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Six Flags Over Georgia
Austell, Georgia – Saturday, June 10th, 2023
The various ineptitudes of the Six Flags chain can both giveth and taketh away. Mostly, if you’re an average guest, it taketh away.
 Prior to departure I tried to reserve the preferred parking benefit on my high-level Six Flags membership. But the online portal wouldn’t work. I spent a total of three hours troubleshooting and then dealing with guest services, where the eventual solution was “the system isn’t working, so no reservations are required, just show your card and get preferred parking on a first-come first-served basis.” Okay, sounds good! But upon arrival, I’m asked for my date-specific reservation when I produce my pass. I explain the situation, but the only solution that’s offered is to park in the general lot and walk to guest services who can better explain the pre-booking policy through my thick skull so I can do it right next time. (Not the exact words, but the intent wasn’t far off.) A distinctly sour note to start the day, mitigated only somewhat by the fact that it was still early in the morning and our spot in the general lot was only a minute or two further walk beyond the preferred section. Way too much fuss over too little benefit.
For a moment, things only seemed to get worse at the front gate, when my membership scanned in, but then our next one showed an error. Unsure why it was reading invalid, the soft-spoken young employee also offered the solution to speak to guest services… and waved us to a structure just inside the main gate near Georgia Scorcher. As we’re sauntering in that direction, we realize the credit card linked to that membership had been replaced earlier that year and never updated, meaning the dues hadn’t been paid for months. No need to wait in line at guest services to identify that issue! And, since we’re already on our own inside the park, we could simply deal with it much, much later. It was a free admission loophole the size of a four-lane highway mountain tunnel; much easier to just go with the flow straight through than volunteer the extra work to go around.
This was only my second visit to the second original Six Flags theme park, after my first visit twenty years earlier. Things had changed, but not as much as expected for a two decade gap. There were only four new coasters for me (plus one removal), which includes a kiddie coaster and a wood-to-steel conversion. Atlanta is booming as a metro area, but Six Flags management seemed not to have noticed the opportunity. Which might have some benefit, as the park still retains elements from its original state history theme park identity that might have long ago been ripped out by more aggressive planning found at a place like Great Adventure. But it also left it with a muddled identity and a confusing infrastructure, as well as an adequate B+ collection of rides that includes a mix of below-average examples of good ride types (Twisted Cyclone, Riddler Mindbender) above-average installations of bad ride types (Georgia Scorcher, Blue Hawk), average versions of middling ride types (Dare Devil Dive, Batman & Superman), and one bona-fide winner (Goliath). As I write this two years after my visit, there’s strong indication that new management sees the potential in this park and is aiming to grow it while cleaning up the identity crises and returning the park to its roots. Hopefully it won’t take me another twenty years to check in on their progress.
Twisted Cyclone
 Twenty years ago, the Georgia Cyclone was my favorite attraction at Six Flags Over Georgia. Riding in the back row, the violent combination of lateral and negative G-force whip over the drop-offs of each fan curve gave this Cyclone-clone real teeth that I still distinctly remember to this day. I can’t speak to the state of the wood track in 2017 and thus whether or not the Twisted Cyclone RMC Ibox renovation in 2018 was a “much needed” change. But in a landscape increasingly overpopulated with RMC Ibox creations (including one of the best in the same metro region), Twisted Cyclone was not very memorable, in which case I must cast my vote in preference of my memories of the original.
Twisted Cyclone actually starts out pretty good. The “hurricane watch party” story (with radio DJ) in the queue is fun, the hot rod trains look pretty cool, and the first set of elements are actually quite good despite the small size. The sharp first drop includes a slight twist with a nice headchopper effect; I love the symmetry and weightless rotation of the double rollover on the first elevated curve; and the 90 degree outward floater hill provides great visuals both on and off ride. It’s a clever RMC reinterpretation of the classic Coney Island Cyclone opening act, and I wouldn’t change anything about it.
But after that point, it loses the connection to the Cyclone identity and becomes a pretty middling collection of the most basic RMC tropes: jabbing airtime peaks, lateral-forceless over-banked curves, and a random zero-G roll because that’s the easiest inversion to place atop an existing wooden support superstructure. The traditional Cyclone layout, which the Georgia Cyclone also did quite well, is able to build tension through a pattern of hold and attack in the first half, before sprinting breathlessly through the final act. Not only do these RMC elements all feel divorced from one another in any sense of flow or story, but it had to shorten the layout by nearly 500 feet, leaving an abruptly truncated ending. An RMCified Cyclone could have been outstanding, but unfortunately this one only gets part way there before fudging the rest of the assignment. I feel no compunction about rating Twisted Cyclone the worst of the Ibox conversions… yet even still, I must give it credit as one of the better rides in the park.
      
Acrophobia
I normally don’t care much for drop towers, but I remembered Acrophobia’s unique floorless tilting variation made an impression on me twenty years ago and I was curious if it still held up. Despite the name,1 Acrophobia is not particularly tall as far as Intamin drop towers go, but the precariousness of the seating (standing?) arrangement is effective, and if anything the shorter stature gives the impression that there’s not enough dropping distance to safely and smoothly land. Acrophobia had no wait, so I had no regrets or disappointments in renewing my acquaintance with it.
