[2] Members of the St. Cassian High School chamber choir of Uranium City, Saskatchewan, have perished on a faulty roller coaster called The Cyclone.

[10] The musical begins with a mysterious and headless girl in a school uniform singing the song of an unending dream-like state ("Karnak's Dream of Life").

Karnak reveals that he will die soon, as a rat he has named Virgil has been gradually chewing through the rubber of his power cable and will soon bite down on 200 volts of electricity, instantly killing them both.

Karnak, in his guilt for being unable to warn five teenagers from Uranium City, Saskatchewan of their impending deaths, summons their spirits to take part in the show, which he has constructed as a "final apology."

Though Ocean clumsily attempts to take back her words, the rest of the choir, including her best friend, Constance Blackwood, has been incredibly offended by her social Darwinist rant.

The next contestant is Noel Gruber, the only gay boy in his small town who dreams of being a cold-hearted French prostitute, but was instead stuck working at a Taco Bell.

He sings about his desire to live the tragic, loveless life of his alter ego, "Monique Gibeau" (inspired by Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel), who dies of typhoid flu at the end of the song ("Noel's Lament").

The third contestant is Mischa Bachinski, a Ukrainian adoptee who immigrated after his mother, dying from radiation poisoning while on a Chernobyl disaster clean-up crew, put him up for adoption and lied about his age.

When he reached Canada, his adoptive parents were expecting a "recently potty-trained" two-year-old, but instead received a violent teenage boy with a drinking problem.

To cope with the isolating treatment he received from his adoptive parents, he turned to "self-aggrandizing commercialized hip-hop," posting his own original raps to YouTube.

The fourth contestant is Ricky Potts, a boy who was born with an unnamed degenerative disease that left him mute and unable to walk, though in the afterlife his ability to speak has been restored.

(A brief 2023 revision in the licensed script removed Ricky's physical disability and replaced it with the trauma of experiencing his now-Pentecostal preacher father being fatally bitten by their pet viper JoJo.

While Ricky bonds with Jane by giving her one of the names he had been "saving up" in life, and Noel and Mischa connect over seeing each other as they want to be seen, Ocean and Constance finally come to a head.

Frustrated with her image as the "nicest girl in town," Constance talks about her family's pride for having worked in Uranium City "since they opened the mines" and that though she agreed with them at first, high school made her think it was lame to feel that way.

Cut characters from earlier versions of the show include Trishna (played by Almeera Jiwa), a shy nerdy girl next door who was into entomology and had a crush on her neighbor Hank.

[20][non-primary source needed] Revisions made during the McCarter production to decrease ableist language, in addition to the removal of Ricky's disability altogether, would later be integrated unannounced into the officially licensed script in 2023.

[21] The replacement of Ricky's degenerative disease with trauma received backlash from several fans, with the "#SaveRickyPotts" campaign inspiring multiple online petitions and discussions regarding representation.

Jacob Richmond and Arena Stage, the venue hosting the McCarter production's 2023 revival, responded in a Tweet that these changes would not bar a disabled actor from playing any roles in the show.

[22] A second unannounced revision would later revert the licensed script to its original state, while the McCarter changes were relegated to the show's High School Edition.

[23] In 2022, after a clip of Emily Rohm singing "The Ballad of Jane Doe" was circulated on TikTok, Ride the Cyclone became a viral sensation on the app as other songs from the cast recording began to be used in videos.