TST Coaster Poll 2018-19

[Martin]

Another long closed season is dawning and so it's time to begin the all new TST Coaster Poll for 2018-2019! Once a tradition on this forum, it's been a few years since a full poll took place, but after the mini revival last winter, it's time to bring it back in full! Hopefully it'll be a success and become an annual competition once more.

As there can only be one poll per thread on this forum, each round will be its own thread and I'll keep this thread updated with the results so that each round can be deleted after it closes, to stop the forum being clogged with poll after poll.

A lot of thought has gone into how to format the tournament and how many coasters to include, and depending on how well it works it might change next time round, but this year the tournament will consist of 64 coasters through a series of group and knockout rounds. As ever, the coasters are from around Europe and the UK, but no Alton Towers coasters are included. The 64 coasters do not represent my personal top 64 but have been chosen to represent a diverse number of styles, and gives a good compromise between only having rides that will obviously be contenders and having too many just making up the numbers. If your favourite isn't included it may be next year; no coaster has an automatic spot. The coasters are all seeded into 8 pots of 8, and again they do not represent my opinions of the rides, but is intended to give a fair competition. Again, depending on how successful this is, it will be reviewed next year.

So without further ado, here are the rules.

Spoiler

The first round will be a group stage consisting of the lowest 6 pools. One coaster from each pool will be drawn into each group, for a round of 8 groups of 6. The draw will be made much like that of a football tournament, with coasters pulled out of a hat, but limitations applying to prevent groups including more than one ride from a given park, more than two from a given country or manufacturer, more than two that are overly similar, etc. You will have two votes per group and the top 2 will go through. In the event of a tie, the ride that will win will be the one with the most votes in the replies. If there is still a tie, there will be 48 hours to post a reply voting for your choice. If there is still a tie, further 24 hour voting periods will continue until there is a winner.

The second round will once again be a group stage. There will be 8 groups of 4, each consisting of a top seed, a second seed, and a winner and runner up from the first round. The same methodology will apply to the draw as the first round, with the added rule that two coasters from the same initial group can't meet again. Once again there will be two votes and the top 2 will continue. The same tie break rules apply.

From the last 16, it's 1v1. Two coasters, one vote, one winner. No coasters from the same group can be drawn together in the last 16 but then there are no limits on which coasters can be drawn together.

There will be a maximum 2 polls per week, and each poll will run for one week, going live on the Monday. The first polls will go live later today and then each Monday the next will go live. There will be a few weeks break after the first two group stages from Christmas and New Year, before continuing with the final rounds until the start of March. The break and weeks before opening can accommodate for any delays to to tie breaks (or forgetfulness on my part).

Rules subject to tweaking should it turn out they need to be, my judgement is final etc etc

Feedback and participation is vital for this to be a success and to be a yearly thing again so the more of both the merrier. Have fun all.

Current rounds:
https://towersstreet.com/talk/threads/coaster-poll-round-1-group-3.4941/
https://towersstreet.com/talk/threads/coaster-poll-round-1-group-4.4942/

Results so far:

Spoiler

 

[DiogoJ42]

Let's just skip the formalities and give the award to The Ultimate, shall we?

 

[Martin]

Let's just skip the formalities and give the award to The Ultimate, shall we?

Rules subject to tweaking should it turn out they need to be, my judgement is final etc etc[/spoiler]

I'm saying nothing, mate.

 

[Martin]

So! We are now half way through the first round, so let's take a look back at the results so far!

Few surprises in Group A as Dragon Khan ran out as winner with Icon not far behind, on 15 and 13 votes respectively. The Swarm took third place with 10, probably due to home advantage, while the excellent Juvelen finished respectably on 7, level with SMM2. Gerst infinity coaster Junker only scored 3, probably due to beng fairly obscure and also "looking a bit crap".

