Roller Coasters

KIEPERT: For me, I mean, it starts in the station. You have a seat in the car, you let the lap bar down. When that lap bar is locked down, I feel like Superman, you know? Wow, those seagulls are way down there and I am way up here. There’s something wrong here.” My heart just starts beating a little bit. And then the next thing you know, there’s speed like you’ve never felt before. You’re floating over a big hill and you just feel like, “Wow, I’m like that bird that I just saw. I’m flying.” After some ups and downs and being on your side, you just kind of, “Tschhh”, come into the station. Just hear people clapping and laughing. Hair is, like, straight up. You look ridiculous. A successful ride is one where you get off and you’re like, “I need to do that again!”

That’s Korey Kiepert. He’s one of many people, young and old, who enjoy riding rollercoasters every year. And he’s not just an enthusiast. He designs them for a living.

KIEPERT: I am an engineer and partner at The Gravity Group, a wooden roller coaster company.

A new roller coaster often sets a theme park back tens of millions of dollars. It involves the labor of designers, accountants, construction crews, and engineers like Kiepert. And after it’s built, it requires costly ongoing maintenance and safety checks. But the right coaster in the right place can make back its cost many times over.

SPEIGEL: In our industry, coaster is king. If you want to drive foot traffic to your park, you’re going to put in a roller coaster.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The Economics of Everyday Things. I’m Zachary Crockett. Today: roller coasters.

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Growing up in Detroit, Kory Kiepert was curious about everything mechanical.

KIEPERT: When I was young, if there was a can opener in the house, I would get a screwdriver and start taking it apart. My mother did not enjoy that.

He also loved roller coasters. So much so, that he once built a miniature theme park out of cereal boxes in his brother’s closet. As Kiepert grew older, he joined the American Coaster Enthusiasts. It’s an organization of more than 6,500 people who visit amusement parks all over the world.

One day, he had an epiphany.

KIEPERT: I remember reading an article in Smithsonian that talked about roller coaster designers. And then everything just kind of clicked where it’s like, “Wow, I really wanna do that!” And if someone has to do it, why can’t it be me?

Kiepert got a masters degree in mechanical engineering and, in 2002, co-founded his own roller coaster design firm, The Gravity Group. Over the past two decades, he’s built 30 new roller coasters. More than 95 percent of today’s new coasters are built with steel. But all of Kiepert’s creations are made the old-fashioned way, from wood.

KIEPERT: I think that there’s just something magical about wood in the sense that it sort of crosses all generations. Grandparents can look at a wooden roller coaster and remember yesteryear. You have rides that are over 100 years old, that people still wanna ride — they’re still relevant today.

For much of history, wood roller coasters were the only option on the market.

The earliest coasters in America, built in the 1880s, were designed to mimic the transport tracks at coal mines. They were powered by gravity — and they carried riders over gentle slopes at about the speed of a leisurely bicycle ride. Throughout the 20th century, advancements were made in safety mechanisms and track design that allowed for faster speeds and more airtime — that floating sensation you get at the very top of a big hill, right when you’re descending. But the biggest shift came in 1959, when Disneyland unveiled the Matterhorn, the first coaster with a tubular steel track. Steel eventually opened the door for more twists and turns — you could be flipped upside down and spun around in ways that almost made you feel weightless. And the introduction of electrical systems like linear induction motors, allowed for smoother and more powerful acceleration.

Today’s coasters come in all kinds of configurations. They can reach speeds of up to 149 miles an hour.

KIEPERT: Can I be over the track? Can I be under the track? Can I be in a flying position? Can I be sitting, like I’m on a motorbike? Basically, we are trying to safely come up with different ways to restrain a body down a path at an exceedingly high speed. You want to do something that’s completely safe, but it doesn’t really seem like it’s all that safe. I mean, it’s to the point where, you know, what is the limit?

