Mitch Hawker Poll: Opinions

[Enter Valhalla]

I am interested to know what people's opinions are of the Mitch Hawker poll and whether or not it is actually a serious poll worthy of our consideration. I know that there has been a lot of criticism of the Golden Ticket Awards yet the Mitch Hawker poll seems to be taken more seriously.

So what is your opinion? Is it an accurate gauge of the majority of enthusiast's feelings? Is it just a thing that a small number of people take part in which isn't worthy of our consideration? Do the Mitch Hawker results actually sway your opinion?

Just to sum up how I feel, obviously there are hundreds of coasters on that chart which I've never ridden, however based on the ones which I have ridden there are a few results which I find very odd based on opinions which I have heard from large numbers of people. For example:

- Balder at Liseberg is rated the highest wooden coaster in Europe. Whilst it's a good ride does it really deserve to be ahead of the likes of Tornerre de Zeus, Wodan, Megafobia etc? I enjoyed Blader but it's not that intense

- iSpeed is the top launch coaster in Europe. Now I know a lot of this is personal opinion but I would rate Stealth, Blue Fire and, dare I say it, Furius Baco ahead of iSpeed which I find looses most of its momentum and becomes quite dull after the first half

- Katun is rated the highest B&M invert in the world. This may be because less people have ridden it but I hear a lot more praise for the likes of Nemesis, Black Mamba and Montu than I do for Katun

- EGF is rated the top steel coaster in Europe. Now I've never actually ridden this one, but is it really that good?


All opinions on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

[DiogoJ42]

Thr trouble with all these polls is that they are dominated by Americans, who *usually* are only interested in height and other dumb statistics. Hence why Blackpool always ranks so highly. The only poll I've ever taken part in is our own one, but we haven't had that for a few years now.

 

[Alastair]

EGF is good but it isn't the best coaster in Europe. I personally rank Shambhala ahead of it, sheerly as it devotes more of its course to airtime. EGF has one insane hill then a load of high banked turns which waste its momentum.

 

[CGM]

Part of the problem is that coasters change their characteristics with time. For instance, when I rode Balder back in 2009, it was incredible. Full of relentless, powerful airtime. Last year however, it seemed to have lost its sting. I don't know if this was because they had recently changed the wheels, whether it was temperature related or what. But on two separate visits, it delivered two very different experiences.

As for the reason that EGF does so consistently well, I have a theory about that. As we all know coaster enthusiasts have different tastes, whether it be roughness, intensity, airtime, inversions or wood vs. steel. I think that EGF must be the coaster with traits that appeal to the widest selection of enthusiasts.

In other words, while it might not be everyone's number 1 coaster, it's in most people's top 10. Meanwhile, more divisive coasters such as Skyrush end up dropping down the order because there are many that hate Skyrush and wouldn't put it anywhere near their top 10.

All this does a bit of a disservice to EGF though, it is still an excellent coaster, vying for my favourite steel with Helix.

 

[Benzin]

I remember the reaction to Shambhala getting into the top 10 after it first opened...

As always, this poll is weighted based upon reputation, group visits and flavours of the month...

I also think that Mitch Hawker does some daft things, like not group every Mega-Lite yet group every Maurer Spinning coaster for no rhyme nor reasoning, basing it solely off 'number of riders'...

 

[Enter Valhalla]

Number of riders is something which I was going to bring up actually. I may have misunderstood this but on some coasters the number of riders is a low as 11. That can't make for a fair poll surely?

 

[Tim]

I've always had a lot of respect for the Mitch Hawker Poll. Ratting rides is far tougher than a film, book or game, there are going to be a few oddities.

As much as we moan about "American Bias" where you come from is always going to be a factor when judging a place you have to travel to. For example your average guest (and even enthusiast) in Britain will only have been on rides local to them and maybe Disney or another park that happened to be near a holiday destination.
Mitch Hawker compensates for this by only letting you judge rides you've ridden. However even then if you go out of your way to somewhere like Europa Park or a more extreme example DisneySea then naturally you'll be biased by the effort you made to get there.

Then you have the time influence CGM mentioned above. Rides unlike a Film (unless its made by George Lucas) change over time. A perfect example of this is Furius Baco. I know people that rode it when it opened and loved it, now they find it too rough. Again Mitch Hawker tries to compensate by weighing rides you experienced in the last year more than those you experienced 3 years ago. But that still doesn't stop me comparing Balder which I rode in 2006 to Wodan a full 6 years later, and I'll be honest I barely remember the former.

Aside these problems the Mitch Hawker Poll does create a list that closely follows popular opinion. Popular being the key term. If a ride has mixed opinions it doesn't do to well, but is that wrong? If it isn't a crowd pleaser the majority aren't going to like it no matter how much we might individually respect it. I love Space Mountain at Disney Paris but I respect that for many it's too intense/rough an experience. If you want a list that factors personal preference into it you're better-off finding a like minded individual and merging your list with theirs.

* * *​

Alas as the last Mitch Hawker Poll was in 2013 it doesn't look like it'll be returning any time soon.

 

[John]

I admired the logic behind the MH poll, which is that most polls are biased towards rides that lots of people have been on, so the way to get rid of that is to look at individual preferences rather that what appears at the top of most ballots. The problem that arises is that you then have to have a ballot, which in the case of steel coasters ends up being unmanageably long - just compare the number of steel coasters listed on rcdb compared with woodies to see the scale of the problem.

Creating and updating the ballot is a huge task - I updated it for the last 2 years of the poll, so I'm speaking from experience here! As for the results, you do get a sort of "hive mentality" on various sites. We've always loved Europa Park, whereas if you visit other sites you might find they prefer PA or Phantasialand. TPR members make up a large chunk of the poll participants, and as their trips take them round the world their ballots have much greater weight than someone who has only done a few rides, so it makes the results look biased towards Alvey's own opinion. As far as I can tell, that's just a quirk of the poll and a person who has done more rides has disproportionate sway over the final results.

A final thought, whilst the full poll seems unlikely to return, I'm hoping to bring back a TST poll of some sort this year - possibly using the MH method.

 

[Tim]

That would be excellent John if you did that I miss the days of the closed season polls, although I fully respect the effort it took.

 

[Enter Valhalla]

The thing is that not every enthusiast takes part in the poll, I never have and I know that a lot of people who also haven't and don't respect the poll for this reason. I often have real trouble myself rating coasters abroad which I have ridden because I've only been on them a few times and because it was a while ago. For example if you asked me to rate Oziris alongside other inverted coasters which I've ridden I would struggle because I've only been to Asterix once and that was a couple of years back. The same can be said for quite a few other coasters.

 

[John]

You can't attack the poll because not everyone takes part, as unlike the Golden Tickets it's completely open and anyone can vote if they want to. The more participants the poll has, the better the results, so if you want it to improve, the best thing to do would be to vote and to encourage others to vote too.

 

[Tim]

If you feel you don't know a coaster well enough you don't have to vote for it. Of course the more rides you vote with the bigger effect you'll have on the poll but you'd still be helping solidify the rides you do know in the correct order relative to each other.