"B.Y.B.B. Be yourself, but better! That's been my power phrase since I started my first company. A middle school girl selling artisanal handmade mascara. "But isn't that just melted crayons?" Hey, neighsayers gonna neigh. But I say B.Y.B.B."
— Vignette Valencia
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rollercoaster of Friendship is an animated hour-long cartoon special set in the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls series. It first aired on July 6, 2018. The special was later uploaded to Hasbro's YouTube channel in serial form starting on August 31.
Rarity gets a job at Equestria Land, a new Amusement Park set to open in two weeks. The head of public relations for the park, Vignette Valencia, loves Rarity's work from Snapgap, and is obsessed with her social media following. Thinking Rarity's costumes will get the park trending, Vignette has Rarity making costumes for the Light Parade, the closing ceremony to the park. But Applejack has a sneaking suspicion about Vignette's intentions. Not to mention, her friends all seem to be disappearing...
The online version can be found below:
My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rollercoaster of Friendship provides examples of:
- 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The Ferris Wheel seen in some shots uses 3D animation, standing out from the rest of the backgrounds.
- Accidental Aiming Skills: After finally giving up on the rigged ring toss game, Sunset tosses a ring over her shoulder without looking, which lands perfectly on one of the bottles. Flim and Flam immediately use it to claim there's always a winner.
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: Rarity refuses to listen to any of Applejack's objections about the parade or Vignette's attitude due to being so enamored with the job of a costume designer. This is in spite of Applejack supposedly being her best friend, and the most honest. Rarity cops to it in an apology to Applejack, though, and surprises herself with how irrational she was being.
- Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: Vignette is prone to speaking like this, her favorite being "B.Y.B.B (Be yourself, but better)". Other character occasionally use this against her in mockery, such as the designer saying "G.W.I.Q. Guess what. I quit".
- Ahem: Applejack has to clear her throat to remind Rarity that she's here, after Rarity fails to mention her to Vignette Valencia when introducing all of her friends.
- Air Quotes: The security guard puts quotes around "not inspector" with his fingers while talking to Applejack because he thinks she's sincerely a "fun inspector" trying to keep her cover.
- All of Them: This is Vignette's answer when Fluttershy asks how many people will be watching them perform at the parade. Naturally, this makes her all the more nervous.
- All Part of the Show: People watching the Rainbooms' fight with Vignette on the Internet think of it as a cool light parade show.
- Alternate Self: In one scene, the two characters who are pegasi in the prime universe ride the rollercoaster together, and the outcome isn't what you'd expect:
- Rainbow Dash, whose other self has wings and routinely flies through the skies, is terrified of heights and screams for the operator to stop the ride. Compare that to her other self's obsession with riding the Wild Blue Yonder in "Grannies Gone Wild".
- Fluttershy, whose other self often forgets or refuses to fly even when it would be prudent, finds the rollercoaster surprisingly enjoyable.
- Amusement Park: The setting of the special is Equestria Land, a huge amusement park that can hold fifty thousand people. It includes such things as roller coasters, a haunted house, and carnival games.
- Angrish: After being frustrated that a light-up outfit burnt out, Rarity throws her face into a pile of clothes, complete with angry shouting. When she gets even more worried about the upcoming light parade, she yells for an even bigger pile of clothes.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Subverted. Twilight attempts to create the perfect ring toss game throw to win through the application of physics. Since the game is rigged, it never works.
- Bait-and-Switch: Vignette's enchanted phone appears to send its victims to yet another White Void Room: but its just a random room in the amusement park that just so happens to be painted all white.
- Blatant Lies:
- Applejack doesn't hide her disappointment in not being hired very well, or her jealousy toward Vignette and Rarity hitting it off so quickly.
- Rarity denying she was having a meltdown, right after something that looks a lot like a meltdown.Rarity: I wasn't having a meltdown! Who said I was having a meltdown?! I AM NOT HAVING A MELTDOWN!
- Rainbow Dash has a long stream of suspiciously specific denials about how she isn't afraid of the roller coaster.
- Blind Shoulder Toss: As they depart Flim and Flam's ring-toss game in defeat, Sunset Shimmer throws the last ring she and Twilight Sparkle had blindly behind her. It lands perfectly on one of the bottles.
- Body Uploading: When Rainbow Dash
is subjected to Flashy Teleportation by Vignette using her phone, and appears where Fluttershy is, she says:Rainbow Dash: Aw, man! Are we trapped in a magical phone?