Balder comfortably won Group B with 14 while Formula did well to score 10 and finish second as Vekoma's renaisance goes from strength to strength. The two trips to Poland this year probably helped. A personal disappointment for me as Alpina Bahn just missed the cut on 8, and Europe's only Batman clone fininsed on 7. Flug was met with a resounding shrug when it opened and nothing has changed since, scoring 5. MS launched coaster Shock did indeed have a shockcer, with a magnificent 0 votes over the entire week, putting its inclusion in next year's poll under serious risk.

Group C was full of surprises, where a poll record of 19 votes went to both Hyperion and Lisebergbanan. There can be only one winner though and Anton's coaster wins in a photo finish in the reply votes. Stealth (9) was a very distant third, the fairly unknown Thunnderbird took 4 votes and Star Trek 3. The Storm was rescued from the shame of its compatriot by a single vote at the weekend, a rough ride for the Mack mega-lite. Lisebergbanan is currently the lowest seeded ride to go through, and quite possibly the oldest in the poll. Don't make em like they used to.

Where The Storm failed, it's cousing Alpina Blitz succeeded, topping group 4 with 15 votes. Blitz lacks an inversion but sticks much closer to the original Intamin layout and probably has more riders here, which could have been a factor. Lost Gravity's 10 votes gives us a Mack 1 - 2 while third and fourth go to the Swedes. The tiny Twister did well to get so close but Valkyria must ask questions of itself, going into this group top seed. RnRC scored 5 and Red Force scored 4, more than I'd score it for originality.

The next two groups go live soon and next week the final groups of the fist round. Then, it's onto Round 2 where some familar faces lie in wait...

 

[Martin]

Today the ffinal groups of round 1 close and we begin round 2, with the winners and runners up of the last 8 groups progressing to join the top 16 seeds in 8 groups of 4.

A quick recap of the last two weeks first. Olympia Looping comfortably won Group E on 15, and will be joined in the next round by Irish woodie Cu Chulainn which scored 12. Mega-lite Piraten only scored 9 despite being one of the very top rated coasters in the world in the old Mitch Hawker steel polls. Colorado Adventure and Jetline tied on 5 and Karacho's 3 votes rounded out the losers.

Group F went to a tie break, with Megafobia taking the win from Baron through the replies after both rides scored 13 in the poll. El Toro was close behind on 11, and was on course to qualify but for a late surge in support for Baron. The cult favourite Stunt Fall scored 5 alongside Turkish Intamin Nefeskesen, and Raptor finished dead last with 4.

In the impossibly tight group G, the two wooden coasters progressed on 9 votes each, Zeus winning with 6 votes to Joris' 5 in the replies. Mir and Monster finished joint 3rd with just one vote less, and Fenix just another behind on 7. Fluch was the clear loser on 4.

Group H was much more clear cut. The Ultimate may be one of the most divisive coasters out there, but the support for it was enough to see it win on an impressive 16, with the highly rated Troy just behind. Way back was BTM on 10, and everything else had to fight for scraps, big B&M Superman only got 4, and a poor show for Merlin as Saw finished on 3 and Oblivion mkii only got 2.

So overall, a lot of interesting results. Chiefly amongst which being that in 4 out of 8 groups, the top seed failed to qualify, and only once did the top seed win outright. Joris was the only bottom seed to qualify, while 3 second-bottom seeds qualified and won. No 3rd seed won its group. Only group A had its top two seeds progress, and 3 groups didn't have either of their top 2 progress. Group G had the lowest seeded progressions and group H had the widest split in seeds.

Lisebergbanan and Hyperion both scored 19, the most of any coasters, and only Shock scored 0, although a few others came close. A pretty dire showing from Merlin who have no representation in the next round, although the return of Colossus next year should correct that, and Stealth was unlucky to be drawn against the two most popular rides so far. It was also pretty poor for B&M, who only won 1 group and finished 2nd in another, despite having 12 coasters to vote for, which suggests a lot about their mid sized coasters I guess.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions, as the results are all here below, as well as the draw for the next round, which I will upload later. Thanks for all the participation so far!

