Wood Coaster Poll results
7 December 2007
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21 Comments
And the number one wooden coaster is… the Voyage! You can see all of the results here. There are a lot of interesting breakdowns and analysis, so I’m not going to cover all of that. What do you think of the results?
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First of all, I’d like to commend Kevin and Nate on giving a very informative news podcast, along with their opinions on various parks and new rides. Conerning the Wooden Roller Coaster Poll, I feel that the top three are justified and are in the correct order. However, being a Wisconsin native, I’d like to see both Hades and Avalanche (especially Hades as #4) closer to the top. Also, I think that it would be interesting to conduct and publish a poll of the top manufacturers, both of wood and steel. My personal top favorites are Gravity Group and Intamin.
Thanks for the kind words Nick.
Regarding the poll, I’ve lost a little respect for it. Thunderbird had 26 riders/voters… there’s NO reason it should be in the top 10 with only 26 riders. Mainly Theme Park Review users have ridden that along with Balder and Thunderbird, and mainly TPR users voted in the poll.
Also, Aska made #11… it’s in Japan, was only ridden by 20 people, and it’s a near clone of SFMM Psyclone. Tell me how it made #11.
For classics like Hershey’s Comet, SFNE’s Thunderbolt and Cyclone to be in the 90s is a joke.
The poll is judged by comparing coasters. Say everyone who rode both Thunderbird and El Toro preferred Thunderbird, that would put Thunderbird ahead of El Toro.
It may have been better than Psyclone, for a wooden coaster, things like trackwork, and all that make a world of difference.
And, just because a ride is classic, doesn’t mean it’s better than a newer ride.
No.
The fact is when asking the question what roller coaster is the best…..there is no real true answer EVER! It is an opinionated question and no opinion question can be answered as fact. The closest an opinion question can come to being fact is majority rules, but even that doesn;t make it fact.
Plus, you will never know for sure the true consensus because you will never be able to get EVERYONE who has ever ridden the coasters to vote in the poll. How many people voted this year…..376! That doesn’t even come close to a one day attendance on a slow rainy day during the season at ANY park, heck I graduated high school with more people than that!
Now on top of not having everyones opinions you have to attempt to weed out the biased opinions. Now just about 40% of voters came from Ohio, Illinois and New Jersey. Of coarse Illinois is gonna vote voyage and NJ is gonna vote Toro….and then you have the CP fanboys that are gonna place voyage higher than toro just cause they are still bitter over kingda ka. Now I’m not saying every vote cast from NJ, Illinois and ohio was biased…but the bias goes far beyond those 3 states so I would say 40% of votes biased is a pretty good estimate.
So when it comes down to it does the poll represent the true #1 wooden coaster….absolutely not…..but in that sense no poll ever could! Mitch Hawker is the only guy that puts a poll out there that even attempts to address these issues. So even though the final consensus can not be fully trusted….(esspecially as close as this poll was with voyage only winning by a mere 6 votes….which is not to mention voyage losing to the best steel coaster…..and toro being the only woodie to beat the best steel coaster which in essence really creates a 3-way tie for first place….) it is the most reliable poll out there PERIOD.
This poll is about as reliable as Nate and myself putting out a podcast on time.
Just because you don’t agree with the results, doesn’t mean it’s un-reliable. Come on man.
Thanks for the kind words Nick. All of these polls have an inherent problem and you are never going to please everyone. I was suprised to see some of the top rides up there, but what can you do. This is the best option we have right now.
Haha okay Kevin your right the golden ticket awards are much more reliable!
Jake, even if I agreed with the results, it’s unreliable.
Jim insists that forty percent of the vote comes from Ohio,Illinois,and New Jersey and lets see if Jim and those who agree with him has a clue or not.
Ohio has fifty-five votes,New Jersey has fifty-four votes, and Illinois has twenty-seven votes thus the total of the three states equals 136.
How many people did vote in the poll? The answer is seven hundred of seven hundred sixty-four did specify were they live from.
Members thus less than nineteen and half percent of the vote lives in Ohio,New Jersey,and Illinois obviously Jim and those who agree with him doesn’t have a clue being the only conclusion!
2007 Golden Ticket award for the Best Wooden Coaster was also The Voyage.
I appreciate what Mitch Hawker is trying to do with his poll and like others have said every poll will have some inherent flaws. That being said, 764 votes isn’t bad. And I think Jim is a bit off base. There’s a lot of assuming going on when you think the votes from IL will vote for Voyage (which is in Indiana last time I checked) and OH voters will purposely vote against Voyage b/c they’re SF haters?
I agree with Nick that I’d like to see Hades a bit higher it’s an amazing ride. But overall I have no problems with the results.
The top 10 or so make sense to me. It doesn’t bother me at all that 26 people rode TBird or 20 people rode Aska. If you’re concerned about how many votes a coaster gets then the Golden Ticket Awards may be more to your liking. I’d take the mutual ride comparisons (even if there’s only a few dozen riders for some coasters) over absolute number of votes.
A few questions though. I don’t get the enthusiast love for Raven. It was a nice coaster, but I’d take Legend over it any day. To me, it was like a ‘thrilling’ junior coaster.
Is Troy pretty much just Thunderhead in Europe does it have a unique layout? Nice discussion guys.
This argument is stupid and pointless.
Then don’t partake in it.
Jack when your right your right……I was misinformed of the number of people who participated in the poll. So lets say 20% of votes biased……. still a pretty large sum. My argument had almost nothing to do with the winner……my argument had to do with the reliability of the poll……can;t understand why your punchline was that of voyage being number 1 in the golden ticket awards…..obviously you didn’t catch my drift. When it comes to opinionated questions no ones opinion is better than anyone elses (like Kevin would like to think that his opinion should be regarded as superior to the majority)….thus there really never can be a true answer to the best! ALL polls have their flaws….but Mitch Hawker’s has the fewest flaws and that makes it the most reliable out there!
Jim, are you saying “Kevin would like to think that his opinion should be regarded as superior to the majority”… because I certainly don’t, nor did I say it.
Yes, I’ll agree that it’s the most reliable poll, but it’s only about 10% reliable.
^Okay then if you want to complain about the reliability by all means please create a poll that is more reliable….
^ However, until you do create that poll Kevin. I will continue to accept Mitch Hawker’s poll as the best out there and be appreciative that somebody out there is investing over a month of his time for my enjoyment!
Mitch Hawker’s been doing this for years, and I’m grateful… however, after all these years, it’s still got flaws. Don’t worry, I have something in the works…
^ Interesting……
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