There are plenty of rides in the UK offering new and exciting ways to thrill you. The smiler can send you upside down 14 times, Stealth can launch you to 80mph in 1.8 seconds and Odyssey can take you to heights no inverted coaster in the UK gets close to. However sometimes you have to look to the past for something new to thrill you.
Step in Wicker Man. At the time of writing, this is Alton Towers newest attraction. A wooden rollercoaster manufactured by Great Coasters International, themed to a cult worshipping a Wicker Man and sending you as sacrifices to feed the flames!
It stands at 22m (72.2ft) tall, has 795m (2608ft) of track and reaches speeds of 43 mph (70.2km/h) and replaced the much loved Flume attraction. It is marketed as the first wooden rollercoaster to incorporate fire into its theming and the first wooden rollercoaster in the UK in 20 years. The last being Megafobia at Oakwood.
Now I love Wicker Man. I like the theme, I love the ride experience and I particularly enjoy the scent pods they use in the preshow, but there are some much older woodies in the UK that can give the new comer a run for its money! So how does the newest major woodie stack up against its older compadres?
The first I’d like to compare it to is Roller Coaster at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach. This is one of 2 scenic railways in the country (the other is at Dreamland Margate) and despite it being over 70 years older than Wicker Man, it still manages to top it’s top speed, reaching 45 miles an hour! Though the ride isn’t quite as thrilling as Wicker Mans’, Roller Coaster is still a great ride and comes in just behind Wicker Man’s biggest competitor, Megafobia.
Megafobia is a Custom Coasters wooden coaster located at Oakwood and is very well received as woodies go. This is the UKs fastest woodie, reaching 48mph (77km/h), reaches heights of 85ft and is 2956ft long. So Megafobia edges out Wicker Man in all categories, though it has no theming at all. When I first started writing this blog in mid 2022, I’d have said that Megafobia was the top woodie in the UK, but Wicker Man is bedding in and feels like it’s getting better and better with every passing season. There is little to split these two in my eyes, but Megafobia does give the more uncomfortable ride, not too harsh at all, but because of that small factor, and the theme difference, I’ve put Wicker Man above Megafobia. Atleast for now!
The next contenders for best UK woodie (that I’ve ridden) are all at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Nickelodeon Streak, Grand National, Blue Flier and Big Dipper. Blue Flyer is a good little kids ride but not quite in the big leagues and I’d say the same is true for Nickelodeon Streak too. Though Nick Streak has a great layout with loads of hills, I feel it takes them a little too slowly and doesn’t give as much airtime as the layout might suggest! It does slightly edge out the next competitor though.
Next up is Big Dipper. Turning 100 years old this year, this is a classic wooden rollercoaster built by William Strickler. It cost £25,000 in 1922, which would be over £1.9 million today, not bad when compared to Wicker Man’s £16 million!
The ride itself has age related roughness to it, though certainly not the hardest ride at Pleasure Beach. It will throw you into unbanked corners and drop you into the dips with a lot of force. The same can be said of Grand National which is arguably the most hardcore of the UK wooden coasters. If Big Dipper throws you into corners and dips, then Grand National launches you into them. It’s certainly not for the faint hearted and it can feel very intimidating, especially if you’ve ridden Wicker Man first!
I feel that Grand National gives the truest wooden rollercoaster experience as it feels raw and untamed, it’s noisy and rough and good fun to boot. Tracy will tell you it’s horrible, which is somewhat understandable as the ride can assault you as much as it thrills! I do enjoy Grand National, but if Wicker Man is a nice and velvety smooth wooden coaster, then Grand National is a slap in the face followed by a stiff drink. Brutal and yet fun.
There are a few other wooden roller coasters in the UK that I’ve yet to ride, such as Scenic Railway at Dreamland Margate and Antelope at Gullivers Warrington. There’s also Tyrolean Tubtwist at Joyland but I don’t think Tubtwist is of the same type as all the other woodies here. It does have wooden side panelling along the sides of the layout that are needed to help the cars spin and though it is classed as a wooden coaster, but that’s all there is, it hasn’t got a wooden structure or anything else, where all the others I’ve mentioned have.
Antelope looks like great fun and has a decent layout so I’d expect that to rank quite well but since I’ve not ridden it, I can’t rate it unfortunately!
So to summarise, here is the list of how I currently rank all the UK wooden coasters!
- Wicker Man
- Megafobia
- Roller Coaster
- Grand National
- Nickelodeon Streak
- Big Dipper
- Blue Flyer
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