National Roller Coaster Day: 16 Photos Of America's Best Thrill Rides

ACROSS AMERICA — Thrill seekers, Wednesday is for you. It’s National Roller Coaster Day, a celebration of the excited screams, heady adrenaline rushes and heart-pumping fear that make these white-knuckle rides America’s favorite amusement park attraction.

The “Great American Scream Machine,” as early roller coasters were dubbed, is not for everyone. But for those who love them — and that includes about 35 percent of U.S. adults polled two years ago by CBS News who said they prefer roller coasters over other rides — finding the fastest, the longest and the scariest is a rite of summer.

Here’s a cheat sheet:

The U-shaped Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, has a reputation as the scariest in the world due to its combined speed and height. The cars bolt up 45 stories at a clip of 128 miles an hour. That also makes it the fastest roller coaster in America.

Superman: Escape from Krypton at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles is fast and scary, too, The only reverse free-fall roller coaster in operation, it shoots to the top of a 415-foot tower at 100 mph and then plunges riders back down again in a dramatic free-fall.

Superman the Ride at Six Flags New England in Agawam, Massachusetts, is called a “hypercoaster,” a type of coaster so intense that it needed its own category. This one is so tall the drop is 221 feet, all happening at 77 mph. The twisting red track is 5,400 feet long.

Goliath at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois, is billed as “the most extreme coaster of its kind.” After climbing 165 feet, riders experience the “steepest heart-racing drop” on a wooden roller coaster anywhere. Thrills include head-over-heels flips, surprising curves and “outrageous turns,” according to the website.

Wooden roller coasters are a fading commodity, but New York has several, including Cyclone at Coney Island, a crowd favorite since 1927. It features 2,640 feet of track and an 85-foot drop overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Traveling at speeds of up to 60 mph, it still qualifies as fast.

Florida has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to roller coasters and theme parks, including Universal Orlando’s Jurassic World VelociCoaster, which collected several elite awards after its 2021 opening. Pre-ride storytelling amps up the tension before taking riders on a high-speed “chase” of the titular prehistoric characters. The cast members of the “Jurassic World” make a virtual appearance, too.

The Twisted Cyclone roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia in Marbletown combines the traditional wood structure with a steel track, it takes riders through three inversions and a 75-degree drop from 10 stories in the air and then into a reverse cobra roll perpendicular to the ground.

The Kennywood amusement park in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, and Pittsburgh Steelers teamed for the Steel Curtain roller coaster that speeds riders along 4,000 feet of track at 76 mph and navigates nine inversions.

For people who like to take it slow, the 30 mph Pepsi Orange Streak meanders through Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America near Minneapolis. It reaches heights of 60 feet and drops 40 feet.

The grizzly bear cars of Untamed, one of several thrill rides at Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire, take riders up 72 feet before plummeting them in a vertical, 97-degree drop. The ride also includes a series of loops, banked turns and zero-gravity rolls.

The wooden Boulder Dash coaster at Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut, is a popular attraction at what is considered America’s oldest continually operating theme park. The coaster made its debut in 2000.

The Hades 360 roller coaster at Mt. Olympus Park in the Wisconsin Dells has, as its name suggests, a 360-degree loop, as well as a 140-foot drop. The world’s first upside-down wooden roller coaster, it also has the world’s longest underground tunnel. The roller coaster reaches speeds of up to 70 mph.

Fury 325, a 32-passenger, open-air three-car train at Carowinds in Charlotte, North Carolina, travels to a 325-foot peak before plummeting in an 81-degree drop. Then, the website says, “like an angry hornet chasing its target, riders race into a massive, 190-foot tall barrel turn and a high-speed S-curve reaching speeds of up to 95 mph.” The ride includes a “hive dive” under a pedestrian bridge before “swarming full force into the back half of the ride through high-speed banked curve, camelback hill and an intense double maneuver.”

The Beast, a wooden roller coaster that opened in 1979 at King’s Island Amusement Park in Ohio, is the longest wooden roller coaster in the world at 7,361 feet. Featuring vertical drops of more than 137 feet at a 53-degree angle and 141 feet at an 18-degree angle, it travels through a 125-foot-long underground tunnel at speeds of up to 65 mph.

You can’t talk about roller coasters without mention of the “Roller Coaster Capital of the World” — Cedar Point, an amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. The amusement park has 18 legendary roller coasters among its thrill rides, including Millennium Force. When it was built in 2000, it broke five world records for speed and is still considered one of the fastest with a top speed of 93 mph.

The origins of National Roller Coaster Day aren’t completely clear. The first known National Roller Coaster Day was on Aug. 16, 1986, to acknowledge the date in 1898 when Edward Prescott applied for a patent for the first looping roller coaster.

However, it was LaMarcus Adna Thompson who is considered the “father of the modern roller coaster,” or the “Great American Scream Machine,” as the ride came to be known.

Though he held more than 30 patents relating to roller coaster technology during his lifetime, Thompson worked off another inventor’s patent in the design of the Switchback Railway installed at Coney Island in 1884. Tame by today’s standards, Thompson’s Switchback Railway crept along at a crocodile’s pace, 6 mph.

It was nevertheless a smashing success with the public, ushering in an era of proliferation of the American roller coaster. Within four years, Thompson had built about 50 more roller coasters in the United States and Europe, including his most famous, the Scenic Railway.

Installed on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1887, the Scenic Railway was a precursor to the elaborate theme park rides of today with its lighted artificial scenery.

Roller coasters have faded in and out of popularity over the years. There are about 750 in operation today.

Fighting to maintain consciousness, commonly called “greying out,” is the effect of rapid acceleration, or G-force, during high-intensity points of the roller coaster ride, according to peer-edited research at Rice University in Houston that unravels the physics of G-forces as applied to roller coasters.

The bottom line: The activities of everyday living have a G-force of 1, and the human body can handle a G-force of up to 4.7. The Texas Tornado at Six Flags AstroWorld in Houston has a G-force of 6.5, and the Batman and Robin roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, has a G-force of 5.0, according to the research.

Any prolonged exposure to high G-forces can cause serious brain damage, the researchers said, noting most roller coasters are engineered to keep riders under safe face thresholds.