Worldwide, there are now nearly 6,000 roller coasters in operation. They range from small kiddie coasters that look like caterpillars to stratocoasters that are more than 400 feet tall. In a typical year, theme parks order somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 to 200 new coasters. And there are a handful of design and engineering firms around the world that fill the demand.

KIEPERT: In terms of wooden roller coasters, there are probably like three or four companies worldwide that do that. In terms of steel roller coasters, you probably have somewhere in the 10 companies or less.

A roller coaster is a complex piece of machinery, made up of many parts.

There’s the physical infrastructure — the track itself, the foundation that holds it up, and the train cars that passengers ride in. But there’s also the rig that powers and programs the ride — the control system, the electrical grid, and the motors. Roller coaster manufacturers are often responsible for designing, manufacturing, and installing these parts. And it can be a long process.

KIEPERT: 9-12 months is probably a good comfortable range for a nice little family coaster.

When a theme park wants to build a new roller coaster, it typically puts out a request for proposal, soliciting bids from design firms. Other times, the park operators might know exactly who they want to work with. If they want a classic wooden roller coaster, they might call up The Gravity Group.

KIEPERT: My favorite experience is when we’re called to visit a park and just kind of walk around and dream with the owner or the management. And you learn about what kind of clientele they want, how thrilling of an experience they want. And then based on that, we put together a couple of ride concepts and see where it goes.

In the old days, designers would mock up roller coaster blueprints on paper. The engineer Ron Toomer, who designed more than 90 roller coasters in his lifetime, used coat hangers to build models of his tracks. Today, the work is typically done with computer software. The Gravity Group has its own suite of programs — including one that’s kind of like a more advanced version of the video game Roller Coaster Tycoon.

KIEPERT: A lot of roller coaster design is just basic physics. You’ve got your potential energy, kinetic energy. And you’ve got our good friend gravity. There’s this other equation, centripetal acceleration — v squared over r — and how you manipulate that has a lot to do with, when you’re going through your curves, like how you’re approaching banking.

Most amusement park rides follow a set of international safety standards that regulate things like restraint systems, clearance heights, and acceleration speeds. To adhere to these standards, designers often have to implement restrictions for riders.

KIEPERT: It’s a big challenge to make sure that people of all different body shapes and styles can safely fit in a vehicle. You have to say, “You have to be this height,” or, “If you’re above this size, maybe you’re not able to safely ride.” We’re not trying to be mean — we know that if you’re within these bounds, it’s completely safe.

Another thing designers always keep a close eye on is G-force — the amount of acceleration your body is feeling at any given point in the ride.

KIEPERT: For a wooden roller coaster, the highest G-force is in the range of like three — three and a half G’s typically on a wooden coaster. And that’s like when you’re going down and you’re at the bottom of that valley, you’re pushed into your seat so much that it feels like you’re three and a half times your body weight. There are some steel looping roller coasters where like, for an instant, you feel like you are starting to black out. And there you might be in the four or five G’s for some duration.

Once a design is simulated and approved by the park, The Gravity Group builds the track. Until fairly recently, this part of the process was done in the park.

KIEPERT: A few years ago, we did it the traditional way. And that would be, you lay the board down, you might be a hundred feet in the air. You have some jigs and you have a circular saw and you cut that shape by hand. 

These days, they build it piece by piece in a giant warehouse near Cincinnati, Ohio.

KIEPERT: We have some really high level math where we take what the shape of that track would be curved and twisted, and we flatten it and we’re able to cut out that flat pattern shape that we then ship off to the parks. It’s like sending a Lego set, where there are all these different pieces. And then, we have drawings on how to put it all together.

The fabricated track, foundation beams, train cars, and control system are assembled by a specialized field crew, often overseen by Kiepert. The park is generally responsible for handling permits, site prep, electric transformers, queue lines, and any customized theming — say, a giant fiberglass mountain, or an animatronic dinosaur. By the time all of this work is done, the total bill is often well into the millions. And as roller coasters have soared to new heights, so too have their price tags.

