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    [OC] The US built 498 roller coasters. Only 158 are still running. I mapped closure rates across 30+ countries.
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    [OC] The US built 498 roller coasters. Only 158 are still running. I mapped closure rates across 30+ countries.

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    18 Comments

    3. EditsReddit on

      The UK stat is depressing! Any clue as to why it’s so high? Why is there a 26% leap in the centre?

    5. dancingbanana123 on

      What counts as “permanently closed”? When I worked at Six Flags, they would often close one ride, change it a little bit, and then open it up again as a new ride.

    6. frankyseven on

      Canada’s Wonderland has 18 roller coasters, so there are only five other roller coasters in the rest of the country?

    7. HeatGlobe on

      This is a super clean layout. The contrast between the US/UK and countries like Germany is fascinating.

      I’m currently building a 3D global data visualization side project, and I’m always on the lookout for interesting country-level datasets. Since you used RCDB, did you have to do much manual data cleaning to track if a coaster was truly “permanently closed” vs just relocated to another park?

    9. DefendTheStar88x on

      This made me think. Loved amusement parks when I was young. I havent been on a roller-coaster in probably 20 years. I need to change that this summer.

    10. arawnsd on

      Some were built a 100’years ago! You need to factor in age somehow. Big difference between a coaster that makes it 50 years and one that makes it 5.

    11. vistopher on

      This is such a weird metric to see by itself and feels completely out of context. “Only 158 are still running” – nothing is meant to last forever. Houses, cars, roller coasters, buildings, etc. I think a much more informative graph would show building and closure rates of roller coasters over time.

    13. ShutterBun on

      Opportunity missed to turn a chart about roller coasters into something more aesthetic than a basic line graph.

    14. Siilenceveil on

      Only 158 out of 498 still running is a shockingly low survival rate. The US seems to tear down and rebuild entertainment infrastructure at a much faster rate than other countries. I’d be curious to see if there’s a correlation between closure rates and the introduction of safety regulations because some older coasters were probably decommissioned due to updated codes rather than lack of interest. Which country has the highest survival rate for their coasters?

    16. Tumbling-Dice on

      Can you tell us how you arrived at these stats? Because the math ain’t mathing. When I search on RCDB for how many rollercoasters are operating in the US, it tells me 841.

      Looking at my own stats, I’ve ridden 174 different rollercoasters. I’ve never ridden a rollercoaster outside of the US. About 15% of the coasters I’ve ridden have since closed. I’ve also never been to some major coaster parks like Magic Mountain, Knott’s, Busch Gardens Williamsburg or Tampa, Kings Dominion, etc, so…yeah.

    17. its-been-a-decade on

      Something doesn’t add up…I can count from memory over 100 operating coasters in the US just at parks I’ve been to and I haven’t even gotten west of the Mississippi River…and my count is conservative! I’m sorry to say that I think your data is incomplete.

    18. ruibranco on

      The 68% closure rate is wild. Would love to see this broken down by decade built — I suspect the ones from the 60s-80s have a much higher closure rate than newer ones, partly due to safety standards evolving and partly because maintenance costs compound over time. Great visualization though.