They say familiarity breeds contempt. This ride serves as an example, it's not that common a ride in Britain, with only this and one other copy at Pleasurewood Hills. Across the world though there are numerous copies of this ride. It's also a ride that takes a lot of flack in general from the coaster enthusiast community, whether this is all deserved, or if it's widespread success has contributed to this is an interesting issue.

One thing you can't accuse Pleasure Island of doing is playing down their big rides. All the major rides have their own sound system, which plays out several promos on a loop to build up the anticipation of the rides. The ones on the Boomerang border on the unintentionally hilarious, as it's hyped up to the heavens.

Part of the reason for this rides success is it's compact layout. Instead of the traditional lift system the train is winched backwards and released, going back through the station and through a compact series of inversions. It then reaches a second hill where it's winched up it, then released where the train goes backwards around the inversions back in to the station.

The backwards section comes as the real highlight of the ride. Especially as you do the vertical loop backwards, as it  pulls of a noticeably intense amount of g-forced.

The main criticism aimed at these rides is of them being to rough, with some people saying there unpleasant or painful to ride. I wouldn't go that far. Yes it is rough, which definitely means it doesn't get the best out  of the track layout, this definitely knocks a point of the final score. I wouldn't quite go as far as to say it's deeply unpleasant or unrideable.

It's  interesting to thing that there was a time this ride would have been a noticeable signature coaster, at least on a national scale. I  remember  doing repeat rides of the Missile at the now closed American Adventure Park in the mid 90's. Nowadays quite a few smaller parks have it as there signature coaster, but in the grand scheme of things it's a pretty standard ride. It's still a pretty good compact coaster, which I think is worth a go, but not one to go out of your way for.