RollerCoaster was a "wrapper" show, usually incorporating three to five externally produced animated programs (formerly a mix of animated and live action shows) of varying lengths, which were interspersed with locally produced studio or location segments hosted by Spencer.

The show also included regular features jointly presented by Spencer and Ruben Meerman, "The Surfing Scientist".

These shows offer a relatively inexpensive means of filling children's viewing times on Australian TV—the wrapper segments are generally made with a small crew and feature minimal production values; in the early days of Australian television the wrapper segments were performed live, although today they are now usually pre-recorded.

Many of these programs are produced outside Australia with most sourced from other English-speaking countries, chiefly the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

RollerCoaster alternates these short programs (e.g. Shaun the Sheep, The Mr. Men Show) with longer animated or live-action children's programs in a variety of genres, such as Roman Mysteries, Wolverine and the X-Men, Naturally, Sadie, 6Teen, Carl Squared, Atomic Betty, Pokémon, Girl Stuff, Boy Stuff, Bakugan Battle Brawlers , Young Dracula, Lizzie Mcguire, Even Stevens, Zoey 101, The Fairly OddParents, Best Ed, Silversun, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Round the Twist and more recently, the children's reality competition Escape from Scorpion Island.

Many of these segments included elements of audience participation or contributions via email or the RollerCoaster website's moderated chat rooms and message boards.

Another change was that it only included animation now, with live action shows not "boxed" by the RollerCoaster format and were seen following in the 5pm-6pm slot.

[1] From 7 December 2009, RollerCoaster began airing on the then recently launched children-orientated multi-channel ABC3 following the original screening on its sister channel ABC1 from 4-5pm.

[3] At the end of the Friday 29 January 2010 edition, Spencer announced that he was leaving the show and thanked viewers for his five years as presenter and writer of the series.

By the same date, the main RollerCoaster URL was redirecting visitors to the new ABC3 website; some pages including "Elliot's Blah" still function, though now carry the disclaimer that they are no long being updated as well as a link redirecting visitors to a new RollerCoaster section in the ABC3 site.

The theme tune "(RollerCoaster)" was performed and co-written by former ABC-TV Creature Features presenter Nick Hardcastle.

The opening graphics are computer generated and feature an interdimensional trip through a fantastic world of images and 3D graphics, culminating by racing through a portal into a white universe with a complex 3D image of a space station style city with roads, skyscrapers, cars, butterflies and robots before the RollerCoaster logo appears from outside the screen to form itself in front of the base of the floating city.