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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio, previously on Ridiculous History.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show Ridiculous his Stories. Think who

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Speaker 1: has always so much for tuning in. Let's give a

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Speaker 1: big shout out to our super producer, mister Max the

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Speaker 1: Tycoon Williams. I am ben Bullen joy does always with

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Speaker 1: the man, the myth, the legend, a tycoon in his

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Speaker 1: own right, Mister Noel Brown Noles. We've had We've had

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Speaker 1: a heck of a time with this roller coaster series, right,

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Speaker 1: A lot of oh no, no, it's okay, we'll allow it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: no ups and downs.

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Speaker 2: To be sure, I think we've roughly reached approaching modern times,

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Speaker 2: but not not not not quite. We still have a

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Speaker 2: little bit of history again.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, just like the experience of writing a roller coaster,

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Speaker 1: we're having form follow function, or form and function be interrelated.

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Speaker 1: Because our previous episode, part one was kind of a

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Speaker 1: up the hill, all right, and now we are at

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Speaker 1: a titular point. Now we are at an apex of

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Speaker 1: roller coaster history because you see, with the dawning of

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Speaker 1: the world's first legit roller coaster, Tycoon La Marcus. I

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Speaker 1: just love to say his name uh, he triggered and

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Speaker 1: arms race amidst the roller coaster manufacturers of the world.

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Speaker 1: I mean, within just a few months after he becomes

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Speaker 1: the roller coaster king of Coney Island, people start moving

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Speaker 1: in on his territory. That's right.

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Speaker 2: I mean he held a virtual monopoly on coasters, you know,

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Speaker 2: at least in this country at Coney Island. But enter

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Speaker 2: Charles Alcoke, who had built a kind of more of

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Speaker 2: a scenic people mover type situation, a slow scenic railroad.

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Speaker 2: The connected the ends of the tracks in a continuous

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Speaker 2: loop to make it more of a pleasure cruise.

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Speaker 1: I like that, a pleasure cruise people mover, a people

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Speaker 1: moving pleasure cruise. Yes, so this coaster gets close to

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Speaker 1: the record set by Thompson Switchback Railway, but Philip Hinkle

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Speaker 1: makes a breakthrough in eighteen eighty five. His coaster has

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Speaker 1: an elliptical route and a powered hoist that pulls cars

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Speaker 1: back to the top of the first hill, and because

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Speaker 1: of the speed at which it moves, it's a more

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Speaker 1: exciting ride than the relatively slow moving switchback. And at

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Speaker 1: this point, to be clear, no one has beaten that

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Speaker 1: original train powered scenic railway from episode one that ended

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Speaker 1: at like sixty five miles an hour.

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Speaker 2: Right, And when I say we're roughly approaching modern coaster times,

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Speaker 2: what I mean is this technology in a lot of

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Speaker 2: ways is still kind of how things are done.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like you said, these a lot

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Speaker 1: of these are what we will call simple machines with

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Speaker 1: further pieces of technology added on top of them. At

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Speaker 1: this point, all of them, at least all the rides

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Speaker 1: at Coney Island are leveraging gravity to work. They're just

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Speaker 1: approaching gravity and interesting ways, there's a ride called the

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Speaker 1: Steeplechase by a guy named George C. Till You, which

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Speaker 1: is an interesting last name. I wonder what the etymology

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Speaker 1: of that is. I don't know. It's spelt like it's

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Speaker 1: spelled like t I L you, so it's like until

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Speaker 1: you with me again.

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Speaker 2: I don't know this this ride actually, you know, Steeplechase

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Speaker 2: being a famous is it a specific horse race or

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Speaker 2: is it just a style.

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Speaker 1: Of horse racing.

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Speaker 2: I can't remember if it's like a particular event, but

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Speaker 2: either way, Steeplechase is a horse race scenario, and this

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Speaker 2: one kind of mimic that with these mechanical horses that

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Speaker 2: descend it on kind of a wavy track, and it

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Speaker 2: was very very popular amongst early coaster heads.

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Speaker 1: I also like coaster heads. I think it's steeplechase, isn't

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Speaker 1: that the one where the horses have to jump over obstacles,

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Speaker 1: like they don't run, and they run and they jump

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Speaker 1: over different fences or different ditches, So it kind of

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Speaker 1: mimics what you would experience on a roller coaster. It's

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Speaker 1: an obstacle race in athletics, but it is named after the.

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Speaker 2: Steeplechase in horse racing, which, to your point, Ben was

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Speaker 2: involved jumping over hurdles and things like that. But a

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Speaker 2: steeple chase in like an Olympic type event, involves going

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Speaker 2: through water, you know, jumping over hurdles and all of

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Speaker 2: that kind of stuff.

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Speaker 1: So this was named for the horse race, the original

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Speaker 1: version of a steeple chase, because of the ups and downs,

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Speaker 1: and there were there were other things like the cannon coaster. Yes,

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Speaker 1: the cannon coaster is a little bit dystopian. Already. There

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Speaker 1: is a gap in the rails. Ooh, yeah, that seems

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Speaker 1: a little bit dangerous. Well, often often the cars made

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Speaker 1: it across the gap. Yeah, when one would hope it

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Speaker 1: would work out that way for you. There was also

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Speaker 1: something called the mystic screw, which also sounds a little dirty.

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Speaker 1: Maybe my mind is just in the gut of perpetually

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Speaker 1: and this trick it was a yeah exactly.

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Speaker 2: This involved a kind of a helix type pattern and

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Speaker 2: then the writers would descend around seventy five feet.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Pass around this time, our friends of Encyclopedia Britannic

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Speaker 1: and note people start experimenting with something called inversions.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and whenever you are are looking at, you know,

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Speaker 2: guides for roller coasters written by coaster heads, inversions are

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Speaker 2: a big feature that are always you know discussed, like

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Speaker 2: how many inversions does a ride happen, what's their height?

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Speaker 2: And also things like corkscrews that might send you kind

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Speaker 2: of circling. It's not a full inversion exactly. It's more

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Speaker 2: of like a sideways kind of like inversion.

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Speaker 1: I always thought loops loops were so cool because it

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Speaker 1: is just from a physics standpoint, it's such an interesting experiment.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like taking a bucket of water and swinging

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Speaker 2: it upside down over your head. It's not gonna come

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Speaker 2: out because of you know, mother gravity. Just hold that

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Speaker 2: holding that stuff in and early inversions didn't even have

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Speaker 2: lap bars or what do you call them, like, you know, harnesses.

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Speaker 1: We were literally held in place.

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Speaker 2: By gravity, which we know is gonna work unless the

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Speaker 2: coaster fails or something, you know, and then you just

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Speaker 2: PLoP right out.

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Speaker 1: Gravity does its thing once again. Yeah, yeah, because the

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Speaker 1: one constant force in all of these things, one thing

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Speaker 1: that never breaks is gravity. So you just have to

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Speaker 1: stay on gravity's good side. It doesn't care about you.

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Speaker 1: It's what it's gonna do. It's very focused on it.

