We arrived at Six Flags Over Texas shortly after 6pm, and with the park closing at 8 that would give us around an hour and a half to explore the park.
Since it was close to the entrance Jake suggested I try to get Wile E. Coyote's Grand Canyon Blaster, the park's kiddie coaster, first. I had heard they flip flopped on when and if adults could ride but I got lucky and was treated to a ride. (#508)
Along the way to our next stop, Jake pointed out some Big Bend footers that were never removed. Big Bend operated at Over Texas from 1971-1978. It was a CLASSIC Schwarzkopf Speed Racer. (think Whizzer at Six Flags Great America)
Next up was a sight I did not want to see:
Yes it is a Boomerang, a closed one. If I had to miss any coaster I'm glad it was this one, but still.. missing any coaster just irks me. Jake was also annoyed as he did not have it yet. SFoT seems like a strange place for there to be a Boomerang in the first place. The park is really too nice to have a pile of crap like this at their park, much like Hersheypark or Carowinds for that matter.
Jake has an unhealthy obsession with Mr. Freeze so we headed that way next. We were greeted with a long line as they were only running one train. He said it would just be smarter to come back to it first thing the next morning.
From Freeze we walked across the midway to Batman.
We were greeted with no wait. It was a typical Batman, fast and intense. (#509)
Moving into the Boomtown section of the park we hit up Mini Mine Train. Now I have been on almost every Arrow Mine Train on Earth, but this would be my first Arrow Mini Mine Train. I wasn't sure what to expect.
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(#510)
The name explains it perfectly, it is just a smaller version of the somewhat larger Mine Train rides. I wish Six Flags Over Georgia still had theirs, as only 4 were ever made and only 2 are still standing. The only really notable thing about this is that is completely inside of the perimeter of Mr. Freeze, so you get some nice views.
The exit for Mini Mine Train, leads directly into Mine Train so we gave that a whirl.
It reminded me somewhat of Over Georgia's Dahlonega Mine Train, where it didn't do much, but had one pretty good drop to end it. (#511)
Exiting out of Boomtown area we hit up Tony Hawk's Big Spin, utilizing the single rider line.
I really enjoy these spinning coasters, and this one was no different. (#512) More parks could use them as not only are they fun, but the entire family can enjoy them.
Jake suggested we go down to La Vibora since it also had a single rider's line, but it was closed at the time so we hurried along to Titan. Titan feels like its miles and miles away from the rest of the park since there is only one path to get there.
I don't know if no one else in the park could find it either, but we lined up for the 2nd row with no wait. (#513)
Overall it is very very impressive looking, and it has lots of positive g's. Unfortunately the negative g's it does have was just not enough for me, and the ride itself is very short for being so tall. It was fun but give me a B&M out and back any day.
The exit for the Titan area happens to go right past the q-bot entrance of Texas Giant, whereas the normal entrance was much farther away and very long and unnecessary walk. There was no line so the nice attendant guarding the q-bot gate let us pass.
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Oh hell yes.
Texas Giant was a ride I heard a lot about even before I became an 'enthusiast,' so needless to say I've been wanting to ride it for a very very long time. Like Titan it is very impressive to look at, but I was hoping the experience was a tad better.
We hopped in the front seat, and were off. (#514) In more recent times it has not had a great reputation, so I was really expecting not to like it much at all. But I was really wrong, it was fairly smooth, had a few nice pops of air, and the 'magic carpet' finale was nothing short of amazing. With a few tweaks it could be an even better ride, I hope what they are doing to it this year doesn't completely ruin it.
At this point we only had 10 minutes left before the park closed, so Jake pulled me through various paths and buildings and somehow we ended up at Runaway Mountain.
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This is my only picture of Runaway Mountain, yes [fail].
Runaway Mountain is an indoor version of the Windstorm/Hurricane rides by various manufacturers. It reminded me a lot of Skull Mountain at Great Adventure, even though it is a completely different layout. It was fun doing the turn in complete darkness. (#515) Overall a fun ride that I would end up not even seeing the rest of our time at SFoT.
For those counting we somehow got 8 of the 12 open credits in just over an hour and a half. This may be even more impressive than the time I went to Cedar Point in 2003 and got 13 of 15 credits in 5 hours.
