What do you generally favour in a coaster?

[Matt N]

Hi guys. We all have our favourite coasters, those rides that we rank really highly; for me, rides that come to mind in this category include phenomenal coasters like Mako, VelociCoaster, Silver Star, Hagrid's and Iron Gwazi, amongst others! Often, there will be a common thread running through our favourite coasters in terms of certain attributes they share to some degree. With this in mind, I'd be interested to know; what do you generally favour in a coaster? What makes a coaster good for you? What kind of coaster elements and attributes really tick your boxes?

Personally, I'm going to answer this through both an analytical and instinctive lens.

Looking at this analytically, I decided to play about with my full ranking of all 111 coasters I've ridden, plotting the correlation between Ranking and Height, Speed, Length, Inversions, Total Rides and Year Opened. Total Rides might seem like an odd metric to test, but I added it in because I wanted to figure out whether that good old chestnut nostalgia has much of an effect on how highly I rate a coaster. Will I rate something that I have an enmeshed relationship with and have ridden numerous times more highly than something I've only ridden once?

When I tested this out, the ranking of how highly correlated certain attributes were with ranking were as follows (I've reversed the direction of the correlations to clear things up; the raw correlations given by Python were negative because ranking gets lower as a number as you rate something more highly):

Ranking	Attribute	Pearson Correlation Coefficient (2dp)	Spearman Correlation Coefficient (2dp)	Average Correlation Coefficient (2dp)	Strength of Correlation based on Average
1	Speed	0.57	0.57	0.57	Moderate Positive Correlation
2	Height	0.52	0.53	0.52	Moderate Positive Correlation
3	Length	0.47	0.48	0.47	Weak Positive Correlation
4	Total Rides	0.37	0.52	0.44	Weak Positive Correlation
5	Opening Year	0.33	0.39	0.36	Weak Positive Correlation
6	Inversions	0.18	0.21	0.20	No Significant Correlation

So my rankings would suggest that the attribute I favour most strongly in a coaster is greater speed, with there being moderate evidence in favour of me generally favouring greater speed. There is similarly moderate evidence in favour of me generally favouring greater height, there is weak evidence in favour of me generally favouring greater length, a higher number of total rides and a newer opening year, and there is insufficient evidence in favour of me generally favouring inversions.

To be honest, I would have instinctively said that speed was my favourite of the main 4 statistics before even doing that analysis, so that tallies up quite well, really!

If you were asking me more instinctively what I enjoy in a coaster, though; I would have to say that simply put, I really enjoy coasters that are fun and thrilling, with good smoothness, comfort and rerideability. The main fundamental criteria for me to rate a coaster highly are simply that it's fun, thrilling and rerideable!

There are specific elements I do enjoy, however. In terms of specific elements I enjoy; I absolutely relish the feeling of airtime on a coaster, and 9 times out of 10, a coaster in the upper echelons of my rankings needs to have at least some notable degree of airtime or negative g-forces. That's definitely something I specifically look for and rate highly in a coaster. I also really relish a coaster with a great sense of speed, and to be honest, I do often tend to gravitate towards taller coasters; for instance, a 200ft+ coaster is nearly always a winner for me, with 4 of the 6 200ft+ coasters I've ridden being in my top 10 and even the 5th being only just outside it at #12!

But I'd be keen to know; what do you generally favour in a coaster? What makes a good coaster, in your opinion?