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Speaker 1: It's like one thing that it's good at. So these

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Speaker 1: loop track rides, people had tried them in Paris before

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the eighteen hundreds, and the rides

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Speaker 1: were similar to the Bucket of Water example from earlier.

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Speaker 1: The rides are based on a toy for kids that

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Speaker 1: keeps a small ball rolling on a loop track without

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Speaker 1: falling off. However, at least in Paris, people found these

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Speaker 1: inversions uncomfortable and dangerous, and so the idea was scrapped

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Speaker 1: until eighteen ninety five, when Lena Beecher installs something called

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Speaker 1: the Flip Flap Railway at Paul Boyton's Sea Lion Park

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Speaker 1: and Coney Island. Their main attraction was sea lions, but

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Speaker 1: they also of course had what they called the Railway.

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Speaker 1: It was uncomfortable, it was still dangerous, but it had

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Speaker 1: this big twenty five foot circular loop that became wildly

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Speaker 1: popular and went viral, as we would say in the

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Speaker 1: parlance of today, and it shut down after only a

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Speaker 1: few years. And it was so potentially dangerous that a

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Speaker 1: lot of folks would just show up to watch others

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Speaker 1: ride it, which I can relate to again with my

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Speaker 1: kind of building back up my courage to ride the coasters.

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Speaker 1: If I go to an amusement park and haven't been

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Speaker 1: in a while, I will sometimes just kind of watch

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Speaker 1: a few of the coasters to kind of build up

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Speaker 1: my moxie, you know, to go for a ride myself. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think people found the excel the slight acceleration, g forces,

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Speaker 1: gravitational forces uncomfortable. Oh yeah, well it kind of is

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Speaker 1: a little bit so, right. So this is where we

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Speaker 1: get to a guy named Edward Prescott who builds something

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Speaker 1: called the loop de loop.

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Speaker 2: And that is sort of the stand in parlance for

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Speaker 2: these kind of inversions. You know, people will often call

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Speaker 2: them a loop, the loop, uh, and that this is

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Speaker 2: also a Coney Island, had a bit of a gentler slope,

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Speaker 2: more oval shaped design, and was much better in engineered

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Speaker 2: and constructed then the flippity flap.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I know it's not the flippity flap, but

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Speaker 1: I like that better. Oh sure, let's treat the phrase

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Speaker 1: flip flap with the gravity it deserves.

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Speaker 2: Hey, hey, jeez, the but it'd still be quite quite

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Speaker 2: a few more decades seventy five years in fact, before

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Speaker 2: a very fully successful vertical loop was was actually created.

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Speaker 1: And because it had a very low seating capacity, the loop.

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Speaker 1: The loop itself doesn't doesn't succeed long term. It's not

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Speaker 1: around now, but for the for the fans of coasters,

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Speaker 1: for the roller coaster folk, it is the coolest thing

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Speaker 1: in town, or indeed in the world, until a new

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Speaker 1: challenger emerges in this arms race for adrenaline, something called

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Speaker 1: drop the Dip, later to be called rough Riders.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a little better. But rough Riders.

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Speaker 2: It makes me think of DMX. Wasn't he the rough

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Speaker 2: rider to the head of the rough Riders crew.

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Speaker 1: It makes me think of Roosevelt.

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Speaker 3: I gotta jump in here. Remember when we were doing

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Speaker 3: our Model Trains. Episode I talked about the terrible idea

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Speaker 3: of a third track roller coaster.

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Speaker 4: This is it. This is it?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, third track being a power rail that delivers electricity

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Speaker 2: to the coaster. But also, as we know if you've

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Speaker 2: ever been on like a subway station, those tracks are

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Speaker 2: way out of reach. They're down, you know, in the

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Speaker 2: in the pit kind of of the of the subway track.

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Speaker 2: But they are very clearly labeled do not touch the

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Speaker 2: third rail because you can get a deadly shock.

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Speaker 1: Exactly. And the issue here is not necessarily the mechanics

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Speaker 1: at play. The issue here is the human operators. Because

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Speaker 1: folks operating the rough rider would try to deliver the

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Speaker 1: maximum amount of fun, thrill and adrenaline to their passengers,

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Speaker 1: which meant they pushed it too hard. They pushed the

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Speaker 1: machine too hard, They used full power, even when folks

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Speaker 1: were already going down, taking the power leveraging the power

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Speaker 1: of gravity. In nineteen ten, one guy operating rough riders,

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Speaker 1: he took his train around a bend just way too fast.

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Speaker 1: He was all gased, no brakes. He threw two cars

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Speaker 1: loose from the ride. Sixteen passengers flew out over the

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Speaker 1: nearby surf avenue. And four of them died.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and Britannica points out that these kind of upping

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Speaker 2: the ante here in terms of the danger quotient did

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Speaker 2: force some of that oversight that we were desperately lacking.

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Speaker 2: And obviously it takes a real gnarly tragedy like this,

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Speaker 2: you know, for folks to see the need for intervention

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Speaker 2: at this level. And so you started to see things

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Speaker 2: like lap bars, which got passengers in place right before that,

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Speaker 2: like I was saying, you were just in place by

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Speaker 2: the forces of gravity and the g force of the

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Speaker 2: vertical loop themselves. Train derailments, however, did kind of continue,

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Speaker 2: though they became a lot less common after some of these,

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Speaker 2: you know, safety measures were put in place around nineteen

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Speaker 2: twelve when John Miller, who was the chief engineer for

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Speaker 2: our boy LaMarcus, invented something called the under friction wheel.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. It was sort of a big wig or as

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Speaker 1: Max wanted to say, a large hair piece in the

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Speaker 1: I appreciate in the roller coaster industry. Yeah, the under

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Speaker 1: friction wheel. Before we get to that, I got to

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Speaker 1: tell you guys, here's the story of how I almost

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Speaker 1: died on the American screen machine. It's due to a

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Speaker 1: lap bar. So the lap bar in these things works,

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Speaker 1: as you know, if you're seated two by two, the

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Speaker 1: lap bar is supposed to go down sort of like

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Speaker 1: on your crotch area, the bend between your hips and

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Speaker 1: your thighs, and as long as people relatively the same size,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna be all right. I was writing with an

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Speaker 1: adult friend of the family who was, you know, a grown,

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Speaker 1: a grown woman much larger than me as a young

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Speaker 1: Ben Bolan, and the lap bar clanked down on her

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Speaker 1: but didn't quite reach our young, our young protagonist. And

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Speaker 1: so thank god, the American Scream Machine did not have

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Speaker 1: loop de loops. It just had this old creaky wooden

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Speaker 1: thing where the first seri downhills, though it's got some

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Speaker 1: serious downhills, and I was replicating the experience of pre

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Speaker 1: lap bar people because I kid you not, guys. There

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Speaker 1: was a clear like six inches or so between my

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Speaker 1: body and the lap bar, so I was almost out

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Speaker 1: of the car well.

