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A History of Roller Coasters, Part Two: Higher, Faster, More Expensive · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio, previously on Ridiculous History.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show Ridiculous his Stories. Think who
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: has always so much for tuning in. Let's give a
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: big shout out to our super producer, mister Max the
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Tycoon Williams. I am ben Bullen joy does always with
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the man, the myth, the legend, a tycoon in his
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: own right, Mister Noel Brown Noles. We've had We've had
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a heck of a time with this roller coaster series, right,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: A lot of oh no, no, it's okay, we'll allow it. Yeah,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: no ups and downs.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: To be sure, I think we've roughly reached approaching modern times,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: but not not not not quite. We still have a
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: little bit of history again.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, just like the experience of writing a roller coaster,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: we're having form follow function, or form and function be interrelated.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Because our previous episode, part one was kind of a
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: up the hill, all right, and now we are at
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: a titular point. Now we are at an apex of
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: roller coaster history because you see, with the dawning of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the world's first legit roller coaster, Tycoon La Marcus. I
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: just love to say his name uh, he triggered and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: arms race amidst the roller coaster manufacturers of the world.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, within just a few months after he becomes
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the roller coaster king of Coney Island, people start moving
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: in on his territory. That's right.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: I mean he held a virtual monopoly on coasters, you know,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: at least in this country at Coney Island. But enter
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Charles Alcoke, who had built a kind of more of
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: a scenic people mover type situation, a slow scenic railroad.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: The connected the ends of the tracks in a continuous
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: loop to make it more of a pleasure cruise.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I like that, a pleasure cruise people mover, a people
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: moving pleasure cruise. Yes, so this coaster gets close to
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the record set by Thompson Switchback Railway, but Philip Hinkle
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: makes a breakthrough in eighteen eighty five. His coaster has
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: an elliptical route and a powered hoist that pulls cars
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: back to the top of the first hill, and because
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: of the speed at which it moves, it's a more
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: exciting ride than the relatively slow moving switchback. And at
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: this point, to be clear, no one has beaten that
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: original train powered scenic railway from episode one that ended
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: at like sixty five miles an hour.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Right, And when I say we're roughly approaching modern coaster times,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: what I mean is this technology in a lot of
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: ways is still kind of how things are done.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like you said, these a lot
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: of these are what we will call simple machines with
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: further pieces of technology added on top of them. At
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: this point, all of them, at least all the rides
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: at Coney Island are leveraging gravity to work. They're just
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: approaching gravity and interesting ways, there's a ride called the
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Steeplechase by a guy named George C. Till You, which
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: is an interesting last name. I wonder what the etymology
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: of that is. I don't know. It's spelt like it's
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: spelled like t I L you, so it's like until
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: you with me again.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know this this ride actually, you know, Steeplechase
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: being a famous is it a specific horse race or
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: is it just a style.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Of horse racing.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I can't remember if it's like a particular event, but
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: either way, Steeplechase is a horse race scenario, and this
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: one kind of mimic that with these mechanical horses that
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: descend it on kind of a wavy track, and it
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: was very very popular amongst early coaster heads.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I also like coaster heads. I think it's steeplechase, isn't
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: that the one where the horses have to jump over obstacles,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: like they don't run, and they run and they jump
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: over different fences or different ditches, So it kind of
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: mimics what you would experience on a roller coaster. It's
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: an obstacle race in athletics, but it is named after the.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Steeplechase in horse racing, which, to your point, Ben was
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: involved jumping over hurdles and things like that. But a
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: steeple chase in like an Olympic type event, involves going
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: through water, you know, jumping over hurdles and all of
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: So this was named for the horse race, the original
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: version of a steeple chase, because of the ups and downs,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: and there were there were other things like the cannon coaster. Yes,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the cannon coaster is a little bit dystopian. Already. There
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: is a gap in the rails. Ooh, yeah, that seems
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: a little bit dangerous. Well, often often the cars made
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: it across the gap. Yeah, when one would hope it
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: would work out that way for you. There was also
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: something called the mystic screw, which also sounds a little dirty.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe my mind is just in the gut of perpetually
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: and this trick it was a yeah exactly.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: This involved a kind of a helix type pattern and
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: then the writers would descend around seventy five feet.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Pass around this time, our friends of Encyclopedia Britannic
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: and note people start experimenting with something called inversions.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and whenever you are are looking at, you know,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: guides for roller coasters written by coaster heads, inversions are
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: a big feature that are always you know discussed, like
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: how many inversions does a ride happen, what's their height?