[Fluttershy nods]
Rainbow Dash: Typical. [pause] You gonna eat that stress salad? - "Brave the Ride" Plot: A subplot had Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash attempting to ride a coaster despite the former being apprehensive about it. They start with smaller kiddie rides before the two eventually go on a bigger coaster, Dash rides with her out of support but starts to have second thoughts when the ride commences. Ironically at the end, Fluttershy ends up enjoying herself, Dash not so much.
- Breaking Old Trends: This is the first Equestria Girls movie/special not to reference Sunset Shimmer or Twilight Sparkle’s villainous pasts. Given recent events, perhaps the girls were taking care to avoid the subject.
- Breather Episode: While there’s plenty of drama between Rarity and Applejack, Rollercoaster of Friendship is notably less weighty and softer in tone than its predecessor Forgotten Friendship — especially for Sunset Shimmer, whose biggest source of stress for much of the proceedings is a mere ring toss game.
- Brutal Honesty: After believing that Rarity and her friends can't stop her plans anymore, Vignette just bluntly tells Rarity exactly what she did to the rest of the Equestria Girls, and that she doesn't know where her phone sent them. She also doesn't care.
- Burger Fool: Bulk Biceps replaces Applejack at the Canterlot Mall's smoothie bar. He doesn't look too happy, as the costume makes him look ridiculous, and he doesn't quite master the skills to make smoothie properly.
- The Bus Came Back: After missing out on "Dance Magic" with her fellow Shadowbolts, Indigo Zap finally returns to the screen in a brief cameo.
- Call-Back: After several of the Equestria Girls are trapped in a White Void Room, Rainbow Dash mentions that this isn't the first time they've ended up in a white void thanks to a corrupted magic item.Rainbow Dash: [to Fluttershy] Aw, man! Are we trapped in a magical phone? Typical.
- The Cameo:
- Aside from Indigo Zap's brief cameo, her fellow Shadowbolt Sunny Flare can be seen in many crowd shots.
- Trixie can also be seen several times at the amusement park.
- We also have Flash Sentry, Lyra, Bon Bon, Derpy, Bulk Biceps, Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Fleur de Lis, Micro Chips, Snips and Snails, Flim and Flam, Cheerilee, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and several others.
- Cathartic Scream: Stressed out from the parade preparations, Rarity screams into a pile of clothing. After an argument with Applejack, she demands a bigger pile of clothes to scream into.
- Character Focus: Like "Dance Magic" before, this Equestria Girls special does not focus on Sunset Shimmer or either version of Twilight Sparkle, instead giving the main roles to Applejack and Rarity.
- Con Man: We see the human Flim-Flam Brothers once again, and they're still as crooked as their Equestrian counterparts, running a rigged Ring Toss game at the park.
- Continuity Cameo: One of the background characters resembles Megan from the '80s cartoon.
- Continuity Nod:
- Applejack receives an e-mail about a sale at Stinky Bottom's Discount Hat Emporium.
- Applejack mentions quitting her job at the fruit smoothie stand, which she was shown working at in "Shake Things Up".
- While helping her family make applesauce, Applejack wears the same outfit she wore in "Five to Nine".
- One of the costumes in the Light Parade is Adagio Dazzle's Siren form.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- Pinkie Pie invents a totally fake "Fun Inspector" position which is mistaken for a real thing by a security guard, who hustles Applejack into a security booth and leaves her unattended despite her protests, and while she's there, one of only five security camera monitors — overseeing a park that holds 50,000 people — just so happens to be aimed at the secluded corner where Vignette zaps her friend into oblivion.
- Not only do all of the people zapped into the White Void Room fail to notice the door on the wall, but Applejack just so happens to walk close enough to said door that she can hear Twilight speaking. In a normal indoor voice. Inside an insulated room. In the middle of an amusement park.
- Covered in Gunge:
- Bulk Biceps tries speeding up the smoothie-making by shaking the blender, only for the cap to dislodge, covering him in juice.
- Applejack slips up while making applesauce the old-fashioned way with her family, ending up sitting in the stuff.
- Micro Chips at the caramel apples stand soon ends up bogged down in sticky caramel.
- The Cracker: Discussed. Twilight, thinking that the girls are trapped in the Internet, wants to hack into Vignette's phone to get them out, complete with some Technobabble to Applejack over the phone. It is unnecessary anyway.
