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Melanin Coaster Network on Iron Gawzi

Melanin Coaster Network: bridging the gap by bringing people together

We speak to founder and CEO, Prime and president, Brichette Reid about MCN’s inception and its goals

Melanin Coaster Network (MCN) was founded by Martina ‘Prime’ Moore, Jr in February 2022 to meet a need for a roller coaster community specifically for people of colour.

Prime Melanin Coaster Network

Since its first ‘Primetime Link-up’ at Carowinds for a Juneteenth event, the network has grown to comprise over 2,000 members across the country. It has supporters on a variety of social media platforms and an incipient partnership with Universal Orlando. MCN’s ethos is welcoming and inclusive. It is open to all races and ethnicities, something encapsulated by its motto: ‘Bridging the gap by bringing people together.’

Its next Primetime Link-up will be at Universal Orlando on 30 March 2023, and it also gearing up for its biggest event yet at Six Flags Over Georgia for Juneteenth this year.

MCN’s goals include the development of more park partnerships, event collaborations as an officially recognised roller coaster club, and community engagement that brings more diversity to parks and the industry overall.

Blooloop caught up with founder and CEO Martina Moore, Jr, aka Prime, and president Brichette Reid to find out more.

A love of travel & passion for coasters

Prime, who is from Mobile, Alabama, plans to be a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) outreach ambassador for theme parks, focusing on recruitment and planning events to bring diversity to all departments. A family man, he has been a police officer for 10 years, and loves coasters:

“I love to travel, too,” he says. “And I love recreational games – bowling, shooting pool. I’m a very competitive person.”

Prime and Brichette with MCN Banner

Reid, who is from Washington DC, also aspires to work full-time in the themed entertainment industry. Her ambition is to facilitate partnerships between theme parks and diverse communities by coordinating internship and mentorship programs.  

Parent to a five-year-old son, she works in affordable housing. A self-proclaimed podcast junkie, she, too, loves coasters and travel:

“It’s one of the reasons I love coasters – because it feeds into that travel bug I have.”

Identifying a need

Prime describes the inception of MCN:

“I was out of town in Atlanta, Georgia, just hanging out with my friends. We decided to go to the park, and we just started riding roller coasters. I didn’t know anything about theme parks. I just wanted to do something fun. We had a good time. When I came home, I was like, ‘Wow, I want to learn more and do more!’

“I started Googling the biggest theme parks and roller coasters in the world, and Cedar Point came up.”

Steel Vengeance Cedar Fair
Steel Vengeance

He took a flight to Cleveland, Ohio, and went to Cedar Point. While enjoying this solo visit, Prime rode the iconic Steel Vengeance coaster. He credits this ride with turning him into a roller coaster enthusiast. However:

“When I was walking around the park, I wasn’t particularly looking at the demographics, but I noticed. I thought: ‘Wow, am I the only person of colour here? Is there anybody else who looks like me that likes theme parks and roller coasters too? Where are they?’ It seemed as if I was the only person of colour standing in line for a roller coaster.

“So when I got home, I got on the internet and started researching people who looked like me. Is it weird for me to like coasters? Is this a taboo thing? Does it exist? I started doing analytics on people of colour and roller coasters.”

The Melanin Coaster Network is born

His searches weren’t very productive:

“So I started a little Facebook group and started adding people that maybe like theme parks and roller coasters. One joined, two joined, three joined, and then people started telling their friends, ‘Hey, there’s this roller coaster Facebook group for people of colour… We’re trying to come together.’ So they start adding their friends. I started reaching out, and recruiting.”

“One day, I said, ‘Instead of sitting in the group talking about roller coasters, let’s go to the park and meet each other for the first time. Let’s go and ride roller coasters together for Juneteenth at Carowinds in North Carolina.’”

It would be the first time group members had met up in real life.

“It was a leap of faith,” he says. “We had around 200 Facebook members at that point. I just put it out there: ‘Hey, we’re going to Carowinds. Let’s meet up.’ I didn’t know who was going to show up. To my surprise, about 25 people from the group came.”

A first outing for MCN

The group of 25 gathered at the Fury 325 coaster.

