The smell of wood – decades-old, cut, stacked, and bolted, bathed in and baked by summer sun; the aroma of grease, clinging to the lift chain as humming motors drag bug-splattered wooden trains upward, anti-rollback wedges clacking into place in their wake; the roaring, rumbling wave of sound as riders snake along a superstructure of swaying wood beams, shuddering and shaking as up-stop wheels ricochet…
For more than a century, the wooden roller coaster has been a staple of amusement parks the world over. And even once it wooden roller coasters were joined by altogether sleeker, smoother steel sisters throughout the 1960s and ’70s, the wooden roller coasters remained landmarks; classics; essentials.
But in the early 2000s, roller coaster enthusiasts encountered a question they’d never had to ask before: what makes a wooden roller coaster a wooden roller coaster? What if the wood wasn’t aged and hand-sawed, but brand new and laser-cut? What if there were no clack-clack-clack of a classic chain lift? And what if the ride itself were smooth as glass, arcing and slaloming and diving as effortlessly as only a steel coaster once could?
Continue reading “EL TORO: The Wild Life of Six Flags’ Buckin’ Bull and How Intamin Rewrote the Rules of the Wooden Coaster Wars”
