Today countries are compared against each other for everything.
The United States has the largest GDP, China has the best education scores, whilst Denmark
has the best healthcare.
But I’m here to answer a much more important question: what country has the best roller
coasters?
If you had to guess right now, what would it be?
Do you choose a country known for having lots of roller coasters, or one that you think
might have the best collection of good roller coasters?
How do you even define what a ‘good’ roller coaster is anyway?
Let’s go one question at a time.
What country has the best roller coasters?
Well according to roughly 2700 people, it’s the United States.
That might not surprise anyone really.
The US has over 800 roller coasters, and some of the most visited theme parks in the world.
Rides like Steel Vengeance at Cedar Point, and Lightning Rod at Dollywood, are known
to be amongst the best around the globe.
However, we can make the answer more interesting if we dig a little deeper.
Before that, we’ll answer the other question: how do you define what a ‘good’ roller
coaster is?
The simple solution, ask lots of people to rank the rides they’ve been on from best
to worst, then collate all of that data and create a comprehensive list ranking most of
the roller coasters around the world.
Well, not really that simple I guess.
We did just that last year.
Vote Coasters is a roller coaster poll designed to find the world’s best roller coasters.
In 2020, we polled close to 2700 people, who collectively ranked over 115,000 roller coasters.
They decided that Steel Vengeance at Cedar Point was the world’s best roller coaster,
Zadra at Energylandia in Poland was the second best, and Lightning Rod at Dollywood was the
third best.
If ranking roller coasters is your thing, go and check out the results of Vote Coasters.
If you’re watching in November, whether that’s 2021 or otherwise, Vote Coasters
is live right now.
Click the link in the description to take part and rank your rides.
I’ll explain more at the end of this video.
We can use the results of Vote Coasters to give points to most of the roller coasters
across the globe.
These points were created via a second poll, one which asked people to score roller coasters
at select theme parks to see how much better one was compared to the other.
This produced this relationship, one where the points of each coaster falls quickly with
rank initially, before levelling out.
Essentially, the difference in quality between the 1st and 10th roller coaster is roughly
equal to the difference in quality between the 500th and 575th roller coaster.
In total, 561 roller coasters in the United States were ranked on Vote Coasters, collectively
producing a score of 25462.
The second best country for roller coasters?
That’s Germany, with a score of 4243 from 103 rides.
Germany is home to Europe’s second busiest theme park Europa Park with rides like Wodan
and Silver Star.
It’s also home to the likes of Taron at Phantasialand, one of the world’s best themed
thrill coasters.
Third place goes to my home country, the United Kingdom, where 135 coasters scored a total
of 3911 points.
The UK has large parks like Alton Towers, home to Nemesis and the Smiler, and Blackpool
Pleasure Beach, home to Icon and the UK’s tallest roller coaster, the Big One.
It doesn’t take long to realise that the countries with the most roller coasters often
have the most points.
So, how do things change if we look at the average score per roller coaster in a country,
rather than just the total score?
Well, the opposite happens.
Hong Kong takes the number one spot, with an average score of 45.7 per roller coaster,
thanks to the few rides at Hong Kong Disneyland and Ocean Park.
Singapore is second with 38.4 per coaster, all thanks to Universal Studios Singapore.
Notably, these two countries have 7 and 6 roller coasters respectively.
Third is the Netherlands, with a score of 33.7 per coaster.
The Netherlands is the first larger country to take a rank, owning collectively 56 roller
coasters.
So, we can assume that the Netherlands has one of the highest quality collections of
roller coasters around the world!
I’d say this is pretty accurate.
The Netherlands is home to Untamed and Goliath at Walibi Holland, Fenix and Troy at Toverland,
and Baron 1898 and Joris en de Draak the Efteling!
What happens to the results if we sort by populations, i.e. the number of points per
million of residents.
Once again, smaller countries do well.
Denmark and Finland take the first and second spots; helped by Pirtaten at Djurs Sommerland
in Denmark, and Taiga at Linnanmaki in Finland.
The Netherlands remains in third place - the dutch love their roller coasters!
In comparison, the USA has a population 19 times larger than the Netherlands.
