What is CoasterForce? CoasterForce is one of the largest free-to-join roller coaster and theme park enthusiast communities in the world. Coaster Force's ongoing mission is to create a one-stop source for any enthusiast, regardless of their level of enthusiasm. Coaster Force is member driven and most of it's content has been donated by members. Coaster Force is not officially associated with any theme park or company.
What does Coaster Force offer? At no cost to you we offer theme park and ride guides for as many of the major attractions as possible. More guides are added as and when we receive more information and photos. We also offer a comprehensive guide to all the technical, factual and historical information to do with the theme park industry. We have a lively interactive community that boasts discussion forums, organised meet-ups (CF-Lives) and the ability for everybody to comment on any news article or ride.
What is your demographic? Theme park and roller coaster enthusiasts! We're proud that our community is varied and welcoming. Although the largest slice of our members are late-teen males from the UK, we welcome anybody from any walk of life or lifestyle. As long as you're up for a laugh and don't take things too seriously then you'll enjoy Coaster Force. Roughly 40% of our visitors are from the UK, 30% from the USA and 30% from the rest of the world.... including 1% from Iraq! Our hit rate depends on the time of year and ranges from 80,000 to 200,000 hits a day.
Can I join and is it free? Yes, it's it's free to join Coaster Force. All you need to do is sign up and then get involved in the community by posting on the forums, attending CF-Lives or just rating the rides! Coaster Force is not a club so you will not get a membership card or any discounts at theme parks, but you'll get involved with a wonderful community and make new friends. We ask that anyone under 13 years old has parental permission before signing up.
Do you do media interviews? Yes. Coaster Force manager Ian Bell is available for comment regarding any aspect of the theme park industry. As Coaster Force is not officially associated with any theme park company, Ian is able to offer an unbiased view through the eyes of an enthusiast. Please contact Ian on ian@coasterforce.com.
What server does Coaster Force use? As of April 2007, Coaster Force is running on a high-spec dedicated server based in a data center in London, England. The heart of the server is a pair of 3Ghz Intel 64-bit Xeon Core 2 Quad processors (thats 8 processor cores making for an unbelievably powerful server and one that wouldnt even slow down the internets biggest websites!), backed up by 2GB of Ram and 2x250GB RAID hard drives. Our current bandwidth allocation is 2000GB per month. Coaster Force currently costs £150 per month in dedicated hosting costs. The site is paid for by the adverts and merchandise sales. Previously, Coaster Force was hosted for £3 per month with Freeola. They served us well but eventually shared hosting took its toll on the loading time of the site.
How does the site work? Coaster Force uses a content management system and a pair of MYSQL database's. One database handles the user information and accounts, the other deals with the ride rating system. This is to prevent the ride rating system slowing down the database that is used for browsing the site and forums. Coaster Force uses php and html pages.
Can I use an image or video from CoasterForce? You are welcome to use any image or video from Coaster Force without seeking permission providing Coaster Force is credited and linked back to. Any misuse of this is copyright theft and will be dealt with accordingly. If you have any questions please contact ian@coasterforce.com.
Where's all of your small print? Our legal stuff and privacy policy can be read here.
Can I have a date with Ian? Probably! He is desperate...and so must you be if you're considering it!
Ian, Dan - Who's the boss? If Ian is the boss of Coaster Force, then Dan surely would be the Godfather. If Ian was Luke Skywalker, Dan would surely be Yoda. Or, frivolities asside, Dan founded Coaster Force, and continues to work behind the scenes, whereas Ian deals with all the day to day running of the site.
Didn't Shockwayve run Coaster Force at one point? Before Ian came along to run the forums, they were run by Shockwayve and Haxar. One of the things older members tend to remember about Shock's reign was the time when he created a special forum for spammers, and locked them in there - with them unable to post anywhere else.
A Brief History of CoasterForce
The idea of creating a web site dedicated to all things roller coaster was the brainchild of Dave the Iguana, pictured here with his owner, Dan Farrell.
However, without opposable thumbs, Dave found it difficult to grip a computer mouse and Dan Farrell, who boasts an incredible two opposable thumbs, took over in early 2001. Dan struggled for names at first; "rollercoasterreview" was the first thought, but deep in his heart, Dan knew that Dave would have wanted something more catchy, so he randomly type in "Coasterforce" to see if it had been taken...it hadn't! www.coasterforce.com was born.
The inspiration for creating Coaster Force was born out of Dan's first unaided steps into the online coaster kingdom. The kingdom was ruled by a man named King Putz of Coasterbuzz, and he was the person to teach all. Dan found that his website was difficult for him to use, not knowing anything about the industry at all, and soon ventured elsewhere. He found a horrible yellow-on-black ThrillRide! site that he didn't even try reading, and a nice site about news called Screamscape. None of these satisfied his desire to learn. Dan then stumbled upon a site called RCDB, the Roller Coaster Data Base. This site gave him the idea to create a website that helped people learn about roller coasters. RCDB gave Dan the infromation he wanted, but finding it was difficult when he didnt know where to start. The final straw was when Jeff Putz banned Dan (then under screen name 'Iron Wolf') for asking for help with his new site Coaster Force, and posting photos from it. Dan stormed from the Kingdom of the Buzzers, seeking vengeance.
The very first Coaster Force featured a shocking amateur design. But then again Dan was 16, single and not yet wise to the world. News stories were exaggerated, pictures were taken without permission, spelling was at best mediocre, and photos of a young and attractive Dan were to be found on every page. Dave was not happy with this, and so Dan conveniently 'lost' Dave whilst caravaning in Conway, North Wales.
