‘Why Do I Do This Stupid Hobby?’ The Ups and Downs of Riding Every Roller Coaster
Rick Mathews’s big vacation this year was a 23-day jaunt across Europe and North Africa, during which he rode 131 roller coasters. “By the time I got home, I was like, why do I do this stupid hobby?" says Mathews, who is 36 and lives in Manassas, Va. That weariness quickly faded and he’s already talking about a return trip, because Megafobia—a wooden roller coaster in Wales—was closed during his visit.
It is one of just four wooden coasters in the world he hasn’t ridden. Mathews, a professional event strategist, is among a cadre of “coaster counters," enthusiasts obsessed with riding as many roller coasters as they can. The pastime can be a real scream but also has its lows.
There is the struggle to keep up with the breakneck pace of coaster openings in places with rapidly growing middle classes, such as rural China. More coasters are on the way, too, as companies including Disney pour billions into expanding theme parks. Motion sickness, of course, can come with the territory.
And on top of that, not everyone in the coaster-counter community agrees on which rides actually count, sparking squabbles. Devotees will even brave kiddie coasters to pad their tallies. George Greenway, a 63-year-old retired automotive engineer, says he had to convince a park owner in Uzbekistan to let him go on a children’s ride that looked like a caterpillar and traveled through an apple-shaped sculpture.
Greenway had to duck to get through the apple. “This hobby gets really nuts," says Greenway, who ranks No. 1 on Coaster-Count.com, a site widely used by aficionados to track their progress.
(Coaster-Count also conducts votes on the world’s best steel and wooden roller coasters. Steel Vengeance at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, has ranked No. 1
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