Scott And Carol Present - The Texas SkyScreamer At Six Flags over Texas

Six Flags Over Texas is proud of having Texas SkyScreamer, the tallest circle swing in the world. It truly dominates the skyline at the park, and it delivers a great ride, for those who don't get queasy soaring high in the air, supported only by a swing set chain. 

Within the beautiful entrance, this monument celebrated Angus Wynn, the founder of Six Flags Over Texas. He is obviously proud as he looks down on parks stretching from coast to coast, allowing millions to experience regional theme parks.  

Instead of cutting the ribbon with scissors, Steve does it Texas style, with a branding iron. This was a unique experience for us, being from the Midwest.

Even the inflatables are bigger in Texas. Park guests have been building their anticipation by walking past this sign every time they enter the park.

Being six months pregnant, Public Relations Manager Sharon Parker was unable to ride the Texas Sky Screamer, but she was more than willing to talk about the ride.

A small section of the park was closed to the public for the event. The VIP badges allowed access to a Texas celebration.

This gives you a taste of the activities that entertained the attendees.

With this photo you can see how the chairs swing around in the breeze, giving ample opportunity to view downtown Arlington from every angle.

Steve Martindale, Park President of Six Flags Over Texas, is justifiably proud of their new attraction.

With a slightly larger circle, the Texas Sky Screamer is slightly faster than regular Sky Screamers.

Ernie Long, from Skydive Dallas, gives us a brief comparison of the Texas SkyScreamer and real life skydiving. Even though we trusted him, we just had to try it out for ourselves.

So now you can see what the Texas Sky Screamer is all about, but these videos really don't do it justice. You really need to experience it for yourself, but you can only do it at Six Flags Over Texas. Many thanks to Sharon, Ernie, and Steve for accommodating our visit for this event.



A Western View - SUPERMAN Ultimate Flight

The big day has finally arrived and SUPERMAN Ultimate Flight is set to open tomorrow at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.  The park held it’s grand opening event today and NewsPlusNotes was in attendance.

The ride's entrance

The event got started at about 1030am with Park President, Dale Kaetzel, and San Francisco 49ers Head Coach, Jim Harbaugh, taking the first official ride.  After they finished they came out to say a few words about the ride.  

Dale Kaetzel and Jim Harbaugh take a spin

Dale showed his enthusiasm for the new ride and referred to it as “the best roller coaster in North America.”

Later, Jim recalled his childhood visiting Cedar Point and Kings Island, but said that the new coaster exceeds anything he experienced at those parks when he was young.

Dale welcomes us to ride.

And with that, the ride was open for those attending the event to enjoy.

Superman's back story

The man we are all here for.

The ride queue utilizes the old Zonga station, which later served as a queue for Tony Hawk’s Big Spin.  The queue snakes it’s way past informational signs about Superman’s story as well as giant giant statues of villains.   The queue ends at a large statue of Superman himself before entering the station to board the car.

The ride itself is fantastic.   The launches are quick and intense, but what really surprises is the abundance of airtime, which is enough to easily overshadow any other California ride.  Cresting over the vertical incline into the barrel roll as well as dropping off the “cliffhanger drop” offers unexpected doses of ejector airtime.

Hanging upside down is frightening no matter how many times you do it.

The large barrel roll offers a huge thrill from the hang time you experience as you very slowly roll through.  And the base of the non-inverting loop gives some pretty decent positive Gs.

I think what ultimately makes the ride succeed is how incredibly smooth the ride is as it navigates the course.  The ride rarely isn’t spiraling in some crazy direction allowing the rider easily get disoriented.

Another group taking to the skies

I heard some riders call it one of the best minutes on a roller coaster and many call this the most intense coasters on the west coast while ranking highly on people’s personal top 10 lists.  All in all, it's clear the park has a real winner on their hands that deserves to be ridden by anyone who can make it to the park. 

And now, an exclusive on-ride POV from today's event featuring yours truly along side Bob from Theme Park Review.

SUPERMAN Ultimate Flight Opens to Season Pass holders tomorrow, June 30, at 6am.  The ride will open to the public later that day at 12pm.  I’d like to thank the park for a wonderful event and wish them lots of success with their fantastic new ride!

Scott and Carol Present: Verbolten at Busch Gardens Europe

Finally the day has arrived, media day for one of the most anticipated coasters, by families at least, of 2012.


Following the signs we made our way into the parking lot.


If you look closely there is a rare image of Carol appearing in the mirror.


Gerta and Gunter Schwartzwald, the brother and sister team who virtually run the entire Oktoberfest village at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. We will learn more about them later.


Carl Lum, Park President offers his insights. "When I moved here a year and a half ago I was amazed about how much people talked about Big Bad Wolf. So I knew it was a big deal and whatever we put here to replace we really needed to think carefully through it and do a good job because the Big Bad Wolf was a big deal."


"One of the strengths of this park are the European countries so when we redesigned all the buildings here what’s important is that we stayed with the German theme. We tried to make sure we did a nice job with that and the ultimate compliment was when the ride manufacturer was here about three weeks ago they said “I feel like I am back in Germany. So that was pretty cool!"


