5. El Toro

Location: Six Flags Great Adventure (Jackson, New Jersey)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2006

Though so much of the Coaster Wars tends to be focused on the massive steel creations that came of the era, the '90s and 2000s were also a time when wooden coasters got upsized dramatically. Obviously, the go-to example is the genre's literal peak: the Lost Legend: Son of Beast which, in 2000, opened as the world's tallest, fastest, and only looping wooden roller coaster. Son of Beast ended up a bust, but in the years that followed its opening, several innovations in wooden coaster technology came online that changed the industry.

One was Intamin's entry into wooden coasters: pre-fabricated rides. Practically all wooden roller coasters are built on-site, where wood is sawed and hammered and installed during a coaster's construction. But Intamin's supposition was that wooden coasters – like steel – could be pre-fabricated; laser-cut, labeled, and shipped to construction sites ready to be pieced together like LEGO blocks. Pre-fab (sometimes called "plug-and-play") wooden coasters would remove the imperfections inherent in hand-cut coasters, making a wooden coaster that felt like a steel one; precise, powerful, packed with airtime and – weirdest of all – surprisingly smooth.

Ultimately, only four pre-fabs were built, with El Toro being the third. (The others are in Sweden, Germany, and South Korea.) True to promise, they opened as butter smooth, wildly powerful, and incredibly cool rides capable of reaching immense heights and speeds. Even as Son of Beast was being demolished, El Toro was still a world class ride.

But major issues have befallen two of the four pre-fabs. Germany's Colossos was closed for three years, requiring extensive rebuilding. El Toro, meanwhile, was closed through nearly all of 2021 after a train partially derailed. It reopened in 2022, only to experience a major malfunction (reportedly, a structural failure) in August 2022, with state investigators determining that the ride was "structurally compromised." The jury's out on whether or not El Toro will ever re-open, but as an example of Intamin's innovation during the Coaster Wars, it's still a landmark.

4. Xcelerator

Location: Knott's Berry Farm (Buena Park, California)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2002

In 2002, Knott's Berry Farm served as the test bed for a whole new model by Intamin – the Accelerator coaster. Conveniently called Xcelerator, the ride was all about the launch. Using a wound cable launch system powered by hydraulic fluid, the ride launched trains from 0 to 82 miles per hour in just over 2 seconds – an absolutely stunning rate of acceleration compared to Superman: The Escape just five years earlier. Then, it turned skyward, racing up a 205 foot top hat and plummeting back down to Earth.

What's most fascinating about Xcelerator, though, is that it represents Intamin's first foray into what we know became its most infamous Accelerator – Top Thrill Dragster. In fact, in 2002, Xcelerator was overpowered after hours, with empty trains pumped up to the system's maximum speed just to see if the hydraulic technology could actually reach the speeds needed to crest a tower twice as high... 

To date, Intamin has built 14 Accelerators, and like all of Intamin's most boundary-pushing installations, most have been plagued with some amount of misfortune, downtime, and outright disaster. As we explored in our in-depth Lost Legends: Top Thrill Dragster feature, the launch cable used on Xcelerator has shredded from friction twice, spraying riders with metallic shrapnel. (One of those instances was caught on camera, but it is distressing to watch.) Xcelerator closed in March 2022 for an unknown mechanical issue and hasn't re-opened as of press time. Will it? Or, like Top Thrill Dragster itself, will Xcelerator end up being modified or redesigned to lessen its issues? We'll see... 

3. Superman: The Ride

Location: Six Flags New England (Agawam, Massachusetts)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2000

When Intamin launched (no pun intended) onto the scene with Superman: The Escape in 1997, no one could've predicted that by time the New Millennium arrived, they "launched coaster" mavens would be generating incredible, world-renowned full circuit coasters, too. But in 2000, Intamin unveiled Superman: Ride of Steel at Six Flags New England (not to be confused with the Superman: Ride of Steel at Six Flags America in Maryland, or Superman: Ride of Steel at Six Flags Darien Lake in New York, which are mirrored twins of each other, but quite different from the Superman: Ride of Steel at Six Flags New England in Massachusetts. Oh, Six Flags...) 

Clearly built on the same DNA found in the same year's Millennium Force, Superman is just a non-stop, adrenaline packed, tear-jerking installation. Though it's "only" got a 221 foot drop, the ride absolutely flies over a series of out-and-back airtime hills at a relentless 77 mph. For people used to B&M's ever-present hypercoasters and their graceful, delightful airtime hills, it's hard to describe how unrelenting Superman is as it charges forward in continuous bouts of weightlessness.

