Otherwise every other invert I’ve been on has one major downfall, and those I haven’t don’t appear to fix the problem much at all. The only other inverted coaster I’ve not been on (yet) and might hesitate in making that claim is Alton Tower’s Nemesis, and possibly by extension the similarly terrain-insane Black Mamba (but remove the stunning setting and you’ve still got a pretty basic B&M invert layout). However, writing as a long-time Raptor rider familiar with its every turn, force and shimmy, and having been on more than a few of the alternative titles mentioned above, once I’ve looked past the surface of the type of ride Raptor appears to be and started looking more closely at the details, I will not feel too uncomfortable in claiming that Raptor may very well be B&M’s most successful inverted coaster to date. I love Raptor, but on the surface it’s just all a bit too bland and, well, Cedar Fair-ized to outpace any of its above-listed compatriots. Even international rides such as Katun or Pyrenees took the basic ideas behind Raptor but improved on them with a larger scale and/or some other uniquely defined element (Pyrenees’ tight helix threading a second large vertical loop inserted between the heartline roll and cobra roll Katun’s overall larger scope, also featuring a tunnel and a high-speed ground curve). Even then, until the turn of the millennium, B&M continued to experiment with other ideas (or, at the very least, had those ideas presented for them to build), such as the Great Bear’s unique, free-flight helix first drop and river section, Afterburn’s frenetically-paced opening sequencing culminating in a subterranean batwing, or Dueling Dragons with its obvious creative strengths. Then Raptor was caught in the middle of things as they transitioned away from tight, compact layouts to much more sprawling and ambitious projects that would become manifest two years later with Busch’s Montu in 1996 and then even further with Alpengeist a year after that. Looking backwards along the timeline there was both the super-tight intensity of the Batman rides and Nemesis (the latter of which is still one of B&M’s crowning achievements). Raptor’s a great ride by nearly any criteria you choose, but creatively it wasn’t a high point for anyone involved, and both B&M and Cedar Point would later go on to have bigger and better ideas. But these are quite minor and circumstantial compared to the accusations of some more fundamental problem the Point’s other star attractions are prone to have lobbed at them from time to time. Okay, occasionally you might hear reports of some Vekoma-like hang-and-banging when the ride’s having a bad day, and for a few others more than one ride could very well leave them feeling sick to their stomach due to the aggressive inversion line-up.

Raptor could very well be the most consistent crowd-pleaser on the Cedar Point peninsula, without the questionably weak forces and slow timing of Millennium Force, the lack of substance of Top Thrill Dragster, the antiquated roughness and quirk of Magnum, or the free-form uncertainty and persistent neck-choppiness of Maverick (notice I’m not making any statements against any of these rides in one form or another, only that there are certain groups of people that would cite those things as a debilitating negative against each respective ride). To be sure, it’s big and forceful and definitely one of the ‘must-rides’ of any visit to Cedar Point, each element packing a punch in that special way you could always count on early B&M layouts to do, and it by no means ever disappoints.

It’s a rather bland, cookie-cutter set of elements, packed together in a basic B&M spaghetti bowl configuration with a similarly standard color palate and theme. For a B&M inverted roller coaster, Raptor isn’t the most impressive.

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