Six Flags America: Skull Mountain (aka Typhoon Sea Coaster)

[bubala]

On July 10, 2011, lucky riders will take their final plunge on Skull Mountain at Six Flags America. The ride is going away to make room for a new attraction scheduled to open in 2012.

 

I have a special place in my heart for Typhoon Sea Coaster. I remember when the ride opened way back in 1997. I was working at the park which was called Adventure World back then since Premier Parks had not yet bought the Six Flags chain. I was assigned as a ride attendant on Typhoon Sea Coaster during it’s first season.

 

As is the case with a lot of new rides, Typhoon Sea Coaster was not ready for opening day. In fact, for the first several days I was stationed at the ride, they had not even added the water into the ride’s reservoirs yet. Park management had us climb down inside the ride with brooms and dustpans and sweep out all of the dirt and debris from inside the water basins. I was actually nerdy enough to enjoy that work since it gave me insight onto the inner workings of the ride.

 

After the ride finally did open, a lot of my first few weeks were spent manning any one of the three turntables on the ride while Adventure World maintenance staff, outside engineers and Sandor Kernacs from Intamin Worldwide worked all of the kinks and bugs out of the ride.

 

A big problem with the ride when it first opened was that the turntables that were supposed to turn the boats around at various points during the ride did not always turn the boats into the right positions.

 

Here is how it was supposed to work, or so I was told. There were holes all around the perimeter of each turntable. An electric eye was supposed to shoot a beam of light up through the holes as the turntable spun around and count the number holes that passed over the electric eye and then stop the turntable after a pre-determined number of holes had passed over the eye. The problem was that holes covered with water or other debris were not always counted accurately by the electric eye, so the boats would sometimes stop too soon or too late and not be properly aligned for the plunger to push them off of the turntables.

 

In fact, one time, when I was stationed at the first turntable at the top of the first lift hill, the boat did not align properly. It was way off and the plunger was about to push the boat off of the platform in the wrong direction. There were not guard rails all the way around the sides of the platform at that time. The platform is about 20 feet in the air, and there were guests on the boat! I thought for sure that a boat full of guests was going to be pushed sideways off of the platform and drop 20 feet to the concrete below!

 

They hadn’t really trained us all that well about what to do in such a situation since no one had assumed that something like this could or would happen. Fortunately though, they had stationed representatives from Intamin at each turntable with us. The Intamin guy pushed the e-Stop button just before the boat was launched off of the side of the turntable! It was amazing how fast all of the water drained out of the ride after the e-Stop button was pushed. They installed more and higher guard rails all around the first turntable shortly after that!

 

It took a while to get the ride running smoothly and consistently. For most of the first season, we all jokingly referred to Typhoon Sea Coaster as either Typhoon Sea Disaster or as the 2A Sea Coaster. (2A was the park’s code that meant that a ride was broken down with passengers stranded on it.) Close to the end of the summer, they finally got the ride running pretty reliably, although I don’t think they ever got it running with the maximum number of boats that were theoretically possible.

 

I was always disappointed with the theming of Typhoon Sea Coaster. The concept art showed a much more exciting ride with a fully enclosed Skull mountain, a lighthouse around the first turntable and many more water effects. When the ride first opened, it had a couple of water falls that would spill down over the mountain and out of the skull’s left eye, but over the years the water pumps for those waterfalls fell into disrepair and were never fixed. If the ride had been built to more closely match the concept art, I am sure that it would have been such a better experience. The addition of the pirate scenes and music in later years helped, but I still always felt that the ride could have been so much more.

 

All of that being said, I will still miss the ride when it is gone. I have a lot of memories of the ride and of how excited I was when I heard that it was going to be built. I look back fondly on my time spent working on Typhoon Sea Coaster. The good times, like the night we climbed up to the top of the 2nd lift hill and watched the fireworks from up there. It was the 4th of July, and there were many fireworks displays all around the area that night. We certainly had the best seats for all of them! The bad times, like when that boat full of guests almost plunged off the first turntable! Thanks for the memories, Typhoon Sea Coaster. You will be gone soon, but certainly not forgotten!

 

If you haven’t already, get to Six Flags America quickly and get your last ride in! I got mine on Monday, and I may even go back for one more ride before it is gone forever.

[bubala]

I also made a video of my trip on Monday with footage of Superman, Joker's Jinx, Batwing and Skull Mountain. It's my first video ever! Be gentle!

 

It's on YouTube:

 

[SKULLY]

I have only made it out to this park once and this particular attraction was closed. Thanks for giving me a much better idea of what's going on in there.