KIEPERT: If I go back to like 1927 — the Racer at Kennywood. I think that was like $75,000 for a big substantial roller coaster. And then if you go to 1989, the published rate for the Magnum XL 200, the first hypercoaster, was like $8 million. And then Millennium Force, a gigacoaster, that was an estimated $25 million in the year 2000.

These days, it’s not unheard of for a park to budget upwards of $50 million dollars for a top-of-the-line steel coaster. Falcon’s Flight — a record-breaking, 639-foot-tall coaster slated to open in Saudi Arabia later this year — will purportedly cost well into the nine figures.

So, how does a theme park justify spending all of this money on a single attraction? And how does it make sure that the investment will be as thrilling as the ride itself?

SPEIGEL: To tell you, “Here’s the formula: if you put in a $10 million coaster, you’re going to receive this kind of R.O.I., versus a 20 million, you’re gonna get this kind of R.O.I.” — it doesn’t work like that. It never has. And I’ve been asked that question for 50 years.

That’s coming up.

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When a theme park is trying to decide if a multi-million dollar roller coaster is worth investing in, they often turn to someone like Dennis Speigel.

SPEIGEL: I’m owner, founder of International Theme Park Services and we’re a consultancy to the global theme park industry.

Speigel is brought in to assess the financial viability of new rides. Over his 42 year career, he’s been involved in more than 500 theme park projects in 55 countries.

SPEIGEL: I’ve actually flown 12 million miles. Which is, somebody told me to the moon and back 20-some times. And all of that was primarily for building and planning theme parks.

Spiegel works with two kinds of clients. There are destination parks, like Disney and Universal Studios, which people travel to from all over the world. But far more common is the regional theme park. A park in Kansas City, Missouri, or Arlington, Texas, doesn’t get many international tourists. To attract a steady stream of visitors, it has to spend lots of money on exciting rides. And nothing brings people to the park like a roller coaster.

SPEIGEL: It is the single most popular ride in a theme park. I look at it as a generator, if you will.

Until they merged last year, the two largest theme park chains in America, Six Flags and Cedar Fair, were in a battle to attract visitors.

Between them, they built more than 250 roller coasters, across 27 amusement parks.

SPEIGEL: It was a armament war — who had the longest, highest, fastest, and the most coasters.

Speigel says that flashier coasters usually bring more attention to a park, and can pull in thrill-seekers from all over the country.

SPEIGEL: The type of coaster that’s being selected is going to be of paramount importance. We’re looking at the length of the roller coaster. We’re looking at the height of the roller coaster. We’re looking at the speed of the roller coaster. We’re looking at how many inversions the rollercoaster might have. And then we’re looking at what we believe will give us that greatest return.

But measuring the return on a $25 million dollar coaster isn’t straightforward. Most theme parks have two major sources of revenue: the general admission tickets at the front gate, and the money that a guest spends inside the park.

SPEIGEL: The average length of stay of a guest is about seven to eight hours. So you know you’re going to get at least two meals out of them and they’re gonna buy some drinks and some popcorn and some other snacks.

Six Flags knows that, between a ticket and food, the average guest will spend around $100 bucks during a day at the park. But it’s hard to attribute that spending to a specific ride. Speigel says the success of a new roller coaster is often measured indirectly, through the bump in visitors a park sees after it’s installed.

SPEIGEL: Let’s say I’ve put in a $25 million roller coaster. I’m hoping, as the manager, to see somewhere in the neighborhood of a five to seven percent increase in attendance.

Let’s say, hypothetically, a park has 3 million visitors in a typical year.

It builds a hot new roller coaster that increases attendance by 5 percent— that’s around 150,000 more guests. If those guests spend an average of $100 each, that’s $15 million dollars in additional revenue in the first year alone. And, in an ideal situation, that roller coaster can generate buzz much longer.

