What CoasterVault is
CoasterVault is an independent reference site for roller coaster enthusiasts and casual park visitors. We aggregate structured data on the roller coasters operating at major United States theme parks — manufacturer, model platform, opening year, height, drop, length, top speed and inversions — and pair it with longer-form context: rankings, manufacturer field guides, trip planning frameworks and beginner-friendly explanations of how the spec sheet actually maps to the ride experience.
The goal is to make it easier to plan a park day before you book one. Every coaster page links through to the park, the state, the manufacturer and to comparable rides elsewhere in the database. The same data powers the rankings, which update automatically whenever a new coaster opens.
Where the data comes from
Our seed pulls from the public Wikipedia category tree for roller coasters in the United States, parsing the structured infobox on each article to extract manufacturer, year opened, height, speed, length, drop and inversion count. Records that lack a confirmable park or state are dropped. The full ingest script is publicly visible in the repository if you want to inspect or reproduce it.
We do not currently scrape behind paywalls, query proprietary databases or claim affiliation with rcdb.com. If a coaster you ride frequently is missing from the database, the most likely cause is that its Wikipedia article either does not exist or does not include the full infobox. Open an issue and we'll add it manually.
Who runs it
CoasterVault is built and maintained by an independent team of fans and writers who spend more park days a year than they probably should. The site is funded by display advertising and is not affiliated with any park, manufacturer or industry trade group. Park branding, ride names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Editorial standards
We try to keep editorial guidance honest and useful. Rankings are generated mechanically from structured data, so there is no editorial preference behind their order. Long-form guides reflect our own take on how to plan a park day — they are opinions, not industry consensus, and they should be read alongside other sources rather than as definitive verdicts.