Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio, previously on Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show Ridiculous his Stories. Think who
Speaker 1: has always so much for tuning in. Let's give a
Speaker 1: big shout out to our super producer, mister Max the
Speaker 1: Tycoon Williams. I am ben Bullen joy does always with
Speaker 1: the man, the myth, the legend, a tycoon in his
Speaker 1: own right, Mister Noel Brown Noles. We've had We've had
Speaker 1: a heck of a time with this roller coaster series, right,
Speaker 1: A lot of oh no, no, it's okay, we'll allow it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no ups and downs.
Speaker 2: To be sure, I think we've roughly reached approaching modern times,
Speaker 2: but not not not not quite. We still have a
Speaker 2: little bit of history again.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, just like the experience of writing a roller coaster,
Speaker 1: we're having form follow function, or form and function be interrelated.
Speaker 1: Because our previous episode, part one was kind of a
Speaker 1: up the hill, all right, and now we are at
Speaker 1: a titular point. Now we are at an apex of
Speaker 1: roller coaster history because you see, with the dawning of
Speaker 1: the world's first legit roller coaster, Tycoon La Marcus. I
Speaker 1: just love to say his name uh, he triggered and
Speaker 1: arms race amidst the roller coaster manufacturers of the world.
Speaker 1: I mean, within just a few months after he becomes
Speaker 1: the roller coaster king of Coney Island, people start moving
Speaker 1: in on his territory. That's right.
Speaker 2: I mean he held a virtual monopoly on coasters, you know,
Speaker 2: at least in this country at Coney Island. But enter
Speaker 2: Charles Alcoke, who had built a kind of more of
Speaker 2: a scenic people mover type situation, a slow scenic railroad.
Speaker 2: The connected the ends of the tracks in a continuous
Speaker 2: loop to make it more of a pleasure cruise.
Speaker 1: I like that, a pleasure cruise people mover, a people
Speaker 1: moving pleasure cruise. Yes, so this coaster gets close to
Speaker 1: the record set by Thompson Switchback Railway, but Philip Hinkle
Speaker 1: makes a breakthrough in eighteen eighty five. His coaster has
Speaker 1: an elliptical route and a powered hoist that pulls cars
Speaker 1: back to the top of the first hill, and because
Speaker 1: of the speed at which it moves, it's a more
Speaker 1: exciting ride than the relatively slow moving switchback. And at
Speaker 1: this point, to be clear, no one has beaten that
Speaker 1: original train powered scenic railway from episode one that ended
Speaker 1: at like sixty five miles an hour.
Speaker 2: Right, And when I say we're roughly approaching modern coaster times,
Speaker 2: what I mean is this technology in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways is still kind of how things are done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like you said, these a lot
Speaker 1: of these are what we will call simple machines with
Speaker 1: further pieces of technology added on top of them. At
Speaker 1: this point, all of them, at least all the rides
Speaker 1: at Coney Island are leveraging gravity to work. They're just
Speaker 1: approaching gravity and interesting ways, there's a ride called the
Speaker 1: Steeplechase by a guy named George C. Till You, which
Speaker 1: is an interesting last name. I wonder what the etymology
Speaker 1: of that is. I don't know. It's spelt like it's
Speaker 1: spelled like t I L you, so it's like until
Speaker 1: you with me again.
Speaker 2: I don't know this this ride actually, you know, Steeplechase
Speaker 2: being a famous is it a specific horse race or
Speaker 2: is it just a style.
Speaker 1: Of horse racing.
Speaker 2: I can't remember if it's like a particular event, but
Speaker 2: either way, Steeplechase is a horse race scenario, and this
Speaker 2: one kind of mimic that with these mechanical horses that
Speaker 2: descend it on kind of a wavy track, and it
Speaker 2: was very very popular amongst early coaster heads.
Speaker 1: I also like coaster heads. I think it's steeplechase, isn't
Speaker 1: that the one where the horses have to jump over obstacles,
Speaker 1: like they don't run, and they run and they jump
Speaker 1: over different fences or different ditches, So it kind of
Speaker 1: mimics what you would experience on a roller coaster. It's
Speaker 1: an obstacle race in athletics, but it is named after the.
Speaker 2: Steeplechase in horse racing, which, to your point, Ben was
Speaker 2: involved jumping over hurdles and things like that. But a
Speaker 2: steeple chase in like an Olympic type event, involves going
Speaker 2: through water, you know, jumping over hurdles and all of
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So this was named for the horse race, the original
Speaker 1: version of a steeple chase, because of the ups and downs,
Speaker 1: and there were there were other things like the cannon coaster. Yes,
Speaker 1: the cannon coaster is a little bit dystopian. Already. There
Speaker 1: is a gap in the rails. Ooh, yeah, that seems
Speaker 1: a little bit dangerous. Well, often often the cars made
Speaker 1: it across the gap. Yeah, when one would hope it
Speaker 1: would work out that way for you. There was also
Speaker 1: something called the mystic screw, which also sounds a little dirty.
Speaker 1: Maybe my mind is just in the gut of perpetually
Speaker 1: and this trick it was a yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: This involved a kind of a helix type pattern and
Speaker 2: then the writers would descend around seventy five feet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Pass around this time, our friends of Encyclopedia Britannic
Speaker 1: and note people start experimenting with something called inversions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and whenever you are are looking at, you know,
Speaker 2: guides for roller coasters written by coaster heads, inversions are
Speaker 2: a big feature that are always you know discussed, like
Speaker 2: how many inversions does a ride happen, what's their height?
Speaker 2: And also things like corkscrews that might send you kind
Speaker 2: of circling. It's not a full inversion exactly. It's more
Speaker 2: of like a sideways kind of like inversion.
Speaker 1: I always thought loops loops were so cool because it
Speaker 1: is just from a physics standpoint, it's such an interesting experiment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like taking a bucket of water and swinging
Speaker 2: it upside down over your head. It's not gonna come
Speaker 2: out because of you know, mother gravity. Just hold that
Speaker 2: holding that stuff in and early inversions didn't even have
Speaker 2: lap bars or what do you call them, like, you know, harnesses.
