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Rides that required a second ride or series of rerides for you to fully appreciate them

Matt N

Matt N

TS Member
Favourite Ride
Mako (SeaWorld Orlando)
Hi guys. Sometimes, you’ll ride a new ride and it will absolutely floor you from the first go. You’ll get off, say “Oh my god, that’s a new number 1/top 3 contender/insert significant superlative here!”, and be flabbergasted by the ride’s greatness from the get go. I find that it doesn’t always work that way, however. Sometimes, I find that you can ride a ride the first time and come off a little disappointed, particularly if the ride in question is very highly rated. You might get off thinking “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great ride, but it didn’t quite live up to the obscene hype for me”. Or you might even get off thinking “Why on earth is that highly rated? I didn’t like that at all!”. Of course, some of these disappointments stay disappointments, and just become rides that you disagree with the consensus opinion on. But I find that in some of these cases, a second ride or a series of rerides can completely change your opinion. I’ve had rides where I’ve had slight disappointment initially, but a second ride or series of rerides has given me the “WOW” feeling I was seeking the first time and made me understand the hype for it a lot more. With this in mind, I’d be intrigued to know; what rides have required a second ride or series of rerides for you to fully appreciate them? What rides didn’t immediately sell you on their hype, but had you fully converted after reriding?

Personally, I have two possibly slightly controversial picks for this thread, and they are VelociCoaster at Islands of Adventure and Iron Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa. Both are very highly rated rides. In both cases, I was slightly disappointed by them after a first ride, but reriding them changed my opinion by a fair amount and made me understand the hype for them a lot more.

With VelociCoaster, I took my first ride in row 9 at the very beginning of my 2023 Florida holiday. After that first ride, I thought it was a great, great ride with a brilliant layout and many brilliant moments… but I was slightly underwhelmed, and not immediately convinced of the ride’s full greatness that everyone was talking about. It ranked highly for me, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t thinking that it was right up there like many do, and after that first go, I wasn’t thinking that I ranked it significantly higher than, say, Icon. But later in my holiday, I managed to get a second ride on VelociCoaster in the front row… and my feeling after that second ride was simply; WOW. On that second ride, it’s like everything just clicked and fell into place. The airtime, the speed, the inversions, the stunning layout… it all just clicked for me on that second ride. I’m not even sure if it was necessarily riding notably better than it was the first time… but it just seemed notably better and wowed me a lot, lot more! After the first ride, I wasn’t thinking that VelociCoaster was right up there, but after that second ride, there was no question in my mind that it was right up there! VelociCoaster now sits proudly as my #2 out of 111 coasters ridden, and sometimes, I’m not even 100% sure that it couldn’t be in contention for the top spot… it really was that good! I wish I could have taken more rides on it during my time in Florida, as it’s not at all inconceivable that a 3rd ride, or even a night ride, could possibly have given VelociCoaster the top spot…

With Iron Gwazi, I took my first ride in the morning in row 9. Again, I thought it was a great ride after the first go, with numerous great moments and great qualities, but I was slightly underwhelmed given the absurd hype it receives. There were a few minor niggles I had with it, and overall, I wasn’t wholly convinced of its full greatness after the first go. I rode SheiKra directly after my first ride on Iron Gwazi, and at that time in the day, I actually thought I enjoyed SheiKra more. However, I rerode Gwazi twice more later in the day, in very similar rows… and like with VelociCoaster, it was like everything just clicked and fell into place on those rerides. The airtime seemed more impactful, the pacing seemed more impactful, my niggles from earlier in the day seemed comparatively irrelevant, and overall, I just enjoyed it a fair amount more on those subsequent rerides and understood the hype for it significantly more. Even though I hadn’t been wholly convinced by Iron Gwazi the first time, the 2nd and 3rd rides endeared me to it a fair amount more, and those rides sealed it as my favourite coaster in the park, my 3rd favourite coaster in Florida (behind VelociCoaster and Mako), my 2nd favourite new coaster of the holiday (behind VelociCoaster) and my #4 overall out of 111 coasters ridden. I sometimes wonder in hindsight if I’m even still ranking it slightly too low… Gwazi has been an interesting one for me in that every time I’ve reshuffled my rankings since returning from Florida, I seem to have bumped it a little higher, as I didn’t feel that the previous ranking did my actual love of it justice! It was sublime, and those rerides definitely made me rate it more highly!

For me, both of the rides I mentioned are certainly prime proof that you can’t necessarily judge something after one ride! But I’d be keen to know; what rides required a second ride or a series of rerides for you to fully appreciate them? What rides did you not appreciate the full greatness of after your first ride?
 
Definitely Oblivion for me, but part of this was caused by the fact that it was my first coaster that I rode which contained a 1.4m height restriction, so I expected it to be much more intense than it was.
 
Black Mamba and Nemesis Inferno, both for the same reason. When you've been used to riding Nemesis hundreds of times for decades as your first B&M invert, it's easy to expect something you have been so accustomed to by the end of the queue line for the others. But Nemesis is unique.

