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Best coaster per unit length; what coaster utilises its length most effectively?

Matt N

TS Member
Favourite Ride
Shambhala (PortAventura Park)
Hi guys. Frequently, people’s favourite coasters on here are quite long rides. My own favourite coaster is Shambhala, a coaster with over 5,000ft of track, and other common favourites like Steel Vengeance and VelociCoaster are also long rides. But with these being long rides, the length arguably contributes to them being able to be rated so highly and provide so many thrills, and there might be a bit of “padding”, for lack of a better term, in there. With this in mind, as well as many other discussions about short coasters as of late (Hyperia comes to mind…), I’d be intrigued to know; what do people think is the best coaster per unit length? What ride do people feel utilises its track length or duration most effectively?

Personally, I’d nominate a couple of examples.

Firstly, I’d honestly struggle to look past Hyperia at Thorpe Park for this topic. The ride may only be around 30 seconds long, but I’d struggle to think of a more jam packed 30 seconds of roller coaster, with a wide variety of sensations on offer! That first drop is sublime, the Immelmann provides wonderful sustained ejector coming out of it, the outerbank is so wonderful and different, the zero-g stall and final two elements provide some really nice forces, and trim brake aside, I don’t think the ride has a single inch of wasted track!

The second ride I’d nominate isn’t cripplingly short as such, but certainly isn’t insanely long by any stretch, and that’s Iron Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa. The ride is not the longest in the world, but it does so much with the duration it has! There’s so much airtime, with that first drop in particular being insane, there are so many other weird and wonderful negative g sensations on offer like the wave turn and the death roll, and the sense of speed throughout is just absurd! Not an inch of that track is wasted or redundant, in my view; every single element offers something!

But I’d be keen to know; what coaster do you feel utilises its length most effectively?
 
Steel Vengeance. It has less dead spots that Hyperia (hello ending of the ride) and is far longer!

I can think of many long and short coasters though that are pretty non-stop when it comes to thrills. Most RMCs I've done are full on from start to finish. Voltron also, although some would argue that the turntable breaks the flow of the ride (I would argue it is a welcome and necessary break to get your breath back!).
 
Hyperia is a great coaster per second of ride time but I wouldn't say the same per unit of track due to how quickly it blasts through it all. If you want a coaster that packs a lot into a short amount of track I'd go for BPB's Rev. Mouse would have been my choice if it were still with us.
 
Another long coaster that uses all the layout would be EGF. Every second is spent trying to make you land somewhere in the German countryside.
 
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