Thrill Seekers Unite!

Strap in for This List of the Best Roller Coasters in America

If you’re an adrenaline junkie, National Roller Coaster Day (Aug. 16) isn’t enough time to celebrate one of the coolest, most fun activities we, as humans, can do.

Do you like a twist on the traditional ride? Are you looking for the biggest thrills? Wondering what coasters debuted this year? We’ve got you covered!

Check out this list of America’s most unique, scariest and newest roller coasters:

Most Unique

Maverick – Cedar Point (Sandusky, OH)

“...packed with twists, corkscrews, launches, tunnels and plenty of airtime, so saddle up for a ride wilder than the rodeo.”

Fun facts / features:

First coaster to have a twisted horseshoe roll
Two opposing, 360-degree corkscrew rolls separated by a 180-degree banked curve
400-foot tunnel launch accelerating to 70 mph in 3 seconds

Take a virtual ride:

New Texas Giant – Six Flags over Texas (Arlington, TX)

“...one of the best steel hybrid roller coasters in the world.”

Fun facts / features:

Combines wooden architecture and high-tech steel engineering
Cadillac-style train
153-foot lift with a steep, 79-degree drop
High-banking turns and swift switchbacks
Three tunnels
4,920-foot track

Take a virtual ride:

Outlaw Run – Silver Dollar City (Branson, MO)

“But be on the lookout — rumors are there is a rogue outlaw and his unscrupulous gang waiting to ambush your stagecoach along the way!”

Fun facts / features:

Soars through the Ozark Mountains
World’s first and only wood coaster with a 720-degree, double-barrel roll
Only wood coaster to twist upside down three times
World’s steepest wood coaster — at its debut — with a 162-foot, 81-degree drop
One of the fastest wood coasters in the world, with a top speed of 68 mph

Take a virtual ride:

SUPERMAN The Ride – Six Flags New England (Agawam, MA)

“SUPERMAN is pretty much the most extreme superhero working today: over-sized strength, mega speed and at the top of his class when it comes to flying.”

Fun facts / features:

Hypercoaster (oversized roller coaster up to more than 200 feet tall)
221-foot drop
77 mph
5,400 feet — more than a mile — of steel track

Take a virtual ride:

X2 – Six Flags Magic Mountain (Valencia, CA)

“Get ready to enter an all-new realm on [this] trail-blazing, fifth-dimension roller coaster.”

Fun facts / features:

360-degree rotating seats that extend on wings far off the track
Head-first, face-down drops
Music and sound effects
76 mph through dives, flips and twists
Two ultra-rare “raven turns” (half loops that become drops)

Take a virtual ride:

Cannibal – Lagoon Amusement Park (Farmington, UT)

This custom mega-coaster is “...unlike anything in the world and will eat other coasters in their tracks.”

Fun facts / features:

208-foot lift with a 116-degree, beyond-vertical freefall into an underground tunnel
140-foot-tall, inverted loop and water features
Riders travel up to 70 mph over 2,735 feet and through three inversions

Take a virtual ride:

Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure – Islands of Adventure (Orlando, FL)

“Fly deep into the wilds of the Forbidden Forest, beyond the grounds of Hogwarts castle... [plunging] into the paths of some of the wizarding world’s rarest magical creatures.”

Fun facts / features:

Universal’s most highly themed, immersive coaster
Seven launches — more than any roller coaster in the world
First coaster in the US with a freefall, vertical drop — nearly 17 feet
Longest roller coaster in Florida

Take a virtual ride:

SUPERMAN: Escape from Krypton – Six Flags Magic Mountain (Valencia, CA)

“Tunnel deep into SUPERMAN’s icy Fortress of Solitude to face the ultimate challenge — 1,315 feet of track that bends straight up into the sky 415 feet high!”

Fun facts / features:

Record-breaking 0-100 mph in 7 seconds — in reverse
415-foot lift straight up the track at 90 degrees
6.5 seconds of utter weightlessness
92 mph plummet
Cutting-edge electromagnetic motor

Take a virtual ride:

Time Traveler – Silver Dollar City (Branson, MO)

“Prepare to embark on the ride of a century on the world's fastest, steepest and tallest spinning coaster.”