Busch Gardens Creative Director, Brian Morrow began telling us Verbolten's back story, "The story starts in Oktoberfest, where that holiday is celebrated every day in Busch Gardens Virginia. Imagine yourself as a tourist in Germany, which is what Busch Gardens is about, immersing yourself in different cultures. One thing you always want to do when traveling abroad is see the countryside and rent a car. So that is where this all started was this car idea. We knew we wanted to do a car themed ride because cars are really sporty and fun. Everyone can relate to them because everyone drives cars."


Brian continued the tale "Gerta the operator of the visitor center where travelers can rent cars and Gunter operates the garage that supplies the cars. Gerta loves the people, loves the village, but she is very afraid of the Black Forest, and gives us lots of warnings to stay out of it."


"Gunter on the other hand, is obsessed with the Black Forest and he wants to protect it from people who think it’s evil and bad. He does a lot of work for the forest like pulling the personal belongings out of the cars reclaimed by the forest."


Two of the five trains that will concurrently operate on Verbolten.


Brian said, "Gunter makes a lot of his own equipment to monitor the forest and to explore the forest so what you see in the queue and in the station is the closed circuit television system that shows six individual story lines along with Gerta and Gunter. In the station are also view ports into Gunter’s greenhouse where his collection of plant specimens are overgrowing his office and the station."


Carl added, "We always want to do things to accommodate our guests with any type of disability but we also wanted to do that because when you design that the right way you get better throughput and more people can get on the ride. You don’t want to build a ride and then have a line that is three hours long to get on it. We can operate five trains concurrently on this ride. "


The train rolls out of the station into some swooping turns with undulating hills.


Here the train is rolling into position for the launch into the "Black Forest." Just inside the building there is a nice pop of air before you encounter a wide sweeping upward spiral where you are stopped for the "show."

Brian gave us some more details, "We are the first people to use the new ultraviolet strobe lights. They are LED black lights and these are directional and focus able, so we can control exactly what we want you to see. We can dim them and strobe them, and while there are other types of lights in there too these are the majority of them."


The second launch takes you out of the "Black Forest" where you encounter a bridge.

Again from Brian, "Of course it is the wrong bridge, ready to collapse, so you encounter the main drop, down to the lake." The Rhine River on the park map is really a lake and Larry offers his ideas. "What we try to do at Busch Gardens is to utilize the terrain when we design our rides to bring the coaster and have it follow the great terrain we have available to us instead of trying to force fit in into the park.



The train slows to a crawl on the bridge, to better heighten the anticipation and also allow the guests to better experience the "Creaking Timbers," before the big drop.



Larry Giles, Vice President of design and engineering said "That is part of what we try to do at Busch Gardens is utilize the terrain when we design our rides is to bring the coaster and have it follow the great terrain we have available to us instead of trying to force fit it.

There was a lot of genius in Big Bad Wolf, there’s no denying it. And one of our discussion points early on was could we really improve that final drop. The answer that came back was probably not. Why would we want to try, if we tried to make it better, might end up making it worse. It was such a great finish to a ride, let’s go ahead and do it. We made it ten feet taller to give you a little more airtime in the back seat which you will feel and it ended up being a nice finish for the ride."


Carl told us, "The footers are in what is called an environmentally protected area, a wetland in this case, and because environmental responsibility is very important to our company, as part of the design were purposely reused those footers. It didn’t save us much money but I thought it was important to minimize the impact in that wetlands area so we reused them."




Larry said, "We want people to ride rides, not wait in line and we know that with two-across seating we can load quickly and get the train out of the station very quickly. We figured with a flat floor we could unload and load much faster. We ended up with a sixteen passenger train, we originally wanted a smaller train but we could get to our capacity expectation that way."


One of the banked turns on Verbolten. The trains all have side mounted lap bars as ride restraints.


Carl said, "The nice thing about the queue is that there is an experience there with the office and we purposely put the line on the other side of the building so people could see the trains coming in and be entertained by that. We knew we wanted to make the queue experience interactive and entertaining. Brian also had an interesting observation, "I am really happy with the way the guests are understanding the story that we have woven here and their appreciation for the fact that all the family members can ride. Lots of kids can ride the attraction with their moms and dads. We feel it is a powerful imagination based attraction that turned out as thrilling as we hoped it would be."

As for our thoughts on Verbolten, join us for a ride!



Thanks to all the kind folks at Busch Gardens Europe for the opportunity to share the Verbolten experience with NPN readers!

SkyScreamer and Adventure Alley Debut at Six Flags Great Adventure

Last year Six Flags Great Adventure added the Green Lantern, a thrilling stand-up coaster that tested the courage of even the bravest rider.  A great addition to the park, it was a hit with the thrill seeker crowd immediately after its opening.

For 2012 the park took a different approach, one that fits the old saying "a little of something for everyone" with its new additions.  The rides and attractions that are new for this season cross the spectrum of riders, from the very young to the very young at heart.

