(click for link to bigger image)
The world is a big place. So big we've had to divide it into countries, hence politics. Many of us have creds (ridden coasters) in many different countries, as evident by this old thread.
But the world is also divided into time zones, also known as UTC Time Offsets. As shown in the map above, the borders for these tend to span several countries, or parts of them. Some time zones span multiple countries, some countries span multiple time zones. And most time zones have coasters in them. How many time zones have you ridden coasters in?
A few notes below:
- There are 26 primary time zones in total (UTC+ even numbers), but some countries (most notably India) adhere to weird half-hour time zones. A shout-out to Nepal for deciding to follow UTC +5 ¾. These offset time zones bring the total number of time zones to 38.
- As far as I can tell, there are surprisingly few time zones without any coasters at all, at least if we stick to the main ones. UTC-12, UTC-11, and UTC-10 lie in the middle of the Pacific, whose islands don't tend to be big theme park destinations, but there was one coaster on Hawaii (UTC-10) almost a hundred years ago. UTC-9 comprises Alaska a tiny French island, but neither have any amusement parks. Then there are the Atlantic time zones of UTC-2 and UTC-1, which only comprise a few islands without coasters. I had some faint hope of finding something in Cabo Verde, but if there are any, RCDB doesn't know about them. Then there's UTC+13 (Tonga) which is another Pacific one. So 7 of the primary 26 are without coasters, which is fewer than I expected. I haven't bothered to figure out how many of the half- and quarter-hour time zones have coasters in them, but it sounds reasonable that most of the continental ones contain one or two. Yes, that includes the time zone exclusive to Afghanistan.
- UTC+11 is mostly Pacific, but appears to have a single cred in it: This little gem in Magadan, Russia. Ten bonus points for whoever has that one on their cred list.
Myself, I've been to ... umm ... UTC-4 (Florida), UTC (UK), UTC+1 (Scandinavia), UTC+4 (UAE), and UTC+8 (Malaysia). That's five, which isn't half bad. What about you?
