Roller Coaster Research Paper

What is or is not a Roller Coaster This is a subject that comes up a lot in the roller coaster community. There is no exact definition of what is or is not a roller coaster. In my opinion, a roller coaster is some type of amusement ride that has a track and is at least once in the ride cycle allowed to roll freely. Some people say that it has to go uphill under it’s own momentum at one point in a cycle. That to me seems a little too strict in the definition because even if it goes downhill it still rolls down an incline. Some people think everything is a roller coaster. They will think that the XScream at Waldameer is a roller coaster because it travels down under its own gravity. That does not make it a roller coaster because it does not make turns in any directions. The XScream is labeled as a drop ride by the manufacturer, even though people still think of it as a coaster. Just because a manufacturers website says it is a roller coaster does not make it a roller coaster.

They labeled it as a roller coaster. Kings Island has an identical ride called Surf Dog. They did not label it as a coaster. I would think Cedar Point labeled it as that because they are desperate for a roller coaster to reclaim the record for most coasters at a park. Cedar Point, Wikipedia, and Zamperla all list it as a roller coaster, while the Roller Coaster DataBase lists it as a flat ride. I would think it would fall under the classification of a powered coaster because it is powered up and down the entire track. If we were to call a Disk’o Coaster a powered coaster then we would have to label every Zamperla Disk’o as one. A normal Disk’o is located at Waldameer Park as the Mega Vortex. That type of ride, In my opinion, is not a roller coaster, or a powered coaster for that