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: And also things like corkscrews that might send you kind
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: of circling. It's not a full inversion exactly. It's more
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: of like a sideways kind of like inversion.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I always thought loops loops were so cool because it
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: is just from a physics standpoint, it's such an interesting experiment.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like taking a bucket of water and swinging
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: it upside down over your head. It's not gonna come
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: out because of you know, mother gravity. Just hold that
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: holding that stuff in and early inversions didn't even have
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: lap bars or what do you call them, like, you know, harnesses.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: We were literally held in place.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: By gravity, which we know is gonna work unless the
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: coaster fails or something, you know, and then you just
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: PLoP right out.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Gravity does its thing once again. Yeah, yeah, because the
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: one constant force in all of these things, one thing
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: that never breaks is gravity. So you just have to
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: stay on gravity's good side. It doesn't care about you.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: It's what it's gonna do. It's very focused on it.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: It's like one thing that it's good at. So these
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: loop track rides, people had tried them in Paris before
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the eighteen hundreds, and the rides
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: were similar to the Bucket of Water example from earlier.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: The rides are based on a toy for kids that
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: keeps a small ball rolling on a loop track without
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: falling off. However, at least in Paris, people found these
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: inversions uncomfortable and dangerous, and so the idea was scrapped
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: until eighteen ninety five, when Lena Beecher installs something called
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the Flip Flap Railway at Paul Boyton's Sea Lion Park
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: and Coney Island. Their main attraction was sea lions, but
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: they also of course had what they called the Railway.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: It was uncomfortable, it was still dangerous, but it had
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: this big twenty five foot circular loop that became wildly
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: popular and went viral, as we would say in the
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: parlance of today, and it shut down after only a
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: few years. And it was so potentially dangerous that a
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: lot of folks would just show up to watch others
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: ride it, which I can relate to again with my
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: kind of building back up my courage to ride the coasters.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: If I go to an amusement park and haven't been
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: in a while, I will sometimes just kind of watch
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: a few of the coasters to kind of build up
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: my moxie, you know, to go for a ride myself. Yeah.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: I think people found the excel the slight acceleration, g forces,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: gravitational forces uncomfortable. Oh yeah, well it kind of is
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: a little bit so, right. So this is where we
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: get to a guy named Edward Prescott who builds something
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: called the loop de loop.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: And that is sort of the stand in parlance for
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: these kind of inversions. You know, people will often call
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: them a loop, the loop, uh, and that this is
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: also a Coney Island, had a bit of a gentler slope,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: more oval shaped design, and was much better in engineered
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: and constructed then the flippity flap.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I know it's not the flippity flap, but
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: I like that better. Oh sure, let's treat the phrase
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: flip flap with the gravity it deserves.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Hey, hey, jeez, the but it'd still be quite quite
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: a few more decades seventy five years in fact, before
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: a very fully successful vertical loop was was actually created.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And because it had a very low seating capacity, the loop.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: The loop itself doesn't doesn't succeed long term. It's not
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: around now, but for the for the fans of coasters,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: for the roller coaster folk, it is the coolest thing
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: in town, or indeed in the world, until a new
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: challenger emerges in this arms race for adrenaline, something called
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: drop the Dip, later to be called rough Riders.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a little better. But rough Riders.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: It makes me think of DMX. Wasn't he the rough
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: rider to the head of the rough Riders crew.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: It makes me think of Roosevelt.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: I gotta jump in here. Remember when we were doing
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: our Model Trains. Episode I talked about the terrible idea
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: of a third track roller coaster.
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: This is it. This is it?
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, third track being a power rail that delivers electricity
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: to the coaster. But also, as we know if you've
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: ever been on like a subway station, those tracks are
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: way out of reach. They're down, you know, in the
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: in the pit kind of of the of the subway track.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: But they are very clearly labeled do not touch the
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: third rail because you can get a deadly shock.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And the issue here is not necessarily the mechanics
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: at play. The issue here is the human operators. Because
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: folks operating the rough rider would try to deliver the
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: maximum amount of fun, thrill and adrenaline to their passengers,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: which meant they pushed it too hard. They pushed the
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: machine too hard, They used full power, even when folks
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: were already going down, taking the power leveraging the power
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: of gravity. In nineteen ten, one guy operating rough riders,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: he took his train around a bend just way too fast.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: He was all gased, no brakes. He threw two cars
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: loose from the ride. Sixteen passengers flew out over the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: nearby surf avenue. And four of them died.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Britannica points out that these kind of upping
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: the ante here in terms of the danger quotient did
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: force some of that oversight that we were desperately lacking.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: And obviously it takes a real gnarly tragedy like this,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: you know, for folks to see the need for intervention
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: at this level. And so you started to see things
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: like lap bars, which got passengers in place right before that,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: like I was saying, you were just in place by
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: the forces of gravity and the g force of the
