Talk:Dragon Mountain

Height Record

75.4.173.112, I respect your opinnion that Dragon Mountain is not 186 feet tall, but I strongly disagree. Given that Wikiproject Roller coasters uses The Roller Coaster Database as its generally most reliable reference (barring other information directly from the park). Rcdb has the coaster at 186 feet and I feel that this is the value we should use. Any coaster that is not on level ground would have to have its height recalculated if we decided that coaster height did not count the difference between the highest and lowest points. I am starting a discussion on the Wikiproject talk page the so we can come to consensus regarding terrain coaster (you are correct btw about 1983, a typo on my part). Best, Irongargoyle 04:42, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Looking at this over ten years later, yes RCDB and Ultimate Rollercoaster list the height as 186 feet tall but it clearly isn't, as that would make it as tall as Great American Scream Machine which has a huge support structure and was considered the tallest and fastest when it opened. I may email Duane Marden on this one, as I think it may be an oversight. Some RCDB entries have a "change in elevation" row as well, which I'm sure wasn't there ten years ago.

I'm afraid I can't find a source for this, but if you look at photographs of this roller coaster, POV videos and Google Maps it doesn't appear to leave the ground except for the inversions which are defiantly not 186 feet tall. NemesisAT (talk) 10:53, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

NemesisAT: I'm not sure what the big deal is. The distance the train travels up the lift hill on Dragon Mountain is what's being measured here. Despite the fact that the support structure doesn't leave the ground by much throughout the ride doesn't mean that the height of this coaster is inaccurate. It's how all coasters are measured, with the only difference being that the terrain in this case is a part of the support structure. I understand in your mind this makes it less impressive, but the industry definition for height qualifies its claim of 186 feet. Furthermore, we can share opinions all day long, but at the end of the day all that matters is what reliable sources tell us.

It is difficult to find anything published in the 80s on Dragon Mountain, but it's a lot easier to find sources for Great American Scream Machine. The latter was marketed as the tallest and fastest looping roller coaster. Here are some sources about GASM from the time period:

• The Washington Post – shows how it was marketed
• The New York Times – only mentions it's seven loops, indicating that this coaster was quickly overshadowed by Magnum XL-200.
• Theme Park Tourist – from 2010 that reaffirms how this ride was marketed in 1989.

So looking at sources like these, we can reasonably say that Dragon Mountain obviously didn't have the reputation at the time as being the tallest. After all, it was located in a rather obscure location in Canada and probably wasn't well-marketed (at least in the US). It would be nice if someone would do the painstaking research of cataloging all the coaster records that were set/broken over the years beginning in the 1970s, and publish a book on their findings. It would put a lot of debates like this quickly to rest. --GoneIn60 (talk) 10:50, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm honestly not that fussed either way, clearly a choice has been made on how Wikipedia should recognise the height so it's not a problem. At first I wondered if it was a mistake, since RCDB usually lists "height" as the structural height (one example of this is the Big One at Blackpool).

I've been looking into all these records and while I won't be publishing a book I hope to finish a list of records throughout the years backed up by sources. I'm busy studying for uni exams just now though so it will take a while. NemesisAT (talk) 16:48, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Actually, I wouldn't call it a choice. I mean, the goal is to include information from reliable sources only. For records and statistics, we tend to lean heavier on RCDB than we do amusement park websites and press releases. This is because RCDB takes it a step further and verifies the information. Parks will often say whatever best suits their marketing campaign, either on their website or through press releases, and even some newspaper articles simply regurgitate that information. An encyclopedia should avoid that bias whenever possible by citing secondary sources instead. RCDB is an example of one that can often help settle disagreements among sources (though not always). When the coaster is a major installation and receives widespread coverage, there will be plenty of solid sources to choose from that can either complement or replace RCDB.

Final thoughts about height...

I get why you think of height in terms of "structural" height. Just keep this in mind. There are quite a few coasters that use hilly terrain to their advantage. The Beast at Kings Island is a great example. The height of the tallest lift hill is only 110 ft (measured from the base of the lift hill to its peak like Dragon Mountain) but that first drop is 135 ft, since it dips into a small ravine. For enthusiasts back in the late 70s, that drop height mattered more than the structural height (though both were impressive in 1979). But if you think about it in the same terms you've described above, The Beast actually cheats. It uses the terrain to obtain the 135 ft drop, and then again on the second drop of 141 ft – both of which would be much smaller if the coaster was built on flat terrain. I know The Beast isn't the best comparison for Dragon Mountain, but it is similar. People want to know how high the train climbs up the lift hill and how long the biggest drops are. How those numbers are attained matter less than the numbers themselves. If I'm standing at the base of Dragon Mountain's first hill and looking up the peak where the train is chain-lifted to, it would feel like 186 ft off the ground, regardless if there's a massive wood structure. Sometimes it's just simpler to think of height as height and not under some special enthusiast coaster definition.

With that said, there are a ton of roller coaster articles with unsourced or incorrect information. If you ever get the time to contribute here at Wikipedia, we could always use the extra help cleaning up. --GoneIn60 (talk) 20:33, 25 April 2018 (UTC)