The Unofficial History of Six Flags Over Texas
Pre-opening pictures of the Joker, to open in 2017.
The Batwing is an airplane carousel ride. Riders ride in fourteen small two seat “batplanes” around a base. Each plane as a flight stick to allow the riders to raise and lower the plane as the ride runs. The planes rotate at six rpm for a ride time of one minute and forty-five second. Around 700 riders can ride an hour.
The ride is a Telecombat style ride from Zamperla. The Batwing units are customized for Six Flags.
Section Gotham City
The Catwomen Whip is one of three villain rides in Gotham City. It was installed in 2016.
The ride is 65.6 feet in diameter. It is 13 feet tall when not operating and 68.5 feet when fully elevated. It rotates at 14 rpm, with a maximum acceleration of 3 gs.
Zamperla manufacturers the ride.
The ride holds 48 guests in suspended seats mounted on a circular structure. The ride starts by spinning around. As it does the seats wing out sideways from the structure. The ride structure then starts to rise up perpendicular to the ground, in the style of a Ferris Wheel. As it does, the units continue to spin around it, turning completely upside down as it spins. After a few moments, the ride slows and returns to its starting point.
The ride is similar to the “Enterprise” style ride Spinnaker, which was previously in the park. The Spinnanker, however, used enclosed gondolas for ride units and not suspended seats.
Section Gotham City
The Riddler Revenge is one of three Villain rides in the Gotham City section.
The ride is a swinging disk that travels 147 feet into the air. The disk swings back and forth while it spins counter-clockwise. The ride structure is 90 feet tall. At its highest, the disk swings out 120 degrees, 30 degrees above perpendicular to the ground. The disk obtains speeds of up to 70 mph. The ride seats 40 riders.
Mr. Freeze Roller Coaster
The Mr. Freeze Roller Coaster was built in 1997, but did not open until 1998, bringing the Roller Coaster count to eight. Named for the Mr. Freeze villain from the Batman universe, the queue house was built to resemble a decaying factory, with a huge ice cream man head for the entrance.
The Mr. Freeze Roller Coaster varies from traditional roller coasters in that it does not have a lift to pull the trains to a starting point. Instead, the ride uses rare earth magnets located in the station house and alongside the train body, to “push” the train out of the station.
The trains then travel through a series of elements, including an inversion, ending in a section of track which leads straight up. Near the middle of this section, another set of rare earth magnets shots the trains again, until the trains nearly reach the top of the track, giving the riders the impression that it the train will shot straight off the track. As the train travels up the track, it slowly losses power, until it comes to a complete momentary stop. The train the starts to fall backward, at which time, the train repeats the track backwards.
The trains were reversed in 2012, so that the trains leave the station backwards and repeat the track going forward. At that time the ride was renamed “Mr. Freeze, Reverse Blast“.
The ride was built by Premier Rides of Maryland.
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In 1999 Six Flags continued its DC Comics theming with the introduction of Batman The Ride, the park’s 10th roller coaster. An entire themed area, Gotham City was added to accommodate the ride. Two acres consists of the Gotham City Park. Several games stands, as well as the Mr. Freeze, are located in the new section.
The Batman is the park’s only suspended roller coaster, with the cars riding suspended below the track. In addition to being suspended, the ride is floorless, so that the rider’s legs hangs suspended below the cars, with nothing under them but the grounds.
The ride, built by Bollinger & Mabillard of Switzerland. contains 2,700 feet of track. Featured ride elements include a 77 foot tall vertical loop, a 68 foot tall vertical loop, two 40 feet tall corkscrew spirals, “s” curves, flat spins and a zero gravity heartline spin. The ride features two 52 (32) passenger trains, with riders suspended four across.
The ride reaches 52 mph, with a height of 109 feet. Riders feel up to 4 g’s. Designed capacity is 1,400 riders an hour. The ride is one of eight installed in various Six Flags parks.
For Six Flags twentieth season a traditional wooden roller coaster, the Judge Roy Scream “Awe West of the Pecos”, was installed next to entry Lake on property south of Good Times Square. This property had previously been totally outside of the park proper.
