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The Joker is just another example of what coaster designers have been doing over the last decade or so by really taking the traditional coaster and throwing tradition out the window.



You are not sitting above the track...you are sitting outside of the track.



Instead of the traditional loops to invert a rider you can flip anywhere along the Joker's course further throwing convention out the window.



In the steel coaster world convention has been challenged with wingriders, inverted coasters, suspended coasters, 4d coasters and 4d free fly coasters like The Joker.  The wood world has really thrown tradition aside with launched rides, loops and twists and turns that used to be just the domain of steel.   The 1920's with the eruption of parks and coasters was called the "golden age of coasters" and the 1970's was the "coaster revival" but what we are in is the "coaster revolution" because what was the norm for a ride is being thrown out and what the designers of today are building can only be described as revolutionary.



I like all of the flips that Bond and I had on The Joker but this half loop/half drop in the middle of The Joker is a lot of fun.  With all of the little drops and hills here and there by the time you get to this one you are not expecting a big drop and no matter which way you are flipped there is a great bit of free-fall here. 



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Paul B. Drabek