To date, there are 5,853 roller coasters in operation around the world. The country with the largest issue of these attractions is China with a total of 1,843. It is followed by the United States with 914 and then Germany, France, Japan, the United Kingdom and Russia with around 200 each. The rest are spread throughout the rest of the world, with Europe being the continent where most of them are located.

Of these nearly 6,000 roller coasters, one-sixth are classified as extreme. This means that they come close to complying with the 4-4 rule of design in which accelerations of 4 g cannot be exceeded for more than four seconds. This rule and other safety rules are included in standards such as the American ASTM-F2291 or the European ISO 17842. To give the reader an idea, the Shambhala roller coaster in Port Aventura reaches accelerations of 3.8 g at several points.

The manufacture of these mechanical titans leads construction companies to systematically push the structural and dynamic limits required by these attractions. The concepts of faster, higher or more intense are surpassed with each new coaster.

Currently, the world's tallest roller coaster is Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park, located in the state of New Jersey, a little over a hundred kilometers from New York City. The height of this colossus is 139 meters, practically the same as the Agbar Tower in Barcelona. Kingda Ka is also the fastest in the world, reaching a speed of 206 kilometers per hour (actually, the fastest is Formula Rossa, in the Ferrari park in Dubai, with 240 kilometers per hour, but it is not currently operational).

During the 1990s and up to 2010, it became fashionable to build roller coasters with many inversions. An inversion is considered to be the element of the ride that causes the vertical to rotate more than 135 Degrees and return to the vertical position. To illustrate, the famous Shambhala ampersand is not considered an inversion because, although it turns more than 90 Degrees, it does not reach 135. In this category, the record is held by Smiler at Alton Towers (UK) with fourteen inversions. It is worth mentioning Colossus at Thorpe Park (also in the UK and very close to London) with a total of ten inversions having what is called a heartline roll of four inversions in a row.

Most of these records will be broken in 2025 with the opening of the Six Flags Qiddiya amusement park next to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. This park will feature Falcon's Flight, the world's fastest (it will reach 250 kilometers per hour), tallest (it will climb a 195-meter hill and have a 158-meter camelback, making it the world's tallest structural element on a roller coaster) and longest roller coaster with a four-kilometer, 250-meter ride.

Although our country does not have a large number of roller coasters (with a total of 55, we are ranked issue 23rd in the world), we can enjoy several record-breaking roller coasters: network Force (in Port Aventura) is the highest in Europe (112 meters) and also the fastest in our continent (180 kilometers per hour); Dragon Khan, which at the time of its inauguration held the record for the roller coaster with the most inversions (eight) and the highest looping in the world at 35 meters; Shambhala, which at the time of its inauguration was the highest roller coaster in Europe with a height of 76 meters and a drop of 78 meters; and Batman Gotham City Escape, which was the first roller coaster in Europe with three launches.

It is worth mentioning that Port Aventura is home to one of the most complex hydraulic installations in Spain: the engine of the roller coaster Furius Baco, an installation that uses oil at very high pressures and is undoubtedly remarkable. In a more discreet, but no less important section , is also in our country one of the oldest roller coasters in the world: the Swiss Mountain of Monte Igeldo in San Sebastian Donostia. Inaugurated in 1928, it ranks issue 16 (fourth in Europe) as the oldest operating roller coaster in the world.