Many enthusiasts today, especially the younger ones, seem to think that John Allen’s rides (and many other older designers) are not worth riding and the only “good” coasters that came from the first Golden Age were Harry Traver’s terrifying triplets.  As a historian this is frustrating but my case is not helped by the way Allen’s last four mega coasters are maintained.  Incidentally these coasters (The Racer, Great American Scream Machine, Rebel Yell and the Screamin’ Eagle) are all at large theme parks (Paramount’s Kings Island, Six Flags over Georgia, Kings Dominion, and Six Flags St. Louis), as opposed to Allen's fifties and sixties coasters that were built in traditional parks.  So, my first tip when rating Allen’s design abilities is not to rate him solely on the coasters in theme parks.  I would say his greatest designs were the ones built in the sixties and still run with good maintenance and little T.P.M. (theme park mentality).  The Starliner and Cannonball are great examples of the out and back in its purest form.  Swamp Fox showcases well-maintained Allen airtime with a unique layout and Knoebels’ Twister so carefully followed his original design that it showed what happened when Allen got intense.  All of these are the currently operating coasters upon which I believe your opinion of John Allen should rest.  If you do not like his design style after riding these coasters then you are certainly afforded your opinion.

            Many call Allen a “traditional” designer and that his style was less original than the group of designers under whom he gained experience.  This is true to a certain extent, but it is hard to look at the lines of Zingo or the Racer and say the man was simply copying what he saw.  Although there were many designers before him, the only two who really experimented with different nuances of the out & back style were John Miller and Andrew Vettel.  If anything, Allen actually broke with tradition because he did not follow directly in the footsteps of his mentor, Herbert Schmeck.  After his first four coasters Allen created an out & back style of his own- recognized simply by examination of the layout.  His use of different hill sizes juxtaposed next to one-another was a feature he perfected and Allen, perhaps better than anyone, built up anticipation with elements like the swoop turn.  Riders on the Screamin’ Eagle or Twister are hard-pressed not to feel intimidated when the train crests the lift hill and pauses before the initial plunge.  Instead of simply looking down the first drop, riders often looked at the seemingly endless track ahead and forgot where they were heading- until it was too late.  Allen once said, “…I studied the psychology of roller coasters, how they effect your eyes, ears, your stomach.  I began to exploit the senses more.”[1]

            To understand the design philosophy of John Allen one must look no further than Bill Cobb’s Judge Roy Scream.  Legend has it that Allen was asked what kind of coaster he would build in his backyard by a Six Flags Executive.  Allen responded with a simple 65-foot out & back coaster “he could ride with his grandchildren,” and that concept served as the inspiration for Cobb’s 1980 coaster.[2]  John said many times that he was never interested in curing fears, his rides were designed to be smooth and ride so that families could enjoy them together.  Quite simply, Allen said his coasters were designed for “entertainment and fun.”[3]  He understood that different crowds were attending theme parks and that the P.O.P. options seemingly made more people willing to hop aboard a coaster.[4]  One thing we might never know is how much airtime and intensity he would have added to his coasters with today’s technology.  Two main obstacles hampered Allen’s design period.  The first was the money a park was willing to invest in a wooden coaster.  I think amusement parks only understood the huge drawing power of a marquee wooden coaster after the Racer.  It was then Allen was really given artistic license on his coasters and dramatic designs like the Scream Machine and Rebel Yell were unleashed.  In addition, the time period straddled the wild period of the twenties and the wild wooden coasters built in the 1990’s.  John Miller, Herbert Schmeck, Frederick Church and many others built very intense, powerful coasters that Allen said were done as eyeball jobs, meaning they were drawings transferred to structure as opposed to the calculations which he added to the design process.  He must have gone through his career thinking that although an intense coaster was not a bad coaster, it was a badly engineered coaster.  This could help explain why he never had much love for Mister Twister.  The ride he ended up with was a result of on-site alterations as opposed to a carefully calculated terror machine.  It is such a shame that he died so close to the time when computers entered heavily into the design process as his design philosophy and understanding of his own coasters might have changed.  John Allen’s influence can be seen everywhere, not just in out & backs like Michigan’s Adventure’s Shivering Timbers and Wisconsin Dell’s Zeus.  But, his addition of math as the “main ingredient” of coaster design allowed wooden designers to go higher and faster than Allen dared.  Back in 1978 he said designers were approaching the ultimate coaster.[5]  If only he had known it was his approach that made the concept of the “ultimate roller coaster” seemingly disappear.

            The last, and probably most important fact, about Allen is that this kind, quiet man was one of the last people the media expected to find when they went in search of the man behind coasters like the Racer.  Instead of a mad scientist they found what author Gary Kyriazi called an “honest and self-effacing man.”[6] Allen, a man who treated his employees well, enjoyed talking math and took time to read the many letters sent to him was the man who brought the roller coaster back to the American public.[7]  If anything his coasters say more about the man than I ever could. 

Classic. 

Reliable. 

Fun. 

Some of the best ever designed.

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Adam Sandy, Copyright 2001.