Our second nugget of advice flows from the first. Help yourself feel more comfortable on launch coasters by mashing your right foot down as the coaster takes off. Imagine that you're pressing hard on the gas pedal of your car, trying to get it to accelerate as fast as it can. Again, you're imaging yourself "driving" the coaster, trying to reestablish that mental sense of control that will put your nerves and your stomach at ease.
All that said, after you've become comfortable on roller coasters, if you're like many of the coaster fans here on Theme Park Insider, you'll reach the point where you don't want to feel comfortable on them anymore. You'll want to feel those nerves -- that sense of dread in your stomach and panic in your heart. You'll start craving that sense of not having control.
Roller coaster designers have plenty of tricks that help them amp up the thrill level on their coasters. Two of their classic tricks eliminate the ability to see the track ahead of you, robbing you of that opportunity to reestablish mental "control" of the ride. How do they do that? They can build the coaster indoors and run it in the dark, or they can flip the train and run it backwards.
Yesterday, we heard from Theme Park Insider reader Anthony Murphy, who showed us Six Flags Great America's inverted coaster Batman: The Ride, which the Chicago-area park has started running backwards this season. Universal Studios Japan ran a backwards train on its Hollywood Dream coaster earlier this year and Kings Island visitors have for years had the option of riding that park's wooden Racer coaster frontwards or backwards.
Millions of theme park fans have enjoyed roller coasters in the dark, too, from Disneyland's relatively tame stateside Space Mountains to its head-rattling, multiple-inversion Space Mountain: Mission 2 at Disneyland Paris. Universal has used indoor roller coaster track to add thrills to dark rides, such as its Revenge of the Mummy rides and its upcoming Gringotts ride at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter -- Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Florida.
But when it comes to pure thrill, which way do you prefer to "ride blind"? Backwards, or in the dark? That's our vote of the week.
Tell us in the comments about your favorite (or least favorite) backwards or darkened roller coaster. And thank you, as always, for reading Theme Park Insider.
It would be disorienting at it's best!
With that said, I actually like backward coasters. I love Sidewinder at Hershey. A number of coasters at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in CA are great. And I miss when they use to have the Rebel Yell at Kings Dominion go backwards.
Dark coasters, on the other hand, I have no problem with, and even the most intense of them that I've experienced (Flight of Fear and Space Mountain: Mission 2) are rides I rode several times during my visits to the respective parks. I never once felt any ill effects. For thrill rides, I still strongly prefer outdoor rides where you can tell where you're going, but for relatively tame coasters being in the dark can add significantly to the experience (example: Disneyland's Space Mountain is a really good ride, but if the coaster was in the middle of an open field it would be a very boring ride).
I truly hope Great Adventure tries this experiment with its version of Batman (same as Great America's)...I'll be a willing lab rat.
If I was to try a backward ride, I think that Colossus at Magic Mountain during Halloween would be a different experience. They run it backwards, or at least they used to, I think the noise alone would be intimidating. Most of the backward rides are pretty much straight line or, like Boomerang, just redo what you have already experienced.
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
