Arthur_Seaton

My guess is "no" due to factors like weight distribution etc. You start and finish in the same place, but that's because the disc seems to correct its position before the restraints come up. I've ridden it a bunch of times in a bunch of different seats, and the experience is random but fairly consistent in terms of getting a good mix of upward/downward-facing swings. Only once did I ride it and get almost all downward-facing views while at the highest point. Really? Is that somewhat confirmed? (At least in terms of enthusiast confirmations?)

Great write up! Thanks! These little parks are such a curiosity — especially in terms of how they stay afloat.

Dropped by the park this afternoon in the hopes that it’d be a little less packed than my last visit a couple weeks ago. ‘Twas not to be as the place was unevenly busy (well, busy for someone who’s spoiled by one-to-two train waits in the awesome “off-season” months). The parking lots were filled all the way back to Scream, but I’ve never not been able to find a spot right next to that one cordoned-off area that’s usually empty. I didn’t venture too far into the queue lines, but Twisted Colossus was fairly maxed out, and even Scream’s line was visible from the entrance — something I’ve never seen before and certainly a bad omen. Green Lantern is still standing, which is a tragedy. The park should sell eggs and rotten vegetables for guests to lob at it. Füll Thröttlë, Ninja, and Revolution all had what looked like 45-60 min lines. As is the norm, Viper had no line at all and neither did X2. Rode Viper a couple of times but skipped X2 because, X2. Surprisingly, Tatsu’s line wasn’t bad (just one switchback in the swamp-pen with people spilling out into the walkway). I’m not a fan of Tatsu, though, so I passed. (I’ll ride it if there’s literally nobody there as it’d be rude not to.) What looked to be a three-pendulum wait on Crazanity ended up taking an hour (more like an eight-pendulum wait). Not sure how I misjudged that, but if the covered section is 3/4 full, it’s an hour apparently. Lots of security guards patrolling that line now — which is good as the line-jumping there was particularly bad due to a goofy design error. Crazanity is still fantastic, but I noticed that the leg that stretches over the löckërs was wobbling like crazy. Don’t know what that’s about, but the others didn’t seem to be moving at all. In short, all my favorites were too slammed for my liking. If you’re an out-of-towner, I’d probably recommend budgeting for whatever skip-the-line passes are available until the hordes disperse in September or so — especially if you want to ride everything. Anyhow, no workers on the new coaster’s site today (or on the new McMansion area behind the park), and it looks like the only major progress that’s new is on the supports. It does look like they’ve got the drop in and the hill out of the second launch finished (those launches are pretty short, so hopefully they pack a punch), but it’s hard to see if the second launch is complete as it’s buried in that ditchy bit. The framework for the figure-8 is monstrous, but I assume that’s because it needs to support the two trains powering through it together. A couple of pics, but nothing too ravishing.

I'm curious about these little high-speed, low-to-the-ground hills that have been popping up as of late (RMC seems to use them a lot). They don't seem to have much of an effect when you pass over them, but they seem to intensify whatever upwards-facing element follows. I can't imagine that this one's noticeable at all. The ones at the bottom of Twisted Colossus' first drop barely even register, yet the double down on Hang Time totally yanks your seat out from under you.

Thanks for the report! It looks like a really fun ride, and I hope we continue to see more launched coasters popping up.

How does the bobsled at this park compare to others? I rode the Six Flags Texas one a couple of years back and was kind of surprised by how bumpy it was given the supposedly-gliding design. The Texas one slammed you into the seat each time the sled traversed the lowest point of the trough. I drove past this park a few years ago but never stopped. One of these days I'll make it as the Comet looks really cool.

Pretty sure the US isn't the only "first-world" country though, so I suspect the list of "first-world" accidents might actually be a tad longer. Given the above, I'd say no. It's always very sad to hear about such accidents — no matter what country they occur in. One hopes that resources and regulations are upheld as much as possible to prevent instances of profit superseding human wellbeing.

I was a little surprised by this when I rode it a few years ago as well. It wasn't horribly violent, but it was anything but smooth — at least on the turnaround. Fun ride (I got a good 10+ rides in), but it wasn't my favorite at the park as Nitro unexpectedly took that crown.

Really interested to hear early reports / responses to this coaster. I still don't quite know what to make of the design / layout. I'm hoping to get to this park sometime in the near future as well.

Just an FYI: ride accidents also happen in developed countries.

When they removed Sierra Twist, it was replaced by some BS corporate display about pistachio nuts. It's like the history of snacks or something. Still, far far better than Green Lantern. As I've mentioned before, they could put an open sewer in that spot and it'd be a massive improvement over GL.

No. It's not even my first visit to one this month. But it is perhaps the first time that, as the user above notes, that I've noticed the ticket booths entirely replaced by a makeshift will-call station.

I can't confirm anything, but I was struck (I visited yesterday) by the fact that the ticket booths were all seemingly unmanned given the crowds—a tacit confirmation that one-day tickets are kind of an anachronism now, at least at Six Flags' parks.

Speaking of crowded, I went to the park today planning on spending a couple of hours there. No single-train ops that I could see, but the place was too packed for my liking with some hefty lines, so I bailed after 30 mins. Grabbed a few pics of the new coaster: It looks like it'll have good visual appeal from the walkway. The first element looks complete and the dips down into the second launch are installed now too. The support structure is gnarly. And, I'm guessing, that guests will walk right under it.

