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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. This is maybe not the best day to head to Coney Island to ride the Cyclone, but it is open for the season. It's 98th season and 98 rounds up to 100. We decided close enough and are making it part of our centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things, today number 84, 100 or so years of roller coasters. While the Cyclone is still chugging up the incline and plunging down the drops, this area, as some of you know, just lost what was the world's tallest coaster, Kingda Ka, at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jersey. It was imploded, reportedly, to make room for an even more spectacular coaster.

Now we're joined by some experts on this subject, two of the co-hosts of the podcast Season Pass, Robert Coker and Doug Barnes. Robert is the author of Roller

Coasters: A Thrill Seeker's Guide To The Ultimate Scream Machines. Robert and Doug, welcome to WNYC.

Robert Coker: Great. Thanks for having us.

Douglas Barnes: Hi, Brian. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Between the two of you, we've got both of these bookends of roller coasters covered. Robert, you know the Cyclone well. Doug, you rode Kingda Ka?

Douglas Barnes: Oh, yes. I've been on Kingda Ka. As well as Robert, too. Actually, Robert and I rode Kingda Ka together years ago.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we invite a few stories. Forgive me while I have a noise source in the background that I'm going to try to kill. Yes, listeners, we want to hear your stories of riding the Cyclone and the late lamented Kingda Ka. Maybe Kingda Ka, especially. I don't know if you can top this call, however, that we got way back in 2009.

2009 Caller: I had ridden on the Cyclone with a number of guys I dated. Then, as I said in my wedding vows to my husband, he was the love of my life and a number of things, the last of which was that he ridden with me twice on the Cyclone in the front car. He was the first guy to pass that test. That was it. I had to marry him.

Brian Lehrer: I had to marry him. Tell us your stories-

Douglas Barnes: That's amazing.

Brian Lehrer: -212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Any other marriages come out of a roller coaster ride? Anyone have to retrieve your dentures from the sand below the Cyclone? Ever attend a roller-coaster wedding? Maybe grandma was a roller coaster enthusiast, or you just want to tell us about your favorite roller coaster of all time, whether it's in the New York, New Jersey area or not? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Robert, can you give us a brief history of roller coasters? Their development stretches back much further in time, actually, than 100 years, right?

Robert Coker: That is correct, yes. Generally, it's considered that the first roller coaster that opened in America was the LaMarcus Thompson's "Switchback Railway", which opened in Coney Island on June 16th, 1884. Definitely stretches far back. Coney Island at that time was really the Orlando of America. It's where a lot of innovation was happening. Some of the first gated amusement parks opened in Coney, and they were spectacular. Dreamland, Luna Park, Steeplechase. Really incredible. All these independent concessioneers were trying to outdo each other. It was always bigger, taller, faster, safer, more innovations.

The Coney Island Cyclone opened in 1927 on the site of the former Switchback Railway. It just exploded across the country. More and more people began designing rides. John Miller, who was one of Thompson's chief engineers, he went on to form his own engineering company and came up with a lot of innovations like the anti rollback device on lift hills, that clinkety-clank noise you hear when you're riding up lift hills, that keeps the car from rolling backwards if the chain lift fails. Upstop wheels, which are the wheels that run underneath the track, which keep the car locked onto the rails, flanged wheels, all these other things that allow designers to just build taller, steeper, more aggressive curves, more serpentine motion.

It just was the first arms race in that first golden age of roller coasters. Between 1500 and 2000 roller coasters once existed across America back during the roaring '20s. Yes, unfortunately, we've lost most of them. The Cyclone is one of the few surviving classic roller coasters from that early golden age.

Brian Lehrer: Here's someone with a Cyclone story, I think. Carolyn in the East Village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Carolyn.

Carolyn: Oh, hey, Brian, and guests. Yes, I just wanted to share about how the Cyclone used to be compared to the way that it is these days. It still has a lot of the original charm. Before Luna Park took over its operation and renovated it and smoothed it out, there was a whole culture there with the guys who used to work it and this man that worked there for many, many years, and you could ride it again for $3 and just stay on it for ride after ride after ride, or maybe you wanted the last car, which some people would love, which was a really crazy, bumpy, swingy ride.