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Speaker 2: And that's the problem with community lap bars, because again

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Speaker 2: you're you're limited by the largest person in the scenario.

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Speaker 3: I actually have a follow up on this because this

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Speaker 3: is how my friend David almost killed me on American

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Speaker 3: Scream machine in the exact same roller coaster. Really, my

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Speaker 3: friend David is a daredevil. He like, you know, I'm

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Speaker 3: afraid of heights. He has no fear of heights whatsoever. Sure,

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Speaker 3: and we were teenagers, probably like fifteen sixteen years old.

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Speaker 3: We're at six Flags, and what he would do is

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Speaker 3: he would always sit up as far as he possibly

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Speaker 3: could and see if people would not notice that he's

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Speaker 3: just like making it so the bar can't go all

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Speaker 3: the way down.

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Speaker 4: It was like it was like a Wednesday afternoon.

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Speaker 1: We were there.

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Speaker 4: The person that didn't really check, and so.

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Speaker 3: Then we're rolling out, he stands up completely out of

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Speaker 3: his seat. Does to show me how bad it is.

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Speaker 3: I'm just like cranking down in the seat, Belty Calf.

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Speaker 3: But I got the last laugh because a year later

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Speaker 3: we went to Cedar Point and I made him right

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Speaker 3: at top fill Dragster and I actually watched that man

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Speaker 3: cry before it went off, and he started to cry.

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Speaker 1: You'll love to see it. Good to be in touch

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Speaker 1: with your emotions, I guess. But but yes, so this

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Speaker 1: idea here and also out to everybody who survived a

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Speaker 1: roller coaster where you almost died. And Carol, if you're

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Speaker 1: hearing this, I forgive you. John Miller's invention of the

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Speaker 1: under friction wheel is a massive game changer because it

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Speaker 1: keeps the train bolted down beneath the track with a

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Speaker 1: third set of wheels. So if gravity, if you get

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Speaker 1: on the bad side of gravity, you have an opposing

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Speaker 1: force attaching your car to the rail, kind of like

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Speaker 1: clamping something. So like the previous ones had maybe side

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Speaker 1: friction wheels that were meant to function kind of as

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Speaker 1: insurance of ice rolling on the inside or the inner

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Speaker 1: edges of the track. But this is this is just

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Speaker 1: a much better answer. It stops so many accidental derailments.

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Speaker 1: Our guy John Miller is also responsible for others safety innovations,

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Speaker 1: like a safety chain lift, which means, okay, I didn't

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Speaker 1: know this, but it makes sense. Back in the day

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Speaker 1: roller coasters rolling up that first till that we were

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Speaker 1: talking about, sometimes they didn't make it. There's real backwards

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Speaker 1: that's not good.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And then I mean, was there any safety measure

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Speaker 2: in place to stop them from just like slamming to

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Speaker 2: a halt at the end when they dropped back.

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Speaker 1: Down hopefully after the first few times. I would hope

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Speaker 1: after the first few anyway, there's a weird thing that

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Speaker 1: occurs here because this progress in terms of safety also

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Speaker 1: enables these absolutely mad cap roller coaster engineers to get

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Speaker 1: even more extreme with their designs. You know, a side

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Speaker 1: friction wheel had limited velocity and you couldn't plunge at

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Speaker 1: certain inclides, but this under friction wheel allows you to

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Speaker 1: go even faster, even higher and lower. And Miller himself

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Speaker 1: is kind of this crazy it's kind of pushing the

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Speaker 1: envelope of physics when you think about it. The Russian

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Speaker 1: mountain builders would be astounded by this because they would

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Speaker 1: be like, literally in the ice age of roller coasters,

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Speaker 1: that joke is worth it.

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Speaker 2: It's more than worth it pen and you know, and

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Speaker 2: you know, you really started to see that arms rays

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Speaker 2: kind of playing out where people were trying to top,

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Speaker 2: you know, existing coasters so they could be known as

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Speaker 2: the fastest, the scariest, whatever it might be. And Miller

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Speaker 2: actually really pushed the envelope of physics itself with his

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Speaker 2: Jack Rabbit attraction at Kennywood Park, which had a significantly

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Speaker 2: precipitous dive into kind of like almost like a valley,

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Speaker 2: and then his Cyclone in Cleveland, Ohio, which used the

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Speaker 2: cliffs and gorges, natural attractions at the appuritus springs to

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Speaker 2: create these kind of v shaped, you know, paths.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is where we get to the golden

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Speaker 1: age of roller coasters, and once more, credit where it's due.

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Speaker 1: We want to shout out American Experience WABPPS dot org.

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Speaker 1: You can find it. This is a relatively comprehensive history.

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Speaker 1: By the nineteen twenties, says American Experience, the roller coaster

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Speaker 1: street name the scream Machine was making more screams than

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Speaker 1: ever before. The US had like maybe fifteen hundred separate

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Speaker 1: roller coasters. Sure, they're all chasing hyperbole and superlatives like

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Speaker 1: one is one hundred and thirty eight feet high, the

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Speaker 1: fastest goes sixty one miles an hour. And there were

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Speaker 1: more and more complex iterations of the basic principles tiger curves,

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Speaker 1: steeper drop spirals, figure eights that would just blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: There was even once upon a time, we talked about

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Speaker 1: this an episode of car stuff. Once upon a time

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Speaker 1: in Los Angeles there was an auto coaster, which was

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Speaker 1: a roller coaster you rode in your car. Yikes, I

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Speaker 1: don't know about that, guys. Just now. It didn't work out.

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Speaker 1: Don't really see those too much these days, if at.

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Speaker 2: All, I'm going to say not at all, because I've

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Speaker 2: certainly never heard of one outside of this. It was,

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Speaker 2: like you said, Ben, consider the golden age of the

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Speaker 2: roller coaster specifically, though, you know, like we have our

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Speaker 2: ice age and all that stuff in our bronze age.

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Speaker 1: This was the wooden age. M yeah, yeah, And this

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Speaker 1: is this is sort of the grandfather of things like

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Speaker 1: the American scream machine. These are the ones that are

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Speaker 1: clattery and jittery. They're lurching, they're they're made pretty much

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Speaker 1: entirely of wood. Perhaps the most famous is the Coney

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Speaker 1: Island Cyclone, which is built in nineteen twenty seven by

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Speaker 1: Vernon Keaton and Harry Baker. Even notables of the day

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Speaker 1: like Charles Lindbergh would get off this ride and say

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Speaker 1: that is actually scarier to me than flying in an airplane.

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Speaker 1: Eighty five foot drop, sixty miles an hour. This is

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Speaker 1: the gold standard for most of modern roller coasters. It

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Speaker 1: truly freaks.

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Speaker 2: Me out the idea of something like that being held

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Speaker 2: with such force, you know, of being exerted on it

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Speaker 2: on the regular, being held together by like nails and boards.

