I’m a big fan of the WIRED “Tech Support” video series. The essence of the series is that they get an expert in a particular field to answer viewer questions about their area of expertise. I’ve seen everything including a mortician, an FBI agent, Penn Jillette talking magic, John Cena talking wrestling and now Korey Kiepert of The Gravity Group talking roller coasters!

In this particular episode Korey tacked some pretty basic stuff like roller coaster history, steel versus wood, why we feel airtime and how a coaster is designed. His love of wood coasters certainly came through in the video as well as his appreciation of some of the classic rides. I was especially surprised that his bucket list coaster was Olympia Looping which is a traveling carnival coaster by Schwarzkopf that primarily works the German festival circuit.

Korey is a bit of a roller coaster celebrity in that he and The Gravity Group have been involved in some special projects including Zippin Pippin at Bay Beach, The Voyage at Holiday World and Hades 360 at Mt. Olympus. I grew up in Wisconsin about 30 minutes from Bay Beach and it was my childhood park. In those days it had nothing like Zippin Pippin, just a bunch of flat rides, but what The Gravity Group and Bay Beach did with Zippin Pippin is simply remarkable, making it a must ride for enthusiasts.

A couple of weeks ago I also rode the Korey Kiepert coaster Mine Blower at Fun Spot Kissimmee for the first time and didn’t even realize it was his. It has become a tad rough over time (the Florida climate is tough on wood coasters), but it is a very well designed coaster with a unique invert all squeezed into a small footprint with an awesome looking train. Fun Spot had a great deal of a ride photo and a t-shirt for $15 which I got, so I look forward to wearing my Mine Blower Gravity Group shirt on some future park visits.

It was such a wonderful surprise to see this pop up in my YouTube feed. If you haven’t watched it, please do! WIRED has had several of the experts back for follow-up episodes with more questions and I’d love to see Korey on there again!