Yes, but now it's like you can't ask, or you're supposed to not wait for a certain seat. It's really hard. They squish you into the seat, whereas before you would just fly all around, which was like riding one of those mechanical bulls almost, because you could really swing around. That was part of the fun in a weird way. Now, it's like I'm not really a very big person, but even for me, it's like they're smooshing me. I haven't ridden it now in years because it's so different, but it is much smoother. They smoothed it out, and they also got rid of any fights that would break out on the platform with like, "I was here longer," because people would wait a long time for the car that they wanted, and that's all they wanted.

Brian Lehrer: Those are great stories. Carolyn, stay there for a second because we have this other caller who's going to amplify one of the things you said about riding in the last car before the renovation. Doug in Kingston, you're on WNYC. Hi, Doug.

Dave: Dave. Hey.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, Dave, I'm sorry.

Dave: Yes, the first time-- No worries. The first time I went on the Cyclone, I was in my early 30s, and I was the odd man out and got stuck in the last seat by myself. The ride was so violent that the right side of my body was black and blue, and I had a limp for three weeks.

Douglas Barnes: Wow.

Dave: Yes. That was. No one could be-

Carolyn: You could really get hurt.

Robert Coker: -allowed in the last car by themselves.

Brian Lehrer: Dave, thank you very much. Carolyn, that's why they renovated it, right?

Carolyn: I guess so. Yes, I think that there was maybe one bad accident there maybe, I don't know. There was a urban legend about someone lifting up and hitting their head or whatever. I don't know for sure that that really happened. Anyway, thanks. I'll hang up and listen on the radio.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. I want to go to Alex in Philly next, who's calling about Kingda Ka. Hey, Alex, you're on WNYC.

Alex: Hey there. I used to go to Kingda Ka, and we would get there early in the morning so we could hop right on after the ride and not have to run through the whole line again, get upwards of 11, 12, 16 times in a day, and then get home before noon. I also just remember the story now of meeting an Orthodox Jewish man who was also loving Kingda Ka. I was wondering what he would do with his kippah, and just watching him toss it to the side so he could get the ride on was like a very special moment of my life. Seeing how spiritual Kingda Ka could be for some people. This year, without it, I just-- I'm not going to get a season pass this year. It just meant so much to me, and I just can't believe it's gone.

Brian Lehrer: Alex, we have another listener who texted. "I once rode the cyclone 10 times in a row with my best friend in the front car. Peak life experience." You just talked about riding Kingda Ka 11 to 13 times in a row. What's it like once you get to the 9th, the 10th, the 11th time?

Alex: At some point, you know it's about time to stop. That might have been even why they took Kingda Ka down. It was like, "Is this bumpier? Am I now more fragile? Is the ride actually-- Does it need some more grease or something?" Around that time, you're just like, maybe it would be a nice time just to get some water and call it quit for the day.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. Doug, Kingda Ka was categorized as a strata coaster because it was so tall. It was imploded recently, but it was only 20 years old, while the Cyclone is 98. Was it because Kingda Ka was about to lose its world's tallest coaster designation?

Douglas Barnes: No, it wasn't necessarily because of that. When it opened up in 2005, it was the tallest, it was the fastest. It used a special technology that was very new at that time. It's a hydraulic launch system with a cable that attaches to the train, and it just can launch you at such high speeds at such split seconds. What happened is that as we continue on, years go on, technology gets better. A lot of these LIM, these magnet launch ones actually start reaching those speeds that the hydraulic launch was.

The hydraulic launch system itself is just not a reliable system. It breaks down a lot. There's a lot of downtime that happens with it. We've had a couple of times with a couple other coasters out there that have the hydraulic launch that the cable actually broke and exploded and hurt people. That's the part that was the most liable source for it to finally be removed. It's just because of that system, it just became chaotic and archaic at the same time.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to bring in another caller who's going to bring in another roller coaster. Tulis in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tulis.

