Another year, another comparison of our top 10 roller coasters! I believe the CF Team speaks for all when we say this year was both better-but-not-quite-back-to-pre-Covid-status. While response rates to this year's poll were lower, we actually saw a wider variety of coasters across rankings!
CF assembled our hit team of calculators, analysts, interns, and academics to scour over the polling results, as is tradition each November/December. Props as always goes to @Pokemaniac for assembling all submitted member Top 10's, and @Hixee for helping with other graphical, editorial, metaphorical, and euphorial support.
Methodology
One of the most visited threads in the General Discussions section of the forums is the "Top 10-ish" thread, where people rank their ten (or more) most favourite coasters. We have combed through the thread and collected all the Top 10 lists posted over the past year, from November 1, 2020 to October 31, 2021ish (given the lower turnout, we let others sneak under the radar this year). Let us compare details on CF's top 25!
The Top 25
| Rank | Roller Coaster | Average Ranking | Average Ranking/Frequency | Number of #1 Rankings | Number of Rides |
| 1 | Steel Vengeance | 1.64 | 0.09 | 8 | 18 |
| 2 | Zadra | 3.11 | 0.22 | 5 | 14 |
| 3 | Lightning Rod | 3.13 | 0.24 | 3 | 13 |
| 4 | Taron | 4.73 | 0.30 | 3 | 16 |
| 5 | Voyage | 4.46 | 0.30 | 3 | 15 |
| 6 | Skyrush | 5.43 | 0.36 | 1 | 15 |
| 7 | Helix | 4.89 | 0.41 | 2 | 12 |
| 8 | El Toro | 5.20 | 0.43 | 1 | 12 |
| 9 | Untamed | 4.33 | 0.48 | 1 | 9 |
| 10 | Hyperion | 5.00 | 0.56 | 2 | 9 |
| 11 | Maverick | 6.20 | 0.62 | 0 | 10 |
| 12 | Nemesis | 6.25 | 0.63 | 1 | 10 |
| 13 | Shambhala | 6.57 | 0.66 | 0 | 10 |
| 14 | Outlaw Run | 5.75 | 0.72 | 1 | 8 |
| 15 | Ride to Happiness | 1.50 | 0.75 | 1 | 2 |
| 15 | Icon | 3.75 | 0.75 | 1 | 5 |
| 17 | Fury 325 | 7.00 | 0.78 | 0 | 9 |
| 18 | Expedition GeForce | 7.33 | 0.81 | 0 | 9 |
| 19 | X2 | 6.86 | 0.86 | 0 | 8 |
| 20 | Velocicoaster | 3.67 | 0.92 | 0 | 4 |
| 21 | Time Traveler | 2.00 | 1.00 | 0 | 2 |
| 21 | Kondaa | 3.00 | 1.00 | 0 | 3 |
| 21 | Intimidator 305 | 5.00 | 1.00 | 1 | 5 |
| 24 | Twisted Timbers | 6.25 | 1.04 | 0 | 6 |
| 25 | Phoenix | 7.60 | 1.09 | 0 | 7 |
Key Thoughts/Takeaways
- Single Riders! - A general issue we saw with this year's poll was a lot of 1 rider entries (58 roller coasters returned with only 1 rider, nearly 50% of all submitted roller coasters). This creates a sampling bias, those roller coasters highly ranked on 1 rider will significantly boost ahead of other roller coasters with more riders, skewing the poll. As result, we had to increase our polling threshold to a minimum of 2 riders.
- Strong Debut for 2021 New Coasters - VelociCoaster, Ride to Happiness, and Kondaa all lead a very strong field of new entries this year, cracking into the top 25 on relatively lower rider count - yet promising trajectory to ever rise in the rankings as more CFers get to visit.
- Zadra, Top Coaster in 2022? - Zadra saw a significant boost in the rankings, climbing to #2, only barely underneath Steel Vengeance in our calculus. Indeed, SV may be sweating as more get to visit Zadra as the relatively-new-RMC on the block.
- Mack Launched Spinners Continue to Impress - The biggest winner in terms of poll movement this year was Time Traveler, jumping a whopping 86 spots to #21. Ride to Happiness also debuted at #15 this year; promising marks!
- RMC and Intamin Tighten Their Hold on the Top 10 - It's getting pretty crowded at the top, as Hyperion bumped Fury 325 out of the Top 10 this year, a first time in three years that B&M does not place in the top 10. Outside of RMC and Intamin's commanding leads, Mack and Gravity Group are the only two manufacturers to make a placement. While there is significant motion year-to-year in the 11-25 ranking slots, the Top 10 appears to cement further and further year over year.
