"Laddie, we're usin' the centripetal force from the loop-the-loop to separate the lighter rock from the denser ore."
"I reckon you're all ready to take a nice, easy tour of this here ol' mine. Ohhhh, they fixed it up real nice and safe for ya, heh heh heh! 'Cept that you ain't goin' there, noooo! You're gonna see MY kinda mine! Ah ha ha ha ha! If you can! Just try and come back alive! Ah ha ha ha haaaa!!"
— Evil tour guide, Devil's Mine Ride
A staple in Western movies along with a couple Adventure films, the Rollercoaster Mine is a mountain railway used as a roller coaster. Mining trolleys roll at high speed down impractically steep and seemingly frictionless rails that weave in and out of an improbably long chain of tunnels, and often across bridges. Sometimes, they'll even do jumps. Works great for a Chase Scene.
Surprisingly often, a mine cart full of protagonists that's been rolling downhill at great speed for a couple of minutes will suddenly break through a nailed-together criss-cross of old boards, and burst out on the surface. If this phenomenon can be harnessed, it will provide the world with infinite energy. Of course, they may have started at a higher altitude, or something.
It goes without saying, but Rollercoaster Mines are not Truth in Television. Actual mines are built for safe, efficient transport and practical extraction, not for dramatic plunges, impossible curves, and deathtrap chase routes. While real mines may have tracks, carts, inclines, and switchbacks, the classic fictional version exaggerates all of that into something far closer to an amusement ride than real industrial infrastructure. But because of how much these coaster-mines in fiction make fun chase sequences, the Rule of Cool is in heavy effect here.
Theme Park Landscape is the supertrope. Minecart Madness is a Video Game-specific subtrope.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bakuten Shoot Beyblade: There's one on the Psychic Island in S 2 E 9. It's not that over the top, but the ground isn't even and prevents a smooth ride. Other hazards, like rubble covering the tracks and rusty breaks, are due to age. On the other hand, it's a mystery what it was used for, since its shown ends are beneath a fortified building and another is cut short at a clearing. There's a bridge in the next episode that has tracks built in, so that's probably another part of the mystery rollercoaster mine.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency, Joseph Joestar makes ingenious use of the trope.
- The Pokémon: The Original Series episode "Island of the Giant Pokémon". Justified in that it's actually a theme park, though no one realizes this during the main course of the episode.
Comic Books
- Blueberry: In "La Piste des Navajos", Blueberry and McClure ride a chariot out of a collapsing mine.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Carl Barks's "Land Beneath the Ground". Many other Disney Mouse and Duck Comics too.
- Donkey Kong Jungle Action Special: The climax of "The Big Banana Robbery" takes place in one. Donkey Kong even says that it's better than a roller coaster.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – The Feast of the Moon: The heroes find themselves riding a mine cart down a number of twisty slopes in order to escape the dracolich's lair. They assume the tracks will go to the river, but they're actually unfinished and so they end up flying and landing in the river.
- Lucky Luke: In The Ballad of the Daltons, an old gold digger rigs his mine into one of these as a trap for the Daltons.
Films — Animation
- In Castle in the Sky, the pirates' car chases an engine on the elevated track over a mining town.
- Detective Swing: The “Mining Area” ride inverts this- rather than being a real mining rail line that nonsensically resembles a roller coaster, it’s a mining-themed roller coaster that inexplicably has some features that would only make sense in a real mine- like track switches and a general lack of safety features.
- Home on the Range has this when they capture Alameda Slim.
- In Hoodwinked!, Red Puckett and the Wolf come close to encountering each other in a gold mine with roller coaster-type mine tracks.
- Replace the mine cars and tracks with bare-assed sliding through ice tunnels, and you've got the cavern scenes from Ice Age 1.
- The Jungle Bunch 2017 movie has the whole gang on a Bamboo Technology minecart chasing after a trail of exploding mushrooms under the jungle.
- Lucky Luke animated movies:
- Lucky Luke: Ballad of the Daltons (1978): The Daltons try to find an old-timer by climbing into a mine-cart and have a rollercoaster ride complete with Averell somehow finding (and eating) cotton-candy on the way.
- Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure (2007) has probably the most ludicrous example, with a very lengthy sequence featuring a good dozen of carts all full of people chasing after the Daltons in an incredibly large mine with complex railways that would put to shame any modern rollercoaster, fully crashing into Bizarrchitecture and Gravity Screw at times.
- My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): Capper guiding the Mane Six through Klugetown includes a short ride on a mine cart, including a jump above a broken part of the rails.
- Odyssey into the Mind's Eye has a segment in "Volatile Planet" in which the camera perspective rides a mining cart traveling chaotically through a mining facility. Built inside an active volcano. This bizarre case is semi-justified by reality; the segment in question is the video half of an actual theme park ride.
- A unused scene that didn't make it past the Storyboard for Shrek 1 had Shrek, Donkey, and Fiona end up on a mine cart ride full of references to Disneyland rides.
- In Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation, Babs, Buster and company go through a literal example of these, complete with a shopping mall AND the theme park Happy World Land, all while being chased by a Jason Voorhees ripoff with a chainsaw.
Films — Live-Action
- In the ending of 101 Dalmatians (1996), Roger designs a video game about dalmatian puppies riding a mine cart and fighting Cruella as the final boss.
- The Apple Dumpling Gang: It isn't actually in the mine, but there is a bit with the characters in an out-of-control mine car racing down the mountain and then wreaking havoc through the town.
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the Trope Codifier, its famous minecart scene is the inspiration for most other examples on this page (with the scene even using some of the sound effects from Big Thunder Mountain Railroad).
- Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) has one — in 3-D, no less.
- Julenatt i Blåfjell: The magical horn ends up falling onto a mine cart which starts rolling away, leading to Fjellrose and Dreng having to follow it in another mine cart during the climax of the sequel.
- The 2001 German western parody Der Schuh des Manitu.
- The Documentary Thrill Ride: The Science of Fun features several, one appearing in the title card (right after stock footage from the simulator ride Devil's Mine Ride), another appearing during a segment describing film resolutions, and a third briefly appearing during a sequence showing miniature special effects.
Literature
- In Handy Mandy in Oz, Wutz sends Mandy and Nox to their dungeon via one of these, which gives them a tour of Silver Mountain before none-too-gently depositing them.
- Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure: In Rowley's story, Roland and his friends have to escape a group of angry dwarves in a mine by riding in some mine carts until the tracks abruptly end and throw them over the edge. Aiming to make the book Merchandise-Driven, Greg loves this part because he thinks it would make a good roller coaster in a theme park.
- Scarlett and Browne: The protagonists enact a mining trolley escape from the Tainted while in the Buried City.
Live-Action TV
- Opening titles
to the fourth series of GamesMaster.
- The entire theme of the bonus stage of the long-running Japanese game show Nep League. At 5 different junctures, the team gets a trivia question and leans the cart left or right (or neither in the Hyper variant) to answer. A correct answer moves them further down the cave (in later years, a jungle for questions 3/4), and 5 consecutive correct answers nets the team a ¥1 million bonus. One wrong answer, though, and it's a long way down.
Pinball
- The "Escape in the Mine Cart" Video Mode in Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure.
Podcasts
- The climax of The Adventure Zone: Balance's The Eleventh Hour arc has Tres Horny Boys and Roswell racing down mineshafts while pursued by a colossal purple worm.
Theme Parks
- The Runaway Mine Train ride at Alton Towers uses this theme, and is the oldest roller coaster still operating at the park.
- Cedar Point's Cedar Creek Mine Ride is actually one of the tamer coasters at the park, and favored by riders who aren't quite up to Millennium Force or Top Thrill Dragster.
- The page quote is from a motion simulator ride called The Devil's Mine which is based on this trope. The live-action intro (including the page quote) would later be recycled as the intro to Thrill Ride: The Science of Fun.
- Disney Theme Parks:
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is built around this trope. Indeed, this is a not-uncommon type of roller coaster.