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Speaker 2: I don't understand how they don't just come crashing down.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the Woodies, right, Ben, the Woodies, that's right. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And the King of the Woodies is a guy named

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Speaker 1: Harry Guy Traver, A guy named Harry Guy Traver. Guy's

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Speaker 1: actually his mill named. In the nineteen twenties, he starts

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Speaker 1: building his own version of cyclone across the nation, and

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Speaker 1: his most famous creation is the cyclone at Canada's Crystal

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Speaker 1: Beach Park. At this point, just a context new. You know,

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Speaker 1: in the early days, they were calling a lot of

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Speaker 1: these rides scenic railways wherever they were. Now they're calling

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Speaker 1: them cyclone like it's not necessarily patented, they're not cyclones

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Speaker 1: or guess. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And this particular cyclone, like you said, Ben, at Crystal

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Speaker 2: Beach Park up there in Canada, actually had a staff

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Speaker 2: nurse on hand in case people experience any kind of

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Speaker 2: medical issues as a result of riding the ride. Another

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Speaker 2: one in the same kind of era and style was

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Speaker 2: something called the aeroplane at a place called Playland Amusement

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Speaker 2: Park in Rye Beach, New York, which was constructed with

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Speaker 2: assistance from Frederick Church. The airplane really relied on this

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Speaker 2: first kind of corkscrew kind of spirally dropped that drops

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Speaker 2: so steeply with such forests that riders were slammed against

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Speaker 2: the side of the cars. And again we see that

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Speaker 2: with things like the remaining woodies that like you know,

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Speaker 2: the Great American Scream Machine in six Flags, or some

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Speaker 2: of the old style coasters at Coney Island. They are

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Speaker 2: really jarring and they do kind of tend to give

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Speaker 2: you a little bit of shell shock just from having

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Speaker 2: your head banged around. And I guess this was a feature,

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Speaker 2: not a bug here where they described that as simulating

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Speaker 2: the experience of being in a plane.

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Speaker 1: Crash, which doesn't sound particularly fun to me. M h true, right,

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Speaker 1: And I wonder whether there are now VR plane crash simulations.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if people do that for fun. Maybe I

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Speaker 1: don't doubt that it exists.

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Speaker 2: Ben, And I was just talking to my kid about

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Speaker 2: again our trip to Disney World a couple of years ago.

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Speaker 2: One of my favorite rides there was like this gravity

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Speaker 2: simular later of like what it feels like to be

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Speaker 2: in a spaceship launch and it literallyre just in this pod.

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Speaker 2: And that's I think the same technology that's used to

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Speaker 2: train you know, up and coming astronauts how to kind

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Speaker 2: of deal with g's G forces. It really does feel

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Speaker 2: like your whole body is being compressed against the back

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Speaker 2: of your seat, and it's very claustrophobic. And you know,

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Speaker 2: for being a pretty old attraction there at Disney, I

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Speaker 2: found it to be one of the most terrifying of

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Speaker 2: any of the things that we wrote.

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Speaker 1: I also think what we're learning is the older, the

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Speaker 1: older rides are going to inherently be more terrified. And

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Speaker 1: especially if you have knowledge of the history of roller coasters,

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Speaker 1: you might ask yourself, well, hey, guys, that's all good

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Speaker 1: and well, but why aren't any of these older rides

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Speaker 1: around now? Why have so many disappeared? Well, when we

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Speaker 1: think about the timeline, we see the same thing that

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Speaker 1: affected so many other stories of Americana, and the same

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Speaker 1: the Great Depression came, the Great Depression rolled in and

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Speaker 1: disposable income rolled away. Roller coasters were part of this.

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Speaker 1: With the onset of the Depression and World War Two

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Speaker 1: right after that, people just didn't have money to spend

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Speaker 1: on roller coasters. They were busy trying to you know,

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Speaker 1: buy food and water and sleep indoors.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this came up on a recent episode as well,

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Speaker 2: I mean it always you know, you never expect the

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Speaker 2: Great Depression, but it does tend to throw a wrench

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Speaker 2: in any kind of leisure time activities, and folks that

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Speaker 2: have really liked invested their their livelihoods into these types

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Speaker 2: of attractions or these types of businesses.

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Speaker 1: Is going to be a sort of a slump inherent. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So a lot of these things, even the legend God

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Speaker 1: to your Ones get torn down. The Traverse cyclone at

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Speaker 1: Crystal Beach Park is torn down in forty six. Nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty six, the Cody Island Tornado goes defunct. And by

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, as a result of all these difficult times,

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Speaker 1: the US went from having fifteen hundred roller coasters to

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Speaker 1: more like two hundred. So it's a heck of a

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Speaker 1: rate of attrition. And it turns out that when we

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Speaker 1: look at the roller coaster today, not just in the

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Speaker 1: United States but around the world, we have to thank

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Speaker 1: Walt Disney because he got super into roller coasters. You know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very often credited as kind of rescuing the

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Speaker 2: concept of the roller coaster, which you know, it's credit

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Speaker 2: where credit is due. He absolutely did that, and he

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Speaker 2: also made them more accessible by not leaning so hard

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Speaker 2: into the absolute death defying kind of thrills of them all,

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Speaker 2: but making them more these sort of like very thoughtfully

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Speaker 2: designed experiences, you know, and themed like for example, the

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Speaker 2: Matterhorn bob Sled ride, which it holds up man. It's

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Speaker 2: super cool and a little bit scary. There's some parts

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Speaker 2: where you know, you look like you're about to jump

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Speaker 2: off the tracks, and then this yetti swoops in and

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Speaker 2: there's all of this animatronics around it.

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Speaker 1: So it's more than just a coaster.

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Speaker 2: It really is almost like riding a high speed like

431
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:25,639
Speaker 2: Haunted House attraction or something.

432
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:31,159
Speaker 1: There's also a huge key innovation that the Disney crew makes.

433
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:34,640
Speaker 1: The matter Horns tracks are not built of wood, they're

434
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:39,160
Speaker 1: built of steel, so the ride smoother, quieter, it feels

435
00:27:39,280 --> 00:27:44,360
Speaker 1: less threatening. And this idea of making coasters out of

436
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: steel brings the industry back to life. It resurrects it.

437
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:55,840
Speaker 1: Disneyland's massive success encourages all sorts of people dreaming of

438
00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:59,480
Speaker 1: the coaster game to open their own theme parks in

439
00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:02,679
Speaker 1: different regions of the US and the layer of the world.

440
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:06,120
Speaker 1: There's Six Flags, which is you know everywhere. Now it's

441
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 1: a franchise. We have one in our fair metropolis of Atlanta,

442
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 1: King's Island near the Natty Bush Gardens in Tampa Bay, Florida,

443
00:28:14,400 --> 00:28:17,840
Speaker 1: And then there are more and more. It seems, even

444
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,200
Speaker 1: when the economy is not doing so well, a lot

445
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:25,400
Speaker 1: of these places survive. At least twenty thirty brings us

446
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 1: another great depression.

447
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:30,600
Speaker 2: So in the nineteen sixties a company called Arrow who

448
00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 2: actually designed the Matter Horn for Disney.