SPEIGEL: We’re looking at what I call the champagne effect of the bubbles, or the glide factor, which carries out two, three years. So if I put the ride in in 2025, I wanna make sure that I’ve got a ride that’s gonna bring the people continuously in ‘26, ‘27, hopefully ‘28 and beyond. If we’ve done our job correctly and the people come, we can tell if it’s gonna be a single, a double, a triple, or a home run pretty early in the game.

Of course, after a park recoups its $25 million dollars, that new roller coaster isn’t pure profit.

SPEIGEL: A coaster is inspected every day, first thing in the morning. If it’s green-tagged, it’s ready to go. If it’s red-tagged that means we’re holding off and still have some things to look at until everything is checked out. We look at the entire length of the tracks. And that takes money. Depending on the type of ride, the size of the ride, annually it could be well into the six figures.

A well-maintained roller coaster can deliver meaningful revenue over the long run. Take, for instance, the Cyclone, in New York’s Coney Island. It was built in 1927 for around $150,000 — and today, thousands of people a year pay $10 for a single ride.

SPEIGEL: You talk about a long-term bang for your buck. It’s one of the most rickety, ratchety coasters that I’ve ever been on in my life. And every time I go up to that area, I ride it again and I’m sitting there screaming like everybody else.

But not every coaster sticks around for a century. Parks have a limited amount of real estate and a single coaster can occupy upwards of 10 acres. Operators are always assessing the value they’re getting out of their square footage. And if a roller coaster ceases to draw big lines, it’ll be demolished to make room for a new one.

SPEIGEL: When we believe that it has served its purpose and it’s not as popular as it once was, you’ll see us take a ride out. 

Sometimes, an old roller coaster is scrapped for parts.

Other times, it’s dismantled with cranes, piece by piece, and relocated to a different park under new branding. Take, for instance, the tale of the steel coaster, Zonga. Originally built in 1986 in Germany, it was moved to Stockholm, then Houston, then to a Six Flags park in the Bay Area, then to Mexico before shutting down for good in 2014.

For the buyer, a used roller coaster like this can be had at an 80 percent discount. A coaster that goes for $5 million new might sell for as little as $200,000, plus $40,000 in moving expenses. Speigel says that many of the ultra-expensive roller coasters being built today are possibly less at risk of being usurped by a bigger, better creation. Because, in his estimation, the industry is now at a thrill-seeking saturation point.

SPEIGEL: Whatever the body can take, we have the technological advancements now to go there. I cannot tell you who is doing this — it’s confidential, I’m under an NDA — but in the very near future the general public are going to be experiencing a thousand foot high roller coaster. Think about that, a thousand feet high.

If that happens, it’ll more than double the current record. But engineers like Kory Kiepert say it’s unlikely that’ll scare the crowds away.

KIEPERT: People like to be scared. People like to do something thrilling. They like the suspense. If you have a tunnel, and it’s dark, and suddenly there’s a drop, it gets them every time.

Sometimes, at the end of a grueling, 12-month project, Kiepert will venture into the park — and watch the first crowds step onto his new roller coaster. He’ll stand near the station and watch the wind-whipped riders disembark the trains.

KIEPERT: You just kind of listen to their comments as they get off the ride. Like, “Oh, can you believe it did that? That was so fun, I’m going to ride that again.” To have that joy — to see that smile on their face — that’s what gives me the energy to work on the next one.

For The Economics of Everyday Things, I’m Zachary Crockett.

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This episode was produced by me and Sarah Lilley, and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz-Rabson. And shoutout to our listeners who suggested this topic: Aidan Lawler, Tim Rapczynski, and Richard Strausz. I have so many good memories of riding wooden roller coasters with my grandparents, so thanks for taking me back. If you’ve got an idea for an episode, feel free to email us at everydaythings@freakonomics.com.

KIEPERT: My wife and I got married on Ghost Rider at Knott’s Berry Farm. They married us in the station and then when they said you may kiss the bride, they pressed go. When I was in college, it seemed like a good idea. Would I do it today? Probably not.