It's not the lack of airtime or laterals that cause such derision. The Arrow 4D coasters are known to be brutally violent, and this one's no exception. You can sometimes catch a "merely-rough" ride on it, but more often than not, the jerky seat rotations will realign your spine. No, SFMM is redeveloping the area where Apocalypse stands, putting in a new family-style coaster, and retracking Apocalypse. It's supposed to reopen when that area is complete later in the year. Green Lantern is scheduled for demolition. The park announced a little while back that they were going to get rid of it (it's an absolute garbage ride). Sounds like you had a blast. It's a great park with a fantastic set of rides — enough to appeal to all tastes (Goliath's one of my personal favorites).

Went to the park tonight for a few hours mainly to people watch and wander around. Figured it'd be too busy to ride anything (it was), and most of the rides had hideous lines. Tried the Ghost Rider single-rider line for the first time though. It should work in theory, but they'd need multiple groupers for it to function well. The group of four in front of us (two adults and two young kids) waited in the single-rider line then, when placed into the line that runs parallel to the main queue, jumped the railing — basically single-rider right up to the station, then the regular line from that point on so they could ride together. They got caught but the grouper was so slammed trying to get the rest of the crowd to follow instructions that he ended up just letting them through. Anyhow, my guess is that the regular line was probably close to 90 minutes, and the single-rider line ended up taking 40 minutes for about 20 single riders.

Couldn't possibly imagine why. Maybe try designs or genres instead? "Wooden Mouse" "Aqua Trax" "4th Dimension"

Ha! I did the same thing today. The park was pretty quiet, but there was some tween convention taking place, so the shriek factor was kind of high. My ears are still ringing. First time trying the app, but figured I'd give it a shot and report back the results. The phone app isn't working for me either (it just crashes and shuts down), so here are the watch screen grabs compiled. Some interesting results. Knott's "Ride Forces" Results

That crane looks like it's moving soooo slow. They'll never have this ride open ever. Plus, look at all that nasty dirt. You'd think Six Flags would at least clean the place up a bit. And don't get me started on how crooked that fence is. When it comes to fences, Six Flags is just the worst. Good to see it's gone vertical! Thanks for posting, Joelwee! It looks like they're setting up the figure-8 ish bit first, presumably to get the go-kart track put back into place. It'll be interesting to watch how this thing's put together.

I could be wrong, but my guess is that they'll build the rollercoaster before they start repainting buildings and whatnot. And that's the stage they're at right now. They've done a good amount of work already in terms of clearing the area and getting the footers in place. It looks like the go-kart track has been stripped away to prepare for the last turn into the station as well. From the renders, it doesn't look like there's going to be a whole lot of new buildings in the area. In fact, it looks like there'll be fewer with more open seating and places to watch the coaster launch from.

I'm pretty sure the ride goes over the entrance of Apocalypse, so I seriously doubt it. As far as I know, they're developing that whole area and re-tracking parts of Apocalypse (it looks like it has some work being done to it from a distance). Despite the continued "they're soooo far behind" refrain, they're well on the way to getting the ride complete by the projected ETA. Again, this is a small ride — low to the ground, shared supports, and basically just an oval. My guess is that the structure itself will be assembled much faster than people imagine once they move into that stage of construction.

Went to the park today for a couple of hours figuring it'd be one of the last days of pre-summer ERT. Although it was hardly busy, it was more crowded than I anticipated and the park was running minimal ops (so I assume it was more crowded than they anticipated as well). Several of the rides I usually marathon on days like this had lines that kept me from riding at all. For example, the Goliath line was down the steps and around the back of the station. With only one train running, I figured that was probably a good 30-minutes so I bailed. Rode Riddler for the first time in eons (I've never liked that ride, and the last time I rode it, it was a headbanging nightmare). No headbanging this time but it was rough enough to give me an instant headache. Anyhow, when leaving the station, I noticed some of the new coaster track sitting there. Most of the track looks like it's stationed across the road from Scream, but these pieces looked ready to install. New Coaster Track New Coaster Track

Took a quick spin around the park today after not visiting for a few months. It's a good time to go as, even with single-train ops, all the coasters were a walk-on with instant re-rides on several. As such, I even hit a few of the rides I usually skip (Tatsu and X2, for example. The fire was working on X2!). You can't really get up to the new area anymore as they've walled the walkways off just past the Jet Stream exit. However, you can see (from various vantage points) the footers for the new coaster. I could be mistaken, but it looked like the go-kart track was all ripped away (presumably to install the coaster track there). Although I don't think this ride will be particularly noteworthy, you can kind of get a sense of how cool it'll look walking toward the area and under the track.

I had a similar response to it, but I just chalked it up to personal preference. While I loved Diamondback and Nitro, I found Skyrush to be little more than an overly-aggressive endurance test — and that's just not what I look for in a coaster. I'm fine with ejector air but I much prefer floater, and the whipping turns of the second half felt like they didn't accomplish much beyond tossing you around as hard as possible. To me, the design lacks dynamics and has pacing issues; I found it didn't have much to offer beyond "extreme for extreme's sake." I get why others like it so much (it's about as intense as a coaster can get), and I rode it a ridiculous amount of times (there was no line when I visited), but I found several of the park's other coasters to be much more engaging — including the meandering old woodie that Skyrush towers over. This was my experience as well — and I didn't expect that at all. I liked El Toro just fine and kind of expected Nitro to be dull, but I ended up loving Nitro way more than El Toro in the end.

Montezooma's Revenge was acting up when I was there on Tuesday. It was closed for much of the afternoon and, when it did open, a train of riders got stuck on the brake run between the station and the rear spike. Rode it later in the day, though. I hope it's preserved for as long as possible. In fact, I hope all remaining Schwarzkopf rides are preserved for as long as possible.