  
Six Flags Railroad
 One of the few remaining opening day rides from 1967, this train shows its age through its quirkiness. Apologies for any potential offense, but this is quite literally the short bus of theme park train rides, with only two passenger cars trailing its steam engine. The scenic ride is also very slow as it navigates the windy, uneven loop route through the middle of the park with awkward backstage views of almost everything. It makes up for it with a Jungle Cruise style live narration as the ride op tries to hype everyone on board for the other attractions in the park, but mostly build hype for the train. I was ready to groan all the way through, but the energy of the host and buy-in from the audience honestly made the overall experience pretty endearing, and we had positive things to say about it as we completed our loop tour of the park.
 
 Also boosting our mood: the free VIP members lounge next door while we waited for the train. Only one of us qualified for the lounge, but the receptionist saw no issue with letting our full party enjoy the air conditioning, lounge seating with phone chargers, and free soft drinks and snacks. (Another example of when Six Flags’ lax attitude unexpectedly giveths.) The snacks proved sufficient to substitute paying for the usual Six Flags meal in the park, and the cooled lounging area is simply an amenity that should be available to everyone in any modern theme park, not just VIP passholders or as upcharges. More parks are introducing autism-safe sensory rooms that also provide similar benefits, but universally accessible design would recognize that these kinds of spaces can benefit everyone, especially as the summers grow hotter and parks more overstuffed with overstimulating rides than in years past.
Dahlonega Mine Train
Another original 1967 attraction, also making the Dahlonega the second oldest mine train coaster ever built, just one year after its sibling at the Over Texas park. The formula still had a ways to be perfected: while most later mine trains evoke a feeling of setting out on an expedition across an unknown wilderness, the Dahlonega Mine Train’s short frequent lifts and meandering layout across a lightly forested hillside plot is more evocative of riding a toy train around a childhood backyard. Which is still quite a lot of fun, especially with its random bunny hops, improvised banking techniques, and an underground finale that gives the first almost-semblance of thrill during the entire layout.
Joker Funhouse Coaster
What a weird kid’s coaster. This custom Chance Big Dipper features a terrain layout mostly by virtue of the large elevated deck built for the kid’s area that it navigates over, under, and around. It begins with a lengthy pre-lift around a back of house area, before the lift feeds into a main layout that includes only three drops, a low number even by kid’s coaster standards. Yet it’s a surprisingly powerful layout for the diminutive ride vehicle size, hitting a top speed faster than the Dahlonega Mine Train as it circles down the hillside and under the walkways a pretty significant distance below the station grade, then using all of its energy to just barely make it back up into the loading platform. I might have tried it a second time if the throughput wasn’t so poor.
   
Justice League: Battle for Metropolis
 When Six Flags commissioned Sally Rides to get them back into the dark ride game, they should be commended for their ambition to tell a coherent superhero story across a multifaceted dark ride. The story is a bit of a grab bag of characters from across the DC Universe, but the odd couple pairing of Lex Luthor and Joker is acknowledged and played for laughs, the interactive element meshes reasonably well with the story while avoiding blinking red lights, and the scenes have enough variety between 3D and practical effects to keep it consistently engaging. Of course, this variety and ambition also represents one of its fatal flaws, which is that maintaining show quality is not a prerequisite for Six Flags’ ability to physically open these rides each day. Expect numerous effects missing or miscalibrated on any given ride through, although as I recall Georgia’s version fared better in this regard than many of its compatriots. Bonus points for sharing a plaza with Superman: Ultimate Flight, the only park in the chain to have a Metropolis section with both Justice League and Superman attractions.
 
Superman: Ultimate Flight
I didn’t ride it this visit. I had already ridden it the year after its debut as the first B&M Flying Coaster in North America, and was mildly interested to revisit it to compare the difference to the later models at Great Adventure and Great America, with its dual loading platform, shorter trains, and semi-terrain coaster setting. But as we walked by, the reality set in that it was hot, it’s not a comfortable ride, and even with Flash Pass there was going to be a bit of a wait, so it felt easier to keep on moving. Superman as a flying coaster should be one of the most obvious superhero-themed attractions imaginable, and it’s too bad it hasn’t been done to a higher standard of excellence than this attraction, yet.
 
Great American Scream Machine
 As wooden coasters have gotten more dynamic and daring, they have also gotten uglier. Despite its name, the Great American Scream Machine is not a particularly thrilling coaster, but the 1973 John Allen creation is certainly Six Flags Over Georgia’s most attractive coaster to look at, its elegant whitewashed structure reflecting against the lake.2 I had remembered there being a decent amount of airtime on my last visit. While recent retracking efforts have kept the Scream Machine relatively smooth, it did seem more sluggish around the course, with faint whispers of airtime that never quite delivers. The pacing is still quite enjoyable, progressing from big drops and high turns to a faster-paced, bunny hop focused ride. We liked it enough to go around and ride it twice back-to-back, which is more than can be said for most other coasters on this side of the park.
    
Blue Hawk
 One thing that irked me in RollerCoaster Tycoon was when players would take a predesigned track and simply plop it over an open body of water. It looked bad and wasn’t realistic. Well, Blue Hawk (formerly Ninja) has been standing over its lagoon since 1992 to offer an example of just how realistic the practice actually was. While it’s one of the park’s least loved coasters, the compact Vekoma multilooping coaster was quite advanced at the time of its manufacture in 1989, showing a much higher CAD sophistication than anything Arrow Dynamics was producing in the same era.