Speaker 1: We were literally held in place.
Speaker 2: By gravity, which we know is gonna work unless the
Speaker 2: coaster fails or something, you know, and then you just
Speaker 2: PLoP right out.
Speaker 1: Gravity does its thing once again. Yeah, yeah, because the
Speaker 1: one constant force in all of these things, one thing
Speaker 1: that never breaks is gravity. So you just have to
Speaker 1: stay on gravity's good side. It doesn't care about you.
Speaker 1: It's what it's gonna do. It's very focused on it.
Speaker 1: It's like one thing that it's good at. So these
Speaker 1: loop track rides, people had tried them in Paris before
Speaker 1: in the middle of the eighteen hundreds, and the rides
Speaker 1: were similar to the Bucket of Water example from earlier.
Speaker 1: The rides are based on a toy for kids that
Speaker 1: keeps a small ball rolling on a loop track without
Speaker 1: falling off. However, at least in Paris, people found these
Speaker 1: inversions uncomfortable and dangerous, and so the idea was scrapped
Speaker 1: until eighteen ninety five, when Lena Beecher installs something called
Speaker 1: the Flip Flap Railway at Paul Boyton's Sea Lion Park
Speaker 1: and Coney Island. Their main attraction was sea lions, but
Speaker 1: they also of course had what they called the Railway.
Speaker 1: It was uncomfortable, it was still dangerous, but it had
Speaker 1: this big twenty five foot circular loop that became wildly
Speaker 1: popular and went viral, as we would say in the
Speaker 1: parlance of today, and it shut down after only a
Speaker 1: few years. And it was so potentially dangerous that a
Speaker 1: lot of folks would just show up to watch others
Speaker 1: ride it, which I can relate to again with my
Speaker 1: kind of building back up my courage to ride the coasters.
Speaker 1: If I go to an amusement park and haven't been
Speaker 1: in a while, I will sometimes just kind of watch
Speaker 1: a few of the coasters to kind of build up
Speaker 1: my moxie, you know, to go for a ride myself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think people found the excel the slight acceleration, g forces,
Speaker 1: gravitational forces uncomfortable. Oh yeah, well it kind of is
Speaker 1: a little bit so, right. So this is where we
Speaker 1: get to a guy named Edward Prescott who builds something
Speaker 1: called the loop de loop.
Speaker 2: And that is sort of the stand in parlance for
Speaker 2: these kind of inversions. You know, people will often call
Speaker 2: them a loop, the loop, uh, and that this is
Speaker 2: also a Coney Island, had a bit of a gentler slope,
Speaker 2: more oval shaped design, and was much better in engineered
Speaker 2: and constructed then the flippity flap.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I know it's not the flippity flap, but
Speaker 1: I like that better. Oh sure, let's treat the phrase
Speaker 1: flip flap with the gravity it deserves.
Speaker 2: Hey, hey, jeez, the but it'd still be quite quite
Speaker 2: a few more decades seventy five years in fact, before
Speaker 2: a very fully successful vertical loop was was actually created.
Speaker 1: And because it had a very low seating capacity, the loop.
Speaker 1: The loop itself doesn't doesn't succeed long term. It's not
Speaker 1: around now, but for the for the fans of coasters,
Speaker 1: for the roller coaster folk, it is the coolest thing
Speaker 1: in town, or indeed in the world, until a new
Speaker 1: challenger emerges in this arms race for adrenaline, something called
Speaker 1: drop the Dip, later to be called rough Riders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a little better. But rough Riders.
Speaker 2: It makes me think of DMX. Wasn't he the rough
Speaker 2: rider to the head of the rough Riders crew.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of Roosevelt.
Speaker 3: I gotta jump in here. Remember when we were doing
Speaker 3: our Model Trains. Episode I talked about the terrible idea
Speaker 3: of a third track roller coaster.
Speaker 4: This is it. This is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, third track being a power rail that delivers electricity
Speaker 2: to the coaster. But also, as we know if you've
Speaker 2: ever been on like a subway station, those tracks are
Speaker 2: way out of reach. They're down, you know, in the
Speaker 2: in the pit kind of of the of the subway track.
Speaker 2: But they are very clearly labeled do not touch the
Speaker 2: third rail because you can get a deadly shock.
Speaker 1: Exactly. And the issue here is not necessarily the mechanics
Speaker 1: at play. The issue here is the human operators. Because
Speaker 1: folks operating the rough rider would try to deliver the
Speaker 1: maximum amount of fun, thrill and adrenaline to their passengers,
Speaker 1: which meant they pushed it too hard. They pushed the
Speaker 1: machine too hard, They used full power, even when folks
Speaker 1: were already going down, taking the power leveraging the power
Speaker 1: of gravity. In nineteen ten, one guy operating rough riders,
Speaker 1: he took his train around a bend just way too fast.
Speaker 1: He was all gased, no brakes. He threw two cars
Speaker 1: loose from the ride. Sixteen passengers flew out over the
Speaker 1: nearby surf avenue. And four of them died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Britannica points out that these kind of upping
Speaker 2: the ante here in terms of the danger quotient did
Speaker 2: force some of that oversight that we were desperately lacking.
