If they did get anything high odds it'd be a replacement for Hook's like the other water play structures SF parks got this year. It's been high on the wishlist to replace for years due to age and was seriously floated as a possibility going into this year.
The last (half-)week of June is daily operation. Also they're only opening about a week later than usual with Season Pass & Member access the 15th & 16th though the schedule doesn't show times for it.
Not entirely true. The mandatory state shutdown wasn't until March and while they didn't get a timeline on reopening there was a spool up of readying rides and staffing in anticipation of a potential August opening opportunity. Ultimately that didn't happen beyond the campground operation, but it's not like they've been sitting idle the past year until the State guidance came out.
Predator needing track repair I wouldn't call an indicator that it doesn't open; it usually has about a hundred feet that gets extensive rebuilding every year or so. Definitely a fantasy to think they'd do track conversion when the ride that's bought and was ready for assembly was deferred, though. (Batman was an entirely different circumstance before folks get started on that again)
Ever since PARC they've kind of leaned into the marketing idea that the water park and the theme park are two entities in one. PARC originally even wanted to have separate or joint admission which is why they built the extra entrance gate never used that was later replaced by Ripcurl Racer.
Houston's (which this is likely a dupe of) doesn't have the Tornado element, just the wave wall and a helix section. Although the teaser video alternates between a Behemoth Bowl40+Tornadowave60 hybrid and a brief shot of Houston's with the short orange open section.
Here's one: Six Flags is pretty unoriginal in their naming and consider alliteration the height of wittiness. I suppose that's not much a hint. It's another ProSlide...
Presumably they don't consider the cost of refurbishment (which is considerable) of two trains instead of one doesn't offset the loss of guest satisfaction. Even if they run a second train only on busy days or weekends it still needs to be near completely disassembled, checked for cracks by third-party inspection, and the majority of hardware replaced annually. Between 4 coasters this could be two hundred thousand or more?
Just the bit of Predator track replaced was something like close a hundred thousand I'd heard.
The original plan I believe was for it to be temporary for 3-5 years and then PARC wanted to move it to a different park while putting something else there. At about that age some of the major cost items like the launch cable would be due and it could then be defrayed tax-wise as the capital improvement at its new park.
And it worked out real well for Six Flags going bankrupt the first time around. I thought Boom and Mind Eraser were supposed to be derided as standard 90's SF cookie cutter coasters, anyways.
And 'nothing of substance': two new roller coasters, a new water park area, and a number of flat rides.
Edit: three coasters. Forgot Rolling Thunder.
My understanding is a large chunk of funding for those installs came from CNL as the property owner. After Herschend they were seriously working to sell the park so might not have been as interested in investing a lot in improvements if the value wouldn't be reflected in the sale bids. The campground was getting focus as a part of the business with the cabin installs going on. During the Premier period there was also considerable amount going to infrastructure (power and the water treatment). Not as sexy as a new ride, but the park hasn't had the total/partial power loss issues 2-3 times a year. Another average size coaster would have been three years out, but they decided they needed a coaster sooner than later so Tantrum fit the bill.
There were two built for Darien Lake. One was more custom that headlined on the show. The other was similar in design, but built more around one of their standard semi-custom choppers as something that could be driven. The second was the one that was to be raffled off. Except the winner turned out to be Canadian and the motorcycle wasn't legal by their regs. So the raffle bike sported a For Sale sign for about two years.