 

[John]

How were the seeding pots determined? There are some great rides in the lower pots that aren't the most thrilling but are widely regarded as being far better rides than some of those above them. With the top 2 pots getting a bye it's pretty important to make sure the right rides get that privelege.

 

[Martin]

There wasn't a hard and fast, scientific approach to it, but generally it was based on things like size, relative obscurity, a stab at judging popularity and guessing how far it might go. It was more about trying to keep most of the obvious stronger rides apart than a definite judgement, it would have been impossible to come up with a truly objective way to split them up into 8 pots of 8 and without a few odd ones.

Personally I'd have put The Ultimate straight into the top 2 seeds but there's just as many people who hate it, so it went into a low pot. I always had inn mind that they would change year on year to reflect how rides perform; piraten went into a high pot due to its success at Mitch Hawker, but it did poorly here so will be demoted next time. Similarly, Lisebergbanan went fairly low because it's not a headline grabbing, record breaking, shiny new thrill machine, but it got more votes than anything else so far so next time it'll go higher. I perhaps have been guilty of prioritising the B&Ms and Macks etc, but with this being the first time I thought that made more sense than giving the privilege to rides like Ultimate and Lisebergbanan, which would seem more biased by my own views.

Like I said though, next year's will be informed by this year's. Coasters that do well will move up, coasters that did bad will go down or miss out altogether, there's plenty of rides that it was a shame to leave out, plus new ones opening to take the places.

 

[Martin]

Bumping this thread because later today the poll will resume. Before the knockout stages begin here's an updated summary of the second group stage and the competition so far.

No real surprises in the first two groups, although I did expect the losers of group B to be a little bit closer to the winners.

Joris snuck through into this round but never stood a chance, was obvious what would happen in group C. Group D however is more interesting, the Mack vote split evenly allowing Lisebergbanan a ticket to the finals, no doubt with a few fan boy votes to help it on its way.

The Ultimate managed to get through the first round on the strength of its support but against much tougher opposition it proved just too polarizing. I did regret not voting tactically but even if I did, the comment votes were a landslide. Poor Formula too. Group F couldn't have been less surprising.

Olympia Looping pulled off a bit of a shock to qualify, considering iSpeed finished so poorly I expect ridership played a big part. Once again Group H doesn't have many talking points.

Overall things went about as expected I suppose, the top 2 seeds qualifying in all but three groups. The three groups that deviated all had in common it being the top seed that didn't qualify. Troy was the only coaster that finished runner up in its first group to qualify, once again as runner up.

Thank you all for taking part so far, the first two ties will go live later, the draw has come up with a few interesting matchups...

 

[Martin]

The new season is dawning and the results are in! The winner of the 2018-2019 TST European Coaster Poll is... HELIX! I'm as shocked as you are.

Let's recap the knockout stages. Only 3 coasters from the first group stage progressed to the knockouts, and they all went out at the last 16. Only one B&M made it to the quater finals, and the two hypers narrowly missed facing each other, which would have been very interesting. 5 of the last 8 coasters were German, but only 1 of the last 4. Half of the last 4 were wooden coasters and 3 of them feature inversions. Most rounds were won pretty comfortably, even Blue Fire only managed 2 votes against Helix. Lech Coaster and Taron were the closest match, eventually pulling ahead by 6 points, and although the semi against Wodan started similarly, eventually Wodan won comfortably. The final was always likely to end up between those two as long as they avoided each other in the earlier rounds, and I doubt there will be many people surprised by the result.

Thank you to everybbody who took part. I hope to bring it back next closed season. I'll look at what worked well and what didn't work well to improve how it works. The format will likely stay similar but there probably will be tweaks. There were plenty of coasters that missed out and plenty opening this coming season, so coasters that performed poorly will drop out and others will come in. Coasters that performed above expectations will have their seeding boosted and ones that performed poorly will drop down the rankings. As ever, feedback is greatly appreciated. The full results are here

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