Revisiting the nostalgic "10 scariest attractions in the world" video

19.05.24

Recently, I've been hyperfixating on rollercoasters and their history, and to a lesser extent - amusement parks in general. And perhaps my first exposure to the topic was this video. I watched it multiple times back in 2010 and 2011, on a small but chonky Windows Vista laptop, years and years before I got unlimited and unsupervised Internet access. Back then I didn't even notice it being 240p, but now it only adds to the era's charm. So, does it hit the same now?

There are obviously no concrete criteria for what is "scary", so I mostly cannot really judge the placements no the list. However, even then there is room for weirdness. Now, jumping into the video. The captions under the screenshots provide how the ride was named in the video, typos kept.

And the weirdness begins right here. This is a fairly generic drop tower, so I am assuming it represents a whole class of rides. What is bizarre is the choice of the example. The only notble thing about the tower in Kings' Island is that it is the tallest Intamin Gyro Drop. It was never the tallest drop tower in general, and had no major gimmicks that would make the ride experience stand out.

The two Vegas Stratosphere attrctions, very understandable choice. Aside from a mistake in the carousel's name (it is actually called Insanity) - nothing to really say here.

Ah, the X. The creation Arrow ended up sacrificing its life for. The first "4th dimension rollercoaster", which does deserve a spot on such a list due to its quirkiness. By the time the video was uploaded, it was already massively overhauled, sporting different trains, a different color scheme and the name X2, but this might be a reupload of an earlier work so no idea here. Also odd that, unlike all but one other entries, no mention is made of the ride's location (Six Flags Magic Mountain, Valencia, California).

These, again, represent whole classes of attractions. For the Skycoasters, since these things are fairly uniform, choosing this particular installation makes perfect sense - it is, to this day, the tallest of its kind. (Although idk how much it counts as Orlando, it is in Kissimmee which is very close.)

Catapult and Booster both represent very common types of flat rides - I assume they were chosen because of proximity. Given how omnipresent slingshots and boosters are, I refrain from picking one concrete example of each.

Now this part is pretty much the reason why I made this post. Everything about it is eyebrow-raising, starting with the title card. "Cobra, Las Vegas"???... Except it is far from Vegas, it's Montreal. La Ronde, to be exact. Even the original POV says so, I have no idea where this blunder came from, Las Vegas doesn't even have a Six Flags park... At least La Ronde is indeed Six Flags.

Second - the choice itself. I stated earlier how subjective the ranking criteria is, but this one makes no sense even in this vagueness. "Cobra" has no notable qualities, no remarkable gimmicks, no fame among enthusiasts (at least that I know of). Not the most interesting standup, far from the most interesting Intamin. Kinda curious that it's an Intamin so old that it uses B&M-style track, and is a very rare Intamin standup, but that's it - this is not even the only ride of its kind.

This makes sense - the tallest and fastest rollercoaster in the world at that moment. Just weird to not call Kingda Ka by its name. (By the way, "Russian hills" or "American hills" is such a stupid name for these rides... Why does Russian language lack a sane word for them?)

And here we are, in the finale. "Unknown attraction". Except this is not an attraction, it's a professional stunt.

Overall - this is such a blast of nostalgia! While it might be fun to spot errors and quirks, they untimately don't matter. I just cherish the memory of watching silly, amateur, charming videos like this on the old, chonky Windows Vista laptop.