449
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: They hired a guy named Ron.

450
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:40,800
Speaker 2: Tumor who introduced a super successful line of rides that

451
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 2: could be recreated, like the Flume ride, for example, which

452
00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 2: everyone knows is like sort of the log ride where

453
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:50,680
Speaker 2: you go down like one single you know, incline and

454
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 2: get splashed.

455
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 1: Nice. Where are you guys at Nolan max on splash rides.

456
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 2: If it's hot, I'm cool with it. It's like a

457
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 2: really really hot It's a nice little kind of you know,

458
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 2: relief a little bit. I go to water parks to

459
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:07,120
Speaker 2: get wet.

460
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 3: My problem with like water rice and world and like

461
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 3: amusement parks a lot of times is like I know,

462
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:15,200
Speaker 3: people like, oh, we're sandals. I'm like, I'm walking around

463
00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 3: all day. I don't I have like comfortable socks on

464
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 3: and coortle shoes on.

465
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:21,400
Speaker 4: That stuff doesn't do well when it gets wet.

466
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 3: But granted, if it's like ninety five degrees outside, okay,

467
00:29:24,160 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 3: that's fine.

468
00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:27,200
Speaker 1: I don't go to water parks, and I'm concerned that

469
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 1: you do because of all the pea.

470
00:29:29,520 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 4: It's a lot of pea.

471
00:29:30,400 --> 00:29:31,160
Speaker 1: There's a lot of pea.

472
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 3: Now I don't like I don't like water parks because

473
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 3: water parks you have to climb up those stairs and

474
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 3: being afraid of heights.

475
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 4: It's awful.

476
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:41,280
Speaker 1: Yet, yeah, I feel you, man, Let's start a hot

477
00:29:41,320 --> 00:29:43,200
Speaker 1: air balloon amusement park.

478
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 2: It's sort of out of this, Yes, it's sort of

479
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 2: out of this. You are you are really on this

480
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:51,640
Speaker 2: hot hout for these air balloons. Ben Hey. There is

481
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 2: a park that's probably outside of the scope of this

482
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 2: particular episode, but it's called Action Park in New Jersey,

483
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 2: I often referred to as Class Action. It is a

484
00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 2: water park that notoriously contained very poorly designed rides that

485
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 2: would just shoot people or water slides that would just

486
00:30:09,240 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 2: shoot people out into oblivion, you know, to be injured

487
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:17,040
Speaker 2: in various ways. And one of the reasons apparently that

488
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 2: this was so common was that the designs of the ride,

489
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:22,840
Speaker 2: or the designers of the ride did not seem to

490
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 2: have sufficient knowledge or training in physics and engineering.

491
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: Just shoot them and go with God, see what happens.

492
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:34,880
Speaker 1: There's the Great American Revolution ride at six Flags Magic Mountain,

493
00:30:34,960 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: which is over in Valencia, California, that goes out in

494
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, and it redefines the looping coaster game.

495
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 1: Now it's just called Revolution and it had a tear

496
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:51,840
Speaker 1: drop loop. The technical term would be a clothoid or

497
00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: clothoid loop. This was designed by a German engineer, Anton Schwartzkrop,

498
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: and the company that made this roller coaster is still

499
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 1: around to this day. They're called Intimate AG and so

500
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 1: they The innovations these guys made brought more and more

501
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:14,720
Speaker 1: people back to amusement parks. And today if you go

502
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: to any modern major amusement park, like anything that's not

503
00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: just a bunch of carnies in a parking lot, you're

504
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: going to see some kind of looping coaster. And there

505
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:29,960
Speaker 1: was another arms race to get the maximum number of

506
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:33,480
Speaker 1: loops or inversions in a single ride. I'm thinking of

507
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:37,720
Speaker 1: stuff like Dragon Con and Spain Monte Macaia in Brazil.

508
00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:41,600
Speaker 1: And there's one quote This is probably one of my

509
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 1: favorite quotes from the research that John Allen, President of Philadelphia.

510
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 1: Toboggan said this, you don't need a degree in engineering

511
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 1: to design roller coasters. You need a degree in psychology. Noel,

512
00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: can you help us unpack that? What does he mean?

513
00:31:58,440 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 2: Well, that's right, because I mean a lot of it

514
00:32:00,240 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 2: is about weaponizing psychology in a way that she us

515
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 2: maximum thrills. We all talked about how oftentimes the scariest

516
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 2: part is the anticipation.

517
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 1: Is that click, click, click, up the hill.

518
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 2: Toboggan goes on to say, a roller coaster is as

519
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 2: theatrically contrived as a broadway play. These advancements in roller

520
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 2: coaster technology and design tech included a lot of very

521
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:32,080
Speaker 2: specific engineering touches that really played with things like your expectations,

522
00:32:32,400 --> 00:32:35,959
Speaker 2: things like parabolic hill shapes where you couldn't see what

523
00:32:36,080 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 2: was coming around the next bend.

524
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:41,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, there we go. So it's always it's like Alfred

525
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:45,240
Speaker 1: Hitchcock said, right, the monster off screen that you can't

526
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 1: see is always going to be scarier than the one

527
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 1: on screen. So not knowing what's coming next really messages

528
00:32:51,360 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 1: with your expectations your head. We also know that the

529
00:32:56,640 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 1: wooden coasters or woodies, which are you know, technologically speaking,

530
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 1: they're not as advanced as steel coasters. They are now

531
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:11,160
Speaker 1: benefiting from the power of nostalgia. Ah yeah, hell of

532
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 1: a drug indeed, right, And these these wooden coasters, the woodies,

533
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 1: become instrumental in the rebirth of roller coasters as a cool,

534
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 1: fun thing. And now they're starting to be called mega

535
00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: coasters at this point, around like the nineteen seventies.

536
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,720
Speaker 2: Right, and you had mega coasters such as Racer, which

537
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 2: was a John Allen design that actually contained dual coasters,

538
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 2: so I believe these would have been side by side, right,

539
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:43,960
Speaker 2: kind of going in tandem. Yeah, and then you also

540
00:33:44,040 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 2: had the Beast of nineteen seventy nine fame, which had

541
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:47,800
Speaker 2: the title.

542
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:49,440
Speaker 1: Of longest coaster in the world.

543
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 2: Both of these, the Beast and the Racer, were at

544
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 2: King's Island Amusement Park were.

545
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:59,520
Speaker 3: And are because I've been a couple of times in

546
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:01,600
Speaker 3: my life, I've written both of these.

547
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 4: The Racers Racers Cool.

548
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:06,800
Speaker 3: Racer is fun because no matter what, you're just automatically

549
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:09,720
Speaker 3: everyone is just talking massive ship to the other car.

550
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:12,480
Speaker 3: But they don't always They used to run at one

551
00:34:12,480 --> 00:34:14,440
Speaker 3: part where one was going backwards. One was going forwards.

552
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:15,719
Speaker 3: I don't know if they do that all the time now,

553
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:19,600
Speaker 3: but The Beast is to the state the best roller

554
00:34:19,640 --> 00:34:20,760
Speaker 3: coaster I've ever written.