Some refurbishments, paint, new trains and a new identity since 2016 have also helped give it a newfound respect among park goers. What seemed like it could have been an ideal candidate for the old ride rotation program (or the scrap heap) has earned the longevity to become the fourth oldest coaster to remain at the park. Those butterfly and sidewinder inversions are still pretty exciting all these years later, as are the numerous headchoppers as it weaves through its own layout in a seemingly too-small footprint. Six Flags Over Georgia might not have the best coasters in the South, but if this is perhaps the worst of its collection, they’re doing better than a lot of parks.
    
Monster Mansion
…Was closed for mechanical problems. Boo!
 I had been so looking forward to what is reportedly the best dark ride in the entire Six Flags chain, especially as it was in the middle of a major refurbishment and reported to be in excellent condition. This was easily the biggest spite of the entire Southeast trip, and especially annoying because it had been open for much of the morning while I was elsewhere in the park, but then it shut down and never reopened. When you have a lot of attractions to get to it can be hard to prioritize, and I never figured a mill chute dark ride operating since the 1960s would be one susceptible to major mechanical gremlins that I should try to do early.
Unfortunately I don’t have anything to say about the Monster Mansion here, so I’ll just note that an earlier incarnation was actually the first-ever ride to be inspired by Disney’s Song of the South featuring the adventures of an anthropomorphic rabbit, fox, and bear… but created by Sid and Marty Krofft in the style of Hanna-Barbera and Rankin-Bass cartoons. (Watch Defunctland for more.) Six Flags at least had the good sense to retheme their version of the ride all the way back in 1981.
Goliath
 When it was announced for 2006, the generic name (one of two Goliaths to debut that year) and diminutive height3 made it feel like Six Flags was adding only the minimum viable product necessary to give their Georgia property its long awaited flagship coaster. Thus I was somewhat surprised when the reviews came in that not only was Six Flags Over Georgia’s Goliath an almost universally well-regarded ride, it was commonly cited as one of the best B&M Hypercoasters, period.
Having finally gotten to try it myself, I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s still much better than the stats would indicate. The difference is in its sharper, borderline-ejector airtime, which went further than the circa-2006 standards for B&M Hypercoasters of light floater (Apollo’s Chariot, Nitro, Silver Star) or no airtime (Raging Bull, minus back row on the first drop). Finally, the open recliner seating and clamshell restraints were being put to their full use!
Unfortunately Goliath had developed a pronounced rattle by the time of my visit that limited its enjoyability and, I suspect, ability to sustain its full speed. I’ve had hot days on Nitro that produced far more aggressive forces than this, and in the intervening years Mako has largely stolen the crown for below-average sized B&M Hyper with an above-average dynamic force profile. That said, larger coasters generally need to be more cautious with how much and how long they sustain forces, which can be to the benefit of slightly smaller coasters to get a little bolder with their dynamic range, something Goliath seems to have taken advantage of.
 The layout quality is a bit of a mixed bag. The coaster fits the park rather poorly, with most of the valleys pulling up some 20 to 30 feet above ground level due to the placement of roads, pathways, or support buildings beneath them, and offers few good viewing angles from within the guest area boundaries despite the station being in the middle of the park. But there’s a lot to like about the layout too, including the aforementioned sharp pitches to nearly every hill producing a pleasing variety of negative-G sensations depending on your placement near the front or back of the 9-car trains. The downhill spiral helix is one of the better turnaround maneuvers on a hypercoaster, the sustained force and increasing speed offering a simple if satisfyingly dizzy logic. And the finale sequence of small airtime hops, eventually cascading through a thicket of trees to surprise us with a tight curve and airtime pop combo into the brakes, keeps the ride interesting all the way up to its very last moments. Maybe with a good refurbishment (and new color scheme), I can return to more fully appreciate everything this ride has to offer. In the meantime, Goliath will have to settle for still being the best coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia, if not quite any longer the best in the metro Atlanta area.
    
Georgia Scorcher
 The seven B&M Stand-Up Coasters fit into one of three classes: the original three compact two-inversion stand-up coasters at Carowinds and both Great Americas; the subsequent three mega-stand-ups at Cedar Point, Kentucky Kingdom, and Magic Mountain that each took the same formula and one-upped the previous in size and inversion count; and finally, the lonely Georgia Scorcher, which combined the modest size of the original class with the most advanced engineering quality of the mega-models, especially the Riddler’s relatively comfortable ride (okay, very relatively). The Scorcher pointed the way toward a friendlier, more modern and sustainable stand-up coaster experience that could have spread around the world in the new millennium. But it was far too little, too late, becoming the last of a much maligned, now nearly extinct ride model.4
 The layout avoids the parade of similarly-paced inversions that typify most B&M looping coasters of that era, even the other mega stand-up coasters, in favor of a more varied twister layout with a number of tight twists and highly-banked curves that flow surprisingly well especially considering the rider’s higher center of gravity; my favorite part is a sideways near-airtime hill that then seamlessly twists back into the corkscrew inversion.
Overall, the coaster is a little too small, and the stand-up restraints (as always) a little too awkward, for the Georgia Scorcher to rank anywhere close among the greats. But with luck, it will be preserved as a stand-up experience for decades to come as a reminder of what the concept was capable of under the best of circumstances.
   
Dare Devil Dive
 Before the RMC Raptors were advertised as low-cost, low-capacity, high-thrill coasters perfect for small parks only to be bought mostly by big chain parks looking to cut costs, there was the time Six Flags Over Georgia bought a 6-seater Gerstlauer Eurofighter. A variant of the Anubis layout from Belgium’s Plopsaland, Dare Devil Dive traded the launch and tophat for a vertical lift to slightly reduce the already low theoretical capacity. They then further halve that theoretical number through operating procedures that rarely see more than one car out on the track at a time. We actually had decent luck with getting to ride it twice in a day, first by getting there as early as possible at opening and second by using our Flash Pass’s limited one-time access later in the afternoon, where a 20 minute wait past the merge point was still in order.
