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European Coaster Poll 2024 (RESULTS)

The winter closed season is almost over and half term events are just around the corner, so it's time for things to get serious. After 8 rounds of matches, the league stage has come to an end and the top 16 rides enter the knockouts!

Here's the league table, sorted by points, Buchholz coefficient and goal difference. As you can see, there's a couple of shocks, including previously perenial winner Helix not even making it through the league phase!

GD Buchholz Points
1 Voltron 121 118 24
2 Gotham City Escape 48 121 21
3 Zadra 90 119 18
4 Wodan 23 105 16
5 Lech Coaster 45 100 16
6 Taron 30 129 15
7 Taiga -16 125 15
8 Ride To Happiness 18 116 15
9 Untamed 29 99 15
10 Karnan 25 84 15
11 Toutatis 35 112 13
12 Hyperion 26 96 13
13 Kondaa 30 89 13
14 Shambhala 24 112 12
15 iSpeed -44 90 12
16 Expedition GeForce 26 88 12​
------------------------------------------------
17 Hyperia -8 85 12
18 Black Mamba -23 84 12
19 Goliath -18 73 12
20 Wildfire -13 105 11
21 Helix 4 119 10
22 Katun -37 83 10
23 FLY -27 102 9
24 Oz'Iris -28 99 9
25 Colossus -36 76 9
26 Balder -14 70 9
27 Blue Fire -29 65 9
28 Silver Star -9 85 7
29 Monster -70 76 6
30 Superman -87 75 3
31 Dragon Khan -72 68 3
32 Red Force -43 64 3​

Here's the Round of 16, as usual the poll closes at Sunday midnight and the last 8 will begin next Monday!
 
Excellent work so far, thanks for organising. A few surprising results in there but without knowing where each ride picked up wins and losses it's hard to say how much of that is just luck of the draw. Helix and Wildfire in particular look to be very unlucky as had they won one of their drawn matches either would presumably have gone though? Similarly a couple of votes either way could have seen Hyperia or Mamba qualify in place of EGF without even needing to change the result of a single "match".

I think "goal difference" is fairly self-explanatory given the format of the competition but I've never encountered Buchholz before. Looks like a way of measuring how well each ride did normalised by the strength of the opposition but I can't quite figure out how it's calculated - wiki suggests two methods, neither of which seem to lend themselves to negative scores, can you give a bit of background as to how it's been applied here?
 
John said:
Excellent work so far, thanks for organising. A few surprising results in there but without knowing where each ride picked up wins and losses it's hard to say how much of that is just luck of the draw. Helix and Wildfire in particular look to be very unlucky as had they won one of their drawn matches either would presumably have gone though? Similarly a couple of votes either way could have seen Hyperia or Mamba qualify in place of EGF without even needing to change the result of a single "match".

I think "goal difference" is fairly self-explanatory given the format of the competition but I've never encountered Buchholz before. Looks like a way of measuring how well each ride did normalised by the strength of the opposition but I can't quite figure out how it's calculated - wiki suggests two methods, neither of which seem to lend themselves to negative scores, can you give a bit of background as to how it's been applied here?
Click to expand...
Here is a pdf with all the league results

Buchholz is indeed a way of measuring relative performance but I think you must be looking at the GD column instead of Buchholz, there's definitely no negative Buchholz scores.

As a bit of an explainer for anyone who's not sure how this all works, the idea of a Swiss system is to maximize how meaningful each round is by matching up similarly ranked entrants. With 32 entrants there simply isn't time for every coaster to play against every other coaster, and a straight up knockout would require seeding and still be unsatisfying with half the entrants going out each time without any real context for their performance or popularity.

As football supporters may know, the Premier League table is already around 90% taken shape by the 10th round of 38, as by then despite the 'random fixture generator' teams usually have played a range of opponents from best to worst. By the end of the season, mid table teams are often accused of being 'on holiday' due to the meaninglessness of their matches against other teams with little to play for, which have little to no effect on the overall standings. The players aren't fussed, the fans aren't fussed, the league table isn't fussed. Late season matches between teams at the top or bottom are often refered to as being 'six pointers' because of how important they can be.

Therefore, if we only have a limited time to run a competition, want every match to be meaninful and for the table to be representative of the entrants actual relative qualities, we should aim not to have a random and predetermined fixture list, but to artificially curate each round of fixtures to have entrants close to each other in the table. The first round was randomised, and then the software chose the rest based on the standings. Each ride would be drawn to the closest performing ride, provided that they had not already matched up. This means that a strong coaster that started off against another strong coaster and lost had a good chance of getting a really easy next round, and so on, until things start to stabilise - look at the state of round 2.

