Our Ranking of Roller Coasters at Silver Dollar City

Silver Dollar City isn’t the first place you might think of when you think of roller coasters. SDC is well known for its atmosphere, vibe, and robust lineup of live entertainment, enough that it’s easy to overlook the coaster scene.

And, to be fair, the park doesn’t have a lot of them. By our count, SDC has seven rides that would qualify as roller coasters. By comparison, Six Flags St. Louis has ten. Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana, has six land coasters … but also three water coasters. Silver Dollar City’s water park, aside from being a separate property six miles away, doesn’t do water coasters.

None of that, though, takes away from the fact that SDC does have some terrific coasters. We know, because we’ve ridden all of them.

That’s why we’re here to give you our own ranking of SDC coasters.

A couple of disclaimers. One, we only ranked actual roller coasters. That means things like Mystic River Falls and FireFall are not on this list. Two, like any list, it’s going to be subjective.

With that, let’s get going.

1. Time Traveler

You know Time Traveler is unique the moment you approach the sign, a cascade of sound and movement in a fully functional clock. The ride itself also impresses, wasting no time (pun intended) dropping you straight down before launching you — twice — into the future. Time Traveler is smooth and controlled, a dance of loops and turns that, along with its tightly controlled spins, is as much art as coaster. It’s a kind of controlled intensity that we’ve never seen in a coaster. It’s an easy choice for Silver Dollar City’s best.

Oh, and if you ever have a chance to ride it at night in the dark, do it. Just don’t forget to look to the sky.

2. Wildfire

The next four coasters were very close for us, so if you disagree with the order here, we understand.

Nevertheless, we all felt one could make a case for Wildfire being the second-best coaster in the park. It’s a steel loop coaster in the vein of Six Flags St. Louis’s Batman. It even shares a similar dangling design to STL’s Caped Crusader, although Wildfire has a floor platform under it rather than the drop floor Batman uses. The difference is that Wildfire is a taller, faster, and longer experience than Batman, making it one of the biggest rides in the park.

The coaster starts with your classic big hill followed by a succession of loops, and while it isn’t exactly innovative, it is a razor-sharp execution of a proven formula. It also holds you in comfortably tight, a plus for some of our riders who don’t like rides like this one.

3. PowderKeg

PowderKeg is an air launch coaster, a fact abundantly clear when you blast out of the gate from 0 to 53 miles an hour in under 4 seconds. While it doesn’t technically have any loops like Time Traveler or Wildfire, it is arguably the more intense coaster. That traffic light at the start only adds to the tension. It says something when the hill toward the end of the coaster is actually the more chill part of the ride.

In our view it’s the most intense coaster in the park, a fact that sharply divides us when it comes to where it should be ranked. Some of us loved the adrenaline of being shot out of the starting gate, while others hated it. It’s a great coaster, but it may also not be for everyone.

4. Outlaw Run

Outlaw Run is the only wooden coaster in Silver Dollar City — kind of crazy when you think about it — but it also does things few wooden coasters do. Barrel rolls. Going sideways perpendicular to the ground. It’s one of the more insane wooden coasters we’ve ever ridden, and while it’s no Voyage, it’s no slouch, either. Not all of our group loved it, and it’s a little rough in places, but it does get kudos for breaking the wooden coaster mold.

5. Thunderation

Thunderation is a mine train style coaster in the tradition of River King Mine Train or — if you’ve been to Disney World — Seven Dwarves Mine Train. It’s got more edge than those coasters, though. Its best feature is that it dispenses with the pleasantries and sends you hurtling downhill right at the start, through track and down into tunnels before finishing with a hill back to the top. It’s a ton of fun, and it’s also quite accessible, with a little kick, of course.

Despite being this far down the list, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s quite good, in our view, one of the better mine train coasters we’ve done, and is a must-ride at Silver Dollar City — especially since it’s closing after 2026.

6. Fire in the Hole 2.0

The original Fire in the Hole operated from 1972 to 2023, with the newer version opening in March of 2024. The new one is similar thematically to the original but features a tweaked narrative and greatly improved audio and visuals. The new Fire in the Hole, like the original, is less a coaster and more of an experience, even if it is technically on tracks.

Still, it bills itself as an indoor coaster, and that’s how we’re grading it. And on that grade it’s … well, better than we expected. The atmosphere is quite good, with the new backdrops and effects doing what Silver Dollar City does best: tell a story. It’s not going to win awards for any serious thrills — and it is hard to justify ranking it higher than this — but it certainly thinks big, and we all had fun. We also think the new Fire in the Hole, along with the redone Fire District, is an order of magnitude better than the old setup.

7. Grand Exposition Coaster

We’re no strangers to entry-level coasters, and we’ve ridden some that are, dare I say it, decent. Rookie Racer at Six Flags St. Louis is, for example, pretty solid, in our view. This coaster, by contrast, is not. It’s stuffed into a tight footprint that lends itself to too many sharp turns and not much excitement. The theming doesn’t exactly excite, either.

Unfortunately, it occupies the bottom for that reason.