555
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:21,959
Speaker 4: It's been that.

556
00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:23,840
Speaker 3: That first sentence you don't need a degree in engineering,

557
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 3: you need a degree in psychology, is like that because

558
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:28,279
Speaker 3: you just walk up. The Beast is at like a

559
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 3: part of the park where it's just woods all behind it,

560
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:32,360
Speaker 3: so you have no idea what it is.

561
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:33,319
Speaker 1: You look at.

562
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:35,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have no idea in so long, and it's

563
00:34:35,960 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 3: like a it's like a story, basically just writing a story,

564
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 3: and it's literally like all you can do on that

565
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:44,400
Speaker 3: roller coaster is just laugh and joy.

566
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:45,400
Speaker 4: It is so amazing.

567
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:48,520
Speaker 3: It's despite its age, it's still like, especially for a

568
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:51,960
Speaker 3: wooden coaster, Oh really smooth. A lot of these hold up, yeah,

569
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:54,800
Speaker 3: if it's don't fix it, yeah, I mean, like obviously

570
00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 3: they have to spend a lot of wooden coaster is

571
00:34:56,280 --> 00:34:57,759
Speaker 3: one of the big drawbacks wooden coasters. You have to

572
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:01,480
Speaker 3: spend a lot of money mainta yeah, replacing the tracks.

573
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 3: But the Beast is one that's like, I mean, it's

574
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 3: been a number of years since I've written it, but

575
00:35:06,239 --> 00:35:08,799
Speaker 3: it was it's about it's probably the number one roller

576
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 3: coaster in my list. I got about three. I got

577
00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:13,919
Speaker 3: three in Tier A. Let's go, oh yeah, let's let's

578
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:15,600
Speaker 3: let's get to that at the end. I'd love to

579
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 3: hear what all our favorites are. I've got a top

580
00:35:18,080 --> 00:35:19,439
Speaker 3: three in my head right now.

581
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, the uh, the as we're getting to that, let's uh,

582
00:35:23,200 --> 00:35:25,359
Speaker 1: let's you know what, Let's let's hurry up and get

583
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 1: to that part right now. What you need to know, folks,

584
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:37,320
Speaker 1: without getting two into weeds, is that the arms race

585
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:42,240
Speaker 1: for the superlatives continues. The titles for the fastest, biggest,

586
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:46,760
Speaker 1: longest coaster are an issue of hot, intense debate every

587
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: single year. It's just sort of it's sort of similar

588
00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:52,879
Speaker 1: to the arms race for skyscrapers, you know what I mean,

589
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 1: everybody's trying to build the tallest building. And honestly, if

590
00:35:56,120 --> 00:36:00,600
Speaker 1: you're hearing this, congrats on the bergs Dubai. But should

591
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:03,200
Speaker 1: we count the antennas at the top as part of

592
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,759
Speaker 1: the height? Max says no, Maxican in thumbed out, I

593
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:09,759
Speaker 1: don't think so either. Skyscraper episode on the way, we're

594
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: just yeah confessed it. Yeah, so okay, So we know this, right,

595
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:17,760
Speaker 1: like the latest crop of coasters. Every time they come out,

596
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:21,680
Speaker 1: they're trying to find at least some specific thing that

597
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:24,880
Speaker 1: they are the best at, the biggest, the fastest, the

598
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:27,800
Speaker 1: most loops, you know, the fewest injuries.

599
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 2: Indoor coasters, you know, indoor coasters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you

600
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:36,480
Speaker 2: have these. First of all, you have suspended coasters like

601
00:36:36,560 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 2: the Xcel R eight nineteen eighty four and six Flags

602
00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:46,799
Speaker 2: Astro World in Houston. You have stand up coasters, which well,

603
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,319
Speaker 2: there's one called the King Kobra, but there is one

604
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 2: at six Flags that's called the Viper maybe or something

605
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:55,520
Speaker 2: like that, but it's there's a stand up coaster at

606
00:36:55,520 --> 00:36:58,879
Speaker 2: the No, it's the Scorcher, the Georgia. Scorcher has six

607
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:01,279
Speaker 2: laves over Georgia as end up coaster, and those are

608
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:03,680
Speaker 2: really cool. They're fun because it really feels like you're

609
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 2: like flying.

610
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:07,080
Speaker 1: Don't we have the Superman one too, where that's.

611
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, yeah, I find that one to be

612
00:37:11,160 --> 00:37:14,319
Speaker 2: difficult because I just get kind of claustrophobic when I'm

613
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 2: like like like locked in in that way, and so

614
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 2: I'm got a little stressful.

615
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:22,799
Speaker 3: It's really restraining. I find I like scorture. But the

616
00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:24,839
Speaker 3: one that like the problem with stand up coasters just

617
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:28,840
Speaker 3: in general is they don't handle g forces very well, right,

618
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 3: so you either have to tune it back a lot

619
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:33,279
Speaker 3: or you get a little rough and scorture is like

620
00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:37,239
Speaker 3: kind of in the middle where it's not it's really fun.

621
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:39,400
Speaker 3: But I've readen other stand up coasters, I've rit bigger

622
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 3: ones than that. I'm like, oh my god, this is horrible.

623
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:44,879
Speaker 1: It's a tricky one, you know what I mean. It's

624
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:48,719
Speaker 1: kind of like building a three willed vehicle, right, but

625
00:37:48,840 --> 00:37:53,279
Speaker 1: there's like it's possible, right. But also, uh, I love

626
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:57,560
Speaker 1: the Superman thing just because despite all the restraints you

627
00:37:57,600 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 1: have to wear, it replicates flying. It does. I wrote

628
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:05,360
Speaker 1: it once. And it's also really really short.

629
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:09,439
Speaker 2: I remember it being obscenely short, which probably for good

630
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 2: reason because it is so restraining.

631
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:12,440
Speaker 1: Can we do this?

632
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 2: I just I remember the first coaster that really, you know,

633
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:20,240
Speaker 2: blew my mind was the Batman Ride. Batman the Ride,

634
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:24,279
Speaker 2: which I believe debuted at six Flags Great America in Illinois,

635
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 2: but has been at six a staple of six Flags.

636
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:29,000
Speaker 1: Over Georgia, you know, for many, many years.

637
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 2: And that's one where I guess it's called an inverted

638
00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:34,000
Speaker 2: coaster where your legs are kind of dangling. And if

639
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:39,400
Speaker 2: I'm not mistaken, somebody got killed on the Batman ride

640
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:42,480
Speaker 2: at Six Flags because they tried to get their hat

641
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:45,880
Speaker 2: from this sort of cordoned off area, and I believe

642
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:48,080
Speaker 2: the the you know, one of the cars swooped down

643
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:49,680
Speaker 2: and they were decapitated, if I'm.