 Gerstlaurer coasters usually don’t fare very well with over-the-shoulder harnesses so I didn’t have very high hopes for Dare Devil Dive, yet it exceeded my expectations by offering a mostly smooth ride. There’s some funky shaping to the dive loops and overbanked curves, and the heartline roll serves as an adequate finale. It’s still not very good; comparing a video of Anubis, it’s clear the gravity-driven Dare Devil Dive doesn’t have anywhere near as much power to sustain its speed through the layout, resulting in lots of hangtime and near-stall around the high points that are sometimes fun, but mostly awkward. This would have been a decent ride at a much smaller park, but in Atlanta those parks are too preoccupied with building top ten megacoasters so it’s the legacy property in the largest regional theme park chain that gets it instead.
     
Batman: The Ride
 Same as the others: a tightly paced, intense layout that’s over before you know it. Great to have at your home Six Flags park and worthy of one courtesy ride when visiting a Six Flags further afield.
The most notable thing I have to say about this version is the color scheme. In my 90s-kid impression, Batman is always supposed to be an all-black coaster with a few yellow accents on the trains, reinforced by the strict branding guidelines of possibly the world’s most lucrative single superhero property. Yet that hasn’t been true for any of the models for over a decade (except the mirror-universe version at Six Flags St. Louis), which have experimented with various combinations of shades of yellow, blue, or grey. Over Georgia’s is perhaps the most unusual, a royal blue track spine with steely navy blue columns. To me this reads as the color scheme for a coaster named something like the Great White, or Top Gun, or maybe Afterburn, but I guess it works as a Batman color palette too. I am curious who is responsible for selecting the Batman colors, and why neither Six Flags nor Warner Bros. has decreed a uniform standard across all installations.
   
The Riddler Mindbender
 I always had it in my head that Over Georgia’s Mindbender was one of, if not the best coaster ever made by Anton Schwarzkopf. I had few memories from my one previous ride twenty years earlier, but a comparative analysis made sense to reason that Mindbender was something special. I’d rate Magic Mountain’s Revolution and Over Texas’s Shock Wave within the top tier of coasters at their respective parks, 9/10 if not 10/10 quality coasters to this day. And Mindbender seemed to take the best elements of each and even improve on them. Like the Revolution, it has a wooded hillside setting that allows it to maintain speed and hide surprises to the very end. And like its 1978-built sister coaster Shock Wave, it features steeper drops and more sharply pitched turns, and even saves one of its two vertical loops as a climax near the end of the layout instead of packing them together at the beginning.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the Riddler Mindbender is still an absolute classic and one of the best rides at Six Flags Over Georgia. Yet as I compare it to the standard set by its 1970s-era looping Schwarzkopf peers, I find a different point of comparison: Hersheypark’s Sooperdooperlooper, the fun if lightweight classic that’s basically a mine train coaster with a loop. Compared to the powerful Shock Wave, the Mindbender just feels a little sluggish around its course, never coming close to the volley of positive and negative forces that the Texas sibling subjects its riders to. And it also lacks the elegant, purposeful pacing of the Revolution, with the Mindbender’s most exciting moments (the two inversions and spiraling downward helix) happening not with anticipatory drama but rather some uneventful dead space in between. Even the terrain setting is smaller and more sparsely landscaped than I realized, with the parking lot never far from view. Maybe the 2021 refurbishment that added new, shorter trains from B&M didn’t do the Mindbender the same favors as its California cousin’s 2016 update,5 but I also think a lot of it comes down to Anton’s design needing a little more refinement.
      
 I should also warn that I didn’t get the best experience with the Riddler Mindbender on this particular day, which may have also colored my (limited) impressions. After two rides in the morning, I had intended to save the rest of my time with the Mindbender for the very end of the operating day. The Saturday schedule was the only day of the week open late enough for about a half hour of dusk/near-night riding, and I couldn’t think of any ride I’d rather focus on than the Mindbender.
The queue had mostly emptied by the time we arrived so it seemed like a good plan. But as we dispatched for our first lap, our train came to a halt on the stretch of transfer track before the lift hill. The ride operator, who was leaning over the control panel in a mock nap at the end of the day, announced she had accidentally pressed the E-stop button. Oops! Ha ha! An easy reset was not possible, so maintenance had to be called to perform an evacuation. While it was perhaps of moderate nerd interest to walk the short length of transfer track, the lengthy procedure not only robbed us of the opportunity to get more rides on the Riddler Mindbender, but from any night rides at all, stepping off to freedom just minutes after everything had closed.
Once again, the ineptitudes of Six Flags usually manage to taketh away.
    
Jackson, New Jersey – Monday, June 9th, 2008
I hadn’t pre-booked any of the hotels before leaving on the trip because in all my traveling experience the only hotel booking website I’ve found to offer any real deals and not just those imaginary ‘promotionals’ is Hotwire. For those of you that have never used Hotwire for your coaster trips, it’s definitely worth at least checking out, since the way their deals work is you buy your room only a day or two before the actual date, and they don’t tell you the exact name and location (but give you enough information that you could easily guess which it is if you compare on other website), the purpose of this all being that you fill rooms that otherwise would have gone empty at extremely reduced prices (doesn’t work if you know the name of the hotel… hello supply-side economics!). Case in point, the night before at Dorney Park we got a very spacious, high-quality hotel in Allentown for I think around $45. It was quite the deal, the hotel had about everything I’d expect from a hotel (which isn’t much, mind you; my idea of ‘traveling cheap’ if I’m by myself would be a couple hours in a commuter lot with a blanket and pillow in a car), the only thing it didn’t have was wireless internet connection in the rooms, and of course I forgot to bring my ethernet connection.