Obviously the largest change to Six Flags Great Adventure this year is the addition of SkyScreamer, which has forever modified the skyline of the park.  The presence of the ride can be felt over large parts of the park, with riders screaming and swinging high above the midways.

Alas, I've gotten quite ahead of myself already!  First things first.  Today was the media and VIP event for SkyScreamer, a prelude to a season pass holder preview that will last several days.  Greeting us at the park was Communications Director Kristin Siebeneicher, and yes that's a whole lot of Elvises behind her!  To fit with the retro vibe of the new park area that contains SkyScreamer, Adventure Alley, the park invited 30 Elvises to help kick things off.

According to Kristin "when completed Adventure Alley will be home to five rides."  These include the park's classic 1960's Ferris wheel, SkyScreamer and three new rides - a music themed scrambler named Deja Vu, the Air Jumbo elephant ride, and Fender Bender bumper cars. 

Park President John Fitzgerald thought about dressing up like Elvis for today's event, but according to him we'd "have to hear him sing, and that wouldn't be pretty."  Speaking of the park's new rides he filled us in on some back-story.

"In 2011 we asked our guests through focus groups and online surveys what they wanted to see in 2012.  The results may surprise you, overwhelmingly families and teens told us they wanted more attractions that they can ride together.  This is how the concept for Adventure Alley was born.  The area features rides and attractions that deliver thrills for all ages.  The rides and attractions are rooted in a simpler time before the mega-coasters and giga-coasters."

Not that we mind the mega and giga coasters!  Still, it was time for the park to focus on the whole family in one year, and they've done a great job of doing just that in 2012.

Streamers!  What ride opening is complete without them?  These marked the point where the 30 invited Elvises were able to take the inaugural spin on SkyScreamer, before any other guests.

And ride they did!  Afterward there were many reports of the ride being described as "nothing like a hound dog," and that SkyScreamer left them feeling "all shook up."  I take that to mean shook up in a good way! 

It was a cute idea of the park to invite the impersonators, complete with white and red jumpsuits and strap on wigs.  You wouldn't want Elvis' hair to come flying off over 200 feet in the air, after all!  I have a creeping feeling that several of the Elvises were park enthusiasts, so I'm sure they didn't mind helping out.  Judging by the faces of these two I certainly don't think they did!

But how about that ride, right?  SkyScreamer seats 32 guests in two person seats.  The seats are about as open-air as you could ever want.  There is a simple bar that comes down and locks into place, along with a seat belt.  Still, the feeling of freedom while on the ride is incredible!  After loading the ride starts to rise up, and slowly begins spinning.

Before you know it the ride has you up some twenty four stories in the air, spinning you at 40 miles per hour.  The seats make a 98 foot circle at the maximum, which means that while on the ride you're able to realize just how far out you're swinging.  Speakers installed on the ride carriage keep things festive, pumping upbeat tunes out during the ride.

The ride program quickly takes the carriage up to the top, where it spins for a while.  It then lowers about a third of the way down, only to quickly head back up to the top for some additional full speed swinging.  The view from the top is understandably gorgeous - you can check out all of Six Flags Great Adventure, and even plan where to head next!

The park pointed out that the park's old Flying Wave, an original Wave Swinger attraction, was located right where SkyScreamer is today.  While there are certainly parallels between the two you can be sure that the ride experience is quite different!  Still, an interesting comparison to make to point out how different rides are in present day from a few decades ago.

And speaking of several decades ago, the park's new section, Adventure Alley most definitely has a retro vibe to it.  John Fitzgerald pointed out that in "Adventure Alley you'll see mementos of our history.  During our earlier years in the 1970's the hot air balloon and rainbow logos were synonymous with Great Adventure, and you'll find them on the new rides, in some sort of hidden locations.  You'll also see some subtle updating of one of the old standards with SkyScreamer." 

Deja Vu is a ride where the park's history is played out through the use of old logos on the cars.  The located of the scrambler style ride was formerly a smoking area for some years, and it's wonderful to see a ride in that spot again.  It's tucked in a nice shady area, giving it almost a restful appearance.  The scrambler is a ride that never has gone out of style, and as the park made clear one that you can ride as a family.

If even Deja Vu is a bit too much for your little ones then Air Jumbo will be perfect for them.  Located adjacent to SkyScreamer, the ride was once located in Balin's Jungle Land, which has since closed at the park.  After taking a season off the ride is back and looks better than ever, filling another previously empty ride pad.

The Fender Benders bumper car ride is not operational at the park quite yet, but is expected to open in June.

SkyScreamer will preview to season pass holders only today through May 20th, and will open to the general public on the 23rd.  Air Jumbo and Deja Vu are already open to the public.

Later this Summer the greater Six Flags Great Adventure property will debut the King Cobra water slide at Hurricane Harbor, which will be the first of its kind slide in the United States.  As always plenty of adventures await guests in the Wild Safari, located just next to the theme park.

Many thanks to Six Flags Great Adventure for having NewsPlusNotes out for the ride opening, it looks like SkyScreamer and Adventure Alley in general will be a great success this year!  Here's a short video of SkyScreamer from today - but the best way to experience it is to go take a spin!