels as if it hasn’t shed a single molecule of its 93 mph top speed.
Sure, plenty of coaster enthusiasts will tell you that Millennium is overrated; “more like Millennium Forceless,” they’ll say. And if you step off the world’s first gigacoaster unimpressed, so be it. But there’s no question that no ride on Earth better represents the Coaster Wars – and more to the point, no better ride to have won it – than Cedar Point’s Millennium Force.
