Wood Coaster Poll Results Are In!

Every year there are two major polls that list the top ten roller coasters. The more famous is the Golden Ticket Awards, taken by Amusement Today magazine. Enthusiasts tend to bash the GTs because they tend to lean toward US coasters. The other poll is taken by Mitch Hawker and is considered more accurate although it’s only listed wooden coasters in the past few years. To vote, one lists all of the coasters that he/she has ridden, then places them in order of best to worst. Then the results of each caster are compared to other rider’s lists to find what the best overall ride is.

If that’s still hard to understand, here’s how Mitch Hawker puts it:

Each coaster is compred one at a time to every other coaster to see whether more people who have ridden both of them preferred one or the other. A coaster is given a “Win” for each coaster that more mutual riders ranked behind it, given a “Loss” for each coaster that more mutual riders ranked ahead of it, and given a “Tie” for each coaster that the same number of mutual riders ranked above it and below it.

Coasters are ranked by their overall winning percentage (where ties count as half of a win and half of a loss). In the event that two coasters end up with identical winning percentages, the tie is broken (if possible) by determining which of the two won the mutual rider comparison between those two coasters.

Here are the winning results from this year:

So the only ride in the top ten that I’ve been on is El Toro (Six Flags Great Adventure) It’s #1 on the Golden Ticket Awards too. Coming in at the bottom of the list is Anaconda at Walygator Parc in France. Here’s a POV in case you are one of the (apparently) lucky people who hasn’t ridden it:

What do you think? Which coaster do you think should have won? Please comment. Thanks for reading! 🙂