Holiday World's New Ride Debuts at #1 in the 2006 Poll
Note: Scroll to the bottom for links to the results for 179 wooden roller coasters worldwide.
The Voyage won all mutual rider comparisons with other wooden roller coasters and was also the
only one to win the comparison with 'Favorite Steel Coaster' en route to claiming the number one spot.
Two time winner Balder finished second, trailing The Voyage 15 to 9 in their comparison by voters
who have ridden them both. El Toro finished a very strong third (actually edging Balder in their mutual
rider comparison) providing the highest debut for the top two new coasters in the poll's 14 year history.
The Phoenix again defied its age by finishing a relative best ever 4th place. Boulder Dash rounds
out this year's top 5, making it seven years in a row in the top 5 the Connecticut terrain coaster.
Tremors finished a very close sixth, Thunderhead and Hades finished in a tie for seventh, Aska
remained highly rated in ninth, and Colossos finally cracked the top 10 after five years of near misses.
2006's two other new wooden roller coasters also did very well, Beech Bend's Kentucky Rumbler
debuted at #16 and PowerPark's Thunderbird finished at #38.
Oldies, But Goodies: Among the great coasters in this year's top 25 are four that have been thrilling
riders since before Buddy Holly's ill-fated flight: Phoenix (1947) , Coaster (1958) , Comet (1947),
Grand National (1935).
FACTOID: Construction dates of the top 25: (1935-1958)=4, (1959-1994)=0, (1995-2006)=21
Within the top 25, the mutual rider tiebreaker was used twice to separate coasters that had
the same number of blemishes (losses + (ties/2)) on their record....note that there are two pairs
of coasters for which the coaster with the marginally better winning percentage (due to more valid
comparisons against much lower rated coasters) is the lower ranked one of the pair.
With the debut of The Voyage, Holiday World is now the park with the top wooden coaster duo
(#1 The Voyage, #11 Raven), and trio (including #19 The Legend).
At the other end of the poll, California's Grizzly made it 12 straight years in dead last. Intrastate rival
Psyclone made a bid for last, but was preferred 37 to 26 by mutual riders over Grizzly.
The following chart shows the mutual rider comparisons for the top 13 coasters (including
"Favorite Steel"). Preferences are listed for the people who rode each pair of coasters. The chart should
be read from left to right along the line for each of the top coasters listed at the left. For instance, it can
be seen that The Voyage was preferred over El Toro, with 46 mutual riders preferring The Voyage and
16 preferring El Toro.
The "Favorite Steel" coaster would have placed second this year if it were included
in the final results, losing only the mutual rider comparison to The Voyage 71 to 51.
Steel coaster fans: Remember to cast your ballot by January 13th, 2007 in
the Internet Steel Roller Coaster Poll. Ballots are at BestRollerCoasterPoll.com