vote coasters
the world’s largest annual roller coaster poll
how does it work?
There are two parts to vote coasters; voting and counting. Each year we ask the community to rank the roller coasters they’ve ridden from best to worst, and, from that, produce a list of the top rides in the world!
voting
The voting process is simple. Search for the roller coasters you’ve ridden and drag them into your list. Rides are ordered from best at the top, to worst at the bottom.
There’s no limit to the number of roller coasters you can rank and your list is automatically saved. You can return to your list at any time by logging back into your account.
calculating the results
Once everyone has ranked the roller coasters they’ve ridden it’s time for us to crunch the numbers. We use an Elo rating system to calculate the world’s best rides. Elo is a points-based system used to rank players in competitive games.
First, we compare every roller coaster with every other roller coaster. With each comparison, we count how many people prefer one ride over the other. If a roller coaster wins it gains points from the losing ride.
an example
Sometimes it's easier to see an example; let's imagine we have four lists to analyse:
Let’s pick two rides to compare, Maverick and Skyrush. One person prefers Maverick over Skyrush, while two prefer Skyrush over Maverick. Therefore, Skyrush ‘wins’ this comparison.
Expected to win: In this example, let’s assume Skyrush has an Elo rating of 1000, while Maverick’s rating is 500. Here, Skyrush was expected to win, so it only takes 1 point from Maverick.
A close comparison: If we change the Elo ratings, the points transferred change also. Now Skyrush and Maverick both have a rating of 1000. Skyrush now takes 10 points from Maverick.
Expected to lose: Finally, let’s imagine Skyrush has fewer points, say 500, compared to Maverick’s 1000. Now by winning, Skyrush would take 19 points from Maverick.
List 1
El Toro
Skyrush
Twisted Timbers
Fury 325
Maverick
List 3
Twisted Timbers
Maverick
El Toro
Skyrush
List 2
Skyrush
Twisted Timbers
Maverick
El Toro
Fury 325
List 4
Maverick
Twisted Timbers
Fury 325
El Toro
what does this mean?
That might all sound a bit confusing, but the summary is more simple. If a ride is expected to ‘win’ a comparison, it takes fewer points from its competitor. In our roller coaster-based ranking, a large thrill ride would only take a fraction of the points by winning against a children’s ride, compared to another large thrill ride.
This system is great for accounting for popularity bias. Rides that appear in ranked lists more often won’t score better than those that appear less. Furthermore, rarer thrill coasters are often only compared against other major thrill coasters. By using an Elo system, the quality of the ride is accounted for.
the result
All of this leads to a more accurate roller coaster poll. In fact, vote coasters uses the most sophisticated ranking system of any major roller coaster poll out there. It leads to better results compared to the traditional pairwise method (as used in the old Mitch Hawker poll), while also enabling rarer roller coasters to rank highly with a limited number of riders.
more details
The example above shows that two separate lists are never compared. We don’t compare your ranking of Maverick with someone else’s, but instead, find the preference of everyone who has ridden the two rides we’re comparing.
To ensure one person can’t disrupt the results, 5 people are required per comparison of two roller coasters. Therefore none of the comparisons in the example above would count. On top of this, roller coasters require 100 or more comparisons to be included in the results.
Unlike other roller coaster polls, roller coasters that don’t meet these requirements are excluded and don’t influence the outcome. We run vote coasters twice - first to determine which rides meet the requirements and second to find the results of the poll with the remaining roller coasters.
Vote coasters is an annual poll. Each year, users are required to verify or update their rankings to be included. As a result, older rankings are removed to keep the data fresh. Despite this, over 1,000 users return annually to update their rankings and take part in the poll.