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: vertical loop themselves. Train derailments, however, did kind of continue,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: though they became a lot less common after some of these,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: you know, safety measures were put in place around nineteen
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: twelve when John Miller, who was the chief engineer for
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: our boy LaMarcus, invented something called the under friction wheel.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was sort of a big wig or as
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Max wanted to say, a large hair piece in the
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: I appreciate in the roller coaster industry. Yeah, the under
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: friction wheel. Before we get to that, I got to
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: tell you guys, here's the story of how I almost
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: died on the American screen machine. It's due to a
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: lap bar. So the lap bar in these things works,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: as you know, if you're seated two by two, the
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: lap bar is supposed to go down sort of like
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: on your crotch area, the bend between your hips and
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: your thighs, and as long as people relatively the same size,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be all right. I was writing with an
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: adult friend of the family who was, you know, a grown,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: a grown woman much larger than me as a young
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Ben Bolan, and the lap bar clanked down on her
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: but didn't quite reach our young, our young protagonist. And
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: so thank god, the American Scream Machine did not have
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: loop de loops. It just had this old creaky wooden
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: thing where the first seri downhills, though it's got some
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: serious downhills, and I was replicating the experience of pre
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: lap bar people because I kid you not, guys. There
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: was a clear like six inches or so between my
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: body and the lap bar, so I was almost out
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: of the car well.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: And that's the problem with community lap bars, because again
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: you're you're limited by the largest person in the scenario.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: I actually have a follow up on this because this
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: is how my friend David almost killed me on American
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Scream machine in the exact same roller coaster. Really, my
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: friend David is a daredevil. He like, you know, I'm
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: afraid of heights. He has no fear of heights whatsoever. Sure,
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: and we were teenagers, probably like fifteen sixteen years old.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: We're at six Flags, and what he would do is
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: he would always sit up as far as he possibly
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: could and see if people would not notice that he's
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: just like making it so the bar can't go all
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: the way down.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: It was like it was like a Wednesday afternoon.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: We were there.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: The person that didn't really check, and so.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Then we're rolling out, he stands up completely out of
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: his seat. Does to show me how bad it is.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: I'm just like cranking down in the seat, Belty Calf.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: But I got the last laugh because a year later
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: we went to Cedar Point and I made him right
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: at top fill Dragster and I actually watched that man
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: cry before it went off, and he started to cry.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: You'll love to see it. Good to be in touch
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: with your emotions, I guess. But but yes, so this
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: idea here and also out to everybody who survived a
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: roller coaster where you almost died. And Carol, if you're
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: hearing this, I forgive you. John Miller's invention of the
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: under friction wheel is a massive game changer because it
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: keeps the train bolted down beneath the track with a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: third set of wheels. So if gravity, if you get
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: on the bad side of gravity, you have an opposing
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: force attaching your car to the rail, kind of like
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: clamping something. So like the previous ones had maybe side
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: friction wheels that were meant to function kind of as
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: insurance of ice rolling on the inside or the inner
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: edges of the track. But this is this is just
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: a much better answer. It stops so many accidental derailments.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Our guy John Miller is also responsible for others safety innovations,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: like a safety chain lift, which means, okay, I didn't
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: know this, but it makes sense. Back in the day
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: roller coasters rolling up that first till that we were
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: talking about, sometimes they didn't make it. There's real backwards
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: that's not good.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And then I mean, was there any safety measure
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: in place to stop them from just like slamming to
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: a halt at the end when they dropped back.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Down hopefully after the first few times. I would hope
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: after the first few anyway, there's a weird thing that
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: occurs here because this progress in terms of safety also
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: enables these absolutely mad cap roller coaster engineers to get
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: even more extreme with their designs. You know, a side
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: friction wheel had limited velocity and you couldn't plunge at
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: certain inclides, but this under friction wheel allows you to
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: go even faster, even higher and lower. And Miller himself
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: is kind of this crazy it's kind of pushing the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: envelope of physics when you think about it. The Russian
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: mountain builders would be astounded by this because they would
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: be like, literally in the ice age of roller coasters,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: that joke is worth it.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: It's more than worth it pen and you know, and
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: you know, you really started to see that arms rays
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: kind of playing out where people were trying to top,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: you know, existing coasters so they could be known as
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: the fastest, the scariest, whatever it might be. And Miller
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: actually really pushed the envelope of physics itself with his
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Jack Rabbit attraction at Kennywood Park, which had a significantly
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: precipitous dive into kind of like almost like a valley,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: and then his Cyclone in Cleveland, Ohio, which used the
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: cliffs and gorges, natural attractions at the appuritus springs to
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: create these kind of v shaped, you know, paths.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is where we get to the golden
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: age of roller coasters, and once more, credit where it's due.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: We want to shout out American Experience WABPPS dot org.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: You can find it. This is a relatively comprehensive history.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: By the nineteen twenties, says American Experience, the roller coaster