Perhaps instead of looking at the whole country, we should be comparing US states.
What would happen if we compared US States, firstly against each other, and secondly,
against other countries?
You might think that Florida, home to DisneyWorld, Universal Studios, SeaWorld and many more,
would be the best state for roller coasters?
Or perhaps Ohio - which has Kings Island and Cedar Point?
Well, it’s actually California that takes the number one spot.
California is not only home to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and Universal Studios
Hollywood, but also Six Flags Magic Mountain, the park with the single most roller coasters
in the world.
Magic Mountain currently has 19 coasters, soon to be 20 in 2022.
Pennsylvania takes the second spot, with help from Hersheypark, Kennywood and Knoebels.
Ohio comes third, and Florida 5th!
If we place these within our countries list, Germany becomes the best place for roller
coasters, followed by California, then the United Kingdom.
Though, California has half the population of Germany, and half the coasters of Germany
and the UK too.
We’ve already mentioned some of the theme parks around the world helping to boost their
countries' points score, but what happens if we rank theme parks instead?
As you can guess, the parks with the most roller coasters easily take the top spots.
Cedar Point ranks number 1, thanks to its 17 roller coasters, followed by the 19 coasters
at Six Flags Magic Mountain.
In fact, the entire top half of the list is dominated by US theme parks, mainly due to
their size and scale.
The first non-US theme park, Europa Park in Germany, ranks 8th.
Canada’s Wonderland, in, well, Canada, comes in 12th, whilst Alton Towers in the UK is
13th.
It turns out US theme parks really do have the best collection of roller coasters, huh.
Some people fondly remember the year their favourite roller coaster opened.
What if we compare the scores of different years?
What was the best year for introducing new roller coasters?
Unsurprisingly, later years seem to fare better.
2016 has been the best year for roller coasters recently, with the debut of Lightning Rod,
Wildfire, Taron, Mako, Flying Dinosaur, Flying Aces and so many more.
2016 is followed by 2018, another amazing year for roller coasters, thanks to Steel
Vengeance, Hyperion and Time Traveler, amongst others.
Interestingly the year 2000 takes the third spot.
Millennium Force, Superman the Ride, Boulder Dash, Katun and Steel Dragon 2000 all opened
in, you guessed it, 2000.
There’s one more comparison we’ve yet to make, one that I’m sure many roller coaster
nerds would be interested in.
We know what country, theme park and year has the best roller coasters; but which company
makes the best roller coasters?
Well, based on our data, Bolliger and Mabillard (B&M) make the best roller coasters.
This result may be surprising to roller coaster fans initially, but it makes sense.
B&M are known for producing extremely well rounded roller coasters, ones that consistently
rank well.
In second place is Intamin, followed in third by Vekoma, thanks to the large number of roller
coasters they’ve produced.
What about Rocky Mountain Construction, RMC, I hear you cry?
Well, they come in 6th, after both MACK Rides and Gerstlauer!
Like previously though, let’s create an average score per roller coaster to see how
things change.
At this point, RMC flies up the table, ranking first.
RMC has only produced 21 roller coasters so far, a fraction compared to B&M’s 113.
However, most RMC rides are extremely highly regarded, leading to a high score per coaster.
Second is Great Coasters International, GCI.
GCI is known for producing high quality wooden roller coasters, and similarly to RMC, despite
having built only 26 rides, many of these 26 are well respected.
Finally, B&M comes in a very respectable third place.
So there you go, now you know that the United States is the best country for roller coasters,
unless you look at it a different way, then it’s Hong Kong, or Denmark, or Germany?
We can thank the 2700 people that took part in Vote Coasters for that revolutionary insight.
Speaking of which, if you like ranking the roller coasters you’ve ridden, you’ll
love taking part in Vote Coasters.
We refresh the poll annually to find the world’s best roller coasters each year.
We’re collecting rankings for 2021 until the end of November.
Simply click the link in the description, log in to our ranking portal, search for the
roller coasters you’ve ridden, and rank them in your list.
It’s as easy as that.
To learn more click the video on the left, or to see the results of last year's Vote
Coasters poll, click the video on the right.
Anyway, thank you for watching, and we'll see you all next time.