With 32 entrants, around 5 or 6 rounds is where things start taking shape, but even with 8 rounds, as you can see, it's still very tight and could have changed a fair bit with another round or two. Statistically, 8 rounds is enough for the table to be fairly reflective, but it's likely that some entrants will have still had a worse run than others, which is where the Buchholz score comes in. Buchholz adds up the points of every opponent. By example, Helix's Buchholz is quite high for where it placed, suggesting it got stiffed by the draw, whereas Karnan's is really low for a high placed ride, suggesting it got lucky. If the rounds carried on, this score would become less important and eventually, goal difference would take over as the most meaningful way to tie break. As you can see, some of the goal differences are wild, so we're probably far from that point, but I'm no statitician so this is just a guess.
 
Wildfire is my favourite coaster in Europe, having ridden almost all of these.

It has been well and truly shafted, can only assume that low ridership and rider bias played a role. Wodan finishing 5th whilst Wildfire crashes out is insanity

At least Taiga made it through
 
I am suggesting to you that you need to get out to Poland... ;)

You could easily do every coaster at Energylandia and Legendia in one day if you are insane, or over a very fun weekend if you're not (reminds me to finish writing about my trip)
 
Everyone does need to get out to Poland. Even if Legendia is basically the Polish Holiday Park
 
Winter is over, the gates are coming up, and the 2024-25 European Coaster Poll has a winner!

32 of the UK and Europe's biggest and best coasters entered into a Swiss league format for 8 weeks to produce a top 16, and the following did not make the cut:

32. Red Force
31. Dragon Khan
30. Superman
29. Monster (Walygator)
28. Silver Star
27. Blue Fire
26. Balder
25. Colossus (Heide Park)
24. Oz'Iris
23. FLY
22. Katun
21. Helix
20. Wildfire
19. Goliath
18. Black Mamba
17. Hyperia

Qualifying for the knockouts were

16. Expedition GeForce
15. iSpeed
14. Shambhala
13. Kondaa
12. Hyperion
11. Toutatis
10. Karnan
9, Untamed
8. Ride To Happiness
7, Taiga
6. Taron
5. Lech Coaster
4. Wodan
3. Zadra
2. Gotham City Escape
1. Voltron

Eliminated in the last 16 were

iSpeed
Expedition GeForce
Shambhala
Kondaa
Karnan
Ride To Happiness
Hyperion
Taron

The defeated quarter finalists were

Untamed
Taiga
Toutatis
Wodan

In fourth, third and second place

Lech Coaster
Gotham City Escape
Zadra

Which means the winner, to no real surprise, is

Voltron

The final standings in the knockouts fairly closely match the final league standings. Taron and RTH slipped out a round 'early' to Untamed and Toutatis. Wodan and Lech swapped places for the top 4, and Zadra went from 3rd to 2nd.

A pretty terrible year for B&M who only managed one ride in the top 16, but a very good year for Intamin, building half of the top 16, even if they did ultimately fall a little short. The top 4 were all built by different manufacturers and a fifth made it into the top 8 which suggests the industry is in a good place of healthy competition, but it does show B&M have been left behind somewhat.

Everyone could have predicted the winner but there was a few shocks along the way. Helix and Wildfire not making the cut was a massive upset, especially as Helix has won every other year one of these polls have been run. iSpeed did better than it usually does and I continue to be confused at how a MCBR-less clone of Raptor does so badly.

It was the first year running the sometimes-annual poll in this format, so there's much for me to think about between now and next closed season. It was very difficult to decide which rides wouldn't be included, and with some honking performances at the bottom of the table, there will be some changes to the lineup next year, even before considering if any 2025 openings make it in.

The new format means more rides have a chance and the standings are more reflective of the true collective reputation amongst the site. I'd consider making it a purely league system with no knockouts, but this could just lead to a procession and any surprise results being smoothed out completely. It would also be more work for me. I think this format gets the balances about right. The ban on Towers coasters will remain. Participation did drop off as it went on, particularly towards the end. I wonder if this is fatigue, lack of drama after the initial stage, or the end of closed season giving us more things to actually talk about, or something else.

Any and all feedback on how to improve next year's poll would be welcome.
 
I think with Monster (Walygator) is it probably suffers two fold as both that coaster and the original (Raptor) aren't at parks that are super easy to visit so people who've not been on either may not realise the quality of the ride experience against it's possible opponents.

Even Raptor never gets the rave reviews it deserves because of the park it's at. Would be the best coaster at 99% of theme parks, yet at Cedar Point it's 4th or 5th.

I wonder if it was a clone of something at SeaWorld or Busch Gardens Tampa were more people have been of it would do better.
 
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