Roller Coasters, Counts, and Credits, Oh My

So shamazipan asked me a wonderful question on Facebook, about what does credit whoring, credits, and what not mean when it comes to roller coasters.

I'm going to do my best and try to explain everything in one little nifty post.

So first off, I love roller coasters always have and always will. Being the dork that I am I had always written down, or took pictures of the coasters that I've been on but I never really thought too much of it until I went on Theme Park Reviews Northeast trip last year. 

Right before the trip, I realized I had been on 98 different coasters, and while on that trip I was going to finally get into the triple digits. This excited me. In the coaster community we term each new coaster we ride as a credit, as in we credit ourselves for riding it. 

So what counts and doesn't count as a credit. This is up to the individual. There are websites out there like coastercounter.com, coaster-count.com and a couple others that allow you to track online what roller coasters you have been on. Me? I use both of those websites plus a website called rcdb.com (Roller Coaster Data base, pretty much an encyclopedia of every coaster in the world.) I currently have a word document that lists what order I've ridden the coasters in (so if I get to a milestone number I can print a sign up and be all dorky), what park the coaster is located at. (I'm in the process of making a spreadsheet to include where the park is located and when the ride opened, because I'm starting to ride some older coasters out there). 

What it means to credit whore: Simply put it's trying to get your way onto a kiddie coaster, either by bribing, sweet talking, or telling them in their guides that there are no height requirements. So when we are all talking about being whores on facebook, it usually means we've tried and sometimes succeeded in getting a kiddie coaster as a credit.

Also whoring it up means going to a bunch of parks and getting all the credits in a day or even a couple hours. For example yesterday I was with my fellow coaster nerd Derek, and we just started out the day by going to this tiny little ghetto-y park way in North Jersey called Keansburg. We finished there in about 20 minutes, but had to use the rest of the tickets we bought so we did a couple other rides, but still was out of the park in under an hour because that's when our meter ran out.  We decided to check on the traffic into Brooklyn, cause Derek needed the 4 new credits at Coney Island. Traffic didn't look so bad so we made our way to Coney Island.  So that can be described as whoring it up, because we were one place that was close to another place and said what the heck lets go to the other one as well cause we can. 

Also whoring it up can mean paying money to get into a park for one ride, ie Victorian Gardens in Central Park NYC. The park is open from Memorial Day to Labor Day because it's on Wollman Ice Skating Rink. Now for Derek, it was only slightly whoring it up and funny that he paid to get in to ride the mini mouse coaster, but it was really whoring it up for me, because I got this credit earlier this year when I went to BEA. So I paid to get into the park and paid for ride tickets to ride the ride I already rode. But it was much better riding with friends than being forced to sit with some random 5 year old. 

For the record I'm currently at 237 new roller coasters. (Something i wish I had done, was keep track of how many times I had been on certain rides, so I could know how many times I've ridden a particular ride.)

But that's the down and dirty on Credits, Credit Whoring, and other random coaster geeky talk.  Oh yeah, riding roller coasters is a freaking expensive hobby. But totally worth every penny. 

Any more questions, just ask, I'll try to answer. :)