The second time I got on Black Mamba and stopped comparing it with the ride experience of Nemesis, I actually ended up prefering it. It's not as intense, the inversions are smooth and drawn out as opposed to the superior older snappy style, and it doesn't seem to particularly peak strongly at any point, although my personal highlight is the rather intense pull up into the loop at the bottom of the first drop. You won't find anything like being whacked through that first corkscrew, the downwards helix befofe being smashed into the zero-g (my favourite part of Nemesis) or anything like that. But BM is a longer coaster and still manages to maintain it's consistency right to the end. No standout highlights like Nemesis granted, in fact most of it is pretty formulaic in terms of layout. But it is reasonably consistent throughout and gives a decent amount of ride time.

Similarly, it's easy to write Inferno off. But taking the comparison away helps me appreciate it for what it is. Which is still a good coaster. It's by far the weaker out of the three mentioned, but it's still a good coaster in its own right and I'll never skip it on a visit to Thorpe. The more I ride it, the more I enjoy it.
 
shakey said:
The Big One

The more you ride it, the more you appreciate it.
Click to expand...
Come on shakey, have you been eating my cookies again??
Fun, but the last time I did an ert for an hour, I had to give up well before the end, I couldn't take any more pain!
And you complain about the National!
Just another crazy Tyke, nothing to see here...
 
rob666 said:
Come on shakey, have you been eating my cookies again??
Fun, but the last time I did an ert for an hour, I had to give up well before the end, I couldn't take any more pain!
And you complain about the National!
Just another crazy Tyke, nothing to see here...
Click to expand...
I didn't mean the more you ride it consecutively !! That is just utter madness



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Took me some time to appreciate what Wicker Man was for the park. I’ve always wanted the park to get a woodie and a large scale one at that, but we got Wicker Man. I now understand its place in the park and how import an investment it was. It’s barrels of fun for all.
 
Steel Vengeance, such a lengthy ride time and just so much going on to take in on just one go. First time I rode it I got off and just re joined the queue and racked up 4 rides in quick succession.
 
Matt.GC said:
But BM is a longer coaster and still manages to maintain it's consistency right to the end. No standout highlights like Nemesis granted, in fact most of it is pretty formulaic in terms of layout. But it is reasonably consistent throughout and gives a decent amount of ride time.
Click to expand...

I've always felt that Mamba would have heavily benefitted from an extra inversion at the end, rather than just petering out into lots of cornering after the second corkscrew. Oz'iris has an unconventional layout by comparison anyway, but I particularly appreciate that it has one last roll before the final corner and brake run.

My answer to Matt's question would be Lisebergbånan. Before visiting Liseberg my closest experience in terms of a similar coaster seemed to be Knightmare, which was frankly ridiculous. Much as it looked like a scrapheap, it was absolutely wild and seemed to be trying to squash you into the seat with sheer force (I later found Jetline, while still great and better in all other respects, is nowhere near as face-rendingly intense). So, if another park had a coaster that took much the same ride type and covered a massive hillside in it, that was a pretty exciting prospect.

Lisebergbånan however is not Knightmare, or even Jetline, on steroids. It's very fast almost throughout, and there is still a fair bit of positive force to be had, but the character of the ride is far less aggressive (brakes aside!) and not really directly comparable. I didn't get that on my first ride or two, and got off underwhelmed.

Fortunately I soon came to appreciate it for what it is; an enormous, very unconventional family-thrill coaster. A very charming one too, especially pre-recent refurb, although perhaps I'm biased with the whole trains thing.

Liseberg has a fantastic atmosphere on a weekend late close evening, and as closing time draws near Lisebergbånan often has a short queue that stays open long after other rides have had theirs closed to run off the guests in time. Hot-footing it from Helix to 'Liseberg C' for one last ride, clattering to the summit and rushing all over the hillside in the dark is an experience not to be missed.
 
Aquatopia at Tokyo DisneySea. There are two separate sides, and on each side the path your vehicle takes is random within that side. On the right half there's a rock formation with a waterfall, and it's random whether or not your vehicle will go under it. You can see it at about 2:30 in this video:


From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn9GepIjqng


Having seen this potential path, I decided that my Aquatopia experience would not be complete without the full experience of going under the waterfall. The ride, even pre-waterfall, would already have been in my all-time favourites: a high-tech but exceedingly silly combination of, roughly, teacups and vintage cars, that also might be as much or more fun to watch from the sidelines as it is to ride. But, I'm only human... despite having been on such a wonderful ride over and over, I wanted more... no, I needed more. I needed to go under the waterfall. Ride after ride I saw other people going under the waterfall. Why not me? What do they have that I don't?

It was a walk-on that day, but if I remember correctly it took about 8 additional rides to finally get the waterfall path. I was about to give up--not for my sake, but for that of my riding companion--when, finally, on one of the final rides of the day, our car took a path we hadn't seen before and we started towards the waterfall.

Without the waterfall this ride would be a 9.5 for me, but having experienced the waterfall, I can easily and without hesitation give it a perfect 10 out of 10.
 
Schramm's Break Dancer. 1 time was good for getting in to it, but returning for the insane cycles later was required.
 
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