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: street name the scream Machine was making more screams than
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: ever before. The US had like maybe fifteen hundred separate
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: roller coasters. Sure, they're all chasing hyperbole and superlatives like
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: one is one hundred and thirty eight feet high, the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: fastest goes sixty one miles an hour. And there were
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: more and more complex iterations of the basic principles tiger curves,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: steeper drop spirals, figure eights that would just blow your mind.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: There was even once upon a time, we talked about
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: this an episode of car stuff. Once upon a time
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles there was an auto coaster, which was
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: a roller coaster you rode in your car. Yikes, I
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: don't know about that, guys. Just now. It didn't work out.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Don't really see those too much these days, if at.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: All, I'm going to say not at all, because I've
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: certainly never heard of one outside of this. It was,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: like you said, Ben, consider the golden age of the
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: roller coaster specifically, though, you know, like we have our
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: ice age and all that stuff in our bronze age.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: This was the wooden age. M yeah, yeah, And this
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: is this is sort of the grandfather of things like
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the American scream machine. These are the ones that are
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: clattery and jittery. They're lurching, they're they're made pretty much
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: entirely of wood. Perhaps the most famous is the Coney
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Island Cyclone, which is built in nineteen twenty seven by
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Vernon Keaton and Harry Baker. Even notables of the day
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: like Charles Lindbergh would get off this ride and say
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: that is actually scarier to me than flying in an airplane.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Eighty five foot drop, sixty miles an hour. This is
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the gold standard for most of modern roller coasters. It
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: truly freaks.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Me out the idea of something like that being held
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: with such force, you know, of being exerted on it
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: on the regular, being held together by like nails and boards.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: I don't understand how they don't just come crashing down.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Woodies, right, Ben, the Woodies, that's right. Yeah.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: And the King of the Woodies is a guy named
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Harry Guy Traver, A guy named Harry Guy Traver. Guy's
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: actually his mill named. In the nineteen twenties, he starts
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: building his own version of cyclone across the nation, and
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: his most famous creation is the cyclone at Canada's Crystal
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Beach Park. At this point, just a context new. You know,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: in the early days, they were calling a lot of
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: these rides scenic railways wherever they were. Now they're calling
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: them cyclone like it's not necessarily patented, they're not cyclones
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: or guess. Yeah.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: And this particular cyclone, like you said, Ben, at Crystal
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Beach Park up there in Canada, actually had a staff
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: nurse on hand in case people experience any kind of
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: medical issues as a result of riding the ride. Another
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: one in the same kind of era and style was
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: something called the aeroplane at a place called Playland Amusement
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Park in Rye Beach, New York, which was constructed with
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: assistance from Frederick Church. The airplane really relied on this
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: first kind of corkscrew kind of spirally dropped that drops
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: so steeply with such forests that riders were slammed against
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: the side of the cars. And again we see that
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: with things like the remaining woodies that like you know,
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: the Great American Scream Machine in six Flags, or some
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: of the old style coasters at Coney Island. They are
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: really jarring and they do kind of tend to give
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: you a little bit of shell shock just from having
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: your head banged around. And I guess this was a feature,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: not a bug here where they described that as simulating
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: the experience of being in a plane.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Crash, which doesn't sound particularly fun to me. M h true, right,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: And I wonder whether there are now VR plane crash simulations.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I wonder if people do that for fun. Maybe I
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: don't doubt that it exists.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Ben, And I was just talking to my kid about
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: again our trip to Disney World a couple of years ago.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: One of my favorite rides there was like this gravity
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: simular later of like what it feels like to be
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: in a spaceship launch and it literallyre just in this pod.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: And that's I think the same technology that's used to
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: train you know, up and coming astronauts how to kind
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: of deal with g's G forces. It really does feel
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: like your whole body is being compressed against the back
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: of your seat, and it's very claustrophobic. And you know,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: for being a pretty old attraction there at Disney, I
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: found it to be one of the most terrifying of
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: any of the things that we wrote.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I also think what we're learning is the older, the
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: older rides are going to inherently be more terrified. And
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: especially if you have knowledge of the history of roller coasters,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: you might ask yourself, well, hey, guys, that's all good
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: and well, but why aren't any of these older rides
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: around now? Why have so many disappeared? Well, when we
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: think about the timeline, we see the same thing that
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: affected so many other stories of Americana, and the same
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: the Great Depression came, the Great Depression rolled in and
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: disposable income rolled away. Roller coasters were part of this.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: With the onset of the Depression and World War Two
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: right after that, people just didn't have money to spend
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: on roller coasters. They were busy trying to you know,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: buy food and water and sleep indoors.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this came up on a recent episode as well,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: I mean it always you know, you never expect the
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Great Depression, but it does tend to throw a wrench
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: in any kind of leisure time activities, and folks that
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: have really liked invested their their livelihoods into these types
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: of attractions or these types of businesses.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Is going to be a sort of a slump inherent. Yeah,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: So a lot of these things, even the legend God