 I mention all this in my SFGAdv review because the night before I was only able to get a weak connection in the hotel lobby, and all my searches for hotels near the Great Adventure area turned up in vain, though I figured it was because of the poor connection was causing things to time-out since the pages were rarely loading properly anyway. So we decided it would probably be better to just drive the way to Six Flags Great Adventure for our two days of stay there and find a decent looking hotel ourselves for that night. So as soon as we enter NJ we start looking for exits with some decent hotels. There’s one, but I think we’re still too far away and we should try to get a bit closer. So we keep on driving, and driving… and driving. Nothing. No hotels anywhere along I-95/195 at all. Not even the most run-down looking roadside motel that would look as if it belongs in a Hitchcock thriller. We finally get to, and then pass Great Adventure, and keep on driving, looking for some hotel anywhere, and finally decide to turn around when we realize we’re already approaching the ocean. We stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant if he knew where the hotels that people going to SFGAdv stayed at were, and he had almost no clue where one might stay that didn’t involve crossing state lines. After passing back and forth the area a few times, taking various side roads in the hope that they might lead to somewhere, I think we finally found a hotel, nothing particularly nice and prices closer to $90, and were finally able to call it a night.
We left the next morning for Great Adventure as late as possible to still be ‘early’. So we make our way to the entrance only to find that the road is packed. About a fifteen minute wait in a sea of traffic to get our parking tickets, then another good twenty minute wait at the main gate to get my season pass, and it’s very apparent that today is going to packed. I get to the window and ask if the season pass still has the Bring-a-Friend for free on weekdays through June. She replies that she’s pretty sure they’ve stopped doing that. Huh? Have they stopped offering that on newly sold season passes or have they cut perks from all passes? Either way didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but with that information in mind I realized it would now be cheaper to each buy an individual ticket with a promotion I found in a brochure in the hotel the night before and happened to think to bring along, just in case. So we finally get into the park, and the midways are pretty well choked, although I suppose it could have been worse. Still, for an early June Monday, when just the weekend before all our parks were visited with considerably small crowds, this was not what I was expecting.
 So we make our way to the first ride of the day, I figure Batman: The Ride is a good one to start off with. The queue is indoors at least, which I figure given the rising heat that morning would at least offer that escape, if only the queue were air-conditioned (or ventilated…), that is. I never really think of myself as liking Batman the Ride, but then just before visiting a park that has one I remember the tighter, more intense layout and figure that I actually like this design much more than I remember. But then I always get to the ride, which so far has invariably been at an over-crowded Six Flags park on a miserably hot day and the whole thing becomes and ordeal for a just one ride that’s too short and then when all said and done I’m still no closer to figuring out if I like this design in relation to other B&M inverts or not. Maybe some other year I’ll finally be able to figure that one out, but all I can say is my light fantasy leading up to that visit of hitting Batman first, getting a bunch of re-rides before the (minor) crowds hit was not going to come true. While in the queue and trying to assess the somewhat grim looking situation I figure that it might be worth it on the second day to get a Fast-Pass.
 After Batman it seemed appropriate to get the other, newer Batman next door out of the way. The wait for the Dark Knight was I think around forty-five minutes total, at least twenty of those spent outdoors with all the televisions blasting out non-stop promotions and others sorts of Six Flags attitude. I suppose Six Flags execs are patting each other on the back for being so cutting edge in commercial synergies and in-park media, and I hope they keep it to themselves because the day my local Cedar Fair parks start pumping advertisements and other self-promotional into their queue lines is the day a season pass will no longer be necessary for me. It used to be that you could spend the time in line enjoying a nice conversation, people watch, or watch the ride you’re about to try in quiet awe, but Six Flags has figured out that when you put television screens in front of people with nothing better to do, they’ll be drawn to them like a bug to a zapper, no matter how awful their programming is. Here everyone just paid attention to the TV screens, the perfect little consumers we all are whenever there’s a LCD screen around, and most would make sarcastic quips to their friends every time the “More Flags More Fun” commercial came on that this right now qualified for one flag although by the end of the line we’d heard that joke enough that it just became dispiriting how artificial it all was, I’d swear this ride is far better themed to Soylent Green or some other dystopian-consumerism film than The Dark Knight [mmm… maybe Dawn of the Dead? I’d love an amusement area themed to that].