Tulis: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. My favorite roller coaster is the Wildcat. It's in Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut. It's a wooden structure, and I haven't been there in decades, but we used to go every year. Our whole school went and took over the whole playground. My father had a pass, so we could get to ride the roller coaster as many times as we wanted, and we took full advantage of it. It was that great rickety-- With the chain that pulls you up into the thing, and it's all rickety. It was a very-- They've added to it since then, but it was just the absolute best. It was the best part of Lake Compounce. That's my memory.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Which one of you is laughing at that story?

Robert Coker: Oh, that was me. I love Lake Compounce. It's one of the-- again, one of the few surviving traditional parks from way back in that era. The Wildcat still runs, and they maintain it very well. They just put a lot of love into it in the last few years. Of course, they opened a roller coaster more recently called Boulder Dash in the late 1990s or 2000s, which is utterly spectacular. I would urge that caller, if they can make it back to Lake Compounce, try Boulder Dash. Yes, you'll see how far roller coaster design has come in the last hundred years.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another one about another further into New England roller coaster. Listener writes, "I grew up near Whalom Park in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, which opened in 1893." There's our hundred years angle. "Our high school physics classes took trips there to ride the Fly Comet wooden roller coaster and jokingly count the bolts as they flew off." "Roller coasters in the movies, in fiction," listener writes, "You have to mention the movie Annie Hall in which the main character had a childhood living in a house directly under a roller coaster." Hilarious. Either of you know that?

Robert Coker: Yes. That was actually the Thunderbolt roller coaster, which was another John Miller design. Again, the guy who was an engineer for LaMarcus Thompson. That ride stood until the '80s. I actually got to ride that once in the early '80s, and it was the most unsafe ride I ever took. It was clearly in terrible shape. The ride closed and stood until 2000 when they tore it down to build the KeySpan Park baseball stadium, which was a tragedy because it was a beautiful structure, and it become so overgrown, like nature was reclaiming it. You could still see the little home, the little shack that was underneath the ride that was the fictional home for the character from Annie Hall.

Brian Lehrer: That's Coney Island, right?

Robert Coker: Correct. Correct, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Now, back in 2009 on the show, I spoke with the longtime Cyclone manager, Gerry Menditto. He was retired, and he passed away in 2022. He told us back in '09 that he could tell when a repair was needed. This was how.

Gerry Menditto: Once the ride opens, I'm sitting in a chair, and I can feel where the ride is. If there's a screw loose and the wheels go over it, I could feel the vibration up in the front. I look around and I could see where the car is. Then we just shut down and we go back there, and if there's a loose screw, we take it out and we change it.

Brian Lehrer: One of the things that surprised us at the time, maybe you know this, Robert, was that Gerry Menditto was also famous for never having ridden the ride that he managed. He didn't like the drops, but I wonder if that's even possible, what he was describing with the newer steel coasters.

Robert Coker: That's one of the-- Oh, sorry, Doug. Go for it, Doug.

Douglas Barnes: I was just going to-- Yes, it's such a different world that we're in now with how roller coasters are constructed, and steel ones more than ever. I mean, everything is built on such exact tolerance and stuff like that. It's really an impossible thing, especially with the standards that the state holds to how coasters are built. I'm sorry, Robert. Go for it.

Robert Coker: No, no, just going to say, yes, the difference in manufacturing techniques and it's with steel roller coasters now too, they become so complex and the ride path so intense. They now have mechanical devices that they run slowly down the track that read for any loose joints or cracks or bad welds or whatever. It's become a much more technology-based system for looking at the safety of roller coasters. Yes, back in the day when wooden coasters open in the morning, the engineers would just walk the tracks and look for loose bolts and carry a hammer and knock them back in.

If you put a penny on the rail of a roller coaster and run over that, you're going to feel it. They're designed to be pretty smooth. If something's not right and somebody who knows the coaster well, they can just have a sixth sense about it. They can feel the ride and know when things are not right.

Brian Lehrer: There's a real history of roller coaster safety that's part of this hundred-year story, right?

