Coaster Enthusiast

Let's get it out of the way: I'm a Disney adult, and I've made peace with it. Living in St. Pete makes regular Orlando park days possible, so Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Universal aren't a once-a-year vacation — they're a Saturday. Annual passes, a favorite parking row, strong opinions on when to hit each ride, home by dinner.

Busch Gardens in Tampa is closer to home, and Iron Gwazi is a genuine world-beater. But if you're tracking where I actually spend my weekends, it's Orlando more often than not.

VelociCoaster is the best thing Orlando has built in years — a launch, a real sense of theme, and a top hat that genuinely gets you. Stardust Racers, the dueling chaos at Universal's Epic Universe, is the newest obsession. Back home, Iron Gwazi at Busch Gardens is a hybrid that has no business being that fast so close to home, and Fury 325 at Carowinds earned a Charlotte road trip all on its own — a giga that just doesn't let up.

The throughline is simple: airtime, inversions, and a front-row seat with my hands up. I'm not a white-knuckle-grip rider. The whole point is to let go — to spend ninety seconds in a system engineered, down to the inch, to make my body believe it's in danger while knowing for a fact it isn't. It's the most trust I place in anyone's engineering all year.

There's a specific thrill to a first public ride — before the wait times normalize, before the internet has finished deciding how it feels, before the ride becomes a known quantity. You're reacting to it honestly because nobody's told you what to expect yet.

I made the trip for opening day on TRON Lightcycle / Run at Magic Kingdom, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at EPCOT, and the opening weekend of Universal's Epic Universe — five new worlds in a single gate. Each one is logged in the trophy case, which is the closest a coaster habit comes to having a changelog.