Speaker 2: And obviously it takes a real gnarly tragedy like this,
Speaker 2: you know, for folks to see the need for intervention
Speaker 2: at this level. And so you started to see things
Speaker 2: like lap bars, which got passengers in place right before that,
Speaker 2: like I was saying, you were just in place by
Speaker 2: the forces of gravity and the g force of the
Speaker 2: vertical loop themselves. Train derailments, however, did kind of continue,
Speaker 2: though they became a lot less common after some of these,
Speaker 2: you know, safety measures were put in place around nineteen
Speaker 2: twelve when John Miller, who was the chief engineer for
Speaker 2: our boy LaMarcus, invented something called the under friction wheel.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was sort of a big wig or as
Speaker 1: Max wanted to say, a large hair piece in the
Speaker 1: I appreciate in the roller coaster industry. Yeah, the under
Speaker 1: friction wheel. Before we get to that, I got to
Speaker 1: tell you guys, here's the story of how I almost
Speaker 1: died on the American screen machine. It's due to a
Speaker 1: lap bar. So the lap bar in these things works,
Speaker 1: as you know, if you're seated two by two, the
Speaker 1: lap bar is supposed to go down sort of like
Speaker 1: on your crotch area, the bend between your hips and
Speaker 1: your thighs, and as long as people relatively the same size,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be all right. I was writing with an
Speaker 1: adult friend of the family who was, you know, a grown,
Speaker 1: a grown woman much larger than me as a young
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan, and the lap bar clanked down on her
Speaker 1: but didn't quite reach our young, our young protagonist. And
Speaker 1: so thank god, the American Scream Machine did not have
Speaker 1: loop de loops. It just had this old creaky wooden
Speaker 1: thing where the first seri downhills, though it's got some
Speaker 1: serious downhills, and I was replicating the experience of pre
Speaker 1: lap bar people because I kid you not, guys. There
Speaker 1: was a clear like six inches or so between my
Speaker 1: body and the lap bar, so I was almost out
Speaker 1: of the car well.
Speaker 2: And that's the problem with community lap bars, because again
Speaker 2: you're you're limited by the largest person in the scenario.
Speaker 3: I actually have a follow up on this because this
Speaker 3: is how my friend David almost killed me on American
Speaker 3: Scream machine in the exact same roller coaster. Really, my
Speaker 3: friend David is a daredevil. He like, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: afraid of heights. He has no fear of heights whatsoever. Sure,
Speaker 3: and we were teenagers, probably like fifteen sixteen years old.
Speaker 3: We're at six Flags, and what he would do is
Speaker 3: he would always sit up as far as he possibly
Speaker 3: could and see if people would not notice that he's
Speaker 3: just like making it so the bar can't go all
Speaker 3: the way down.
Speaker 4: It was like it was like a Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker 1: We were there.
Speaker 4: The person that didn't really check, and so.
Speaker 3: Then we're rolling out, he stands up completely out of
Speaker 3: his seat. Does to show me how bad it is.
Speaker 3: I'm just like cranking down in the seat, Belty Calf.
Speaker 3: But I got the last laugh because a year later
Speaker 3: we went to Cedar Point and I made him right
Speaker 3: at top fill Dragster and I actually watched that man
Speaker 3: cry before it went off, and he started to cry.
Speaker 1: You'll love to see it. Good to be in touch
Speaker 1: with your emotions, I guess. But but yes, so this
Speaker 1: idea here and also out to everybody who survived a
Speaker 1: roller coaster where you almost died. And Carol, if you're
Speaker 1: hearing this, I forgive you. John Miller's invention of the
Speaker 1: under friction wheel is a massive game changer because it
Speaker 1: keeps the train bolted down beneath the track with a
Speaker 1: third set of wheels. So if gravity, if you get
Speaker 1: on the bad side of gravity, you have an opposing
Speaker 1: force attaching your car to the rail, kind of like
Speaker 1: clamping something. So like the previous ones had maybe side
Speaker 1: friction wheels that were meant to function kind of as
Speaker 1: insurance of ice rolling on the inside or the inner
Speaker 1: edges of the track. But this is this is just
Speaker 1: a much better answer. It stops so many accidental derailments.
Speaker 1: Our guy John Miller is also responsible for others safety innovations,
Speaker 1: like a safety chain lift, which means, okay, I didn't
Speaker 1: know this, but it makes sense. Back in the day
Speaker 1: roller coasters rolling up that first till that we were
Speaker 1: talking about, sometimes they didn't make it. There's real backwards
Speaker 1: that's not good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then I mean, was there any safety measure
Speaker 2: in place to stop them from just like slamming to
Speaker 2: a halt at the end when they dropped back.
Speaker 1: Down hopefully after the first few times. I would hope
Speaker 1: after the first few anyway, there's a weird thing that
Speaker 1: occurs here because this progress in terms of safety also
Speaker 1: enables these absolutely mad cap roller coaster engineers to get
Speaker 1: even more extreme with their designs. You know, a side
Speaker 1: friction wheel had limited velocity and you couldn't plunge at
Speaker 1: certain inclides, but this under friction wheel allows you to
Speaker 1: go even faster, even higher and lower. And Miller himself
Speaker 1: is kind of this crazy it's kind of pushing the
Speaker 1: envelope of physics when you think about it. The Russian
Speaker 1: mountain builders would be astounded by this because they would
Speaker 1: be like, literally in the ice age of roller coasters,
Speaker 1: that joke is worth it.
Speaker 2: It's more than worth it pen and you know, and
Speaker 2: you know, you really started to see that arms rays
Speaker 2: kind of playing out where people were trying to top,
Speaker 2: you know, existing coasters so they could be known as
Speaker 2: the fastest, the scariest, whatever it might be. And Miller
Speaker 2: actually really pushed the envelope of physics itself with his
Speaker 2: Jack Rabbit attraction at Kennywood Park, which had a significantly
Speaker 2: precipitous dive into kind of like almost like a valley,
Speaker 2: and then his Cyclone in Cleveland, Ohio, which used the
Speaker 2: cliffs and gorges, natural attractions at the appuritus springs to
Speaker 2: create these kind of v shaped, you know, paths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is where we get to the golden
Speaker 1: age of roller coasters, and once more, credit where it's due.
Speaker 1: We want to shout out American Experience WABPPS dot org.
Speaker 1: You can find it. This is a relatively comprehensive history.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen twenties, says American Experience, the roller coaster
Speaker 1: street name the scream Machine was making more screams than
Speaker 1: ever before. The US had like maybe fifteen hundred separate
Speaker 1: roller coasters. Sure, they're all chasing hyperbole and superlatives like
Speaker 1: one is one hundred and thirty eight feet high, the
Speaker 1: fastest goes sixty one miles an hour. And there were
Speaker 1: more and more complex iterations of the basic principles tiger curves,
Speaker 1: steeper drop spirals, figure eights that would just blow your mind.