Then, after its first half, the coaster transitions entirely into a weaving, winding, low-to-the-ground course more similar to Intamin's Maverick (2007) or Intimidator 305 (2010), banking, helixing, rising, twisting, and threading through tunnels. Many of the moves "practiced" on Superman would become Intamin standards. You can feel its influence on VelociCoaster and Pantheon, for example, and in Intamin's new wild, unpredictable, and odd manuevers like banked airtime hills, stalls, and unexpected directional changes.

Interestingly, in 2009, Superman: Ride of Steel was painted purple, given on-ride audio, "plussed" with new effects, flamethrowers, and scenery, and renamed "Bizarro" after Superman's mirror image nemesis. (Such "reintroductions" were a common Six Flags tactic in the era, allowing them to re-market an existing coaster as new without too much investment.) In 2016, the Bizarro overlay was removed and the ride was renamed Superman: The Ride (probably to differentiate it from the Rides of Steel in Maryland and New York). Between 2001 and 2015, the ride was consistently ranked either 1st or 2nd on Amusement Today's Best Steel Coaster awards, never even dipping to third place until 2016. So if you're looking for a Coaster Wars landmark, here it is.

2. Kingda Ka

Location: Six Flags Great Adventure (Jackson, New Jersey)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2005

In the blinding speed of the Coaster Wars, Cedar Point debuted Top Thrill Dragster in 2003. The ride was plagued by downtime and notoriously unreliable, with then-CEO of Cedar Fair Dick Kinzel calling the ride the "worst mistake" he ever made. It makes sense... the most ultra-extreme, statistically-insane ride on the planet, Kinzel suspected that "half" of Cedar Point guests didn't even have any interest in riding it at all. In other words, Top Thrill Dragster's 120 mph, 420 foot tall double-dog-dare-ya experience was a one-step-too-far; a "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" sign that the Coaster Wars couldn't go on much longer, and that they'd hit a ceiling.

So naturally, Six Flags decided they wanted one, too. In 2005, Great Adventure unleashed Kingda Ka – a ride that looks suspiciously identical to Top Thrill Dragster but for a different paint job, 36 extra feet, and 8 more miles per hour speed. The tallest and fastest coaster on Earth at the time (today surpassed in speed by Abu Dhabi's Formula Rossa – another Intamin Accelerator) Kingda Ka has been expectedly plagued by downtime itself. There's no word on if it will be modified like Top Thrill Dragster, but considering it's still running, it looks like Six Flags doesn't have any plans to change that.

Interestingly, if you're lucky enough to have ridden both Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka, then congratulations – you've experienced the only two stratacoasters on Earth. No one else has tried to build a roller coaster over 400 feet, and since these two Accelerators are very extreme, very temperamental, and very difficult-to-maintain, it's unlikely anyone will again. Frankly, it's no surprise that for both Cedar Fair and Six Flags, their respective stratacoasters sort of served as the end of their Coaster Wars ambitions.

1. Millennium Force

Location: Cedar Point (Sandusky, Ohio)
Manufacturer: Intamin
Opened: 2000

If you want to distill the Coaster Wars of the '90s and 2000s down to a single ride – one, iconic landmark that represents the tug-of-war between statistics, quality, marketing, and longevity, there can be only one must-ride icon: Millennium Force. If you haven't yet, you absolutely have to make the jump to our in-depth Modern Marvels: Millennium Force feature, exploring the design and construction of this then-incomprehensible coaster. The first true "gigacoaster," Millennium shattered the 300-foot height barrier (and at the same park that had broken the 100-, 200-, and would soon break the 400-foot ceilings, no less)! 

Intamin's engineering marvel is a work of art. It's also a relative anomoly in that it seemingly intentionally ignores the conventions you expect of a statistically-enormous ride. Instead of quick transitions and ejector air, Millennium Force is graceful; a soaring, sweeping ride that takes real Mississippi seconds to transition between giant elements. It's incredibly forceful, but poetic. It hums with power, but glides through its course. By time the coaster reaches the end of its 6,595 foot long course, it feels as if it hasn't shed a single molecule of its 93 mph top speed.

Sure, plenty of coaster enthusiasts will tell you that Millennium is overrated; "more like Millennium Forceless," they'll say. And if you step off the world's first gigacoaster unimpressed, so be it. But there's no question that no ride on Earth better represents the Coaster Wars – and more to the point, no better ride to have won it – than Cedar Point's Millennium Force.