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: to your Ones get torn down. The Traverse cyclone at
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Crystal Beach Park is torn down in forty six. Nineteen
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: forty six, the Cody Island Tornado goes defunct. And by
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, as a result of all these difficult times,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the US went from having fifteen hundred roller coasters to
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: more like two hundred. So it's a heck of a
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: rate of attrition. And it turns out that when we
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: look at the roller coaster today, not just in the
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: United States but around the world, we have to thank
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Walt Disney because he got super into roller coasters. You know.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very often credited as kind of rescuing the
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: concept of the roller coaster, which you know, it's credit
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: where credit is due. He absolutely did that, and he
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: also made them more accessible by not leaning so hard
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: into the absolute death defying kind of thrills of them all,
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: but making them more these sort of like very thoughtfully
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: designed experiences, you know, and themed like for example, the
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Matterhorn bob Sled ride, which it holds up man. It's
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: super cool and a little bit scary. There's some parts
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: where you know, you look like you're about to jump
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: off the tracks, and then this yetti swoops in and
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: there's all of this animatronics around it.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: So it's more than just a coaster.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: It really is almost like riding a high speed like
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Haunted House attraction or something.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: There's also a huge key innovation that the Disney crew makes.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: The matter Horns tracks are not built of wood, they're
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: built of steel, so the ride smoother, quieter, it feels
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: less threatening. And this idea of making coasters out of
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: steel brings the industry back to life. It resurrects it.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Disneyland's massive success encourages all sorts of people dreaming of
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the coaster game to open their own theme parks in
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: different regions of the US and the layer of the world.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: There's Six Flags, which is you know everywhere. Now it's
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: a franchise. We have one in our fair metropolis of Atlanta,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: King's Island near the Natty Bush Gardens in Tampa Bay, Florida,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: And then there are more and more. It seems, even
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: when the economy is not doing so well, a lot
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: of these places survive. At least twenty thirty brings us
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: another great depression.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: So in the nineteen sixties a company called Arrow who
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: actually designed the Matter Horn for Disney.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: They hired a guy named Ron.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Tumor who introduced a super successful line of rides that
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: could be recreated, like the Flume ride, for example, which
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: everyone knows is like sort of the log ride where
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: you go down like one single you know, incline and
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: get splashed.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Nice. Where are you guys at Nolan max on splash rides.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: If it's hot, I'm cool with it. It's like a
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: really really hot It's a nice little kind of you know,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: relief a little bit. I go to water parks to
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: get wet.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: My problem with like water rice and world and like
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: amusement parks a lot of times is like I know,
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: people like, oh, we're sandals. I'm like, I'm walking around
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: all day. I don't I have like comfortable socks on
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: and coortle shoes on.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: That stuff doesn't do well when it gets wet.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: But granted, if it's like ninety five degrees outside, okay,
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: that's fine.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I don't go to water parks, and I'm concerned that
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: you do because of all the pea.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: It's a lot of pea.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of pea.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Now I don't like I don't like water parks because
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: water parks you have to climb up those stairs and
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: being afraid of heights.
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: It's awful.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Yet, yeah, I feel you, man, Let's start a hot
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: air balloon amusement park.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: It's sort of out of this, Yes, it's sort of
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: out of this. You are you are really on this
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: hot hout for these air balloons. Ben Hey. There is
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: a park that's probably outside of the scope of this
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: particular episode, but it's called Action Park in New Jersey,
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: I often referred to as Class Action. It is a
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: water park that notoriously contained very poorly designed rides that
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: would just shoot people or water slides that would just
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: shoot people out into oblivion, you know, to be injured
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: in various ways. And one of the reasons apparently that
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: this was so common was that the designs of the ride,
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: or the designers of the ride did not seem to
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: have sufficient knowledge or training in physics and engineering.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Just shoot them and go with God, see what happens.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: There's the Great American Revolution ride at six Flags Magic Mountain,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: which is over in Valencia, California, that goes out in
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, and it redefines the looping coaster game.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Now it's just called Revolution and it had a tear
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: drop loop. The technical term would be a clothoid or
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: clothoid loop. This was designed by a German engineer, Anton Schwartzkrop,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: and the company that made this roller coaster is still
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: around to this day. They're called Intimate AG and so
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: they The innovations these guys made brought more and more
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: people back to amusement parks. And today if you go
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: to any modern major amusement park, like anything that's not
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: just a bunch of carnies in a parking lot, you're
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: going to see some kind of looping coaster. And there
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: was another arms race to get the maximum number of
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: loops or inversions in a single ride. I'm thinking of
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: stuff like Dragon Con and Spain Monte Macaia in Brazil.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: And there's one quote This is probably one of my
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: favorite quotes from the research that John Allen, President of Philadelphia.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Toboggan said this, you don't need a degree in engineering
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: to design roller coasters. You need a degree in psychology. Noel,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: can you help us unpack that? What does he mean?
