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Occasionally, the good ideas never really leave the drawing board. El Diablo was a folly of quite spectacular proportions because of legal wrangling between Tussauds Group and the-then Arrow Dynamics.

Anheuser Busch befriended Arrow in the earliest stages of PortAventura’s development, using one of their designs as the centrepiece of the park; a ride similar to Busch Gardens Europe’s Loch Ness Monster, complete with interlocking loops.

Inheriting 40% of the shares, Tussauds took over the development of the park. Much of the park remained as god (AKA Busch) intended, although the showpiece Arrow coaster was dropped in favour for Dragon Khan. As you would.

Production on the other Arrow, a support ride to the main coaster, stopped, and as a result the section between lift two and three was shortened to the point that it was simply a stretch of track between the two lifts.

El Diablo was never going to be on the cover of the World’s Greatest Coasters, but the opening and the finale both show that the ride had promise, and – like so many Arrow rides, it has to be said – it has let us down in almost every imaginable way.

Sometimes it’s a case of right ride, wrong place.

I’ll use the Wild Mouse as an example. I really love these rides, but sometimes they just don’t work.

Parks even have to make an effort – Chessington did well with Rattlesnake by incorporating the queue into the layout of the ride, as well as neat touches such as animatronic Mexicans engaging in various capers throughout the queueline.

Look no further than Matterhorn Blitz at Europa Park, too, which has a similarly (if more refined) animated queue, along with a neat vertical lift system that makes a feature of arguably the dullest part of the ride.

But even fairs aren’t immune to surprisingly disappointing rides – a fair is a good example of how the most innocuous of rides can have some magic sprinkled on them to create something quite special.

Yet the problem with coasters – mice in particular – is that they take you away from the energy and adrenaline of the showground. To distract you from this, they need to be something special.

Eurostar and Alpina Bahn are two examples of quite extraordinary coasters, albeit for completely different reasons. At any theme park they would be the star attractions, so knock off a few brownie points for the reasons mentioned above and you still have something quite special.

Mice are fun, but offsetting the lack of lights, music and atmosphere with something that would only be a fun support ride at best is not a realistic expectation.

Elsewhere, while limitations can often bring out the best in a ride (clichéd example number 1: Nemesis), they can also stifle something special.

Rita was a latecomer to the rocket coaster party, but she offered something many of the others didn’t; originality. While others were performing 200ft – sometimes 400ft – tophats and others inversions, Rita offered a far more serpentine layout loosely borrowing elements from 20 year-old Schwarzkopf coasters, elements such as sweeping turns between undulating helices.

But time, and more to the point, the Corkscrew, got in the way of Rita.

Rita was rushed in terms of planning, conception and construction, and was squeezed into Alton Towers virtually (and at moments, actually...) on top of existing rides.

On top of this, Intamin’s apparent inability to design an effective lapbar meant that Rita had overhead restraints, an absurd example of cracking a nut with... well, even a sledgehammer is putting it lightly – napalm, perhaps.

Rita is actually an underrated ride in my opinion, although I must concede everybody’s criticisms are valid – it’s a great ride that wasn’t. If you look beyond the restraints, the cramped layout and the length of the ride, you’ll see an allusion of a great ride, it was just curtailed by time and space, both of which delivered a wasted opportunity. Continues...