Prime adds:

“We were about to take a picture when a park supervisor walked up to us. Her name is Mariah Romero, she is a supervisor of ride operations. She said, ‘Who are you all?’

“I explained that I ran a Facebook group called the Melanin Coaster Network and that we were here to celebrate Juneteenth and ride roller coasters together.”

Group shot Melanin Coaster network

“She asked if we had ridden Fury 325 yet. When she heard that we had only just arrived, she said, ‘Follow me.’ She took us up the VIP ramp onto the coaster, shut down the coaster, and let us ride by ourselves, just our group of 25 people of colour. As we rode the train, they shouted out, ‘Carowinds welcomes the Melanin Coaster Network to our park to celebrate Juneteenth!’

“When I got off the train, that’s when I knew what Melanin Coaster Network could be.”

Global goals

By the time he got home, he knew he wanted to make the coaster club into a global institution. He explains:

“That trip motivated me. If I could get 25 people to show up when I had 200 people in the group, imagine what I could do with a thousand-plus people. I started working on business development. I wanted to make this a legitimate business, to do things professionally, to create an email, a website, and a Google domain, to brand us.

“That’s when I started recruiting. I knew that needed people to help me build an organisation, a community, not just a Facebook group. I wanted to be able to do global outreach and recruit people from all over the world. That’s when I met Bri, who has the ideal skill set to help me.”

“Our mission, before I turn it over to Bri, is to highlight people of colour who are theme park and roller coaster enthusiasts, but we’re not exclusive. Anybody who supports our mission, our goals and our aspirations can join us and can ride with us. You can be any colour. Our purpose is to highlight people of colour because we really don’t see us in this industry, so we want to shine a light on us, but we encourage everybody to support that mission with us.”

In welcoming everyone, they also make it clear that even those who prefer to keep their feet firmly on the ground are welcome:

“We have Disney vloggers in our network who love theme parks, but not roller coasters. We need people to hold the bags, and take the photos, too. The mission is to be a theme park or roller coaster enthusiast.”

A different experience

Melanin Coaster Network Brichette

Brichette Reid joined the group after a couple of the Primetime Link-ups had already taken place.

Her story is slightly different:

“I grew up in DC, which, at the time, was predominantly black,” she says. “The area still is predominantly black, and people of colour, though the demographics are changing over time with gentrification.

“Our home park here is Six Flags America. I grew up going there multiple times over the summer; it was just black people, so I didn’t have the experience of looking around a park and not seeing people that looked like me. Because the area I came from at that time was predominantly black, I didn’t think about the fact our park is not the norm in that way, while for everyone else, it is very special.

“It took me getting older to realise that how I grew up was not the norm. I knew, of course, that I was not in the majority, but to experience it is different.”

A coaster enthusiast

As far as coasters are concerned, she says:

“As I said, I grew up going to Six Flags America. My mom took me to Universal and Disney, I went on church trips to Universal and Disney, and I would ride the coasters. I didn’t know what an ‘enthusiast’ was. But I knew that whenever I went to a park, the only thing I wanted to do was ride on the coasters. I didn’t care about anything else. I would just ride them over and over again.

“At Universal, I remember getting on the Hulk multiple times with my friends. When Dueling Dragons was there, I remember getting off the red side and immediately getting in the queue for the blue side.”

Dueling Dragons at Universal’s Islands of Adventure
Dueling Dragons

The Bolliger & Mabillard ‘Dueling Dragons’ comprised two dragons, one blue, one red –ice and fire–which would begin their route at the same time, passing each other closely several times, giving the illusion of duelling.

“I grew up, went off to college, then came back and got back into parks, now as a mom,” Reid adds. “I have the money, now, to travel.”

Meeting the Melanin Coaster Network

Melanin Coaster Network at Six Flags

At this point, Reid started looking for companions with whom she could share her passion for coasters:

“No one around me really cared about coasters in the way that I did. My friends don’t want to hear me talk about the newest coaster opening up, who made it, how long the track is, how high the lift is, and what the degree of the drop is. They don’t care, but I do. So, I went online, just like Prime did, to look for people who looked like me, and who were into coasters.

“When I started going on YouTube and getting into the nerdy stuff on my own, I didn’t see anyone that looked like me in those videos, or making content.”