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Well, that's right, because I mean a lot of it
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: is about weaponizing psychology in a way that she us
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: maximum thrills. We all talked about how oftentimes the scariest
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: part is the anticipation.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Is that click, click, click, up the hill.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Toboggan goes on to say, a roller coaster is as
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: theatrically contrived as a broadway play. These advancements in roller
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: coaster technology and design tech included a lot of very
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: specific engineering touches that really played with things like your expectations,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: things like parabolic hill shapes where you couldn't see what
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: was coming around the next bend.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there we go. So it's always it's like Alfred
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Hitchcock said, right, the monster off screen that you can't
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: see is always going to be scarier than the one
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: on screen. So not knowing what's coming next really messages
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: with your expectations your head. We also know that the
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: wooden coasters or woodies, which are you know, technologically speaking,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: they're not as advanced as steel coasters. They are now
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: benefiting from the power of nostalgia. Ah yeah, hell of
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a drug indeed, right, And these these wooden coasters, the woodies,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: become instrumental in the rebirth of roller coasters as a cool,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: fun thing. And now they're starting to be called mega
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: coasters at this point, around like the nineteen seventies.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Right, and you had mega coasters such as Racer, which
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: was a John Allen design that actually contained dual coasters,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: so I believe these would have been side by side, right,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: kind of going in tandem. Yeah, and then you also
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: had the Beast of nineteen seventy nine fame, which had
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: the title.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Of longest coaster in the world.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Both of these, the Beast and the Racer, were at
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: King's Island Amusement Park were.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: And are because I've been a couple of times in
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: my life, I've written both of these.
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: The Racers Racers Cool.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: Racer is fun because no matter what, you're just automatically
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: everyone is just talking massive ship to the other car.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: But they don't always They used to run at one
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: part where one was going backwards. One was going forwards.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: I don't know if they do that all the time now,
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: but The Beast is to the state the best roller
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: coaster I've ever written.
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: It's been that.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: That first sentence you don't need a degree in engineering,
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: you need a degree in psychology, is like that because
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: you just walk up. The Beast is at like a
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: part of the park where it's just woods all behind it,
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: so you have no idea what it is.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: You look at.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you have no idea in so long, and it's
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: like a it's like a story, basically just writing a story,
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: and it's literally like all you can do on that
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: roller coaster is just laugh and joy.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: It is so amazing.
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: It's despite its age, it's still like, especially for a
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: wooden coaster, Oh really smooth. A lot of these hold up, yeah,
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: if it's don't fix it, yeah, I mean, like obviously
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: they have to spend a lot of wooden coaster is
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: one of the big drawbacks wooden coasters. You have to
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: spend a lot of money mainta yeah, replacing the tracks.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: But the Beast is one that's like, I mean, it's
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: been a number of years since I've written it, but
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: it was it's about it's probably the number one roller
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: coaster in my list. I got about three. I got
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: three in Tier A. Let's go, oh yeah, let's let's
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: let's get to that at the end. I'd love to
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: hear what all our favorites are. I've got a top
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: three in my head right now.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the uh, the as we're getting to that, let's uh,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: let's you know what, Let's let's hurry up and get
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: to that part right now. What you need to know, folks,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: without getting two into weeds, is that the arms race
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: for the superlatives continues. The titles for the fastest, biggest,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: longest coaster are an issue of hot, intense debate every
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: single year. It's just sort of it's sort of similar
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: to the arms race for skyscrapers, you know what I mean,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: everybody's trying to build the tallest building. And honestly, if
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: you're hearing this, congrats on the bergs Dubai. But should
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: we count the antennas at the top as part of
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: the height? Max says no, Maxican in thumbed out, I
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: don't think so either. Skyscraper episode on the way, we're
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: just yeah confessed it. Yeah, so okay, So we know this, right,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: like the latest crop of coasters. Every time they come out,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: they're trying to find at least some specific thing that
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: they are the best at, the biggest, the fastest, the
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: most loops, you know, the fewest injuries.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Indoor coasters, you know, indoor coasters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: have these. First of all, you have suspended coasters like
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: the Xcel R eight nineteen eighty four and six Flags
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Astro World in Houston. You have stand up coasters, which well,
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: there's one called the King Kobra, but there is one
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: at six Flags that's called the Viper maybe or something
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: like that, but it's there's a stand up coaster at
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: the No, it's the Scorcher, the Georgia. Scorcher has six
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: laves over Georgia as end up coaster, and those are
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: really cool. They're fun because it really feels like you're
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: like flying.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Don't we have the Superman one too, where that's.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, yeah, I find that one to be
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: difficult because I just get kind of claustrophobic when I'm
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: like like like locked in in that way, and so
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: I'm got a little stressful.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: It's really restraining. I find I like scorture. But the
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: one that like the problem with stand up coasters just
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: in general is they don't handle g forces very well, right,
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: so you either have to tune it back a lot
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: or you get a little rough and scorture is like
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: kind of in the middle where it's not it's really fun.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: But I've readen other stand up coasters, I've rit bigger
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: ones than that. I'm like, oh my god, this is horrible.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: It's a tricky one, you know what I mean. It's
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: kind of like building a three willed vehicle, right, but
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: there's like it's possible, right. But also, uh, I love
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: the Superman thing just because despite all the restraints you
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: have to wear, it replicates flying. It does. I wrote
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: it once. And it's also really really short.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I remember it being obscenely short, which probably for good
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: reason because it is so restraining.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Can we do this?