Speaker 1: There was even once upon a time, we talked about
Speaker 1: this an episode of car stuff. Once upon a time
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles there was an auto coaster, which was
Speaker 1: a roller coaster you rode in your car. Yikes, I
Speaker 1: don't know about that, guys. Just now. It didn't work out.
Speaker 1: Don't really see those too much these days, if at.
Speaker 2: All, I'm going to say not at all, because I've
Speaker 2: certainly never heard of one outside of this. It was,
Speaker 2: like you said, Ben, consider the golden age of the
Speaker 2: roller coaster specifically, though, you know, like we have our
Speaker 2: ice age and all that stuff in our bronze age.
Speaker 1: This was the wooden age. M yeah, yeah, And this
Speaker 1: is this is sort of the grandfather of things like
Speaker 1: the American scream machine. These are the ones that are
Speaker 1: clattery and jittery. They're lurching, they're they're made pretty much
Speaker 1: entirely of wood. Perhaps the most famous is the Coney
Speaker 1: Island Cyclone, which is built in nineteen twenty seven by
Speaker 1: Vernon Keaton and Harry Baker. Even notables of the day
Speaker 1: like Charles Lindbergh would get off this ride and say
Speaker 1: that is actually scarier to me than flying in an airplane.
Speaker 1: Eighty five foot drop, sixty miles an hour. This is
Speaker 1: the gold standard for most of modern roller coasters. It
Speaker 1: truly freaks.
Speaker 2: Me out the idea of something like that being held
Speaker 2: with such force, you know, of being exerted on it
Speaker 2: on the regular, being held together by like nails and boards.
Speaker 2: I don't understand how they don't just come crashing down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Woodies, right, Ben, the Woodies, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the King of the Woodies is a guy named
Speaker 1: Harry Guy Traver, A guy named Harry Guy Traver. Guy's
Speaker 1: actually his mill named. In the nineteen twenties, he starts
Speaker 1: building his own version of cyclone across the nation, and
Speaker 1: his most famous creation is the cyclone at Canada's Crystal
Speaker 1: Beach Park. At this point, just a context new. You know,
Speaker 1: in the early days, they were calling a lot of
Speaker 1: these rides scenic railways wherever they were. Now they're calling
Speaker 1: them cyclone like it's not necessarily patented, they're not cyclones
Speaker 1: or guess. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this particular cyclone, like you said, Ben, at Crystal
Speaker 2: Beach Park up there in Canada, actually had a staff
Speaker 2: nurse on hand in case people experience any kind of
Speaker 2: medical issues as a result of riding the ride. Another
Speaker 2: one in the same kind of era and style was
Speaker 2: something called the aeroplane at a place called Playland Amusement
Speaker 2: Park in Rye Beach, New York, which was constructed with
Speaker 2: assistance from Frederick Church. The airplane really relied on this
Speaker 2: first kind of corkscrew kind of spirally dropped that drops
Speaker 2: so steeply with such forests that riders were slammed against
Speaker 2: the side of the cars. And again we see that
Speaker 2: with things like the remaining woodies that like you know,
Speaker 2: the Great American Scream Machine in six Flags, or some
Speaker 2: of the old style coasters at Coney Island. They are
Speaker 2: really jarring and they do kind of tend to give
Speaker 2: you a little bit of shell shock just from having
Speaker 2: your head banged around. And I guess this was a feature,
Speaker 2: not a bug here where they described that as simulating
Speaker 2: the experience of being in a plane.
Speaker 1: Crash, which doesn't sound particularly fun to me. M h true, right,
Speaker 1: And I wonder whether there are now VR plane crash simulations.
Speaker 1: I wonder if people do that for fun. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't doubt that it exists.
Speaker 2: Ben, And I was just talking to my kid about
Speaker 2: again our trip to Disney World a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite rides there was like this gravity
Speaker 2: simular later of like what it feels like to be
Speaker 2: in a spaceship launch and it literallyre just in this pod.
Speaker 2: And that's I think the same technology that's used to
Speaker 2: train you know, up and coming astronauts how to kind
Speaker 2: of deal with g's G forces. It really does feel
Speaker 2: like your whole body is being compressed against the back
Speaker 2: of your seat, and it's very claustrophobic. And you know,
Speaker 2: for being a pretty old attraction there at Disney, I
Speaker 2: found it to be one of the most terrifying of
Speaker 2: any of the things that we wrote.
Speaker 1: I also think what we're learning is the older, the
Speaker 1: older rides are going to inherently be more terrified. And
Speaker 1: especially if you have knowledge of the history of roller coasters,
Speaker 1: you might ask yourself, well, hey, guys, that's all good
Speaker 1: and well, but why aren't any of these older rides
Speaker 1: around now? Why have so many disappeared? Well, when we
Speaker 1: think about the timeline, we see the same thing that
Speaker 1: affected so many other stories of Americana, and the same
Speaker 1: the Great Depression came, the Great Depression rolled in and
Speaker 1: disposable income rolled away. Roller coasters were part of this.
Speaker 1: With the onset of the Depression and World War Two
Speaker 1: right after that, people just didn't have money to spend
Speaker 1: on roller coasters. They were busy trying to you know,
Speaker 1: buy food and water and sleep indoors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this came up on a recent episode as well,
Speaker 2: I mean it always you know, you never expect the
Speaker 2: Great Depression, but it does tend to throw a wrench
Speaker 2: in any kind of leisure time activities, and folks that
Speaker 2: have really liked invested their their livelihoods into these types
Speaker 2: of attractions or these types of businesses.