It was only around 8pm at this point, so we did some driving around. Where to?
Where else?
We happened to be driving by during one of the first ever games for the stadium, Oklahoma-BYU, so trying to get around was an amazing amount of cluster####edness. My memory card had been acting strangely, so we thought it would be a good idea to go to the Walmart across from the stadium so I could purchase a new one. Its kind of funny you go to someplace like that, which looks exactly the same at every location in the country, so you think you may be in your local store. But once you leave you realize there is a giant spaceship that appears to have landed next door.
We hadn't really eaten since breakfast 13 hours ago so we drove around and looked for something to eat. After driving around for even a little bit we realized this would not be a problem, but actually choosing something could be. We found a little sandwich place called Philly Connection where I actually had a delicious turkey sub.
I somehow got a hotel not far from SFoT, so we just spent the rest of the night watching college football, we would get to sleep earlier and have to wake up later than the previous night.
The next day started off early enough just before 9am where we had a terrible contental breakfast. We weren't eating any of it so we just left to drive around the area. Where to?
Where else?
This was the view immediately upon exiting the hotel, so we didn't have to think hard about where to go.
It really is an amazing structure up close, but for over a billion dollars I guess it better be. We went into the Pro Shop and inquired about the tours. The nice lady behind the counter said 17 dollars which I thought was pretty crazy at the time. If I would have known how things were going to be for the rest of the day I would have probably signed up immiedately. Back out to the car we drove around some more.
Oh yeah this is a Six Flags Over Texas trip report, not Jerry World... we arrived at the park about 10 minutes till open, which put us in great position for hitting a bunch of things at the beginning of the day.
First up of course..
Two quick rides on Mr. Freeze. We got one in the very front and one in the very back, both great. The inverted top hats are so much cooler than the non inverted ones, in my opinion anyway. (#516) It's a shame there aren't more of these great Premier coasters.
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I just liked this one.
On the way to the next coaster we passed by Superman: Tower of Power. It had no wait at this point, so we figured it would be worth a quick ride.
I guess you are riding on Superman's legs?
The next coaster was a ride I had been looking forward to ever since I had ridden Mind Bender at Six Flags Over Georgia..
..the first coaster with consecutive double loops ever!
I will go ahead and say I don't think it's as good as Mind Bender, but Jake who had been on it a few times, said it wasn't running well at all. The loops were very intense, but the rest of the ride did not pack the punch I had come to expect from an old Schwarzkopf like this. We took 2 quick rides (#517) and were off to the next ride.
Oil Derrick, is a typical observation tower. Texas is very flat so you can see for miles and miles, unfortunately on this day was very hazy or you could have seen the skylines of Ft. Worth and Dallas. I believe it's around 300 feet tall which isn't as tall as the Eiffel Towers at Kings Island and Kings Dominion.
After spending a fair amount of time at the top of the Oil Derrick, we went next door to a CLASSIC dark ride..
Spee-Lunker's Cave Ride originally opened in 1964, and was transformed into Yosemite Sam in 1992. While all the characters were made by Sally, this is not a Sally shooter.
It is very much like Monster Plantation (Mansion?) at Six Flags Over Georgia, where you sit in boats and go through a themed story. Overall I thought it was very well done, and amazingly maintained. Thumbs up to Six Flags for keeping this around.
Next up was a small walk to La Vibora where we were greeted with this:
Then we went over to the Single Rider line which looked like this:
We only had to wait a few cycles and we both ended up in the same car anyway. (#518) It's amazing to me that people still wait in massive, slow moving lines. Especially for silly rides like this. As for the actual La Vibora ride there isn't much to say about it. If you've been on Disaster Transport at Cedar Point or any other bobsled coaster you've been on this, I do remember it being quite loud though.
Only one credit left in the park so we trudged up to Judge Roy Scream.
Somehow Judge Roy Scream has been Kentucky Kingdom'd away from the rest of the park, and is separated by this tunnel under the entrance road.
I will go ahead and say I don't remember a damn thing about Judge Roy, other than it wasn't good and it wasn't bad. It was a solid "meh", even in the front seat.