Coasterforce spent the next few years making a good and bad name for itself. If it wasn't stealing photographs from other web sites, the fresh and no-bull approach was attracting coaster enthusiasts from around the globe!
In 2002, Coaster Force offered a forum for people across the world to post their comments about the roller coaster industry. This forum was set up on software called EZboard. It was strange how with no contact from any visitors previously, EZBoard's Coaster Force forums soon found themselves with a team. This team went on to become important a few years later.
Our original team consisted of Dan's Schoolmates, Simon Roberts (Shockwayve) and Matthew Shaw (Haxar) as Admins. Out of nowhere also came forth Oli Felton, Shockwave, Cedar Point Chic, and Coasterguy_297 (what did ever happen to him?).
The forum became quite popular, so it was given its own domain, coasterforce.net.
After about a year, EZBoard was ditched in favour of new software phpBB 1.0. Member numbers exploded and Coaster Force became an extremely active community. In 2002 the switch was made to phpBB 2.0 and now Coaster Force's community was going stronger than ever, gathering key members that are still with us today.
The main site had now been upgraded with a new green and grey style. But despite lots of content, Coaster Force was still full of inaccuracies.
Between 2003 and 2004, Coaster Force under went more face lifts than a popular American pop star.... but just like that popular American pop star, a cult following had begun.
The forums were being run by Dan Farrell, Oli Felton, Haxar and Shockwayve at this time and all was well. Oli Felton also helped with the main site and his contributions helped give Coaster Force the speculative edge everyone liked. Who will ever forget Oli posing the question in 2001 that Air might be joined with Nemesis?
Sometime in 2003 the forums gained a new member, a member that would go on to be critical to Coaster Force's future. Some say he can drink 30 pints in one night. Others say he wears a Coaster Force Chastity Belt. All we know is that he is called Ian M. Bell.
Ian was like the pub regular... He'd chat about everything, joke about allsorts and generally make loads of mates whilst being mature and an all round nice bloke.
Therefore, after another year or so of him delighting us with his membership, the admin team made him a moderator.
Whilst Dan, Shockwayve and Haxar went to the same university, they managed the forums over the local wetherspoons table. Shockwayve in particular did a lot of hard work to keep the forums running, and became notorious for his wit, and his innovative ideas. The fact that people still remember him today is a testament to his CF legacy. Who can forget when he decided to create a new forum for all the misbehaving members, called "Shock's Sinners" - the only place on the forum they could post. It was inhabited by regular forum spammers, Tanya and Amber, who proceeded to make the forum their own and created a diary of their time spent there.
Once Shockwayve and Haxar had decided that the forums, now called CF-INFO, were "more boring than sitting through three hours of algorithm design" and promptly disappeared, Ian was promoted to be their replacement.
Then Dan disappeared, and came back, then he disappeared again, and this trend continued, whilst Ian made CF-INFO his own.
To capitalise on the cult following, in October 2003, CoasterForce held it's first ever member meet up, dubbed a "CF-Live". Ten people turned up that day... Since then, CF-Lives have become a major part of the Coasterforce community and are recognised by theme parks throughout the UK. Within a year, other communities copied, proving CF is one of the most innovative communities on, and off, the internet.
That was then, that was before the dark times...
Throughout 2003, Dan had turned to the dark side, and Coaster Force took on a new all Black and White colour scheme. Opinion was divided on this controversial move. The site however was little more than a joke as Dan was quite frankly utterly useless at reporting news without insulting someone.
In 2004 Dan hired Nadia as the presenter for a new venture called CFTV. This fell flat on its face when Dan ended up wooed by Nadia's charms. A series of videos were made, starring Nadia and the theme parks visited. These proved to be very popular, and paved the way for better video editors to come along.
CF was in danger of being split in two. On one hand, Ian had made the forums super-successful, whilst the site was becoming dormant.
Coaster Force took a nose dive in 2005 with no regular updates or alterations to the park guides. Something needed to be done. With the forum community getting stronger and stronger, late 2005 saw the rebirth of CoasterForce...it's aim to better that following it had in late 2004.
In 2006, Coaster Force continued to grow, and the CF-LIVES were the biggest ever. The site was updated with thousands of extra pages of content, hundreds more videos, and hundreds more photos. Coaster Force began to get more involved with the media and park management, friends were forged with Paulton's Park, Flamingoland, where CF was given its first ever ERT session especially for our members, and Thorpe Park, as well as the Save Dreamland campaign and the BBC. 2006 also saw the introduction of new team member Gavin from South Korea, who has been able to go out and visit parks in Japan and South Korea and provide us with exclusive photos and park guides. The first major USA CF-LIVE took place at Cedar Point, and in 2007, it is hoped we will further expand over the pond!
In 2007, the year got off to a bad start when chronic slowdown brought the site to a standstill, eroding 90% off our visitor numbers, and to make things worse, once things had improved, slowdown hit us again. In Late March 2007, Dan took the decision to finally fork out a huge amount of money each month to get Coaster Force running on a dedicated server. Slowdown, fingers crossed, should be history! 2007 promises to be CF's biggest year yet, with a huge update planned to complete CF's park guides.
Who knows what the future might bring? And quite frankly, who cares? As long as that Iguana is looking down smiling upon us!
Coaster Force Visitor World Map This map shows where our visitors come from. This particular map is of our visitors locations on 30th April 2007.
The forum became quite popular, so it was given its own domain, coasterforce.net.
