TG and Raptor are neck and neck, with TG edging out #1 on my invert rankings - and #2 on my overall steel behind Kumba. Raptor is #3 overall.
Ones I'd LIKE to get a brakeless run on are Montu and Alpengeist. Montu was very bleh my first rides in 2001, but was VERY good last year. Still, the mid-course really sapped a lot from the finish. TG still to me has the better Batwing, and I like how TG and Raptor are spread out over midways rather than out in a field like Montu.
Alpengeist is pretty much last on my invert list - I've had some decent rides on it, but the transition to the midcourse on that one seems FAR worse to me than Raptor's, it's had a tendency to be rough on many of my rides, and the ending is just extremely weak due to the near-stop on the midcourse brake. And - the elements are too big due to the higher speeds.
I liked the Dragons a lot, and put them about even with Montu - all top-10 rides just a bit behind Raptor and TG. I'm in the minority in liking Ice a bit better than Fire, but not by much.
Batman is one I like quite a bit, but rate behind everything other than Alpie due to the frenetic pace. The other rides have a nice flow between elements and good pacing - with TG really winning big here for me. Batman seems to be slam -direction change - slam direction change - repeat. Good for a change, but not what I like best - well not on coasters anyway
I gave up on trying to count rides, but just based on guesstimates I'm sure I've ridden Top Gun over 1000 times. This certainly gives it an advantage over the other rides - I've ridden it a multitude of different conditions. TG seems a bit more "woodie-like" than most steel coasters I've ridden, in that it seems to vary quite a bit with time of day or changing weather conditions. I've gotten my share of "bleh" rides where I certainly wouldn't rate it my #2 steel. I've gotten many more good-to-excellent rides. Several times a year I get some REALLY good rides that remind me why this is one of my favorites. And at least a handful of times a year - often at Scarowinds - I get some OH MY GOD rides that always push it past every other invert I've ridden.
Still, even Alpie that I slam on a bit here is very high up in my overall rankings - B&M inverts are by far my favorite type of steel coaster.
KenB
But i don't change where i am, i just like to know where i'll be (and it oddly enough turns out that i ride yellow about 2/3 of the time). What you were talking about with other coasters having a difference in trains, i think another reason may be that on Top Gun, you can get 2 rides in 10-15min if not waiting for the front on a weekday, so you have a very short timeframe to remember the experiences by for comparison, as opposed to other parks which have 45 min wait or something, and as you said, it's hard to identify trains. Plus going to Carowinds regularly, we get so many re-rides (100s or 1000s of them, rather than just a handfull or two of rides at parks we visit for vacation). It is kind of interesting to think about though. I've heard somewhere before that one of the trains we got was a used train? Is that true? If so, that might explain a little.
