Hello and welcome to the debut of the Golden Cog Awards,
a fun roller coaster based community poll
with the aim of accurately representing the people’s opinions.
To start with off, we have decided to specifically find the UK’s best thrill coaster,
as of 2017.
To do this, we enlisted your help.
If you are active over on my social media channels, you would have seen this poll.
Over 100 people were asked if they had ridden any two of the 23 UK roller coasters
currently shown on screen.
If so, they were then told to list the coasters they had ridden,
from the selection,
in order of best to worse.
Here comes the interesting part.
Instead of using a point based system to score and rank the coasters,
we followed a similar approach to the highly regarded polls run by Mitch Hawker.
In this system,
each roller coaster is evaluated against all of the other roller coasters within the poll.
The placement of the two attractions in the lists submitted by the community
determine the winner.
For example, if The Smiler scored higher than Galactica in someone’s list,
we’d tally one point to The Smiler.
This is then done for all of the submitted lists, resulting in either the Smiler or Galactica
winning the head to head.
Once this has been done for all of the attractions,
we use the percentage of battles won to determine the ranking of the coasters.
If one roller coaster has 1 win and 3 losses, it would score 25%.
That being clarified, let’s move onto the results.
Before taking a look at the full ranking featuring all 23 roller coasters,
we’ll briefly discuss the UK’s top 10 thrill coasters as decided by you guys.
10. The Big One
Arguably one of the UK’s most iconic roller coasters,
it can be found at the perimeter of Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
9. Nemesis Inferno
Thorpe Park’s own take on the classic B&M inverted coaster.
8. Speed: No Limits
Located at Oakwood Theme Park, the ride was the UK’s first Gerstlauer eurofighter.
7. Saw: The Ride
The world’s first horror film themed roller coaster, also located at Thorpe Park.
6. Oblivion
Found within the X Sector at Alton Towers, the ride is the world’s first B&M dive coaster.
5. Megafobia
As of 2017, Oakwood’s only wooden coaster is the newest of its kind in the UK.
4. Stealth
The tallest roller coaster at Thorpe Park, and the fastest in the United Kingdom.
3. The Smiler
The world’s first 14 inversion roller coaster and Alton Towers current flagship attraction.
2. The Swarm
Thorpe Park’s, and the UK’s, first and only wing coaster.
And finally, crowned the UK’s best thrill coaster by the Coaster Bot community
is Nemesis.
Nemesis, is loved by enthusiasts for it’s forceful layout,
interesting terrain and smooth ride experience.
The attraction is highly regarded worldwide as one of the best B&M inverted roller coasters to date.
It may not be the tallest ride, but it packs more than just a punch.
The full ranking, from 1 to 23,
as well as the percentage win scores can be seen onscreen now.
Notable rankings include Colossus, at 23, with a score of less than 3%;
Kumali beating Odyssey by a single place in the battle of the SLCs;
as well as 13, a roller coaster that blurs the line between thrill and family, out placing Rita.
The full list can also be found in the description of this video.
Well, that’s been it from the first ever Golden Cog Awards.
Let me know your thoughts of the results,
as well as if you think we should do more polls in the future, in the comments below.
Also, be sure to share the list graphic, again in the description,
with your friends and other enthusiasts.
Thank you watching, and I’ll see you all next time.