This, she explains, was alienating:

“I wanted to talk to people like me who get my sense of humour, and share my background and culture, and who like this type of stuff. That’s when I went on Facebook to look for a group that I could talk about this stuff with – especially about being a black woman.”

Intersectionality is key

In terms of intersectionality, she emphasises:

“You just don’t see black women represented. Where I may find a black content creator who was a man, I was far, far less likely to find a black creator who was a woman. I set out with the aim of finding a group where there were all types of people that I could relate to, and where we could talk coasters, travel together, and experience this hobby as a group. And that’s when I found Melanin Coaster Network.

“I didn’t realise that I was an enthusiast until I found the community. They were just like me, and, suddenly, I wasn’t the weird one. I got engaged by the group because I was so excited. I had found people who were going to get my cultural references when I’m making a joke – and it was also coaster-related.”

MCN rides Twisted Colossus

Additionally, she found, the group to be friendly. There was – and is – no gatekeeping:

“Everyone was so nice. If I had a question – if anyone has a question, we are here to educate. In some groups of enthusiasts, you have very knowledgeable people. They tend to expect everyone to know what they know. In this group, it’s not like that. We are here to educate. One of the things I enjoy about the community is that there are all levels of people in it. Where one person may not know a lot about something, someone else can educate them, and vice versa.”

A vision to fill the gap

On becoming engaged in the group, Reid made her presence known:

“Prime took notice. He realised I seemed smart enough, so he reached out to me and told me what his vision was. He had been working, recruiting and building a group, and wanted to take it to the next level, and make it a coaster club – a business.”

Reid saw that Prime’s vision filled the gap she had perceived in the community – and that it was feasible:

“I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ I knew we would have the backing of our community because our stories are different but similar. We were looking for people who were like us; who were enthusiasts.

“The more people that we recruit, the more that story is repeated: people of colour who are enthusiasts in theme parks and roller coasters, wondering, ‘Where are the people that are like me?’

“The testimonial page on our website shows that story repeating over and over and over again.”

Melanin Coaster Network collaborates with Universal Orlando

At this point, the Melanin Coaster Network team received an email which offered the intriguing possibility of a collaboration with Universal Orlando.

Reid explains:

“It came to be through a random email that we got from the contact form on our website. We saw an email, and it said, ‘Universal Potential Partnership’. It was someone in the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) sector. We were like, ‘Hold on, is this real?’ We hadn’t been talking to anyone at Universal – or anywhere, about anything, yet.”

“So, we followed it up, and lo and behold, they were serious. They were really from Universal, Florida. They said they loved what we were doing, and they reached out because they wanted to see how we could partner to bring more diverse faces into the workforce at Universal.”

This, Reid explains, ties into part of MCN’s mission:

“We want to be able to show people of colour that this is a viable career option; something you love can also be something that you do as a career, and are paid well for it. This was something we wanted to do as part of our goals.

We had a call with them, and saw that our missions and our goals were aligned.”

An ongoing partnership

The team are still working on the details of what a partnership will look like:

“It’s an ongoing conversation,” she says. “But in those talks, we were able to make connections with Universal, because we already had a trip planned. We were able to speak with heads of so many departments, let them know that we were coming, and say, ‘Hey, we’d love for you, as professionals in this industry and faces of diversity to meet with our members and give them insight on how you got to where you are.’

“At the end of the day, we are a network. We want people to make connections with each other. Maybe someone can make a connection at Universal during our trip, and send a resume, and that connection can say, ‘This is a good resume. These are the types of jobs I recommend you apply for, with that skillset.’”

Insights from industry insiders

These, she explains, are ways in which Universal has expressed an interest in helping MCN from the start:

“Then, with our trip, which will take place on March 30th, we have been able to tap into some of the employees that work there and to ask, since we will be there, if they will come and speak to our members, and show what they have done at the park. A ride engineer, for example, can show us the coaster they have created.”

Melanin Coaster Network group trip

“Our industry advisor, Dionté Henderson, was the lead engineer for Velocicoaster. He has been instrumental in helping with mentorship. If we have engineering students in our network, he’s happy to help them. He can say things like: ‘This is how I got to where I am, these are the courses I took and this is what I studied. These are the jobs that I had before this one, to show the pathway.’”