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: I just I remember the first coaster that really, you know,
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: blew my mind was the Batman Ride. Batman the Ride,
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: which I believe debuted at six Flags Great America in Illinois,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: but has been at six a staple of six Flags.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Over Georgia, you know, for many, many years.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: And that's one where I guess it's called an inverted
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: coaster where your legs are kind of dangling. And if
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: I'm not mistaken, somebody got killed on the Batman ride
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: at Six Flags because they tried to get their hat
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: from this sort of cordoned off area, and I believe
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: the the you know, one of the cars swooped down
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: and they were decapitated, if I'm.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Mistaken, And then someone on a ride called z Force
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: in six Flags broke their neck. You can find on
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: coaster pedia dot at a fairly comprehensive list of deadly
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: roller coaster accidents. To be fair to the industry, these
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: are isolated cases rare. They're very rare. It can sound scary,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: and part of that, I would argue is a little
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: bit of like black bag psyop stuff in some of
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: the marketers. But to be absolutely transparent, everybody building roller coasters,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: everybody charging you to ride one, they want you to
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: be as safe as possible. They want you to have
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: an amazing time. That's why there are like one hundred
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: and twenty different roller coaster operations opening across the world
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: by the end of the twentieth century, about half of
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: those fifty percent or in the United States. Because I
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: ask you, despite the Russian and French origin story, what
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: is more American than a roller coaster as a ride?
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Saying like, I want to feel like I might die
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: for you know, two three minutes.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a sort of cheating of death aspect
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: to it that that does have.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: A certain appeal.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: But you're right, you know, despite its origins, it has
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: become a pretty uniquely American thing. Well, you know, not
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: to say that there aren't cool coasters in other parts
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: of the world.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: There certainly are. Do you guys wanna as we as
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: we close out our series on the history of roller coasters,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: thanks again to our research associate Max, do you guys
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: wanna tell us all a little bit about your favorite coasters?
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Each said you have a top three? I do?
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: I think for me, my number three would be Batman,
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: the ride at six Slives over Georgia. Why don't we
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: maybe go round robin until we get to our number ones?
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree with that one. Play That one's
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: so much fun. It's also a great one that if
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: you're there on a night or it's slow and there's
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: not many people there that you can just binge that one.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: They'll like, they'll let you ride it a couple of times. Yeah,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: sure that one.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: That one's great for that I'm gonna go with at
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: a theater point. There's this one called Maverick and it's
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: a weird roller coaster because it doesn't have chain lift
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: or anything like that. So it's like you were was
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: in constant motion the entire time and as like it
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: was the first ninety five degree drop, which is a
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: weird thing.
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: Like I'm Amurican on my that's not great but crazy
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: of an idea, and I wrote it.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: because you're going underneath the track that you were just on,
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: but it just whips and turns and it's just this
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: beautifully scripted written roller coaster.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Very cool, Ben, you got a number three fave. I
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: don't really have, you know, I don't really have a
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: top list of roller coasters. Again, it's like the ice
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: cream comparison in episode one. You know, like if they're.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: There, I'll go stand out in your memory, whether it
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: be childhood.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: But I know, almost dying, like to the ice cream thing,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I don't wake up and then immediately travel the one
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: American scream Machine just because I conquered death on that one,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: which is the inherent appeal of roller coasters. I wouldn't
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: say it's a great coaster by any means, uh, But
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I fought it and I won.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Sonumber three well, okay, And speaking of fighting against great
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: adversity and winning as the underdog, my number two would
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: be the Goliath at six Flags over Georgia, which is
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: quite long and very high, with incredible scenic views of
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: the surrounding kind of wooded areas in that part of Atlanta,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: and some serious drops, and every time I ride it,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: I have to get over my fear of heights because
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: it is massively tall, and at night when they do
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: the fright Fest or whatever Fright Night I guess it's
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: called at six Flags. It is a wild one to
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: ride at night when you can see the full moon
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: up in the sky ahead of you.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: So I was actually changing up my list kind of
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: on the fly right here, so that I talked about
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: the Beasts and how which I love that one, and
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: I was going to talk about Goliath. It's my number two,
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: so I'm going to change it for the sake of
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: having more and talk about Goliath Daddy, which is Magnum
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: x L, which is the first ever mega coaster in
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: the world. I think it's the late eighties at Suit Point.