To create the Judge Roy Scream the park hired William “Bill” Cobb, a man who had practically a legend in his own time and his firm William Cobb & Associates.
Since the ride is outside of what had always been the park proper, it is only accessible through a tunnel which travels under the park’s entry driveway. The eight acre ride runs parallel to the large lake located outside the front gate. It was billed as the “biggest addition” in the park’s history.
The ride handles two trains of four cars each, for a total of 24 riders per train. The trains travel up to 53 mph. The ride’s main lift is 65 feet, with a 50 degree, 60 foot drop. The trains travel a total of 2500 feet of track in approximately two minutes. The ride is designed to handle 1,200 passengers an hour.
For a time in 1994, some variety was created by turning the trains around, allowing the riders to ride backwards as they traveled around the track.
While not as large as its sister “scream” coasters at Georgia and Mid-America, the Judge Roy Scream is highly popular and brought the park’s operating coaster count to five.
The park opened the Superman tower ride for 2003. The ride, a three leg free-fall tower, stands 325-feet tall from the ground to the top of the ten-foot tall US flag mounted on the structure. It is one of the world’s tallest free falls rides. At the time that it was installed, it was the tallest structure in the park when measured to the top of the American flag.
Built by S&S Power, Inc. of Logan, Utah, each one of the three legs has three sides. Each of the three sides holds three seats, for a total of twenty-seven simultaneous riders. The ride has a capacity of 1,200 riders per hour.
The ride seats are propelled by compressed air. Riders feel 3.5 g’s on the ascent and a negative .8 g’s on the descent. The cost of construction was estimated at over $10 million dollars.
The Superman Tower of Power was previewed with a media event on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2003. The ride officially opened to the public the following Saturday. Twelve contest winners were the initial riders for the ride’s official opening. Named for Superman, the hero of comic books, TV shows, and movies, the ride followed the park’s practice of naming rides after DC Comic characters.
When it opened in 1983 the Roaring Rapids raft ride was the largest, most expensive ride ever constructed at the park. The raft ride, designed to simulate the experience of white water rafting on a raging river, is located just south of the Tower and physically takes up more space than any other ride in the park.
The ride replaced both Skull Island and LaSalle’s Riverboat Adventure, which were removed after the 1983 season to accommodate the new ride. Construction actually began August 16th, 1982, the day after the Riverboat made it last trip.
Originally, the entrance to the ride was on the north side of the ride, directly across from the exit area for the Tower. Later, the ride was renamed as LaSalle’s Rapid ride and the entrance was moved to the south side of the ride, in the same location as the former entrance to the LaSalle’s Riverboat ride.
The ride was designed by Six Flags and built by Intamin A.G. at an estimated cost of $4.2 million dollars. (Intamin A.G. also built the Shockwave, Tower, and Spinnaker.)
The concept for the ride was inspired by the man-made river used for the kayak races in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. The first ride of this design was built by Six Flags for the Six Flags Astroworld park and opened in 1980.
The ride constitutes of three lakes and four stretches of rapids. It is 80 feet across at its widest point and 16 feet wide at its narrowest. The “river” is filed with 1.5 million gallons of water and is powered by two 400 horsepower pumps which pump 150,000 gallons of water per minute. These are supplemented by five water jets.
The ride’s reservoir is capable of holding 2 million gallons.
With an average water speed of 16.6 feet per second, the river grade drops 14 feet from start to finish. The 1/4 mile ride takes about 2 minutes to complete.
The ride is equipped with 20 twelve passenger boats and can carry approximately 1,200 riders per hour.
As of 1983, all six of the theme parks then owned by Six Flags operated a ride of this nature. Today, virtually ever major amusement park has a similar ride.
The Shockwave features an initial 116 foot lift, followed by a 36 degree drop into the two seventy foot loops. The one minute, fifty-eight second ride travels through 3,500 feet of track. The trains travel at up to 60 mph, with banks up to sixty degrees while the riders pull up to 5.9 g’s. Three trains of seven cars each can hold up to 28 riders. The ride capacity is 1,800 an hour.
