Popsicle Sticks

There are two kinds of roller coaster people: those who like wooden coasters and those who like steel coasters.

I myself am a steel coaster guy. They are faster, smoother, can turn sharper, and are much more structurally sound.

Take a look at this wooden section of Gemini. Does this look safe to you? To me it looks like a group of kids built it at summer camp out of popsicle sticks. It's almost ridiculously complex because wood isn't very strong and therefore needs gobs of structural redundancy.

Think: House of Cards.

I was standing under the wooden Mean Streak once, waiting in line, and was almost struck in the head by a huge bolt that fell off the structure somewhere high up in the rafters of the thing. My entire ride I wondered what function that bolt had abandoned, and which two pieces of wood that were previously tight were now loose.

Yes, wooden coasters have a certain roughness, a kind of visceral authenticity that modern steel coasters lack. But if I am going to free-fall 300 feet while riding a coaster, I want it to be by design, and not because an old termite-weakened timber snapped at the wrong time.