With all the credits complete at the park, it was quickly becoming obvious that the park was getting more and more crowded, it also seemed as if the temperature was getting hotter with every passing minute.
The next ride we decided on was Texas Chute Out. I missed this while it was at Six Flags Over Georgia, and I think the Great Adventure one was closed on both of my visits there, so this would be my first parachute drop.
I didn't expect the drop to be as quick as it was, but other than that it was a nice relaxing ride, it's a shame there aren't more left.
We kind of wondered around for a while till we found the (crowded beyond capacity) Train, near Mr. Freeze.
The train was another nice relaxing break without having to walk or do anything, and had some good photo opportunities. We decided to get to get off at the halfway point to see how the lines for rides on that side of the park (such as Titan or Texas Giant) were, and as you can imagine the queue for everything was full. Back to the train station, we took it back to where we started.
It was about this time I proposed Jake an idea: we go back to Jerry World and try for the tour (yes despite scoffing at the price earlier) and then go to a Steak and Shake we had seen from Oil Derrick. He obliged, but just wanted one more ride on Mini Mine Train so he could get a Mr. Freeze pic like this:
On the way out of the park we passed the Aquaman splashboat ride, which is kind of silly and ingenious at the same time. Silly for Aquaman being themed to anything, ingenious for just slapping a few Aquaman things on a preexisting ride. I'm surprised I haven't seen this more.
So it was with much reluctance that we left Six Flags Over Texas around 2pm. We probably spent less than 6 hours total there in 2 days, but in the time I did get to spend there I really enjoyed it. The park has a ton of flat rides I didn't even mention, so you could easily spend an entire day riding those. It's also fun to see how the really old sections of the park haven't really changed much. The Texas, Old South, and France sections are some of the oldest parts of the park and all the buildings and paths are really close together. It's a shame the crowds and the heat pretty much changed our plans to stay the entire day. Hopefully I get to revisit the park soon.
For all of my Six Flags Over Texas pictures please click here.
We headed over to Cowboys Stadium where were greeted with more lines. Turns out the tour tickets were sold out, which was ok with me because the line for the tour may has well have been the line for any Six Flags ride. Never underestimate the power of the Cowboys franchise, or a billion dollars.
We went over to the Steak n Shake, which amazingly did not have a line. We ate well and relaxed in the air conditioning before the long drive back to San Antonio. The original plan was to stay at a hotel north of Austin, but since we were leaving so early Jake invited me to stay in the guest room at his house.
Fast forward 4-5 hours later, I am returning the rental car back to the airport. The final tally was 1274 miles of driving, or 20 hours and 20 minutes according to the in car timer. And this was in about 2 days and 3 hours time. I was trying to find a comparison so one could possibly understand what 1274 miles is like, and here are some that are close.
Round trip - Carowinds to Busch Gardens Tampa (Tampa, FL) - 1,131 miles
Round trip - Carowinds to Holiday World (Santa Claus, IN) - 1,143 miles
Round trip - Carowinds to Cedar Point (Sandusky, OH) - 1,150 miles
Round trip - carowinds to Waterville USA (Gulf Shores, AL) - 1,189 miles
Round trip - Carowinds to Six Flags Great Adventure (Jackson, NJ) - 1,194 miles
Round trip - Carowinds to Libertyland (Memphis, TN) - 1,246 miles
One Way - Carowinds to Six Flags Over Texas (Arlington, TX) - 1,047 miles
One Way - Carowinds to Valleyfair! (Shakopee, MN) - 1,191 miles
One Way - Carowinds to Six Flags Fiesta Texas (San Antonio, TX) - 1,250 miles
Okay, time to stop playing with google maps..
Jake suggested we go to CiCi's pizza near his house, where I only had a few pieces of pizza. It was about this time it hit me that I wasn't feeling well at all. I don't know it was from being in the car so long, or the lack of sleep or food, but my body felt like it was destroyed from the hard going of the 3 previous days. We headed back to his house where I finally had a decent bed to sleep in , and sleep I did.
Map of my driving for Day 3:
Total map of my driving:
Up next:
The best Six Flags park.. ever?