Robert Coker: Oh, absolutely, Yes. Roller coasters wouldn't have evolved to where we are today without safety innovations and locking lap bars and brake technology, the use of block brakes. In the middle of the ride, they can put a break in so that if a train stops, they can pull any other trains on the track also can stop so there's no collisions. It's all been a very evolutionary process getting us to where today we can go well over 100 miles an hour, 10 inversions, whatever, with complete safety.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nancy.

Nancy: Hello. Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Yes-

Robert Coker: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: -hi, Nancy, you're on the air. We have you.

Nancy: Hi. Hi there. I grew up in New Jersey, and Seaside Heights was a regular place, especially in my teens and as a child. Then when Hurricane Sandy demolished the roller coaster in 2012, I believe it was called the Jet Star. It broke my heart to see it all over the newspapers in the ocean. That's my story.

Brian Lehrer: That's your story. A roller coaster in the ocean in Hurricane Sandy? Doug, did you know about that?

Douglas Barnes: I know that we lost quite a few coasters during Sandy. The one thing that's interesting to me that I'm hearing throughout these calls is that we could talk about roller coasters and their technology and their establishment and what they are as a engineering masterpiece. All I hear right now is that memories of people of past times and remembering these great times and being with people and the joy and everything. I think that's the main thing that we get from roller coasters is that it's not necessarily the ride itself. It's what you have years after that ride that really is the true story behind all these.

Brian Lehrer: One more. Joshua in Westfield, you're on WNYC. Hi, Joshua, we have about 30 seconds for you.

Joshua: Oh, hi. Yes, I have a quick story, but thanks for taking my call. I took my daughter once to Great Adventure, and it was one of those glorious rainy days where nobody else decided to go. She was young, and she was a little short. The only roller coaster we could go on, that she fit the "you have to be this tall," was El Toro. They literally let us stay on the car.

Douglas Barnes: Oh my gosh.

Joshua: She's going around and around. I'll tell you, I bought every single photo. We had the exact same screaming expressions on our face. I have the most wonderful set of photos, but the people around us are different each time. It was just such a wonderful memory.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Let's end on this--

Douglas Barnes: That's amazing.

Brian Lehrer: Do you each, you two roller coaster experts, have a favorite coaster? Robert, real quick?

Robert Coker: Oh gosh. Space Mountain at Disneyland just because of the music. It's such a beautiful experience.

Brian Lehrer: Doug?

Douglas Barnes: Yes, a quick shout out. El Toro, easily one of the greatest roller coasters ever built. I'm glad that he brought up that story. The Voyage over at Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana, is the one that I always go back to. An amazing wooden roller coaster structure. If you get a chance to go to Holiday World, do it.

Brian Lehrer: Is there a what's coming next story here? 15 seconds, Doug? Maybe because you watched Kingda Ka go.

Douglas Barnes: Yes. We do know that there is a new coaster coming to Six Flags Great Adventure. It is promised to be a record-breaker multi-launch. Supposed to be an amazing piece. I don't know if it's going to be the tallest, but it should be something pretty special.

Brian Lehrer: We leave it there. 100 Years of 100 Things, thing number 84, roller coasters. Big thanks to my guests, two of the co-hosts of the podcast Season Pass, Robert Coker and Doug Barnes. Thank you both so much. This was [unintelligible 00:20:17].

Robert Coker: Thank you so much.

Douglas Barnes: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I'll be out again next week to get my second eye cataract surgery. The effects of the first one, as I mentioned on Monday's show, maybe some of you heard it, have been so great doing the show without glasses for the first time in my life. Next comes eye number two, Brigid and Amina and Tiffany will be filling in next week. Be nice to the substitute hosts, and to all of you who observe one of the holidays, a happy Passover. By the way, a listener wrote a correction to the All of It promo, which said it's a week without wheat for Passover. I mean a week without grains. It's really a week without wheat. Accurate correction, not all grains, just the leavened ones.

Happy Passover, Happy Easter. I'll see you on the other side, presumably a week from Monday. That's the Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our daily politics podcast. Our intern this term is Henry Saringer. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio, and that was Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz at the audio controls. Have a great weekend as well as a great holiday. Stay tuned for Alison.

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