The Best Virtual Roller Coaster Rides, Vol. 3
Point-of-view roller coaster videos have become an at-home craze. Use this ranking to tour the world’s best coasters—from themed attractions to the tallest and fastest rides on Earth.
The Retro Global Amusement Park: Roller Coaster Edition
Countries Represented (25):
🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇫🇷 🇵🇱 🇯🇵 🇳🇴 🇩🇪 🇳🇱 🇸🇪 🇦🇺 🇹🇷 🇦🇪 🇬🇧 🇧🇪 🇪🇸 🇸🇦 🇫🇮 🇰🇷 🇮🇹 🇩🇰 🇲🇽 🇨🇦 🇹🇼 🇮🇪🇨🇭
Introduction
As a child, I was fascinated by roller coasters. But I also loathed the sight of them.
Due to issues with motion sickness and vertigo I’ve had as long as I can remember, I’ve only ever ridden two roller coasters: the Yankee Cannonball, a now 92-year-old wooden coaster at Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire—where my family used to go every summer in the 1980s because Digital Equipment Corporation, the then-employer of my late father, Robert Abramson, held its annual family day there—and another less daunting but still exhilarating ride at the same amusement park, an SDC Galaxi coaster retired in 2004 that records say was called Rockin’ Rider but I think had a different name (either Galaxi or Mouse Trap) when I rode it in the 1980s (see the “Special Citations” section, below, for a great video of an identical coaster).
In 1984, my dad had a heart attack which he survived, though heart problems would cause his death in 2020 36 years later. From the day—when I was eight years old—that paramedics and firemen filled our small condo’s top floor to help my father down to a waiting ambulance, I was certain I would one day die of a heart attack and even had a particular belief that events like roller coaster rides were just waiting to do me in. By the beginning of the 1990s, I was determined to never ride a roller coaster again.
When my dad passed away early on in the pandemic—again, not of COVID-19, but still under circumstances that made those who loved him well aware that he’d been hospitalized in the midst of a once-in-a-century international event—I found myself more nostalgic for the past than I’d ever been at any other point in my adult life. I began playing Nintendo and Super Nintendo video games again (as subscribers to Retro won’t be at all surprised to hear, given the size and scope of this publication’s Video Games section) and even found myself watching roller coaster videos online.
It was nice. Watching POV roller-coaster rides at home caused me little vertigo and, while I certainly didn’t get the same sense of speed and danger as I would’ve actually gotten being on a ride, I found that knowing a bit about what that experience would be like scratched a palpable itch for me—while not causing me any trauma-born anxiety.
Only recently did I learn that roller coaster POV videos are becoming a very big deal, and not just because they help people who do ride actual roller coasters decide which ones they want to ride (it may not surprise you that some adventuresome souls travel the world trying to ride all of the best roller coasters, which are helpfully ranked—on an annual basis—here and here and here). It seems that there are many people who do not want to go to amusement parks regularly, if at all, but who do want just a taste of what the experience is like.
Minus the high ticket prices, long lines, overpriced food, and pushy crowds, of course.
Virtual Coaster Riding
It probably also won’t surprise anyone to learn that virtual roller coaster riders—those who watch roller coaster POV videos with the lights off, the sound up, and on the best television screen they can find—judge rides a little differently than they would if they were riding a coaster “live.” The value of certain components of roller coaster riding is lessened if a) you’re watching video of it at home and b) you’re partly doing so because you experience motion sickness or other issues when or if you ride roller coasters on-site. (I should note that some people who do love riding roller coasters at amusement parks also like watching videos of coasters due to nostalgia, a logistical inability to get to certain locations, the cost of traveling to such parks, and/or concerns about being in extremely crowded places in the aftermath of a years-long international pandemic).
With virtual coaster riding, you might find yourself considering much more than usual the following aspects of the roller coaster-riding experience:
The aesthetics of the structure;
the smoothness of the track and the camera work;
the duration of the ride;
the pacing and length of the lift hill;
the terrain over which the ride has been built;
the availability of surprising vistas;
the presence of interesting optical illusions;
the sonics of the ride;
the presence or absence of unwanted distractions;
the ride’s sense of speed and airtime;
any conceptual setpieces; and
any unusual track features.
Some virtual riders find—I know I do—that, with occasional exceptions, lift hills and inversions and corkscrews aren’t actually that fun to watch, whereas the sound of a wooden roller coaster creaking in what feels like a dangerous way may be even more central to a virtual experience than it already is to a live one. Even ride components that virtual and live riders are likely to equally enjoy, for instance the speed of the ride, register differently at home versus a park; on video, a slightly slower ride may well feel faster because of something as esoteric as the shape and spacing of the crossbars on the track or the recorded audio’s sensitivity to ambient wind during the recording.
In other words, divining which virtual roller coaster experiences are the “best” is as much an art as a science, depends heavily on individual “riders’” idiosyncratic bases for nostalgia, and draws sufficiently from ideas about visual and multimedia literacy that it’s the perfect subject for a ranking on a website like this one (that is, one whose author is a former professor of digital studies). I expect to make further updates to this ranking as I try out more tracks—I’ve seen, I think, nearly a hundred by now—and do even more to hone my sense, as a cultural critic, of what makes a great virtual coaster-riding experience.
I hope you’ll take a “ride” on these coasters and let me know what you think of them!
The 75 Best Virtual Roller Coaster Rides in the World
{with the “🔷” symbol denoting a new ride added since last edition of this Retro series}
1 | Steel Vengeance (🇺🇸)
Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio
⏱️: 2:11
2 | GhostRider (🇺🇸)
Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California
⏱️: 2:22
📔: Wooden Coaster
3 | Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure (🇺🇸)
Universal Orlando in Orlando, Florida
⏱️: 3:10