- Curse of The Ancients: Applejack catches herself cursing like a senior citizen at one point.Applejack: Uh, I think I hashgabbed my SnapTag or all in the— Ugh. I can't figure out these new, fandangled apps. Ugh. I sound just like Granny Smith!
- Distinction Without a Difference: Vignette tells Rarity not to think of her as her "boss", but as a friend who bosses her around.
- Drunk with Power: Vignette gets increasingly liberal with her phone's teleportation power, to the point that she almost teleports the entire parade crowd for booing her performance. The Rainbooms note that transporting that many people at once into a tiny room would crush them.
- Everyone Has Standards: Even the shifty Flim-Flam Brothers start feeling bad after Twilight and Sunset lose their game for the umpteenth time. The brothers even offer to give Sunset and Twilight a prize out of pity. Sunset rejects it because she doesn't want the prize; she wants to win.
- Facepalm: Rainbow Dash facepalms after Fluttershy insists the first attraction they try should be... the kiddy coaster.Fluttershy: Oh, these kids are so brave.
Rainbow Dash: Ugh. - Failed a Spot Check: Having already been teleported into a White Void Room in a previous adventure, the girls seemingly don't notice that this one has walls, a ceiling, and an unlocked door. Sunset is quite annoyed when they realize their mistake, complete with High-Pressure Emotion.
- Fictional Social Network: A website called SnapGap is regularly promoted throughout the special, which seems to be the Equestria Girls equivalent of Instagram. Vignette Valencia has over three million followers on it, and she hired Rarity to design costumes partially because she has such nice photos on SnapGap.
- Flashy Teleportation: What Vignette Valencia's ensorceled phone is actually doing is slowly, and glowy transporting the people or items it photographs to another spot in the park.Micro Chips: I was just minding my own business making perfect caramel apples, when suddenly, Vignette saw me and said I wasn't as cool a nerd as she thought. Then she took my picture, and I ended up here, violating all known laws of space and time.
- Foot Popping: Rarity lifts her foot while hugging Applejack toward the end, and this after a reconciliation too.
- Foreshadowing: When Fluttershy finds herself trapped in a White Void Room, the edges of walls and a ceiling are visible behind her. Later, as all the rest of the girls (except Rarity and Applejack) are stuck inside, Pinkie looks at something just out of frame and becomes confused at what she sees. The suggestions that their prison isn't what they think it is are borne out when Applejack finds them by opening a door from outside.
- Fun with Acronyms: Vignette Valencia goes overboard with this, everyone one of her lines involves acronyms.
- Good-Times Montage: As in Legend of Everfree and Forgotten Friendship, the final song is pretext to show the girls having fun, this time at the amusement park, in a series of still photographs.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Applejack says Rarity only likes Vignette because she "keeps blowing smoke up [her] chimney." Typical usages of that idiom don't use the word "chimney"...
- Green-Eyed Monster: Applejack quickly grows jealous when she sees Rarity and Vignette being so friendly with each other.
- High-Pressure Emotion: After learning the White Void Room they were stuck in was just a room in the park and not some sort of magical void, Sunset Shimmer gets so upset that her face turns bright red, accompanied by the sound of steam escaping.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Vignette's singing in the Light Parade is so bad that the crowd starts covering their ears.
- Hologram Projection Imperfection: Vignette's phone can create holograms of whatever it has taken pictures of, but they're faded, transparent, and shake constantly in addition to having an extremely limited range of motion.
- Hope Spot: It seems at first that Vignette's use of magic isn't as bad as it seems when it's revealed that it just sends people to a white room in the park rather than trap them in her phone. Then the girls realize that given how trigger-happy she's getting with her magic it's likely that she'll use it on the entire crowd at the parade and send them all into a small room at once, which will result in "Squish City" as Pinkie puts it.
- Hypocritical Humor: After everything Rainbow does to convince Fluttershy to conquer her fears and ride the rollercoaster, she succumbs to fear herself when she realizes how high they're going, calling out for someone to stop the ride.
- I Can't Hear You: Fluttershy and Rainbow are standing next to a rollercoaster, and can't hear each other because of the patrons screaming.Rainbow Dash: [yelling] Can you hear me over all the screaming?!
