Theme Park Discussion / Fun With Roller Coaster Statistics 2011

Hey guys
Some of you may remember I did this last year (or was it the year before? I forget) but I found some spare time and decided to have a mess around with the RCDB's extensive database again.

All graphs and tables contained within this post are created by myself and any errors are entirely my fault.

First Up lets take an updated look at the state of the worlds coaster industry over the last 15 years

This graph is slightly misleading as all 2011 coasters won't have been announced yet

However if we break this down a bit more we get this result.

I shall let you guys draw your own conclusions from this. but there has been a dramatic drop in the USA over the last few years. However as above 2011 may still rise. I would have added China here but information on Chinese rides is understandably vague across the DB and many rides only have ranges as to when the ride may have opened

Ok so everyone knows that America leads the way in shear numbers of coasters already but let's take a look at an updated list of the worlds top 20 coaster owning countries.

This takes into account operating coasters only but it shows just how many coasters there are in China now. They may all be tiny children's rides and spinning coasters but there's a fair few.

However there is no point in living in the country with the most coasters if it takes days to get to the nearest one. So the next chart shows how many coasters each country has per kilometre squared.

Here the USA does much much worse and northern europe has a really strong showing. who ever said Belgium was boring? The caveat here is that this doesn't take into account the vast areas where people don't live. This is why Australia had such a poor showing in this chart last year.

So like last year here I produced a chart of the number of people per ride. This was done with the latest census or estimated population available for each country so there is some margin for error here.

Here we see the USA do much better and the UK come storming into 2nd. Denmark still leads the way though.
Now this next graph is completely pointless but it gave me a chuckle.
The previous chart got me thinking. What if EVERYONE in a country decided to have a day trip to a theme park one day. And somehow evenly spread themselves between every coaster in that country... If you were waiting at the back of a queue for a B&M coaster how long would you wait....

Yes I know just Humour me.... this chart was done on the theoretical capacity of Riddlers Revenge at SFMM.

Pointless... But if everyone goes to a theme park... don't be in India.

Right back on track. The next table shows which continents have the highest percentage of steel or wooden rides.

The columns show what percentage of a continents coaster collection is either steal or wood. Australia does well on the Woodie front but it's a little misleading since Australia has so few rides. but it does have 3 woodies.

Moving on I will focus mostly on B&M's for now. But the following graph shows where the worlds B&M's are


But what ride does B&M make the most of? well when you think about it, It's pretty obvious

Inverts account for a massive proportion of B&M's output. Although this has slowed in recent years it is still doing well. (Note: this includes all under construction rides too)

So If B&M pretty much invented the inverts and it's their most popular product, what market share do they have?

Turns out they don't do badly but Vekoma dominates the market here with several more models (Shuttles, Junior and SLC's), to put this in perspective, there are currently only 111 operating inverted rides out there.

Now to finish of today's post I shall have a bit more fun. TPR have a reoccuring joke about rides on the moon and last year we crowned a new speed record holder. So if we took each of the worlds fastest 10 coasters. How long would it take to get to the moon at top speed? This is based on the average distance of the moon so it changes a lot. but the ratio's would be the same


Hopefully you enjoyed this pointless trip through my mind.

Its getting late here so I better dash
I hope to do more soon though.

Cheers
Dave

Wow, really cool stats there Roomie. I looks at this stuff a lot too, so you arent the only one.

This was a blast to look at, reminded me of the graphs CP6 had on his blog. Thanks!
Ouch at that second chart...

nice read .

As a stats guy myself, this was most enjoyable

mmm, interesting,
What's a B&M speed? do you mean a hypercoaster?

Yup. Thats just the model name that B&M tends to use.

I always feel so dumb when you guys know what the real-life therms are for those coasters :c
I only know the RCT names XD

O love these kind iof things, gonna look onto it more for like 20 minites.

The only thing weird to me is australias wooden coaster percentage, i still personally havent been on one lol!

Well i decided to play with Mitches Coaster Poll and join it up with RCDB stats to see if there are any interesting correlations.

Turns out not much

Heres the length of the top 50 coasters on the last poll


Not much of a trend there really (the ones with 0 were because there was no length on the RCDB)

However when we look at manufacturer dominance check this out



Yikes... B&M and Intamin are crushing the field here. Not that surprising really but i didn't expect it to be that high.

When we look at the types we get a pretty good spread


It was really hard to make categories here but i split them down to what i thought worked. Launched loopers were split from normal loopers but really rides like Blue Fire and Storm Runner could have gone in either Launched or Loopers or their own catagory. :s

I shall try add some of the lowest ranked rides soon

Really interesting read roomie

Agreed! The percentage of a manufacturer's coasters making the top 50 would make a nice chart, btw.

Lol, Vekoma is building the most coasters by far, but non of their coasters is in the Top 50 when even small manufactures like Maurer or Gerstlauer are in there...