Looking at CFers #1 picks, Steel Vengeance continues to lead the majority, but other coasters are quick approaching (going back to Zadra continuing to gain):
As usual, we have a few graphs to further breakdown CF's top roller coasters, which you can view in the full spreadsheet link at the end of the post. For starters, here is a map of average roller coaster ranking vs. number of rides. The higher a roller coaster is charted on towards the upper left, the higher it is in the ranking. I have also added a trend line to add further clarity:
As was the case last year, charting out the roller coaster average rankings by number of rides shows a high correlation with their ranking. Steel Vengeance still takes a definitive runaway victory, each way we slice the chart!
Year-Over-Year Trends
For year-over-year, I highlighted a few key observations above. Some other good takeaways:
- Zadra continues to jump up in the rankings, three continuous years of upward movement!
- RMC has locked in 1, 2, and 3 spots in the rankings. Will anything crack in next year? VelociCoaster?
- Shambhala took a tumble out of the top 10 alongside Fury 325. We partly toss this up to sampling bias and folks that submitted their ballots.
- Balder saw the biggest ranking slide, 33 slots total from 24 to 57.
| Roller Coaster | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | Change From Previous Year | Average Ranking |
| Steel Vengeance | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1.0 |
| Zadra | - | 16 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 8.0 |
| Lightning Rod | 2 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 3.0 |
| Taron | 3 | 2 | 2 | 4 | -2 | 2.8 |
| Voyage | 8 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 6.3 |
| Skyrush | 4 | 6 | 4 | 6 | -2 | 5.0 |
| Helix | 7 | 3 | 5 | 7 | -2 | 5.5 |
| El Toro | 10 | 7 | 12 | 8 | 4 | 9.3 |
| Untamed | - | 8 | 9 | 9 | 0 | 8.7 |
| Hyperion | 58 | 19 | 18 | 10 | 8 | 26.3 |
| Maverick | 4 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 0 | 9.3 |
| Nemesis | 13 | 12 | 14 | 12 | 2 | 12.8 |
| Shambhala | 14 | 17 | 8 | 13 | -5 | 13.0 |
| Outlaw Run | 12 | 27 | 20 | 14 | 6 | 18.3 |
| Icon | 31 | 38 | 43 | 15 | 28 | 31.8 |
| Ride to Happiness | - | - | - | 15 | - | 15.0 |
| Fury 325 | 11 | 9 | 10 | 17 | -7 | 11.8 |
| Expedition GeForce | 18 | 14 | 22 | 18 | 4 | 18.0 |
| X2 | 8 | 18 | 15 | 19 | -4 | 15.0 |
| Velocicoaster | - | - | - | 20 | - | 20.0 |
| Intimidator 305 | 25 | 15 | 35 | 21 | 14 | 24.0 |
| Time Traveler | 130 | - | 107 | 21 | 86 | 86.0 |
| Kondaa | - | - | - | 21 | - | 21.0 |
| Twisted Timbers | 22 | 23 | 32 | 24 | 8 | 25.3 |
| Phoenix | 28 | 30 | 25 | 25 | 0 | 27.0 |
Sample Size is Everything
Again, this is heavily reliant on sample size, and how folks responded with their top 10 rankings. If you feel like a roller coaster got cheated and didn't participate this year; make it a point to drop your top 10 into the thread so we can count it towards next year's count!
We also updated the alternate rankings as we did last year, showing variations to how roller coaster rankings can be measured, such as logging results (to consider strong outliers) and removing top and bottom-most votes for each respective roller coaster (also as a control for outlier votes). A word of warning, the traditional outlier ranking is a bit skewed this year, due in part to lower sample size (jumping back to having a lot of single rider entries).
Comparing to Other Polls
While we have used the ElloCoaster polls for comparison in years past, they have unfortunately been shuttered the last two years. @coasterbot however had a great turn out in their new rankings (https://coasterbot.com/votecoasters), which we added as a final comparison. Overall, the rankings still relatively close to each other, an average of 11 slots difference between the two polls with a correlation of 48%. Interesting to see that even with two quite-different polling approaches, you can still see a similar overall trend. (Again, due in part to sample size)
Check Out the Full Rankings!
You can peruse all the data and tables here:
CoasterForce Top 10 for 2021 - Results
Raw Data Username,Post on page,#1,#2,#3,#4,#5,#6,#7,#8,#9 Nitefly,108,Zadra,1,Hyperion,2,Lech Coaster,3,Nemesis,4,Expedition GeForce,5,Shambhala,6,Incredible Hulk,7,Montu,8,Taron,9 Projektion,108,Wildfire,1,Hakugei,2,Zadra,3,Flying Dinosaur,4,Taron,5,Untamed,6,Furius Baco,7,Shambhala,8,Balder,9 ...
Thank you again for joining in the CF Top 10 Rankings - Happy Holidays and Happy New Coasting Year!