Fluttershy: [yelling] I can't hear you over all the screaming! - Impractically Fancy Outfit: Rarity's "Carousel Dress" that she's seen parading with during the final song has an impressive design, but it's strictly good for a fashion show and nothing else. Notably, she better be wearing Modesty Shorts underneath because it's perfect for upskirt shots. It's also probably impossible to sit down with it.
- It's All About Me: Vignette only cares about her "vision" and being popular, ignoring the views of others and only focusing on what she wants.
- Lethal Harmless Powers: Discussed. When the Equestria Girls find out that Vignette's smartphone is transporting them to a room in the park, they realize that, should Vignette want to, she could send too many people into the room all at once, and "Squish City" would be the result.
- Lighter and Softer: Rollercoaster of Friendship is a lighter toned special compared to its predecessors (especially Forgotten Friendship) with a greater emphasis on comedy. The most stressful elements of the special is Twilight and Sunset losing the Ring Toss game, and its clearly rigged and Played for Laughs. The "villain" (Vignette Valencia) is an over-the-top perfectionist who spouts numerous catchphrases involving acronyms.
- Logical Weakness: Vignette's phone has to be able to see an object to transport it. Rarity protects herself by manifesting diamond shields to block the camera, causing it to only teleport the shields.
- Malicious Misnaming: Vignette calls Applejack "Applejuice" at one point. It might be unintentional.
- Match Cut: The scene where Rarity demands more clothes to scream into dissolves into the ring toss game stand as the scene changes, with Rarity in the exact same spot as white pony plush with a purple mane.
- Mythology Gag: One of the background kids in Equestria Land shares a design with Megan Williams, the human protagonist of the first generation of My Little Pony.
- Never My Fault: In the opening scene, Vignette complains about how the costumes aren't "perfect". The designer points out that it's mostly because Vignette keeps changing her mind, but Vignette ignores that statement.
- Never Say "Die": When the Rainbooms fear what might happen if Vignette transports an entire crowd into the small white room, they refer to the outcome as simply "Squish City".
- Nobody Touches the Hair: Rainbow Dash already wasn't enthused about Vignette's ideas for the parade, but the last straw is when she suggests the rainbow-haired girl would have to shave her head to wear a wig.Rainbow Dash: Uhhh... there is no way anyone is shaving my head.
- No-Sell: Rarity uses her own magic to protect herself from Vignette's phone, using her diamond shields to block the beams so she won't be transported.
- Oh, Crap!: The Rainbooms are relieved when the White Void Room is just an average room that just so happens to be painted white, but get this when they realize that Vignette can send anyone she wants (including entire crowds) to the White Room as she sees fit, causing "Squish City".
- Oh, No... Not Again!: This sums up well Rainbow Dash's reaction to finding herself and Fluttershy in a White Void Room... again.Rainbow Dash: Aw, man! Are we trapped in a magical phone? Typical.
- Old-Fashioned Fruit Stomping: When Rarity calls Applejack about getting the job at Equestria Land, we see Big Mac, Apple Bloom, and her stomping apples to make cider.
- Pet the Dog: Defied. After Sunset and Twilight lose so many times at the ring toss game that they've spent a mountain of tickets, the Flim-Flam Brothers offer to just give the girls a parakeet doll prize out of pity. Sunset screams that "it's not about the parakeet" and refuses.
- Photo-Booth Montage: During the final song, the seven girls are seen scrambling into a photo booth to make a group picture. It quickly turns to slapstick as Rainbow Dash loses her balance and they end up piling up as the first photos are taken. Then they just laugh it up and keep making faces in the later photos.
- Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Applejack and Rarity's friendship is strained by Rarity only focusing on her job and ignoring Applejack trying to warn her about their missing friends, and Applejack's jealousy over Rarity calling Vignette her best friend. It eventually reaches a boiling point where they both start arguing with each other and Applejack yells at Rarity "You're not special!" The two of them apologize to each other shortly after their argument and assure each other they are best friends.
- Precision F-Strike: A fairly tame one but still applicable given the series' usual language. Applejack says she "screwed things up" with Rarity, the first instance of the word in the franchise.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Applejack tells off Rarity for listening to Vignette instead of her, saying that Vignette is just "blowing smoke up [her] chimney" and pretending to be nice, which is what she does with everyone. Applejack finishes by shouting "you're not special!" to Rarity, which Applejack immediately regrets, but it's too late to take it back.