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: It's basically it's very similar to Billie. It's not the
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: same script, and it's nowhere smooth as Goliath is, but
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: it's like it was one of the coolest things about
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Cedar Point, which I gush about it if you let me
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: do it for too long. There's so many records were
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: set at that park, and it looked it was the
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: first two hundred foot roller coaster in the world, and
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: you can still ride to this day. It's just there's
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: just now two other roller coasters taller than it.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because again it's it's like the skyscraper race. They're
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: also what are they called giga roller coasters. A giga
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: coaster Gego's three hundred and three three hundred to three
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: hundred and ninety nine feet it is, which is massive.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: And I think there's what we're talking about too, is
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: this nomenclature. There's also the hyper coaster.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I said mega Hyper's two hundred to
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: three hundred right, right, So.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: We're throwing at the terms here too.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: You can tell Max is a real coasters in terms
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: like script you know, I mean, come now, you've done
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: your homeworks there.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Magnum XL is A is a hypercoaster. There are giga
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: coasters as as you mentioned. If I had to choose
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: a second one, you know what, I'm thinking more in
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: terms beyond just orthodox coasters. I really like the bungee
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: rides where they launch you out and you're attached to
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: a rope. No, no, thank you. I don't like those
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: straight drops, but I like the I like that. I
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: like the big swings. Those are terrified pasts.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: I've read it one time in my life, and I
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: will never not regret you.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Came through the fire. I'm proud of you. Max. All right,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: So then that brings us to what number ones? Just
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: their number ones? Yeah? Max, you want to go first?
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: Sure, I can go first, because, uh Ben, you were
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: talking about giga coasters, so of course I'm want to
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: talk about the first giga coaster ever made, Millennium Force
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: at Cedar point three hundred foot. The coolest thing about
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: Millennium Force, well, ay, one thing that's really cool about
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: that is it has probably the fastest chain I've ever ridden,
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: going to three hundred feet and it's just like you
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: go so fast up and I'm like, okay, that's nice,
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: but as an eighty degree three and nude foot drop.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: But the coolest thing it does is the first thing
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: it goes up and then turns and on the turn
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: you go I think one twenty, so your feet are
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: above your head on a turn and you only have
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: a lap bar on and it's just so smooth and
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: it's so excellent. The problem with Lannium Force is it's
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: like always broken. At least that's my knowledge. Like I've
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: been a Supard Point twice and I was only able
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: to one of the times.
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: It was broken for the entire season.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: It's like there McDonald's ice cream.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: It really is the McDonald's ice cream. So if you're
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: in Ohio and Lenian Force is running, you should just
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: go to Santusky.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: All right, Chief Advice. And with that, mister Brown, your
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: number one coaster.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: The number one coaster for me was at Universal Studios, Orlando,
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: and it is the Incredible Hulk roller coaster. And it
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: is because I ever experienced anything like this where it wasn't.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: It does this thing where you enter on the I
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: guess the uphill part. The very first little you know,
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: chain lift part and it click click click click click.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: You go to this tunnel that sort of.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Surrounded you with like gamma ray kind of lights, one
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: would presume, and you go click click click about halfway
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: and then it just shoots you out and you don't
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: know exactly what's gonna happen. And it's like, I don't
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: know how it's propelled or what the technology is behind it.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: But something about the like the momentary, you know, familiar
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: thing of the chain lift click and then the note.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Screw this, bam and you're out.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: There's something about it that just really games your your
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: brain in a really interesting way and you just feel
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: like unstoppable and it has some incredible inversions and it's
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: just really really fast and really really fun and I
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: loved it.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: I've only ridden it once and I thought it was
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: next level. Nice nice with that will end with a
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: number one on my end. That is not a declaration,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: it's a question. Ridiculous his story? Could you help it?
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Could you help me find a number one roller coaster?
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: What is your favorite? Let us know at Ridiculous Historians
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: over our Facebook page. Yeah, we want to hear about
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: your adventures folks and I can't wait to can't wait
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: to return with even more strange, ridiculous history. This has
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: been such a not even an intentional pun, but I'll
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: keep it if we're okay with it. It's been such
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: a fun ride.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: A real ride, yeah, real journey of self discovery.
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: And then Jois de viv No, it's good stuff. Man.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Without a line.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: No, no, no line requires ridiculous history. We're right there
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: for you.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Huge thanks to Max for the incredible research work on
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: this one, as well as aj Bahamas and Jonathan Strickland
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the Puzzler and Quist respectively. Huge fan of lines, that guy.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Big big thanks to christ Rossiotis Eves, jeffco will Be
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Eve Jeff Coat, and Ben Thompson, both of whom will
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: be appearing soon in the near future spoilers. Big big
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: thanks again to Alex Williams, who composed this slap and
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: bop and audio roller coaster all its own indeed, and Noel,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: thanks to you. Ah to you as well. Ben. We'll
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: see you next time. Folks.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.