A risk for the top choice, as this coaster is not for the faint of heart. But since Magic Mountain prides itself on being a park for those seeking roller-coaster intensity, there’s an argument to be made that its top ride should be the one that arguably offers its most thrills, at least that was the one Thompson made to me. Yet you’ll be forgiven for skipping a ride in which seats rotate 360 degrees, forcing riders, at times, into face-first drops. And those rotations don’t stop, giving X2 its reputation for disorienting riders.

The seats extend off the track, giving you a sensation of flight at its most chaotic; with an assortment of loops that suddenly shift direction and segue into drops, X2 aims to keep guests guessing as to where it is heading. Due to the constantly changing direction of the seats, the path of the track can be hard to discern.

“There’s nothing else quite like it in the U.S.,” Thompson says of the coaster that, in its original form, opened in the early 2000s. He praises its stats: “full 360-degree rotating seats on a 20-foot wingspan over 200 feet high with a vertical drop.”

“There’s a moment,” he says, “when you crest the lift and you’re looking straight down 200 feet, and then it flips you upside while you’re plummeting. No matter how many times I’ve gone on it, it always gives me the reaction of, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to make it.’ And then I make it.”