How important is consistency in a coaster?

[Matt N]

One interesting thing about roller coasters is that they are, to some extent, variable experiences. A ride can ride differently depending on conditions, row, restraint stapling etc. However, I personally feel that some coasters vary a lot more drastically than others; some rides deliver something reasonably close to their best experience in every seat in any conditions, whereas others vary quite drastically and any ranking often comes with caveats. With this in mind, I'd be intrigued to know; in your opinion, how important is consistency in a coaster? Do you like a coaster to deliver something reasonably close to its best ride at all times, or are you willing to put aside a coaster's inconsistency if it has one specific set of conditions in which it really delivers?

Personally, I like a coaster to be consistent and would err towards saying that consistency is important in a coaster for me. When I was riding Hyperia on Tuesday, one thing that made me respect it is that it is a very consistent coaster. I've ridden it over a number of visits, and got the chance to ride it in a number of rows on Tuesday, and regardless of where you sit on that train, when you ride it or how stapled in you are, the ride always delivers something reasonably close to its best ride, from my experience; while my row preference marginally settled on the back, I found the ride sublime in every row and did go through a period where I thought the front was superior, and when I'm struggling to decide which row is my favourite, I always think of that as a good sign of consistency. One thing that peeves me ever so slightly is when a coaster has a specific set of caveats to it delivering its best experience; for example, I've increasingly found that Wicker Man at Alton Towers, as much as I love it dearly, has a little bit of what I call "magic seat syndrome" in that it delivers a markedly better ride experience on the back and you feel a little short changed if you don't ride in the back. Other examples include Stealth at Thorpe Park and Nemesis at Alton Towers, whose "magic seat" is the front, and Thirteen at Alton Towers, whose "magic seat" is the back. One of the most temperamental coasters I think I ever rode would probably be the late Megafobia at Oakwood; in 2016, it was absolutely superb with great pacing and had really quite strong airtime on the front, whereas in 2019, it was markedly weaker and had notable dead spots. And I also found that Megafobia varied wildly between rows when I rode it multiple times in 2019; the front was great fun and reasonably smooth with some nice floater airtime being pushed into the hills, the middle was inoffensive but almost completely devoid of force, and the back provided by far the strongest ejector airtime but was also much rougher than elsewhere on the train. As fun as I generally found it, this inconsistency definitely made me push it down a little. As much as I would generally call the B&M hypers quite consistent rides, I also have to say that Silver Star showed slight inconsistency in that I had two rides on it where I got thoroughly stapled, and the airtime was much, much weaker. Whereas the other 8 rides I had packed much stronger airtime. And this is a significant part (albeit not all) of why I rank it below Shambhala and Mako, and have at times pondered placing it below Hyperia as well.

With that said, one front row ride did help me to change my opinion on VelociCoaster to make it my #1, so who knows?

So, I'd be intrigued to know; how important do you feel consistency is in a coaster?

 

[Rob Coasters]

The biggest example of consistency I think, is Ride to Happiness at Plopsaland Belgium.
On your first ten or so rides, you are experiencing every element in every direction you possibly can, so every ride is incredibly insane to you.
Your next ten rides, you start to discover that you prefer certain elements in different directions.
Your next ten rides, you can be actively disappointed that you didn't go through an element facing a certain direction.

That's exactly how I feel towards Ride to Happiness. I sound like an absolutely whiney complainer who hates everything, but I mean, over my thirty or so rides on it, I feel like it's reasonable to start gaining a preference towards how you want to experience it.
If I had a button to make every single ride on Ride to Happiness the same, so I could experience every element facing the most "ideal" direction, and eliminated all of the randomness that comes with the spinning, I would honestly press it. Guarantee a backwards drop if I'm in the back row. Go through the banana roll facing downwards. Front flip through the double-inverting dive loop. That kind of stuff.

Wildfire at Kolmarden. I was told that due to visiting on a public holiday, hot weather and always full trains, the ride was running "abnormally fast". It's my favourite roller coaster by RMC by a country mile.
But here's the thing. "Abnormally fast" - it's not supposed to run like that. If I go back to Kolmarden, there's a 90% chance Wildfire isn't going to run like that again and I will lose my love for it. So I'm kind of scared to go back.

Stardust Racers at Awesome World. I'm a sucker for onboard audio. I am extremely biased towards it. But here's the thing - it almost never works. The onboard audio working at night on the yellow side is why that ride is my favourite theme park attraction in the world. Green side, audio was broken on my train, and the ride was just "really good" and not much more.

So yeah, my answer is "very". I want to have my best ride every time on a theme park ride, I'm not fond of variability.
Plus - if I'm taking a first-timer on an attraction, and I say to them "this ride is really good", the last thing I want to happen is the ride running sluggish or rough or with broken effects and then I look crazy in front of them!

 

[rollercoaster.jpg]

I'm going to get a bit philosophical here, but I don't mind a bit of inconsistency. Roller coasters are uniquely physical experiences, so variation is just part of nature. A bit of inconsistency makes it that much more special when conditions hit just right; I'm thinking of that night ride on a warm summer evening after some light rain. Of course, the opposite side of the coin is disappoint. But that's the human experience.

To take it to the other extreme, you could theoretically build a coaster with LSMs on the entire course to perfectly replicate gravity-powered acceleration. So it would still feel like a normal roller coaster, but it would be exactly the same every time. To me, that would ruin the charm of riding roller coasters but I can't really justify why I feel that way.

That said, I do feel the same way about the extreme spinners They offer great re-rideability intially, but then in creeps a tinge of frustration when you just want to re-experience a certain element in a certain way. Kind of like chasing the dragon I suppose...

 

[Callum]

I do feel consistency is fairly important, which is probably why I don't rank Ride to happiness as high as others. Sometimes I hit the break run feeling quite disappointed as it didn't hit at hard as other times.

Another example which comes to mind for me is Kondaa. I think Kondaa is a far superior ride when sat at the back than near the front. Unfortunately, assigned seating is out our control a lot of the time but I do like it when parks are flexible, where i'm sat on a coaster can make a huge difference.

 

[Changa]

I definitely prefer a ride that is consistent in the quality of its experience. Though, I wouldn't downgrade rides like Stealth or Inferno for being better in the front, because you can always choose to ride them there.

Conversely, my front and back row rides on Millennium Force were completely different. But both were incredible in different ways. The front was a blast of unrelenting speed, the back offered one of the best first drop I've experienced. That inconsistency only further boosted it in my own rankings because it offered almost two rides in one.