Speaker 1: Is going to be a sort of a slump inherent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So a lot of these things, even the legend God
Speaker 1: to your Ones get torn down. The Traverse cyclone at
Speaker 1: Crystal Beach Park is torn down in forty six. Nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six, the Cody Island Tornado goes defunct. And by
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, as a result of all these difficult times,
Speaker 1: the US went from having fifteen hundred roller coasters to
Speaker 1: more like two hundred. So it's a heck of a
Speaker 1: rate of attrition. And it turns out that when we
Speaker 1: look at the roller coaster today, not just in the
Speaker 1: United States but around the world, we have to thank
Speaker 1: Walt Disney because he got super into roller coasters. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very often credited as kind of rescuing the
Speaker 2: concept of the roller coaster, which you know, it's credit
Speaker 2: where credit is due. He absolutely did that, and he
Speaker 2: also made them more accessible by not leaning so hard
Speaker 2: into the absolute death defying kind of thrills of them all,
Speaker 2: but making them more these sort of like very thoughtfully
Speaker 2: designed experiences, you know, and themed like for example, the
Speaker 2: Matterhorn bob Sled ride, which it holds up man. It's
Speaker 2: super cool and a little bit scary. There's some parts
Speaker 2: where you know, you look like you're about to jump
Speaker 2: off the tracks, and then this yetti swoops in and
Speaker 2: there's all of this animatronics around it.
Speaker 1: So it's more than just a coaster.
Speaker 2: It really is almost like riding a high speed like
Speaker 2: Haunted House attraction or something.
Speaker 1: There's also a huge key innovation that the Disney crew makes.
Speaker 1: The matter Horns tracks are not built of wood, they're
Speaker 1: built of steel, so the ride smoother, quieter, it feels
Speaker 1: less threatening. And this idea of making coasters out of
Speaker 1: steel brings the industry back to life. It resurrects it.
Speaker 1: Disneyland's massive success encourages all sorts of people dreaming of
Speaker 1: the coaster game to open their own theme parks in
Speaker 1: different regions of the US and the layer of the world.
Speaker 1: There's Six Flags, which is you know everywhere. Now it's
Speaker 1: a franchise. We have one in our fair metropolis of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: King's Island near the Natty Bush Gardens in Tampa Bay, Florida,
Speaker 1: And then there are more and more. It seems, even
Speaker 1: when the economy is not doing so well, a lot
Speaker 1: of these places survive. At least twenty thirty brings us
Speaker 1: another great depression.
Speaker 2: So in the nineteen sixties a company called Arrow who
Speaker 2: actually designed the Matter Horn for Disney.
Speaker 1: They hired a guy named Ron.
Speaker 2: Tumor who introduced a super successful line of rides that
Speaker 2: could be recreated, like the Flume ride, for example, which
Speaker 2: everyone knows is like sort of the log ride where
Speaker 2: you go down like one single you know, incline and
Speaker 2: get splashed.
Speaker 1: Nice. Where are you guys at Nolan max on splash rides.
Speaker 2: If it's hot, I'm cool with it. It's like a
Speaker 2: really really hot It's a nice little kind of you know,
Speaker 2: relief a little bit. I go to water parks to
Speaker 2: get wet.
Speaker 3: My problem with like water rice and world and like
Speaker 3: amusement parks a lot of times is like I know,
Speaker 3: people like, oh, we're sandals. I'm like, I'm walking around
Speaker 3: all day. I don't I have like comfortable socks on
Speaker 3: and coortle shoes on.
Speaker 4: That stuff doesn't do well when it gets wet.
Speaker 3: But granted, if it's like ninety five degrees outside, okay,
Speaker 3: that's fine.
Speaker 1: I don't go to water parks, and I'm concerned that
Speaker 1: you do because of all the pea.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of pea.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of pea.
Speaker 3: Now I don't like I don't like water parks because
Speaker 3: water parks you have to climb up those stairs and
Speaker 3: being afraid of heights.
Speaker 4: It's awful.
Speaker 1: Yet, yeah, I feel you, man, Let's start a hot
Speaker 1: air balloon amusement park.
Speaker 2: It's sort of out of this, Yes, it's sort of
Speaker 2: out of this. You are you are really on this
Speaker 2: hot hout for these air balloons. Ben Hey. There is
Speaker 2: a park that's probably outside of the scope of this
Speaker 2: particular episode, but it's called Action Park in New Jersey,
Speaker 2: I often referred to as Class Action. It is a
Speaker 2: water park that notoriously contained very poorly designed rides that
Speaker 2: would just shoot people or water slides that would just
Speaker 2: shoot people out into oblivion, you know, to be injured
Speaker 2: in various ways. And one of the reasons apparently that
Speaker 2: this was so common was that the designs of the ride,
Speaker 2: or the designers of the ride did not seem to
Speaker 2: have sufficient knowledge or training in physics and engineering.
Speaker 1: Just shoot them and go with God, see what happens.
Speaker 1: There's the Great American Revolution ride at six Flags Magic Mountain,
Speaker 1: which is over in Valencia, California, that goes out in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, and it redefines the looping coaster game.
Speaker 1: Now it's just called Revolution and it had a tear
Speaker 1: drop loop. The technical term would be a clothoid or
Speaker 1: clothoid loop. This was designed by a German engineer, Anton Schwartzkrop,
Speaker 1: and the company that made this roller coaster is still
Speaker 1: around to this day. They're called Intimate AG and so
Speaker 1: they The innovations these guys made brought more and more
Speaker 1: people back to amusement parks. And today if you go
Speaker 1: to any modern major amusement park, like anything that's not
Speaker 1: just a bunch of carnies in a parking lot, you're
Speaker 1: going to see some kind of looping coaster. And there
Speaker 1: was another arms race to get the maximum number of
Speaker 1: loops or inversions in a single ride. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: stuff like Dragon Con and Spain Monte Macaia in Brazil.
Speaker 1: And there's one quote This is probably one of my
Speaker 1: favorite quotes from the research that John Allen, President of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: Toboggan said this, you don't need a degree in engineering
Speaker 1: to design roller coasters. You need a degree in psychology. Noel,
Speaker 1: can you help us unpack that? What does he mean?
Speaker 2: Well, that's right, because I mean a lot of it
Speaker 2: is about weaponizing psychology in a way that she us
Speaker 2: maximum thrills. We all talked about how oftentimes the scariest
Speaker 2: part is the anticipation.