 Anyway thankfully we were the very last ones to be let into the air-conditioned anti-chambers, which as it happens is the best part of the ride. For the most part it seemed that the ride’s creative designers missed a memo from Warner Brothers that Tim Burton and Joel Schumaker were no longer directing the franchise since that still seemed to be where they wanted to pull a lot of the scenery elements from for most of the attraction, although at least they managed to get Aaron Eckhart to do some contractually obligated work for an intro video. I even partly admire the intro scene since it a bit more ambiguous and requires more close attention to figure out exactly what the set-up is, but given the average SFGAdv patron the competing noise level in the room made it impossible to decipher any of the back story. Then we were let into the next chamber which we got to spend at least another twenty minutes in, the best feature of which is that it’s air conditioned. They’ve even got some pretty decent themeing throughout so that by the time you get in the ride vehicle you think you could be in for something fairly decent.  Then you take the first turn and are greeted with a wild mouse in a box, effectively killing all the build-up from the pre-show. There are a couple partially enclosed tunnels on the top couple of switchbacks, complete with a strobelight flashing on a Batman figurine in one section, which turned out to be about as technical as they were willing to go for on-ride effects. The rest of the wild mouse takes place without nearly any themeing and plenty of light, although the nice thing was they weren’t braking it at all. On the exit even the pathway takes you right underneath the ride area, with the exit door being inside the main building, letting in large amounts of light into the ride area every time someone opened the door. Especially compared to the wonderful Exterminator this ride just screamed ‘incompetent’ at every level, and overall the whole experience, from the barrage of queue-mmercials to the overwhelmingly cheap ride experience, was just plain embarrassing in its blatantly artless commercialism, even going so far as to detract from the cinematic experience a month later when, for all that films layered interpretations about the dualistic nature of heroism and the like, I’d think back on my experience with the coaster and remember how the film was still just part of the corporate franchise machine.
 Moving on to Nitro. The line for Nitro wasn’t too bad, still pretty long but at least they got it to move faster than any others for that day. Noticed some people were collapsing from heat exhaustion while in the unshaded line, at least the Six Flags staff were adequately taking care of them. As onlookers watched them get a free bottled water and a ride in a shaded golf cart back to a medical center, I mused if that would all be worth self-inducing a heat stroke. In the end I figured you have to give up your place in line, so probably better off not to. That’s how desperate we all were for some shade. We got a front seat row for the ride itself.
I like Nitro better than I want to, which is weird because I don’t like Apollo’s Chariot as much as I want to. If my opinion of each could switch, then I’d be happy. Nitro for some reason I really like even though it’s just large, separate elements plugged in to one another while taking place over the beautiful surrounding New Jersey cesspool, something I normally would critique the hell out of today, but I still came back with my high opinion of it from 2003 virtually unchanged. Meanwhile Apollo’s Chariot (which I rode for the first time the previous year), despite actually having terrain, unique shaping, strategically placed flat sections to give it some actual pacing and character (on a B&M? Unheard of!),  in fact from off-ride I’d say AC is B&M’s best designed ride in my eyes, yet I didn’t like it when I actually got the chance to ride it. I figure it must be that Nitro has the extra speed and height to make the whole speed coaster concept work for me, but still I just can’t figure out my own opinions on this ride. It would help if I could ever ride any Six Flags coaster more than just once a visit, though.
After Nitro we tried getting a free complementary ice water after waiting in line for about eight minutes at a small food corral. If it wasn’t already obvious my opinion of Six Flags up to this point was not very high and it wouldn’t have surprised me to be turned down. But thankfully, no, they did in fact offer complementary ice water, in a Dixie cup size somewhere between “Shot Glass” and “Baby’s First Tippy Cup”.
We wandered along the wooded backside of the park which was not crowded at all (I guess because there’s nothing back there), and got in a quick ride on Blackbeard’s Lost Treasure Train, which had no line, mostly to boost our Rides-per-Hour ratio somewhat. This is partly what surprises me about Great Adventure, there actually is some decent terrain and lakefront property here that they could work with, but instead any nice views or anything are all closed off by a thin layer of trees and other buildings, leaving the main scenic views of the outside world from major attractions to be only the parking lot from Ka/Superman, or the waste containment area (whatever it is) next to Nitro. If they could just cut the tree layers back and utilize that large lake system they have behind the park it might actually feel kind of nice, but instead the entire infrastructure is entirely inward facing on large concrete midways clogged with tastelessly styled rides and building (the eastern part of the park has thankfully improved over the past few years).
That rides-per-hour ratio I just mentioned was going to quickly plummet after this. From there we moved over to do Great American Scream Machine, one of the rides I skipped back in 2003 on the premise that it should be dismissed because it’s ‘too rough’ (unfortunately Viper was also overlooked then for the same reason). However the heat was playing with the lift engine causing the ride to be down when we got over there. Superman had far too long of a wait, so we did the Parachute Tower which didn’t have much of a line, although the fact that they were only running two of the parachutes didn’t necessarily mean the wait was short. I am still glad I did this one because A): it’s a classic, and B):  I got to savor the views of El Toro for the first time from up there, and marveled at how ridiculous that first drop looked in real life. While up there, I also couldn’t help but suppress the suspicion that ET was not currently in operation. When we got over there to check it out, those suspicions were confirmed. “It’s down because of the heat” seemed to be the reason why. From there looked at the wait for the Mine Train (too long), the Log Flume (down), Medusa (too long), Rolling Thunder (left side, the side I hadn’t been on, closed, right side, too long). That left us with the only intermittently down Kingda Ka, or… um. Well I wanted to save Ka for Day 2, have something new to try for then, especially if we’re getting a Fast Pass. In the end we decided to just camp out by El Toro’s entrance since it looked like they had some people working on it and I think a test train was even sent out, while I frequented La Cocina filling up on ice waters.
It sure takes a lot of work to have fun at Six Flags.
