I Was a Roller Coaster Child

My dad had a habit of saying yes. When I was a kid that meant driving from Denver to Sandusky, Ohio specifically to ride the Top Thrill Dragster, at the time the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. We waited extra in line to sit in the front row and came off with bugs on our shirts at 120mph. Worth it.

Same general era: the Las Vegas Stratosphere with no one else at the top, riding everything over and over with no line. Thirteen times on Top Shot. Magic Mountain with fast passes. The Matrix as my first R-rated movie, watched with a cousin, parental permission but no supervision.

X2 at Magic Mountain and Top Thrill Dragster are still my top two. Nothing has come close. X2 because you genuinely cannot tell which way you're facing at any point, which is apparently the entire design brief. I'd pre-built it in Roller Coaster Tycoon before I ever rode the real thing.

Top Thrill Dragster is gone now. I watched the demolition video of Kingda Ka, the other contender from that era, and felt appropriately old about it.