El Toro

El Toro opened in 2006 as one of the first American installations of Intamin's prefabricated wooden track system, a design that assembles laminated wood segments off-site rather than building the structure board-by-board on location. That manufacturing shift let Intamin engineer a first drop far steeper than traditional wood coasters could safely achieve — 76 degrees down a 176-foot hill, a figure that would have been considered reckless on a conventionally built woodie of the era.

What follows the drop is a relentless sequence of airtime hills that barely let up for the rest of the 4,400-foot layout, a hallmark of Intamin's prefab wood designs that trades smooth pacing for sustained, aggressive ejector airtime. The ride's name and bull-themed branding tie loosely to the adjacent Plaza del Carnaval area, though the coaster itself carries almost no built scenery — its reputation rests entirely on the intensity of the ride experience rather than any storyline.

Nearly two decades after opening, El Toro is still routinely ranked among the best wooden coasters in the world by enthusiast polls, a rare feat for a ride from the mid-2000s prefab wood boom, many of which have since been retracked or removed. Its combination of steep drop and unbroken airtime hills set a template that Intamin and later manufacturers like Rocky Mountain Construction would continue to chase in the years that followed.