- Indiana Jones et le Temple du Périlnote at Disneyland Paris and Raging Spirits at Tokyo DisneySea also qualify. The former was distinctly inspired by and themed as a Indiana Jones ride, while the latter is a generic temple, despite being right next to the Indiana Jones Adventure ride in that park.
- The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train coaster at the Magic Kingdom and Shanghai Disneyland takes guests through the Seven Dwarfs' mine.
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is built around this trope. Indeed, this is a not-uncommon type of roller coaster
- Europa-Park:
- "Alpenexpress Enzian", the first rollercoaster to be built in the park (in 1984). The mine that speeding train goes through is named "The Magical World of Diamonds" and features dwarves and Clockwork Creatures, a dragon most notably. The area is shared with a log ride and there's a walking path inside as well (the latter leads to a jewelry shop).
- Shows up in the first of the 4D Ed films, Das Geheimnes von Schloss Balthasar.
- Part of Arthur, l'Aventure 4D at the Futuroscope involves a Rollercoaster Mine. The rest of the time, this simulator ride invokes flying instead.
- Colorado Adventure at Phantasialand, Germany, is the park's oldest coaster and features tours through dark mines at high speeds.
- Mine Cart Madness at Universal's Super Nintendo World. Unlike the other examples, however, this one replicates the feeling of the minecarts jumping the track like in the games it's based on.
Webcomics
- Ally, Reece and Sheila of At Arm's Length getting into one of these during the "Powder Keg" storyline, complete with a running battle with enemies in other carts.
- Deliberately (and emphatically) averted in a strip from Chasing the Sunset strip.
- Played straight in Our Little Adventure as the cart Julie and her group rides on does steep drops and even loops. The cart does jumps as well, though this is accomplished with a wand they picked up as treasure earlier.
- A sequence from Wapsi Square starts this way, although the cart ends up way outside the mine.
Web Videos
- In Journey of the Cartoon Man, Roy and Valerie arrive at Oswald Sherzikien's castle in a very roller coaster-esque mine cart. It even plays a safety spiel before it starts rolling.
Western Animation
- Hanna-Barbera's The Adventures Of Gulliver episode "The Hero". After Captain Leech kidnaps Flirtacia, the other Lilliputians follow him into a mine. They end up pursuing him with both parties traveling in mine carts.
- Codename: Kids Next Door: In "Operation T.H.E.-S.H.O.G.U.N", Numbuhs 2 and 4 finds themselves stuck on one while escaping the cheese ninjas.
- Dinotrux: In "Desert Scraptors", the Reptools build a long winding track in some underground tunnels that Click-Clack takes for a ride while being pursued by the Desert Scraptors.
- In the Family Guy episode, "The Courtship of Stewie's Father", Peter is rescuing Stewie from Disney World employees and they hop on an Indiana Jones-themed minecart ride (complete with Peter in Indy's regalia).
- Fievel's American Tails features an improbable roller coaster mine track in the episode "The Lost Mother Lode", which after going through huge drops and loops ends in a mud puddle.
- One of the Raceworld zones in the Kerwhizz episode "Wild West World" features an abandoned mine, through which the racers are pursued by what they think are bandits in a mine cart.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has gotten in on the fun, in "A Canterlot Wedding".
- Subverted in The Owl House episode "Eclipse Lake". King was looking forward to a mine cart Chase Scene, but Kikimora's group trying to ride a mine track at high speed simply causes their cart to derail.
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode "Mine Your Own Business". While in an underground mine, Shaggy and Scooby Doo ride in a minecart with the Miner Forty Niner pursuing them through the mine in his own minecart.
- The Secret Saturdays: Zak and Drew chase Argost through a rollercoaster mine in "Into the Mouth of Darkness".
- There's a brief minecart pursuit in the 1973/74 Superfriends episode "The Planet Splitter" when Doctor LeBon's assistant Wilbur tries to escape through subterranean coal mine tunnels.
- In Wakfu, the Brâkmarian transport system involves a mine cart dragged on top of a quite high rollercoaster, before letting it go.
"Well I'll be! You made it through! You're the first to come back alive in a long time! Wait...You wanna see it again? Huh?! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!"