The partnership with Universal will be symbiotic. Prime comments:

“Universal wants to tap into our network as a pipeline to bring more black and brown employees – more diversity – to Universal’s workforce.”

Reid adds:

“Universal has resources and we have resources. Now, we are working to see how we can best use that to help us both reach our goals.”

In one year, the network, which began as a Facebook group with 200 members, has grown to 2000 members and supporters from all over America.

Melanin Coaster Network plans to expand

Addressing the future, Reid says:

“In the next year, we would like to be a recognised coaster club. That’s the first thing. We’re very young, but we’re working towards it.

“Then, we are doing so much recruiting here in America, but people of colour are all over the globe. We would like to expand globally, to have members all over so that our mission can hit and impact the globe.”

MCN group members on coaster

“We are already planning to travel internationally, so we can work on this goal, but we do need some help. Sponsorships and donations are very welcome, to help us expand this mission globally. We could, for example, have a branch of MCN in Great Britain. There are a bunch of parks there and a lot of people of colour.”

Prime outlines the plan:

“We will travel all over America to different theme parks by next year; the following year, we want to travel internationally – to have a Primetime Link-Up at Energylandia in Europe. We want to bring MCN across the globe and to bring all people of colour, from all across the world, from all walks of life to MCN.

“As Bri said, sponsorships, partnerships, and donations can help with that. That’s our goal.”

Something that started in such a small way is turning into a powerful force for positive change.

Supporters within the industry

Meow Wolf’s Vince Kadlubek is an influential supporter:

Vince Kadlubek Melanin Coaster Network

“He was the first person to reach out,” Prime says. “He found us on Facebook. I had posted a video of us, riding the Cheetah Hunt coaster at Busch Gardens, Tampa, in a group called Theme Park Review which Vince is a part of. He saw our video, thought our videos were amazing, and wanted to know who we were.”

When he found out, he reached out:

“He said, ‘Hey, Prime, I love your mission. I love what you’re doing. I love what you stand for. This industry has represented you all disproportionately, and I want to help fix that.’ He welcomed us to Vegas.

“He brought MCN to Meow Wolf Vegas, in February, to enjoy their attraction. We had a great time. He wants to help connect us with whoever can help us achieve our goals. I want to thank him for everything – for his partnership. He has said that as we work to continue to grow and to live MCNs mission, he’s going to be there, every step of the way. He’s the first person to reach out to help us achieve our goal.”

Melanin Coaster Network brings people together

Reid comments:

“It has been our dream and our goal, since we started talking about building this, to speak at conferences, IAAPA being one of the biggest ones. We believe it would be beneficial to have voices like ours talk at these types of conferences. We want to spread our mission, and let people know that it should be on your radar to include more diversity in your company, your business; at your parks, at your attractions, whatever it may be.

“And this should not just be the people in the front, doing ticket sales or vending or concessions. There is a richness of ideas that springs from diversity. This can grow your business in directions and ways you might not have considered. Bring in a different viewpoint, different experiences, and new ideas.”

MCN at AREA15

“Speaking at IAAPA, and any other conferences of note in the industry, is a goal of ours.

“Our mission is to highlight people of colour who are theme park and rollercoaster enthusiasts. Part of that highlighting is literally just showing up. It’s about being there and being visible in a space where we haven’t been seen before. Just our presence is enough to make a difference; to be thought-provoking.

“For a coaster club of people of colour to be somewhere like Energylandia may be enough to make people think: ‘Wait: this is new. I haven’t seen this before.’ That might be enough to start people thinking about why.”

Prime clarifies:

“Our motto is ‘Bridging the Gap by Bringing People Together.’ It’s important that to help us support that mission, we’re not exclusive; we welcome other races. It is by bringing us all together that we will bridge the gap.”

To find out more, connect with MCN on its social media pages, website & YouTube channel.

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Lalla Merlin

Lalla Merlin

Lead features writer Lalla studied English at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University, and Law with the Open University. A writer, film-maker, and aspiring lawyer, she lives in rural Devon with an assortment of badly behaved animals, including a friendly wolf

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