I was at the park last month. I didn't have time to ride everything, but of what I could squeeze in, my list would run like this:
Millenium Force
Magnum
Maverick
Raptor
Mean Streak
Blue Streak
Gemini
Disaster Transport
Corkscrew
Let me start from the bottom up to explain.
There's nothing wrong with Corkscrew other than it's an old design, meaning that when it was new it was radical and thrilling, but everything about it has been done better by some later ride. Some later rides do everything about it much, much, better.
Disaster Transport seems to be everybody's favorite whipping boy. It's certainly no worse than most portable coasters, and the special effects don't hurt. If you want to argue that the park could have done something more intersting with that amount of money, I won't complain.
Gemini shows why woodies with steel structures > steel coasters with wood structures. It's not a bad coaster, but it just doesn't have that scary, out of control feeling that a good woodie has when it's lurching around the track, and it feels weird flying through all those wooden bents without having those sensations.
I have a soft spot in my heart for old woodies, so I can't say anything bad about the Blue Streak, either. In my mind, this was part of a set along with the Big Dipper at Geauga Lake, the Wildcat at Idora Park, and the Blue Streak at Conneaut Lake Park. At one time, if you said "roller coaster" to someone living in the area, those are the machines that came to mind. And being at the "big park", Blue Streak had the rep, at least with the locals. But having ridden the Wildcat before it burned, I have to rate this as a good old woodie but not a great one.
I can't help but feel that most of the reviews I've read on Mean Streak must have been written by aliens or something. My perspective was that the ride was just starting to get interesting when we hit the mid-course brakes, and after that...boooring! I couldn't comprehend why people would complain that it was a rough ride. Admittedly, it was just starting to get a little rough before those brakes, but after that...no way. I've been on much rougher rides than this one.
Raptor deserves it's rep as one of the best suspended coasters of its generation. It's easy to see what the flaws in the ride are...like the poor transition into and out of the mid-course brakes that just screams, "Brakes! Brakes! This ride was going TOO FAST for old folks and little children, and we're going to slow it down now!" Still, it's just such a well-put together ride with such good pacing otherwise that you just don't care. It's like forgiving your best friend for having one really annoying habit. I did get the famous head-whack just before entering the station, but it wasn't bad and I got the feeling that if I would have anticipated it better, I could have avoided even the discomfort that I had.
I must have been living under a rock because I hadn't read all that much about Maverick, and looking at the ride, I sort of wondered what the big deal and the enormous line was all about. I really like all the innovations on the ride (tandem dispatch, uphill launch, midcourse launch, etc.), and thought it was very well thought out. Good pacing, nice special effects (the fountains were a nice touch). I now understand what all the fuss is over this ride!
Magnum proves that you don't need every trick in the book to pull off a world-class ride. I was a little surprised when I heard people rating Maverick over Magnum. Don't get me wrong, I love Maverick's many varied elements, but comparing the two is like comparing this year's biggest hit with a classic tune that you love so much that you turn up the radio every time you hear it, even though you've heard it hundreds of times. Magnum is distilled airtime perfection. I like to think that coasters have personalities, and that you can best determine those personalities by the emotion you feel at arriving at the station. Well, when I ride Magnum, my emotions are best summed up as, "I love being alive!" Really, what more do you need?
And then there's Millenium Force. Yes, I rode in the front seat after dark, and didn't get a single bug hit (my fellow front seater got a couple, but nothing major). Sometimes more really is better. I've raced cars at several venues, and have experienced the thrill of power-sliding a turn at nearly 130 mph. The experience of speed on this ride is comparable to some of the top 4 or 5 experiences I've had racing cars. In fact, I feel like MF has crossed some sort of threshold, in that there's absolutely no point in trying to improve the ride experience by going faster and that it's time to concentrate on other aspects of the experience. This is because it's such an amazing ride with practically no fancy elements (save the one overbanked turn), relatively little airtime (only twice on my ride, not even on the bunny hop), and practically no sense of being out of control. In this case, more would simply mean more wind in your face to distract you from the experience, more bugs, and getting to the station quicker. After my ride, I spent some time thinking about what would be the most important thing to improve about it (and I'm sure everyone has a list, there are so many aspects that could be done better). But of all the improvements I would make, if I could make only one it would be to increase the ride capacity!
If I got a chance to go back to the park and could only ride one ride that I hadn't already, it would be TTD. If I could add a second, it would be Wildcat, as I'm partial to both wild mice and to Schwartzkof. But this is still THE park for coaster fans, very deserving of it's rep.