Joel
Founder of CoasterCritic.com. My favorite coasters are B&M hypers and gigas. I'm also a huge fan of terrain roller coasters.
Copperhead Strike Almost Ready to Launch at Carowinds
Earlier this week, I joined a construction tour of Carowinds new roller coaster Copperhead Strike. The track is complete, but the station, launch barn, and area around the ride are still far from complete. Steve Jackson, Director of Maintenance and Construction led the tour and did a great job answering questions. Seeing the ride’s orange track, even from a distance I could tell that this is...
Review: Talon at Dorney Park
Dorney Park is a smallish theme park located in Dorney, Pennsylvania. If you’re not from Eastern PA or New Jersey, you may not have heard of it. Part of the Cedar Fair chain of parks, it currently has a roster of 7 roller coasters with three real eye-catching standouts: a Morgan hyper coaster (Steel Force), a floorless B&M looper (Hydra: The Revenge), and a B&M inverted coaster (Talo...
Review: Canyon Blaster at Adventuredome
On a business trip to Las Vegas a few years ago I was excited to try out the city’s roller coasters. After taking a rough ride on the Manhattan Express/Big Apple Coaster, and seeing that it pretty much was as bad as I’d heard I was eager to get to Adventuredome, an indoor amusement park attached to the Circus Circus casino. The experience of walking through an older casino with all of ...
New Roller Coaster Copperhead Strike Launching at Carowinds in 2019
This week Carowinds announced Copperhead Strike, a new steel roller coaster, that’ll open in 2019. The new ride will be the anchor attraction in a new area called Blue Ridge Junction. As rumors suggested, Copperhead Strike will be a multi-launch roller coaster, rocketing riders through a twisted path of loops and turns. In all, the ride will turn riders upside-down five times, include two la...
What We Know About Carowinds’ 2019 Roller Coaster
Good news for fans of Carowinds. All signs point to a new roller coaster for 2019 and the park has started to tease the new attraction with a series of tweets. A sign of things to come? 🚜👩🌾🌽 #Carowinds pic.twitter.com/UecGe4b9kA — Carowinds (@Carowinds) June 29, 2018 We’ve sourced only the best timber for the mystic expansion of Byrd Farm. 🌲 #C...
Our Most Unusual Roller Coaster Experiences
With hundreds of roller coaster rides under our collective belts, we thought it’d be fun to share our most unusual roller coaster experiences. We figured since we’ve visited as many parks and strapped in to ride roller coasters as many times as we had, there’d be some odd experiences we could share. Just in time for April Fool’s Day, here are a few of those experiences. Get...
What’s Your Dream Theme Park Trip?
Is there a park that you’ve been dreaming to visit one day? For me it’d be England’s Alton Towers. It’s a unique theme park located in the English countryside on the grounds of a massive Stately Home (American Translation: A Castle!). There’s also a huge garden and the park itself is beautifully landscaped and very green. The park’s foliage and rolling topograph...
What Is a Hybrid Roller Coaster?
At the most simplistic level, roller coasters consist of tracks and support structures. Usually the material used for these components are the same. You’ll usually find steel roller coasters with a steel track and steel supports and wooden roller coasters with a wooden track and wooden supports. Hybrid roller coasters are roller coasters that have different materials for the track and suppor...
8 Ways to Visit More Theme Parks in 2018
If you’re a big theme park fan like me, then you’re probably already planing to visit a theme park or two this year. I thought it might be helpful to share some tips on how you can include more theme park trips in 2018. Have you been meaning to visit a certain park? Would you like to meet other enthusiasts? Here are some ideas you may not have considered that can help you visit more pa...
CoasterCritics’ Picks: Top 12 New Roller Coasters for 2018
What are the best looking new roller coasters opening in 2018? It’s time again, for the long-running tradition on CoasterCritic, of answering that question. This year, it’ll be a team-driven list based on a combination of all of our picks. Given that the majority of our readership is in America, we decided to focus on the United States. Here’s our top 12 new roller coasters for t...
Slinky Dog Dash Opens This Summer at Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Disney’s Hollywood Studios, located in Orlando, FL, will be opening a new roller coaster along with the new Toy Story Land. Slinky Dog Dash looks to be a launched coaster designed by Mack Rides. Fittingly, the launches look relatively gentle and just enough to accelerate the cool Slinky-themed trains on their course throughout Toy Story Land. Opening Date & Height Requirements Curious if...
Why Changing Rebel Yell’s Name is the Right Move
Last week Kings Dominion announced that it was going to rename one of its roller coasters from Rebel Yell to Racer 75. The ’75’ refers to 1975, the year that the ride opened. And of course ‘Racer’ refers to its ride design featuring two tracks where trains race each other throughout its hilly course. The name is also reminiscent of similar ride Racer at sister park Kings Is...