- Rebel Relaxation: Pinkie Pie leans against the wall of the White Void Room in this pose as the others realizes it's just a room, revealing that she knew all along.
- Rummage Sale Reject: Pinkie Pie promotes herself to "fun inspector" of Equestria Land, putting on a uniform of things she dug out of the trash.
- Running Gag:
- Sunset and Twilight repeatedly try to win a ring toss game run by the Flim-Flam brothers, only to consistently keep losing.
- Vignette's "stress salad." She accidentally teleports it away before she can eat it; later, Fluttershy finds it in the White Void Room and asks no one in particular if she can have it; still later, Rainbow Dash ends up there and asks Fluttershy if she's going to eat it.
- Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: The security guard says "wink, wink," while winking to Applejack.
- Shout-Out:
- When being introduced to Vignette, Rainbow Dash dabs, a signature hand gesture from the National Football League.
- On Applejack's Equestria Land map, a mascot looks very similar to Disney's Horace Horsecollar.
- Sunset tossing blindly the last ring in defeat is followed by a slow-motion with typical The Six Million Dollar Man sound effect.
- When being introduced to Vignette, Rainbow Dash dabs
- Sore Loser: Sunset becomes increasingly angered when she and Twilight keep losing at the rigged ring toss game. She even admits that she hates losing.
- Stealth Pun:
- A valencia is a type of orange. As Rarity gets increasingly drawn into her work and starts to ignore Applejack's objections, she ends up comparing apples and oranges.
- Vignette uses her phone to turn the Rainbooms into holograms.
- Sticky Situation: Micro Chips, in his role of Caramel Apple "girl", is soon shown having trouble with the stuff and ends up bogged down in sticky caramel.Micro Chips: Do you by any chance have a knife or samurai sword or several tiny but very sharp nail clippers?
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash identify Vignette's stress salad as a "stress salad" with no external input.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Applejack goes to ask Rarity how her work is going. She barely finishes her sentence before Rarity screams that she's not having a meltdown.
- Sweet and Sour Grapes: After Sunset and Twilight lose the ring toss game enough times, they decide to just quit, with Sunset throwing the last ring nonchalantly over her shoulder, causing it to land perfectly on the bottle.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Pinkie Pie, the one most often demonstrating she has No Sense of Personal Space, gets for once on the receiving end of it from Vignette Valencia when she circles Pinkie's face with her arm and touch her nose; Pinkie looks appropriately awkward during this.
- Techno Babble: Twilight Sparkle indulges heavily in technical speech at several occasions, notably before trying the ring-toss game. Of course this doesn't help, since it is rigged.
- Tele-Frag: When the girls realize Vignette's phone is just teleporting whatever it takes a picture of into a small room in the park, it quickly becomes a concern that she might end up teleporting more people than the room has capacity for, potentially causing serious injuries.
- Transformation Sequence: The heroines turn into their Magical Girl forms with a sequence in the same style as in Forgotten Friendship, although it's much abridged compared to the one from that special.
- Trivially Obvious:
- After Rarity praises how awesome Vignette Valencia is, Applejack's lukewarm response is "She sure is... somethin'."
- There's also Flim's reaction to Twilight:Twilight Sparkle: Wow! This game does look easy!
Flim: Would ya lookee here? Somebody who knows a thing or two about a thing or two!
- Twitchy Eye: Rarity's eye twitches right after the cowboy costume adorned with electric lights they are testing out suddenly short-circuits.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: As usual, nobody in the crowd is surprised when the Rainbooms use their magic in front of them, or when they do their transformation sequence and destroy Vignette's phone. Apparently everyone thinks it is all part of the show, even though several people in the crowd have seen the Rainbooms use magic before.
- Visual Pun: Rarity calls Applejack about her costume designing job, and Applejack says that she won't slip up — which she does (in applesauce) right after that.
- White Void Room: Vignette's phone is enchanted to send whatever she takes a picture of to a featureless white plane. Turns out it's just an empty room at the park that just happens to be white.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Applejack trying to prove that Vignette is evil to her friends, and snatching her phone to try and make disappear a mannequin (it doesn't work because it's Rarity's phone), only results in AJ looking like a fool.
- You Were Trying Too Hard: Twilight and Sunset aren't able to win a prize using carefully calculated throws, but an offhand over-the-shoulder throw by Sunset lands.
