Back in the days of yore, before computer aided design took off in the coaster industry, building a new coaster could be a bit of a coin toss. Some coasters could be smooth as butter, some could ride like a jackhammer from day one. Certain manufacturers had some issues with producing reliably smooth rides, meaning that even a brand new coaster could deliver a rough and unpleasant ride that would only get worse with age. These were the type of coasters that banged their restraints against your body, whose transitions were sudden and jerky, whose banking flowed like a rockslide in a scrapheap, and that generally sounded (and rode) like a sackful of cutlery falling down a shoddily made staircase.
Even though those days have passed, we still keep circulating the stories and remember the names with dread: Arrow and old Vekoma loopers, PTC woodies, Togo coasters outside of Japan, Boomerangs and the infamous Invertigo models, the dreaded three-letter acronym "SLC", or those cursed contraptions Pinfari used to put up. They are still remembered, but the memories fade with each passing year as those coaster models have long since gone out of production, in many cases because the manufacturing companies themselves went under. It's rare nowadays to hear about new coasters that are outright bad anymore. You've got the occasional rattle in some Intamin coasters, Gerstlauer occasionally produces a coaster with some inherent roughness, and there is still some evidence of the Chinese manufacturers being new to this game, but in general the industry has learned how to not make their coasters unpleasant.
For the most part.
You see, there is one company that somehow survives making coasters just like the old days. Coasters that bring you back to the days of Arrow's track profiling, Gerstlauer's early-days build quality, the ricketyness of PTC, or the overall sheer unpleasantness of Pinfari's loopers, even though these coasters are manufactured well into the second and third decades of the twenty-first century. Zamperla has seemingly looked at old, poorly-maintained Togo coasters and decided "let's build something like that!". Their Volare models are infamous for feeling like you're chained down in a sunbed inside an out-of-control cement truck sliding off-road down a rocky hillside. The Thunderbolt coasters are like homages to the Parisian showmen who first bolted carriages to steel wheels bent in loops vaguely reminiscent of a circle and charged a penny to ride at one's own risk.
Of all the currently active coaster companies, at least those in the West, Zamperla has by far the worst reputation and they seem to work hard to maintain it. I've never heard of a good Zamperla coaster. "Too small for the imperfections to be bothersome" seems to be the general verdict for their family-sized coasters, but when they try their hand at thrill coasters, the feedback I've seen is almost universally negative. The Volare coasters are legendarily unpleasant, and the Thunderbolts have been called mediocre at best and horrible at worst. Zamperla's coaster division seems to be stuck where Vekoma was in the 1990s, and that was not a good place.
So of course when an independent UK park decides to get a new thrill coaster ...