Fun facts / features:

$26 million, record-breaking coaster
Three inversions — the most ever on a spinning coaster
95-foot-tall vertical loop
Two launches
10-story, 90-degree vertical drop
Custom designed for the mountainous terrain of the Ozarks

Take a virtual ride:

TRON Lightcycle / Run – Disney’s Magic Kingdom (Orlando, FL)

“Leave the real world behind and join Team Blue in a quest across the Grid — the dark, computerized world with no horizons from ‘TRON.’”

Fun facts / features:

Semi-indoor coaster
Straddle, motorcycle-style seats
High-speed launch to 59 mph — one of the fastest coasters at any Disney theme park in the world
Sudden, sharp twists, turns and drops
Music and sound effects

Take a virtual ride:

Scariest

El Toro – Six Flags Great Adventure (Jackson, NJ)

“This beast bucks wildly so hang on tight!”

Fun facts / features:

Nearly 19-story lift with a 176-foot drop at a 76-degree angle — the steepest of any wooden-style coaster in the country
70 mph ride with nine, airtime producing hills
One of the fastest, tallest wooden coasters in the world
Voted No. 1 roller coaster in USA Today’s 10 Best Awards 2022

Take a virtual ride:

Intimidator 305 – Kings Dominion (Doswell, VA)

“Challenge one of the tallest, fastest and most thrilling roller coasters on the East Coast.”

Fun facts / features:

300-foot-tall first drop at an 85-degree angle
High-speed twists and turns

Take a virtual ride:

Millennium Force – Cedar Point (Sandusky, OH)

“Millennium Force’s creation demanded an all-new category just to classify its one-of-a-kind nature — thus was born the giga-coaster.”

Fun facts / features:

First roller coaster to top 300 feet when it opened in 2000
Debuted with the longest drop and fastest speed, at 93 mph
Shoots riders over hills, past lagoons and through tunnels, all at high speeds
Ranked as one of the world’s best steel coasters year after year since its opening

Take a virtual ride:

Fury 325 – Carowinds (Charlotte, NC)

“Feel the sting on the tallest, fastest, longest giga-coaster in North America!”

Fun facts / features:

325-foot lift with an 81-degree drop
190-foot-tall barrel turn and high-speed S-curve reaching speeds up to 95 mph
91-degree, overbanked horseshoe turn to a “Hive Dive” below a pedestrian bridge
High-speed, banked curve, camelback hill and intense double maneuver
North America’s longest steel coaster — over 1.25 miles

Take a virtual ride:

Valravn – Cedar Point (Sandusky, OH)

“Do you dare try and conquer Valravn?”

Fun facts / features:

Tallest, fastest and longest dive coaster in the US
223-foot lift that dangles riders over the edge before dropping them at a 90-degree angle
Multiple inversions, 270-degree roll and legendary Immelmann maneuver
Secondary 131-foot drop
Airtime at the end of the ride

Take a virtual ride:

Kingda Ka – Six Flags Great Adventure (Jackson, NJ)

“There’s a reason this coaster is known as the King.”

Fun facts / features:

Tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world (as of 2023)
Upside-down, U-shaped track
Bolts up 45 stories — 456 feet high — at 90 degrees
Accelerates from 0 to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds
Plummets down into a 270-degree spiral
129-foot camel hump

Take a virtual ride:

Goliath – Six Flags Magic Mountain (Valencia, CA)

“Goliath is so fast they call this metal monster a ‘hypercoaster,’ and within seconds you’ll know why.”

Fun facts / features:

255-foot drop at 85 mph — one of the longest and fastest in the world
Secondary 185-foot drop
Airtime, repeated several times over a series of drops and rises
4,500-foot-long track
Sideways twist diving into a helix at more than 4.5 G’s

Take a virtual ride:

Manta – SeaWorld Orlando (Orlando, FL)

“Find out what it’s like to spin, glide, skim and fly like a giant ray when you experience the only flying roller coaster of its kind in Florida.”

Fun facts / features:

Seats align riders horizontally with the ground
Head-first, face-down inverted nosedive
Four inversions, including a pretzel loop, two twists and a corkscrew

Take a virtual ride:

New in 2023

AQUAMAN: Power Wave – Six Flags over Texas (Arlington, TX)

“The first ride of its kind”

Fun facts / features:

Launches riders backward and forward, traveling on more than 2,000 feet of track up two 150-foot towers
Sends riders straight down — a 90-degree angle — at 63 mph to a massive water splashdown

Take a virtual ride: