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Milestones in Your Counts

I have an interesting update for you all regarding my count. Well, I found it interesting, anyhow!

Anyone who's read my recent Florida trip report may remember that when I left Florida, my official coaster count was at 99. I had hoped to get that count to 100, but the closure of Tigris meant that it wasn't to be.

However, my coaster count and park visit log have only covered park visits and coaster rides after 28th September 2013, the day that I first rode the big coasters at Alton Towers and really started taking this hobby more seriously, ever since I first started trying to keep track of things. It sounds like a weird idea, but I felt that that was a good cut off point to set, as my memory of park visits and coaster rides before that was somewhat variable, and I was unable to pinpoint exact visit dates, order of first rides on coasters and such for my spreadsheet; being the slightly OCD person I am when it comes to exact ordering and dates, I was not keen to introduce that degree of uncertainty into my count and visit logs.

But today, something happened that meant that I could satisfy my own thirst for reasonable exactness in my log while also including all of the theme park visits and coaster rides I have ever taken, even those from before I was properly into theme parks. My dad found an old hard drive with pretty much every photo my parents had ever taken on it (it went all the way back to "Christmas 2004", an album containing pictures of me and my now 22 year old sister as toddlers), including a fair few pictures of some of our earliest theme park visits as a family. It was a rainy afternoon here in Gloucestershire, and I had nothing else better to do... so with the help of these pictures' metadata and our copious selection of old on-ride photos, as well as some recollections of my own from these aforementioned visits, I decided to scrap the "enthusiasm start date" I had always started my count and visit log from and try and piece together my pre-enthusiast theme park visit history so that my visit log could become a truly exhaustive account of every theme park visit and coaster ride I have ever taken, and the order in which I rode coasters and visited parks could be the proper order right from the very beginning (to some extent... some of the ordering of coasters within parks pre-2013, as well as the rides ridden on early revisits, relied on my vague recollection and some assumptions based on our typical park visits at the time).

As such, I managed to piece together my full, exhaustive theme park visit history... and I was able to add a +3 to my coaster count, bringing it to 102! My park count also had a +2, bringing it to 22!

Basically, a visit from my childhood that I had forgotten about when concocting my initial coaster count, and often forgot about when thinking about the theme parks I've been to and rides I've ridden, was a March 2011 visit to Disneyland Paris. I always knew I had been to DLP, and I remembered some of the rides I had ridden, but I could not comfortably sit down and rate them, which made me hesitant to include them in my count as Captain Coaster makes you rate things to say you've ridden them and I always liked the fact that my coaster ranking was exhaustive. I also wasn't 100% certain of the rides I had ridden, and I also wasn't sure of when we actually visited. This was a large part of what made me exclude anything pre-enthusiast (i.e. before 28th September 2013) from my visit log; I didn't like to be sure of what I'd done prior to that point, and I didn't like the idea of including stuff where I couldn't place it perfectly within my timeline of ridden coasters and visited parks. However, I finally managed to get confirmation of which coasters I'd ridden at DLP and when we went... I can now confirm that I rode Big Thunder Mountain in the main park and Crush's Coaster and RC Racer in Walt Disney Studios, and we visited from 24th-27th March 2011!

These coasters, and by extension the two DLP parks, will remain unrated and unranked until I revisit, because as I say, I can't remember the ride experiences and parks on a specific enough level to rank them alongside everything else I've ridden, and as such, my Captain Coaster-listed count of rated rides and the scope of my coaster ranking will remain at 99. However, I've had a change of heart and have now decided to include these 3 coasters within my coaster count, so it turns out that I did pass 100 in Florida after all! And it actually worked out very nicely... because my 100th coaster was Iron Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa, the ride I had hoped it would be to begin with!

So yes, I have in fact ridden 102 coasters! I know that this is a slightly anticlimactic way to hit 100 coasters, and I'm conscious of the fact that it's kind of cheating to retrospectively change your coaster counting strategy, but finding that hard drive and getting the exact dates and visits gave me a change of heart and made me want to include my pre-enthusiast theme park visits within my log. Even though I was stubborn in sticking to my "enthusiasm start date" for a few years, I had always been a tad uncomfortable about the fact that my visit log wasn't truly exhaustive and didn't encompass everything, so I was very glad to be able to find the exact dates and confirmation for every park visit I've ever taken!

Following today's discoveries, here are my edited milestones:
1) Troublesome Trucks Runaway Coaster - Drayton Manor (18th April 2008)
50) Nickelodeon Streak - Blackpool Pleasure Beach (14th August 2018)
100) Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa (22nd June 2023)

So in short, I'm now in triple figures!
 
I have an interesting update for you all regarding my count. Well, I found it interesting, anyhow!

Anyone who's read my recent Florida trip report may remember that when I left Florida, my official coaster count was at 99. I had hoped to get that count to 100, but the closure of Tigris meant that it wasn't to be.

However, my coaster count and park visit log have only covered park visits and coaster rides after 28th September 2013, the day that I first rode the big coasters at Alton Towers and really started taking this hobby more seriously, ever since I first started trying to keep track of things. It sounds like a weird idea, but I felt that that was a good cut off point to set, as my memory of park visits and coaster rides before that was somewhat variable, and I was unable to pinpoint exact visit dates, order of first rides on coasters and such for my spreadsheet; being the slightly OCD person I am when it comes to exact ordering and dates, I was not keen to introduce that degree of uncertainty into my count and visit logs.

But today, something happened that meant that I could satisfy my own thirst for reasonable exactness in my log while also including all of the theme park visits and coaster rides I have ever taken, even those from before I was properly into theme parks. My dad found an old hard drive with pretty much every photo my parents had ever taken on it (it went all the way back to "Christmas 2004", an album containing pictures of me and my now 22 year old sister as toddlers), including a fair few pictures of some of our earliest theme park visits as a family. It was a rainy afternoon here in Gloucestershire, and I had nothing else better to do... so with the help of these pictures' metadata and our copious selection of old on-ride photos, as well as some recollections of my own from these aforementioned visits, I decided to scrap the "enthusiasm start date" I had always started my count and visit log from and try and piece together my pre-enthusiast theme park visit history so that my visit log could become a truly exhaustive account of every theme park visit and coaster ride I have ever taken, and the order in which I rode coasters and visited parks could be the proper order right from the very beginning (to some extent... some of the ordering of coasters within parks pre-2013, as well as the rides ridden on early revisits, relied on my vague recollection and some assumptions based on our typical park visits at the time).

As such, I managed to piece together my full, exhaustive theme park visit history... and I was able to add a +3 to my coaster count, bringing it to 102! My park count also had a +2, bringing it to 22!

Basically, a visit from my childhood that I had forgotten about when concocting my initial coaster count, and often forgot about when thinking about the theme parks I've been to and rides I've ridden, was a March 2011 visit to Disneyland Paris. I always knew I had been to DLP, and I remembered some of the rides I had ridden, but I could not comfortably sit down and rate them, which made me hesitant to include them in my count as Captain Coaster makes you rate things to say you've ridden them and I always liked the fact that my coaster ranking was exhaustive. I also wasn't 100% certain of the rides I had ridden, and I also wasn't sure of when we actually visited. This was a large part of what made me exclude anything pre-enthusiast (i.e. before 28th September 2013) from my visit log; I didn't like to be sure of what I'd done prior to that point, and I didn't like the idea of including stuff where I couldn't place it perfectly within my timeline of ridden coasters and visited parks. However, I finally managed to get confirmation of which coasters I'd ridden at DLP and when we went... I can now confirm that I rode Big Thunder Mountain in the main park and Crush's Coaster and RC Racer in Walt Disney Studios, and we visited from 24th-27th March 2011!

These coasters, and by extension the two DLP parks, will remain unrated and unranked until I revisit, because as I say, I can't remember the ride experiences and parks on a specific enough level to rank them alongside everything else I've ridden, and as such, my Captain Coaster-listed count of rated rides and the scope of my coaster ranking will remain at 99. However, I've had a change of heart and have now decided to include these 3 coasters within my coaster count, so it turns out that I did pass 100 in Florida after all! And it actually worked out very nicely... because my 100th coaster was Iron Gwazi at Busch Gardens Tampa, the ride I had hoped it would be to begin with!

So yes, I have in fact ridden 102 coasters! I know that this is a slightly anticlimactic way to hit 100 coasters, and I'm conscious of the fact that it's kind of cheating to retrospectively change your coaster counting strategy, but finding that hard drive and getting the exact dates and visits gave me a change of heart and made me want to include my pre-enthusiast theme park visits within my log. Even though I was stubborn in sticking to my "enthusiasm start date" for a few years, I had always been a tad uncomfortable about the fact that my visit log wasn't truly exhaustive and didn't encompass everything, so I was very glad to be able to find the exact dates and confirmation for every park visit I've ever taken!

Following today's discoveries, here are my edited milestones:
1) Troublesome Trucks Runaway Coaster - Drayton Manor (18th April 2008)
50) Nickelodeon Streak - Blackpool Pleasure Beach (14th August 2018)
100) Iron Gwazi - Busch Gardens Tampa (22nd June 2023)

So in short, I'm now in triple figures!
Congratulations @Matt N !
 
Hoping to hit 206 tomorrow, which doesn't sound like a milestone number what-so-ever...

...but I'm in Margate tonight, about to get some sleep before riding Britain's oldest surviving rollercoaster... So yeah, 206 is an important number for me.
 
1. Runaway Mine Train - Chessington (1992)
50. Silver Star (2006)
100. Bruco (2011)
150. Tornado - Bakken (2013)
200. Big Thunder Mountain - Disneyland (2014)
250. Family Rollercoaster Walygator (2017)
300. Millennium Force (2018)
350. Wild Mouse Grona Lund (2022)
400. Alpengeist (2023)

and finally last Saturday

450. TNT Tren de la Mina (2023)



I somehow miscounted at the time and thought Invadr was my 400th. Glad that its Alpengeist as I love that ride
 
Didn't really know what to name it so excuse me for the crappy name, lol.

Do you try to get in bigger, more exciting coasters for things like your fiftieth coaster, or your hundredth coaster (or any other milestone numbers), or do you go for the kiddie coasters to make it more amusing? Or do you just not care?

Also, what are your milestone coasters?

For me, I don't really care what my milestone coasters are considering I've only had one, which was my fiftieth, and even that's not a big deal. When I get to one hundred I'm gonna make it a worthwhile coaster though. In case you're wondering, my fiftieth was Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Great Adventure.

SOo, what about you guys?
Behemoth 15 backlot stunt coaster 10 dragon fire 1
 
Two years for this one! :(

1. Dragon - Legoland (2001)
25. Incredible Hulk - Universal Studios Islands of Adventure (2006)
50. Stealth - Thorpe Park (2008)
100. Racer - Kings Island (2010)
200. Renegade - Valleyfair! (2012)
300. Gold Striker - California's Great America (2013)
400. Intimidator 305 - Kings Dominion (2016)
500. Alpina Blitz - Nigloland (2017)
600. Goliath - Walibi Holland (2018)
700. Zadra - Energylandia (2021)
800. Huracan - Belantis (2023)

tQ86iTJ.jpeg
 
Two years for this one! :(

1. Dragon - Legoland (2001)
25. Incredible Hulk - Universal Studios Islands of Adventure (2006)
50. Stealth - Thorpe Park (2008)
100. Racer - Kings Island (2010)
200. Renegade - Valleyfair! (2012)
300. Gold Striker - California's Great America (2013)
400. Intimidator 305 - Kings Dominion (2016)
500. Alpina Blitz - Nigloland (2017)
600. Goliath - Walibi Holland (2018)
700. Zadra - Energylandia (2021)
800. Huracan - Belantis (2023)

tQ86iTJ.jpeg
Congratulations @Hixee!
 
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