Speaker 1: Is that click, click, click, up the hill.
Speaker 2: Toboggan goes on to say, a roller coaster is as
Speaker 2: theatrically contrived as a broadway play. These advancements in roller
Speaker 2: coaster technology and design tech included a lot of very
Speaker 2: specific engineering touches that really played with things like your expectations,
Speaker 2: things like parabolic hill shapes where you couldn't see what
Speaker 2: was coming around the next bend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there we go. So it's always it's like Alfred
Speaker 1: Hitchcock said, right, the monster off screen that you can't
Speaker 1: see is always going to be scarier than the one
Speaker 1: on screen. So not knowing what's coming next really messages
Speaker 1: with your expectations your head. We also know that the
Speaker 1: wooden coasters or woodies, which are you know, technologically speaking,
Speaker 1: they're not as advanced as steel coasters. They are now
Speaker 1: benefiting from the power of nostalgia. Ah yeah, hell of
Speaker 1: a drug indeed, right, And these these wooden coasters, the woodies,
Speaker 1: become instrumental in the rebirth of roller coasters as a cool,
Speaker 1: fun thing. And now they're starting to be called mega
Speaker 1: coasters at this point, around like the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Right, and you had mega coasters such as Racer, which
Speaker 2: was a John Allen design that actually contained dual coasters,
Speaker 2: so I believe these would have been side by side, right,
Speaker 2: kind of going in tandem. Yeah, and then you also
Speaker 2: had the Beast of nineteen seventy nine fame, which had
Speaker 2: the title.
Speaker 1: Of longest coaster in the world.
Speaker 2: Both of these, the Beast and the Racer, were at
Speaker 2: King's Island Amusement Park were.
Speaker 3: And are because I've been a couple of times in
Speaker 3: my life, I've written both of these.
Speaker 4: The Racers Racers Cool.
Speaker 3: Racer is fun because no matter what, you're just automatically
Speaker 3: everyone is just talking massive ship to the other car.
Speaker 3: But they don't always They used to run at one
Speaker 3: part where one was going backwards. One was going forwards.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they do that all the time now,
Speaker 3: but The Beast is to the state the best roller
Speaker 3: coaster I've ever written.
Speaker 4: It's been that.
Speaker 3: That first sentence you don't need a degree in engineering,
Speaker 3: you need a degree in psychology, is like that because
Speaker 3: you just walk up. The Beast is at like a
Speaker 3: part of the park where it's just woods all behind it,
Speaker 3: so you have no idea what it is.
Speaker 1: You look at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have no idea in so long, and it's
Speaker 3: like a it's like a story, basically just writing a story,
Speaker 3: and it's literally like all you can do on that
Speaker 3: roller coaster is just laugh and joy.
Speaker 4: It is so amazing.
Speaker 3: It's despite its age, it's still like, especially for a
Speaker 3: wooden coaster, Oh really smooth. A lot of these hold up, yeah,
Speaker 3: if it's don't fix it, yeah, I mean, like obviously
Speaker 3: they have to spend a lot of wooden coaster is
Speaker 3: one of the big drawbacks wooden coasters. You have to
Speaker 3: spend a lot of money mainta yeah, replacing the tracks.
Speaker 3: But the Beast is one that's like, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: been a number of years since I've written it, but
Speaker 3: it was it's about it's probably the number one roller
Speaker 3: coaster in my list. I got about three. I got
Speaker 3: three in Tier A. Let's go, oh yeah, let's let's
Speaker 3: let's get to that at the end. I'd love to
Speaker 3: hear what all our favorites are. I've got a top
Speaker 3: three in my head right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the uh, the as we're getting to that, let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's you know what, Let's let's hurry up and get
Speaker 1: to that part right now. What you need to know, folks,
Speaker 1: without getting two into weeds, is that the arms race
Speaker 1: for the superlatives continues. The titles for the fastest, biggest,
Speaker 1: longest coaster are an issue of hot, intense debate every
Speaker 1: single year. It's just sort of it's sort of similar
Speaker 1: to the arms race for skyscrapers, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody's trying to build the tallest building. And honestly, if
Speaker 1: you're hearing this, congrats on the bergs Dubai. But should
Speaker 1: we count the antennas at the top as part of
Speaker 1: the height? Max says no, Maxican in thumbed out, I
Speaker 1: don't think so either. Skyscraper episode on the way, we're
Speaker 1: just yeah confessed it. Yeah, so okay, So we know this, right,
Speaker 1: like the latest crop of coasters. Every time they come out,
Speaker 1: they're trying to find at least some specific thing that
Speaker 1: they are the best at, the biggest, the fastest, the
Speaker 1: most loops, you know, the fewest injuries.
Speaker 2: Indoor coasters, you know, indoor coasters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 2: have these. First of all, you have suspended coasters like
Speaker 2: the Xcel R eight nineteen eighty four and six Flags
Speaker 2: Astro World in Houston. You have stand up coasters, which well,
Speaker 2: there's one called the King Kobra, but there is one
Speaker 2: at six Flags that's called the Viper maybe or something
Speaker 2: like that, but it's there's a stand up coaster at
Speaker 2: the No, it's the Scorcher, the Georgia. Scorcher has six
Speaker 2: laves over Georgia as end up coaster, and those are
Speaker 2: really cool. They're fun because it really feels like you're
Speaker 2: like flying.
Speaker 1: Don't we have the Superman one too, where that's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, yeah, I find that one to be
Speaker 2: difficult because I just get kind of claustrophobic when I'm
Speaker 2: like like like locked in in that way, and so
Speaker 2: I'm got a little stressful.
Speaker 3: It's really restraining. I find I like scorture. But the
Speaker 3: one that like the problem with stand up coasters just
Speaker 3: in general is they don't handle g forces very well, right,
Speaker 3: so you either have to tune it back a lot
Speaker 3: or you get a little rough and scorture is like
Speaker 3: kind of in the middle where it's not it's really fun.
Speaker 3: But I've readen other stand up coasters, I've rit bigger
Speaker 3: ones than that. I'm like, oh my god, this is horrible.
Speaker 1: It's a tricky one, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like building a three willed vehicle, right, but
Speaker 1: there's like it's possible, right. But also, uh, I love
Speaker 1: the Superman thing just because despite all the restraints you
Speaker 1: have to wear, it replicates flying. It does. I wrote
Speaker 1: it once. And it's also really really short.
Speaker 2: I remember it being obscenely short, which probably for good
Speaker 2: reason because it is so restraining.
Speaker 1: Can we do this?
Speaker 2: I just I remember the first coaster that really, you know,
Speaker 2: blew my mind was the Batman Ride. Batman the Ride,
Speaker 2: which I believe debuted at six Flags Great America in Illinois,
Speaker 2: but has been at six a staple of six Flags.
Speaker 1: Over Georgia, you know, for many, many years.
Speaker 2: And that's one where I guess it's called an inverted
Speaker 2: coaster where your legs are kind of dangling. And if
Speaker 2: I'm not mistaken, somebody got killed on the Batman ride
Speaker 2: at Six Flags because they tried to get their hat
Speaker 2: from this sort of cordoned off area, and I believe
Speaker 2: the the you know, one of the cars swooped down
Speaker 2: and they were decapitated, if I'm.
Speaker 1: Mistaken, And then someone on a ride called z Force
Speaker 1: in six Flags broke their neck. You can find on
Speaker 1: coaster pedia dot at a fairly comprehensive list of deadly
Speaker 1: roller coaster accidents. To be fair to the industry, these
Speaker 1: are isolated cases rare. They're very rare. It can sound scary,
Speaker 1: and part of that, I would argue is a little
Speaker 1: bit of like black bag psyop stuff in some of
Speaker 1: the marketers. But to be absolutely transparent, everybody building roller coasters,
Speaker 1: everybody charging you to ride one, they want you to
Speaker 1: be as safe as possible. They want you to have
Speaker 1: an amazing time. That's why there are like one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty different roller coaster operations opening across the world
Speaker 1: by the end of the twentieth century, about half of
Speaker 1: those fifty percent or in the United States. Because I
Speaker 1: ask you, despite the Russian and French origin story, what
Speaker 1: is more American than a roller coaster as a ride?
Speaker 1: Saying like, I want to feel like I might die
Speaker 1: for you know, two three minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a sort of cheating of death aspect
Speaker 2: to it that that does have.
Speaker 1: A certain appeal.
Speaker 2: But you're right, you know, despite its origins, it has
Speaker 2: become a pretty uniquely American thing. Well, you know, not
Speaker 2: to say that there aren't cool coasters in other parts
Speaker 2: of the world.
Speaker 1: There certainly are. Do you guys wanna as we as
Speaker 1: we close out our series on the history of roller coasters,
Speaker 1: thanks again to our research associate Max, do you guys
Speaker 1: wanna tell us all a little bit about your favorite coasters?
Speaker 1: Each said you have a top three? I do?
Speaker 2: I think for me, my number three would be Batman,
Speaker 2: the ride at six Slives over Georgia. Why don't we
Speaker 2: maybe go round robin until we get to our number ones?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree with that one. Play That one's
Speaker 3: so much fun. It's also a great one that if
Speaker 3: you're there on a night or it's slow and there's
Speaker 3: not many people there that you can just binge that one.
Speaker 1: They'll like, they'll let you ride it a couple of times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure that one.
Speaker 3: That one's great for that I'm gonna go with at
Speaker 3: a theater point. There's this one called Maverick and it's
Speaker 3: a weird roller coaster because it doesn't have chain lift
Speaker 3: or anything like that. So it's like you were was
Speaker 3: in constant motion the entire time and as like it
Speaker 3: was the first ninety five degree drop, which is a
Speaker 3: weird thing.
Speaker 4: Like I'm Amurican on my that's not great but crazy
Speaker 4: of an idea, and I wrote it.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen
Speaker 3: because you're going underneath the track that you were just on,
Speaker 3: but it just whips and turns and it's just this
Speaker 3: beautifully scripted written roller coaster.
Speaker 1: Very cool, Ben, you got a number three fave. I
Speaker 1: don't really have, you know, I don't really have a
Speaker 1: top list of roller coasters. Again, it's like the ice
Speaker 1: cream comparison in episode one. You know, like if they're.
Speaker 2: There, I'll go stand out in your memory, whether it
Speaker 2: be childhood.
Speaker 1: But I know, almost dying, like to the ice cream thing,
Speaker 1: I don't wake up and then immediately travel the one
Speaker 1: American scream Machine just because I conquered death on that one,
Speaker 1: which is the inherent appeal of roller coasters. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it's a great coaster by any means, uh, But
Speaker 1: I fought it and I won.
Speaker 2: Sonumber three well, okay, And speaking of fighting against great
Speaker 2: adversity and winning as the underdog, my number two would
Speaker 2: be the Goliath at six Flags over Georgia, which is
Speaker 2: quite long and very high, with incredible scenic views of
Speaker 2: the surrounding kind of wooded areas in that part of Atlanta,
Speaker 2: and some serious drops, and every time I ride it,
Speaker 2: I have to get over my fear of heights because
Speaker 2: it is massively tall, and at night when they do
Speaker 2: the fright Fest or whatever Fright Night I guess it's
Speaker 2: called at six Flags. It is a wild one to
Speaker 2: ride at night when you can see the full moon
Speaker 2: up in the sky ahead of you.
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 3: So I was actually changing up my list kind of
Speaker 3: on the fly right here, so that I talked about
Speaker 3: the Beasts and how which I love that one, and
Speaker 3: I was going to talk about Goliath. It's my number two,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to change it for the sake of
Speaker 3: having more and talk about Goliath Daddy, which is Magnum
Speaker 3: x L, which is the first ever mega coaster in
Speaker 3: the world. I think it's the late eighties at Suit Point.
Speaker 3: It's basically it's very similar to Billie. It's not the
Speaker 3: same script, and it's nowhere smooth as Goliath is, but
Speaker 3: it's like it was one of the coolest things about
Speaker 3: Cedar Point, which I gush about it if you let me
Speaker 3: do it for too long. There's so many records were
Speaker 3: set at that park, and it looked it was the
Speaker 3: first two hundred foot roller coaster in the world, and
Speaker 3: you can still ride to this day. It's just there's
Speaker 3: just now two other roller coasters taller than it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because again it's it's like the skyscraper race. They're
Speaker 1: also what are they called giga roller coasters. A giga
Speaker 1: coaster Gego's three hundred and three three hundred to three
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety nine feet it is, which is massive.
Speaker 1: And I think there's what we're talking about too, is
Speaker 1: this nomenclature. There's also the hyper coaster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I said mega Hyper's two hundred to
Speaker 3: three hundred right, right, So.
Speaker 1: We're throwing at the terms here too.
Speaker 2: You can tell Max is a real coasters in terms
Speaker 2: like script you know, I mean, come now, you've done
Speaker 2: your homeworks there.
Speaker 1: Magnum XL is A is a hypercoaster. There are giga
Speaker 1: coasters as as you mentioned. If I had to choose
Speaker 1: a second one, you know what, I'm thinking more in
Speaker 1: terms beyond just orthodox coasters. I really like the bungee
Speaker 1: rides where they launch you out and you're attached to
Speaker 1: a rope. No, no, thank you. I don't like those
Speaker 1: straight drops, but I like the I like that. I
Speaker 1: like the big swings. Those are terrified pasts.
Speaker 3: I've read it one time in my life, and I
Speaker 3: will never not regret you.
Speaker 1: Came through the fire. I'm proud of you. Max. All right,
Speaker 1: So then that brings us to what number ones? Just
Speaker 1: their number ones? Yeah? Max, you want to go first?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: Sure, I can go first, because, uh Ben, you were
Speaker 3: talking about giga coasters, so of course I'm want to
Speaker 3: talk about the first giga coaster ever made, Millennium Force
Speaker 3: at Cedar point three hundred foot. The coolest thing about
Speaker 3: Millennium Force, well, ay, one thing that's really cool about
Speaker 3: that is it has probably the fastest chain I've ever ridden,
Speaker 3: going to three hundred feet and it's just like you
Speaker 3: go so fast up and I'm like, okay, that's nice,
Speaker 3: but as an eighty degree three and nude foot drop.
Speaker 3: But the coolest thing it does is the first thing
Speaker 3: it goes up and then turns and on the turn
Speaker 3: you go I think one twenty, so your feet are
Speaker 3: above your head on a turn and you only have
Speaker 3: a lap bar on and it's just so smooth and
Speaker 3: it's so excellent. The problem with Lannium Force is it's
Speaker 3: like always broken. At least that's my knowledge. Like I've
Speaker 3: been a Supard Point twice and I was only able
Speaker 3: to one of the times.
Speaker 4: It was broken for the entire season.
Speaker 1: It's like there McDonald's ice cream.
Speaker 3: It really is the McDonald's ice cream. So if you're
Speaker 3: in Ohio and Lenian Force is running, you should just
Speaker 3: go to Santusky.
Speaker 1: All right, Chief Advice. And with that, mister Brown, your
Speaker 1: number one coaster.
Speaker 2: The number one coaster for me was at Universal Studios, Orlando,
Speaker 2: and it is the Incredible Hulk roller coaster. And it
Speaker 2: is because I ever experienced anything like this where it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It does this thing where you enter on the I
Speaker 2: guess the uphill part. The very first little you know,
Speaker 2: chain lift part and it click click click click click.
Speaker 1: You go to this tunnel that sort of.
Speaker 2: Surrounded you with like gamma ray kind of lights, one
Speaker 2: would presume, and you go click click click about halfway
Speaker 2: and then it just shoots you out and you don't
Speaker 2: know exactly what's gonna happen. And it's like, I don't
Speaker 2: know how it's propelled or what the technology is behind it.
Speaker 2: But something about the like the momentary, you know, familiar
Speaker 2: thing of the chain lift click and then the note.
Speaker 1: Screw this, bam and you're out.
Speaker 2: There's something about it that just really games your your
Speaker 2: brain in a really interesting way and you just feel
Speaker 2: like unstoppable and it has some incredible inversions and it's
Speaker 2: just really really fast and really really fun and I
Speaker 2: loved it.
Speaker 1: I've only ridden it once and I thought it was
Speaker 1: next level. Nice nice with that will end with a
Speaker 1: number one on my end. That is not a declaration,
Speaker 1: it's a question. Ridiculous his story? Could you help it?
Speaker 1: Could you help me find a number one roller coaster?
Speaker 1: What is your favorite? Let us know at Ridiculous Historians
Speaker 1: over our Facebook page. Yeah, we want to hear about
Speaker 1: your adventures folks and I can't wait to can't wait
Speaker 1: to return with even more strange, ridiculous history. This has
Speaker 1: been such a not even an intentional pun, but I'll
Speaker 1: keep it if we're okay with it. It's been such
Speaker 1: a fun ride.
Speaker 2: A real ride, yeah, real journey of self discovery.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Jois de viv No, it's good stuff. Man.
Speaker 1: Without a line.
Speaker 2: No, no, no line requires ridiculous history. We're right there
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to Max for the incredible research work on
Speaker 1: this one, as well as aj Bahamas and Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: the Puzzler and Quist respectively. Huge fan of lines, that guy.
Speaker 1: Big big thanks to christ Rossiotis Eves, jeffco will Be
Speaker 1: Eve Jeff Coat, and Ben Thompson, both of whom will
Speaker 1: be appearing soon in the near future spoilers. Big big
Speaker 1: thanks again to Alex Williams, who composed this slap and
Speaker 1: bop and audio roller coaster all its own indeed, and Noel,
Speaker 1: thanks to you. Ah to you as well. Ben. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next time. Folks.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.