Good news. A small line started forming around El Toro‘s entrance, and workers looked like they were about ready to send someone down to open it up. We quickly made it in, and the line opened. We made our way to the back of the train, and were able to be the second people in for the very back row. Now even though we were only one train away from riding it still took a good fifteen minutes to actually ride. The test train they sent out just before letting the first load of people on before us became stopped at the top of the lift hill. Not that it was viewable from the station, but my suspicions were aroused when it went up but never came down. The trainees running things never noticed as they took their  sweet time to make sure their first trainload was loaded properly, until it came time to dispatch when it was obvious that the first block had never cleared. Well, they sent someone up there, came back down, they finally got it working, and dispatched the first train. We were loaded in, had to check restraints twice (fine by me since my lapbar came down a bit too tight the first time), and finally we were off. First ride on El Toro was definitely something, although I’ll admit, maybe it was just being tired from the heat and waiting and everything, but when I actually got to my first experience with El Toro, rather than have a heightened sense of reality as is normal with the first ride on a record-breaking coaster like this, I felt curiously removed from the whole experience, especially from the first series of camelback hills.
 Regardless by the time we got to the brakes (and I had plenty of time to reflect there as well as we waited for the next train to clear the station) I realized just how different this was from any other wooden coaster I had tried before. I wasn’t ready to commit to say ‘better’, but most definitely different. (Random note, but for some reason the exit path requires you to make a bee-line through a series of tables if you want to get back to the ride entrance, which is where we were clearly headed after that first ride). The line was mercifully still very short, given it’s such a high-profile attraction I figured everyone in the park would be there upon news of its reopening but the line was only to the middle of the stairs that lead directly into the loading platform. Second time around we decided to wait for the front row. I counted about fifteen groups ahead of us for the wait, not too bad considering that was all the line would entail. Still the wait took close to 50 minutes, thanks to said trainees taking forever (I was mildly irked that the ‘supervisor’-type personalities standing watch over the trainees at the control panel didn’t expedite things and help the restraint checkers speed things up). It occurred to my dad what probably was the result of all these large crowds and trainees present everywhere were, it was most likely the first weekday of summer vacation for all the New Jersey schools, thus leading it to be the case for every youth in the state that if they weren’t already starting work at Great Adventure today, there were going to be there to ride coasters anyway. If there was one silver lining to having trainees check restraints, it’s that the girl on the right side of the train was still very cautious not to invade anyone’s personal space which meant an extremely comfortable lapbar position on my second go-round.
 Second ride: This time I was much more into it. While everyone else seems to be talking about the back seat on this ride being the place to be, I found the front seat to be the superior placement. Only real advantage the back had was the extra strong ejector on the first drop, but compared to Maverick’s ultra-tight, 95 degree drop in the back seat, El Toro could only close to comparison, far from exceeding. The front, however, was a far more visceral experience on the first half of the ride, having no obstructions and with the first series of hills setting a powerful if not slightly 1-note opener. The first turnaround I didn’t care for as much as I hoped, after the first few hills it was clear the ride was going to use all its speed and smoothness to focus on raw power rather than a more colorfully characterized, uniquely profiled experience, and the first turn-around seemed to be lacking that power as well as it just flew through the element with an impressive if not slightly languid gracefulness in it’s high banked turns.
Now here’s where El Toro really started to work for me. The shallow hill on the return run, while without the strong airtime present in the first maneuvers, startled me when I realized that for what almost appeared to be a straight-away there actually was still some noticeable airtime present. Consider also the wind felt in the front seat and the wooden support structure built around it and impression that we were actually gaining speed into the much more tightly plotted second half of the ride was mild cause for alarm and anticipation. The left-hand turn, with it’s moment of sudden headchoppers, is the perfect set-up to the sudden, and incredibly violent change of pace for the twister section of the ride. Everyone that’s been on El Toro I know of has talked about the viciousness of the Rolling Thunder hill. It’s far more intense than the previous hills in every possible way, in both psychological lead-up, fleetness in the transitions and relative rotation change, and, of course, the raw intensity of the ‘uplift’ itself.
The tightened pacing for the second half does not let a millisecond go wasted as it’s into a series of tight switchbacks at ground level, an awesome experience partly just because it’s so contrary to the entire first half of the ride. I was a bit worried that the return series of hilly curves would be taken too slowly as I had seen in all the videos, but the extreme heat meant the wheels were running fast and I was quite surprised when these final hills also offered some strong spurts of air, mixed in with the ‘dancing’ of the train from right to left.
Overall I was a bit worried El Toro, with it’s plug-and-play technology and train design, might have been a bit over-hyped by the masses that would prefer the most straight-forward Intamin Hyper coaster over any authentic wooden coaster any day. Thankfully El Toro works well on both levels, and while I can’t even call it the best wooden coaster from 2006 (that distinction belongs to the Voyage) I was pleased to find at the end of the trip that I was still able to place it firmly in my top ten list, just above Hades (similar size and pacing structures, although Hades is interesting in that it’s progression is actually the opposite of ET, although Hades’ amazing tunnels just barely got edged out by ET’s raw power).
After this ride the sky was starting to turn a dusty red/purple, indicating the sun was heading west and we only had about an hour until the park’s 7:00 close. While heading over to the now opened Great American Scream Machine I got a call from my mom wanting to know how things were going. While the rides here were great, I had to be honest that being back on the hot, crowded midways was miserable (thankfully though the crowds were starting to thin and it wasn’t quite as hot as that afternoon). It seemed like all that I really had left that I really wanted to accomplish while at Great Adventure was get a ride in on both GASM and Kingda Ka, and if the wait for GASM was short enough that seemed entirely do-able for the day. As it happened, GASM was walk-on.