644
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:53,000
Speaker 1: Mistaken, And then someone on a ride called z Force

645
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:57,840
Speaker 1: in six Flags broke their neck. You can find on

646
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:03,440
Speaker 1: coaster pedia dot at a fairly comprehensive list of deadly

647
00:39:03,560 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 1: roller coaster accidents. To be fair to the industry, these

648
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:14,240
Speaker 1: are isolated cases rare. They're very rare. It can sound scary,

649
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 1: and part of that, I would argue is a little

650
00:39:17,680 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 1: bit of like black bag psyop stuff in some of

651
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: the marketers. But to be absolutely transparent, everybody building roller coasters,

652
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:29,279
Speaker 1: everybody charging you to ride one, they want you to

653
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:31,239
Speaker 1: be as safe as possible. They want you to have

654
00:39:31,320 --> 00:39:35,840
Speaker 1: an amazing time. That's why there are like one hundred

655
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 1: and twenty different roller coaster operations opening across the world

656
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 1: by the end of the twentieth century, about half of

657
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 1: those fifty percent or in the United States. Because I

658
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 1: ask you, despite the Russian and French origin story, what

659
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 1: is more American than a roller coaster as a ride?

660
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:56,919
Speaker 1: Saying like, I want to feel like I might die

661
00:39:57,080 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 1: for you know, two three minutes.

662
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a sort of cheating of death aspect

663
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:03,440
Speaker 2: to it that that does have.

664
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:04,040
Speaker 1: A certain appeal.

665
00:40:04,080 --> 00:40:05,960
Speaker 2: But you're right, you know, despite its origins, it has

666
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 2: become a pretty uniquely American thing. Well, you know, not

667
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:11,919
Speaker 2: to say that there aren't cool coasters in other parts

668
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:12,319
Speaker 2: of the world.

669
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:15,839
Speaker 1: There certainly are. Do you guys wanna as we as

670
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:19,160
Speaker 1: we close out our series on the history of roller coasters,

671
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: thanks again to our research associate Max, do you guys

672
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: wanna tell us all a little bit about your favorite coasters?

673
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:27,320
Speaker 1: Each said you have a top three? I do?

674
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:32,480
Speaker 2: I think for me, my number three would be Batman,

675
00:40:32,760 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 2: the ride at six Slives over Georgia. Why don't we

676
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:37,760
Speaker 2: maybe go round robin until we get to our number ones?

677
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree with that one. Play That one's

678
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:41,719
Speaker 3: so much fun. It's also a great one that if

679
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 3: you're there on a night or it's slow and there's

680
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:46,400
Speaker 3: not many people there that you can just binge that one.

681
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,319
Speaker 1: They'll like, they'll let you ride it a couple of times. Yeah,

682
00:40:48,560 --> 00:40:49,440
Speaker 1: sure that one.

683
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 3: That one's great for that I'm gonna go with at

684
00:40:52,760 --> 00:40:55,879
Speaker 3: a theater point. There's this one called Maverick and it's

685
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:57,839
Speaker 3: a weird roller coaster because it doesn't have chain lift

686
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:00,160
Speaker 3: or anything like that. So it's like you were was

687
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 3: in constant motion the entire time and as like it

688
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:06,960
Speaker 3: was the first ninety five degree drop, which is a

689
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:07,839
Speaker 3: weird thing.

690
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:10,280
Speaker 4: Like I'm Amurican on my that's not great but crazy

691
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:11,320
Speaker 4: of an idea, and I wrote it.

692
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen

693
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 3: because you're going underneath the track that you were just on,

694
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:17,799
Speaker 3: but it just whips and turns and it's just this

695
00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 3: beautifully scripted written roller coaster.

696
00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 1: Very cool, Ben, you got a number three fave. I

697
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 1: don't really have, you know, I don't really have a

698
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:32,799
Speaker 1: top list of roller coasters. Again, it's like the ice

699
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 1: cream comparison in episode one. You know, like if they're.

700
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:38,880
Speaker 2: There, I'll go stand out in your memory, whether it

701
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 2: be childhood.

702
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 1: But I know, almost dying, like to the ice cream thing,

703
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:44,759
Speaker 1: I don't wake up and then immediately travel the one

704
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:50,239
Speaker 1: American scream Machine just because I conquered death on that one,

705
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:53,760
Speaker 1: which is the inherent appeal of roller coasters. I wouldn't

706
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 1: say it's a great coaster by any means, uh, But

707
00:41:57,760 --> 00:41:59,239
Speaker 1: I fought it and I won.

708
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 2: Sonumber three well, okay, And speaking of fighting against great

709
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:07,879
Speaker 2: adversity and winning as the underdog, my number two would

710
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 2: be the Goliath at six Flags over Georgia, which is

711
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:16,880
Speaker 2: quite long and very high, with incredible scenic views of

712
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 2: the surrounding kind of wooded areas in that part of Atlanta,

713
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:23,000
Speaker 2: and some serious drops, and every time I ride it,

714
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 2: I have to get over my fear of heights because

715
00:42:25,239 --> 00:42:30,120
Speaker 2: it is massively tall, and at night when they do

716
00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:33,200
Speaker 2: the fright Fest or whatever Fright Night I guess it's

717
00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 2: called at six Flags. It is a wild one to

718
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 2: ride at night when you can see the full moon

719
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 2: up in the sky ahead of you.

720
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:39,480
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible.

721
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 3: So I was actually changing up my list kind of

722
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:43,600
Speaker 3: on the fly right here, so that I talked about

723
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:44,880
Speaker 3: the Beasts and how which I love that one, and

724
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:46,759
Speaker 3: I was going to talk about Goliath. It's my number two,

725
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 3: so I'm going to change it for the sake of

726
00:42:49,160 --> 00:42:52,840
Speaker 3: having more and talk about Goliath Daddy, which is Magnum

727
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:57,279
Speaker 3: x L, which is the first ever mega coaster in

728
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 3: the world. I think it's the late eighties at Suit Point.

729
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 3: It's basically it's very similar to Billie. It's not the

730
00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 3: same script, and it's nowhere smooth as Goliath is, but

731
00:43:06,160 --> 00:43:09,600
Speaker 3: it's like it was one of the coolest things about

732
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:11,719
Speaker 3: Cedar Point, which I gush about it if you let me

733
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,440
Speaker 3: do it for too long. There's so many records were

734
00:43:14,440 --> 00:43:16,759
Speaker 3: set at that park, and it looked it was the

735
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:18,960
Speaker 3: first two hundred foot roller coaster in the world, and

736
00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:21,359
Speaker 3: you can still ride to this day. It's just there's

737
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:24,359
Speaker 3: just now two other roller coasters taller than it.

738
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, because again it's it's like the skyscraper race. They're

739
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:31,280
Speaker 1: also what are they called giga roller coasters. A giga

740
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:34,799
Speaker 1: coaster Gego's three hundred and three three hundred to three

741
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:38,880
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety nine feet it is, which is massive.

742
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,360
Speaker 1: And I think there's what we're talking about too, is

743
00:43:42,960 --> 00:43:45,840
Speaker 1: this nomenclature. There's also the hyper coaster.

