I do not think that Iron Rattler is a bad ride. (I haven't gone on it, but it does not look bad at all). Furthermore, I have gone on Untamed at Walibi Holland and have found the trains and restrains to be incredibly comfortable for a ride of this caliber of airtime and inversions. I understand your point of how Tomahawk does not fill the gap, but it filled the gap for me when I was a kid and Stampida was closed on my first visit to the park. I went from Tomahawk to Furius Baco without any problem.
First off It's cool people like yourself and to be fair myself can jump from tomahawk to baco as kids with no problems. But that falls into the trap of assuming everyone's like us.
A fallacy which I used to fall into myself before I went to parks with kids myself. And something I feel as enthusiasts I feel we do far to often.
I mean we are all self acknowledged coaster enthusiasts now. And we had to have showed some proclivity to higher thrill attractions even while we were younger. I know I did.
I've been to plenty of parks with my niece who isn't one of us and when she was younger going from woody woodpecker at universal or rattlesnake at chessie to cheetah hunt or to rip ride rocket was an enormous step and took a lot of convincing.
There was no way we'd have got her onto something like kumba back then. Stampedia fills that roll at PA and are important rides for that.
Let's look at it this way. coasters at PA height requirement wise.
DK 1.4m (average UK child height that surpasses 1.4m is 10 years old)
Sham 1.4
Baco 1.4
Stampedia 1.2 (7 years old)
El Diablo 1.1 (6 years old)
Tomahawk 1.1
Tami Tami 1m (4 years old)
So without stampedia the average British child would have 4 years after tomahawk before they could right any other bigger coaster at the park.
Stampedia fills a gap and a very important one that we as enthusiasts ignore, the child who doesn't want to do inversions and stuff yet but is too old for a junior coaster.
Do you think the reason ice breaker is losing its comfort collars is mostly to do with comfort? No it's to do with lowering the height limit to 1.2m rather than 1.4m. So there is a coaster at that park that fills that gap (that they wanted ice breaker to fill in the first place) between Grover and the B&Ms.
An RMC is actually 1.2m height requirement too but as mentioned before there's a huge difference in tomahawk and an RMC in terms of what your average child will ride.
Now off topic onto why IR is cap
Astonishing first drop, one of the best I've ridden, good 2nd drop and inversion and then a boring meander for about half the actual coasting time that doesn't do anything on the cliff top. Followed at least by a decent last drop through a tunnel into the brakes. 3 good moments a great coaster does not make (thanks Yoda) it's not even top 3 in the park it's in for me)
My other ridden RMC Zadra is a great ride although not anywhere close to my top 20 (that's mostly due to a higher preference for very high positive g forces)
But I find it's mostly scuppered by what I still think are awful trains. They're smooth enough at tracking the course but that lap bar is terrible and by the end of the ride it's always killed my legs during hang time and with those mostly fun off axis hills that provide slightly off center pressure on the legs with the forces,
I'm not the smallest guy but I'm not huge and ive always found RMC lap bars are towards the bottom of the lap bar comfort rungs. B&M clamshells, Intamin and Mack over the top lap bars and even dare I say it Maurer X car weird ass things I find more comfortable.
Anyway getting off topic a bit.