 Great American Scream Machine was of particular interest to my dad, since his first experience with a large-scale, intense coaster was when he was director of a school marching band, taking his band to play at Six Flags Great America back in 1990, and rode the Shockwave while there. Of course now we go on much bigger and more intense all the time, but, with that original Shockwave gone, he was finally able to compare that original experience 18 years ago with today. We got the second-to back row, generally a preferred seat for the Arrow multi-loopers. The ride itself was perfectly smooth and tolerable, the design is odd because of how quickly it seems to shrink throughout the ride experience. Tremendous first drop and loop, the next two loops are still very fast but feel a bit smaller scale due to the elevation. The midcourse practically bringing it to a halt, the twist down into the batwing has some neat dynamics, and by the time it gets to the final corkscrew and turn the scale of things has pretty much been reduced to remind me of Michigan’s Adventure’s model. Still they don’t quite make multi-loopers like this anymore, and I still managed to come off the ride thoroughly impressed by what is normally an overlooked coaster.
Last ride of the day: Kingda Ka. Got in line about a half-hour to park’s close. It quickly became apparent that things were very start and go. It would launch a couple trains in fast succession, and then there’d be a 10 minute wait for the next batch to go. A couple times it closed down altogether for at least a half hour. While in line someone recognized my CoasterSims t-shirt, and introduced himself as vandelay.corp. We had a quick conversation about CS and the park before the line started moving again. After about an hour and a half of waiting we got into the station. While I would have liked to have tried the front row there was already quite a line for it and it was obvious they were probably going to have to ask some of the people waiting for it to move to other rows once the maybe 2 or 3 trainloads worth of people behind us were accommodated, so we got the second-to-front row instead. A mechanic/supervisor running the ride from the operator’s booth let us know that the heat was causing the sensors to fail so he was going to have to manually oversee every launch, but they were sure to make sure everyone in line got a ride no matter how long after park closing it was.
Kingda Ka is even more like Top Thrill Dragster than I would have expected. That’s probably a good thing. The anticipation of the launch is about the same, the launch itself is about the same. The tower feels about the same. The only thing Kingda Ka really does that Dragster doesn’t is offer the camelback hill, but even that’s not as notable as I would have guessed. Speed and height feel pretty similar, perhaps a bit more in Ka’s case, and that difference probably would have been even more notable had I gone in the very front. TTD I think is still the superior ride for a few reasons. First, the use of only lapbars on that one does make the experience a whole lot more precarious feeling, although I will admit the OTSRs on Ka were not as intrusive as I thought they would be. Well, they have the same type on Maverick so I shouldn’t have been surprised, although as I recall there was a moment as I was going up and over the tower that there was a moment that I felt like I couldn’t feel any restraints and I had a split-second of panic at thinking they had maybe come undone before I realized they were still there. Also, Six Flags did not utilize the ride’s location very well.  Dragster is right at midway level, and the sensation of speed is increased by having all the midway and rides and everything tearing away in the background, while Ka just sits above an even lining of trees the entire way down, and the parking lot on the other side. But overall it’s still quite the ride experience, and I’m quite glad I managed to get a ride in.
 After the ride was over we waited around on the exit platform that overlooks the ride, watching a few other launches go and took some pictures, while discussing what we wanted to do the next day. As great as the rides were, that unfortunately represented only less than 1% of the actual time spent in the park, the rest of which, the heat and crowds just made it miserable. We could have splashed a lot of money down on a Flash Pass, but given I had now done everything I really wanted to get out of my visit (El Toro front and back, Kingda Ka, Dark Knight, Great American Scream Machine, a ride on Nitro to compare to AC from last year… plus a ‘bonus’ ride on Batman and the Parachute tower, wish I had done Medusa instead, though) it seemed that the money and effort put into a second day’s visit would be pointless, especially considering the season pass w/ bring-a-friend deal didn’t work out. Given the number of smaller parks along the Jersey coastline, that seemed a much more pleasant way to spend the day. Back at the hotel, showered, I checked online to find a good alternative. There was Bowcraft park and it’s interesting looking Crossbow,  but that was inland, isolated, and farther north than I expected. Expensive too. Morey’s Piers were too far south, plus I had an offer through Amusement Today from them for a free VIP visit to their park to all Golden Tickets Award voters, in an effort to boost up their rankings in certain areas. Since I left that promotion at home I would have felt rather silly not using it now. A much better alternative seemed to be the Casino Pier and Funtown Pier, only 23 miles due east, each with an interesting looking collection of compact steel coasters over the water. Except both were closed on Tuesday. Some other small parks, nothing noteworthy. Finally I found something that would work as an alternative plan. Ocean City. 60-some miles south-east of us. Two competing amusement zones with at least three ‘adult-sized’ coasters between them. A full boardwalk and beach. Sounds great. Let’s do that.
Since we had not had anything to eat at the park we went out to get a good meal, and ended up at a Longhorn Steakhouse. The restaurant was pretty quiet in those late hours, and the meal itself was enormous, juicy and delicious, exactly what I needed. The real winner however was an item that caught my attention on the dessert menu: Golden Nugget Fried Cheesecake. Creamy cheesecake lightly breaded, flash-fried to crisp perfection and served over ice cream with strawberry sauce and a raspberry-caramel swirl. Topped with real whipped cream and served in a chilled goblet.
That is how you end a day. 🙂
(P.S.- I appologize for the relative lack of photos for this review since I went through most of the day planning to get my shots the next day, which then never ended up happening)
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