744
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:48,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I said mega Hyper's two hundred to

745
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:50,120
Speaker 3: three hundred right, right, So.

746
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: We're throwing at the terms here too.

747
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:54,480
Speaker 2: You can tell Max is a real coasters in terms

748
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 2: like script you know, I mean, come now, you've done

749
00:43:57,560 --> 00:43:58,399
Speaker 2: your homeworks there.

750
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 1: Magnum XL is A is a hypercoaster. There are giga

751
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: coasters as as you mentioned. If I had to choose

752
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 1: a second one, you know what, I'm thinking more in

753
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:15,880
Speaker 1: terms beyond just orthodox coasters. I really like the bungee

754
00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:18,799
Speaker 1: rides where they launch you out and you're attached to

755
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 1: a rope. No, no, thank you. I don't like those

756
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:24,759
Speaker 1: straight drops, but I like the I like that. I

757
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:28,720
Speaker 1: like the big swings. Those are terrified pasts.

758
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:31,040
Speaker 3: I've read it one time in my life, and I

759
00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:32,319
Speaker 3: will never not regret you.

760
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:34,759
Speaker 1: Came through the fire. I'm proud of you. Max. All right,

761
00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 1: So then that brings us to what number ones? Just

762
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:40,560
Speaker 1: their number ones? Yeah? Max, you want to go first?

763
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 2: Uh?

764
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 3: Sure, I can go first, because, uh Ben, you were

765
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:45,320
Speaker 3: talking about giga coasters, so of course I'm want to

766
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:48,440
Speaker 3: talk about the first giga coaster ever made, Millennium Force

767
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 3: at Cedar point three hundred foot. The coolest thing about

768
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 3: Millennium Force, well, ay, one thing that's really cool about

769
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:57,320
Speaker 3: that is it has probably the fastest chain I've ever ridden,

770
00:44:57,680 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 3: going to three hundred feet and it's just like you

771
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 3: go so fast up and I'm like, okay, that's nice,

772
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 3: but as an eighty degree three and nude foot drop.

773
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:07,399
Speaker 3: But the coolest thing it does is the first thing

774
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 3: it goes up and then turns and on the turn

775
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,399
Speaker 3: you go I think one twenty, so your feet are

776
00:45:13,520 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 3: above your head on a turn and you only have

777
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:20,840
Speaker 3: a lap bar on and it's just so smooth and

778
00:45:20,880 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 3: it's so excellent. The problem with Lannium Force is it's

779
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:27,600
Speaker 3: like always broken. At least that's my knowledge. Like I've

780
00:45:27,600 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 3: been a Supard Point twice and I was only able

781
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 3: to one of the times.

782
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:32,120
Speaker 4: It was broken for the entire season.

783
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 1: It's like there McDonald's ice cream.

784
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:37,560
Speaker 3: It really is the McDonald's ice cream. So if you're

785
00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:41,680
Speaker 3: in Ohio and Lenian Force is running, you should just

786
00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 3: go to Santusky.

787
00:45:43,120 --> 00:45:47,200
Speaker 1: All right, Chief Advice. And with that, mister Brown, your

788
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:48,600
Speaker 1: number one coaster.

789
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:55,960
Speaker 2: The number one coaster for me was at Universal Studios, Orlando,

790
00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:59,359
Speaker 2: and it is the Incredible Hulk roller coaster. And it

791
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:02,240
Speaker 2: is because I ever experienced anything like this where it wasn't.

792
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 2: It does this thing where you enter on the I

793
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:08,360
Speaker 2: guess the uphill part. The very first little you know,

794
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:11,239
Speaker 2: chain lift part and it click click click click click.

795
00:46:11,400 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 1: You go to this tunnel that sort of.

796
00:46:12,600 --> 00:46:15,239
Speaker 2: Surrounded you with like gamma ray kind of lights, one

797
00:46:15,239 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 2: would presume, and you go click click click about halfway

798
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 2: and then it just shoots you out and you don't

799
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:22,399
Speaker 2: know exactly what's gonna happen. And it's like, I don't

800
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 2: know how it's propelled or what the technology is behind it.

801
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:30,560
Speaker 2: But something about the like the momentary, you know, familiar

802
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:33,680
Speaker 2: thing of the chain lift click and then the note.

803
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:35,120
Speaker 1: Screw this, bam and you're out.

804
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:38,799
Speaker 2: There's something about it that just really games your your

805
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:41,320
Speaker 2: brain in a really interesting way and you just feel

806
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:44,640
Speaker 2: like unstoppable and it has some incredible inversions and it's

807
00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:47,880
Speaker 2: just really really fast and really really fun and I

808
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:48,279
Speaker 2: loved it.

809
00:46:48,320 --> 00:46:50,040
Speaker 1: I've only ridden it once and I thought it was

810
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:54,279
Speaker 1: next level. Nice nice with that will end with a

811
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:57,840
Speaker 1: number one on my end. That is not a declaration,

812
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: it's a question. Ridiculous his story? Could you help it?

813
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:06,280
Speaker 1: Could you help me find a number one roller coaster?

814
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:10,000
Speaker 1: What is your favorite? Let us know at Ridiculous Historians

815
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:13,839
Speaker 1: over our Facebook page. Yeah, we want to hear about

816
00:47:13,880 --> 00:47:18,359
Speaker 1: your adventures folks and I can't wait to can't wait

817
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:23,560
Speaker 1: to return with even more strange, ridiculous history. This has

818
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:27,359
Speaker 1: been such a not even an intentional pun, but I'll

819
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: keep it if we're okay with it. It's been such

820
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:30,400
Speaker 1: a fun ride.

821
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:33,880
Speaker 2: A real ride, yeah, real journey of self discovery.

822
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:34,720
Speaker 4: Yeah.

823
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:36,879
Speaker 1: And then Jois de viv No, it's good stuff. Man.

824
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 1: Without a line.

825
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:41,520
Speaker 2: No, no, no line requires ridiculous history. We're right there

826
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:41,839
Speaker 2: for you.

827
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to Max for the incredible research work on

828
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:52,160
Speaker 1: this one, as well as aj Bahamas and Jonathan Strickland

829
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:56,399
Speaker 1: the Puzzler and Quist respectively. Huge fan of lines, that guy.

830
00:47:56,480 --> 00:48:00,960
Speaker 1: Big big thanks to christ Rossiotis Eves, jeffco will Be

831
00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:03,640
Speaker 1: Eve Jeff Coat, and Ben Thompson, both of whom will

832
00:48:03,640 --> 00:48:07,279
Speaker 1: be appearing soon in the near future spoilers. Big big

833
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:10,480
Speaker 1: thanks again to Alex Williams, who composed this slap and

834
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 1: bop and audio roller coaster all its own indeed, and Noel,

835
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: thanks to you. Ah to you as well. Ben. We'll

836
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:18,720
Speaker 1: see you next time. Folks.

837
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:29,520
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

838
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:31,760
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.