and ahead of us welcoming us at the entrance is Goliath, the latest addition salvaged from Six Flags New Orleans where it ran briefly as "Splash Coaster Underwater B and M Aqua Nautica" (S.C.U.B.A. for short).
Cooooooooool, this park has a boooooooooomerang!The day actually had us being given a rather exclusive photo opportunity. The park is situated in a quarry and we had been allowed to walk around the top of it from where we can look down onto the park. I took the opportunity to take some more panorama shots.
The purple and blue coaster dominating the foreground is their Superman floorless ride. It hugs the quarry wall.
A general view of the park
The wooden coaster RattlerOK, back to more regular photography.
The drop tower (nice paint job) and Poltergeist behind it.
We had a good chance to freak out the public as they hit the mid-course brakes. They certainly wouldn't expect other members of the public to be up here.
Cliff is a guy who lives just over the edge. He doesn't like people invading his personal space so it was very nice of the park to warn us not to venture too near.
The first drop and loop on Superman. For those interested in such trivia this is the second largest vertical loop. Dominator, now in Kings Dominion has the first. But that one doesn't have a Superman on it.
Superman looked like a great ride and the park had rather kindly allowed us to ride it for an hour at the end of the day.
Loving that first drop
Having finished the tour, we rejoined the public at the Rattler ride so we decided to ride that.
It looked like it had the potential to be a great ride but something must have happened to it over its life. One third was rough, one third was slow and the final third was pretty good. Next door to that was Roadrunner Express a mine train which wasn't all that.
The next ride in the park was the Boomerang, sponsored by Heinz not because the ketchup looked like the blood likely to come out of your ears having ridden it but because its apparently, like its ketchup, its worth waiting for.
It wasn't worth the wait.
This angel has the horn
Rollschcuhcoaster is in the German area of the park. It was just a kiddy coaster; credit - tick - move on.
We were hot, these guys must have been boiling in those suits...what do you mean they're not suits?.....oh! they're real.After lunch, which was really nice, a small group of us headed into San Antonio to seek out another credit and to see a bit of downtown.
Kiddie Park of San Antonio is a tiny inner-city park in San An. We met Bob the owner who'd given us the OK to ride his coaster.
Usually adults are barred, we were to discover to mitigate the risk of being sued should they get hurt when riding it. Assuring him that we were there to ride and not make money he let us on.
Some big kids enjoying the ride and gaining the bragging rights to getting a credit that isn't that easy to obtain. Actually it is, you just need to ask nicely.
The park is apparently the oldest childrens park in America opening originally in 1925. Not surprisingly its still popular with the kids now as I imagine it would have been then.
Liking the theming outside the park, an interesting take on the hanging corpse seen at Selva Magica. The park's hospitality was most appreciated and we were happy to pose for a photo for the owner to post on his website. Checking it now I'm back its yet to appear. I only hope its not because one week after we rode the ride it broke and he blames us :(
Whilst Martin headed off to visit Hard Rock Cafe I chose to have a quick run around the downtown area. Here's a view from the car park overlooking some of Downtown. Don't worry the quick run wasn't that quick.
A rather lofty church that gets you a little closer to heaven. Now do I mean because its higher or because it would take an effort to get to it? Hmmm!
A rather "green" establishment.
Unlike Houston, San Antonio is a city with a rich history. Here on a bridge one of the original Native Americans has been set in Carbonite and used for decoration for the immigrant residents to enjoy as they eat their McDonalds and drink their Starbucks.
Loving that sculpture! The tower on the right is the tallest building in the city and houses a rotating restaurant at the top.
The citywalk area is full of restaurants, bars and the like. It's a really cool place and if I had more time I'd have investigated it more. As it happens there was a more important place I'd wanted to see in the time it took Martin to find the Hard Rock and drink their bar dry...and for those that don't know Martin, that's not a lot of time.
What is "chicken fried steak"?
This is what I was looking for, the Alamo. This is a very important building in American history. This building was the first car-rental centre in America and gives its name to the chain found all over the world today.
Actually it was here 187 American Soldiers defended themselves against 6,000 Mexican soldiers looking to retake Texas as their own after they'd already lost it. Whilst the defenders of the Alamo failed, it has become a symbol of the heroic struggle against impossible odds and a place where men paid the ultimate price for freedom. There's a couple of obvious Bush references there but I'll ignore them. Inside the building is a small museum of the events and because its a chapel I didn't take any pictures. Is it a coincidence that there were 187 victims on the US side and that number is also police code for a homicide?
This is one of the guys who helped defended the Alamo. It looks like the Indians got their own back for having some of their kinfolk set in carbonite. Here, they've done it back. I only hope when he's finally released that Toribio doesn't find the city too different from when he last fought here.
I've been conned. That high church isn't a church at all. It's just a big hotel type complex. The wall in the foreground is part of the Alamo enclosure.Having seen all I wanted to see, albeit briefly, I met back up with the others and we were taken back to Six Flags to finish up the rest of the rides there.
First up was Poltergeist, which is the ride on the left not the drop tower.
It is a knot of a coaster and having seen these rides all being down following an accident in another park in 2006, it was good to see this up and running (I didn't get to ride Joker's Jinx at Six Flags America). Load times were pretty good here and I remember the ride having a great launch and not being overly rough. It's one of the better rides in this park.
Another shot of Poltergeist this time from the back. I won't say how I got this shot needless to say it wasn't that obvious :)
There were a few of these signs in the Six Flags parks and they were rubbish. If you're going to number the piece at list have them all in the park so those of us with OCDs can try to find them all. As it happens I think I only found 2.
As well as adding Batman the park had recently opened a new Tony Hawks coaster. Following a trip to Six Flags New England in 2006 (he was there on the same day we were), Six Flags CEO Mark Shapira decided that a similar ride there would be a great addition to the chain and the result of that decision is a spate of Tony Hawk coasters.
I didn't like it, but then I've had an absolutely insane ride on Han Katten, a similar ride at Bonbon Land in Denmark. Until I'm spun around more than then I'm going to be hard pushed to rate any other ride, and if you'd seen how much I'd spun on it you'd understand how difficult that is going to be.
Having said that like the local hooker it seemed to go down well with the locals, and one good thing it had was a camera that filmed your ride on it. Much better than a static one-ride shot.
A couple of old themed cars
Having ridden all the coasters bar the two we were getting for the ERS we decided to ride them anyway. First up was Superman the massive quarry wall hugging floorless coaster. I was having difficulty getting properly exposed shots on my little camera in the Texas heat but I should state the superman logo really was faded and he looked more purple than blue.
Queueing for the coaster took about 40 minutes and I was just about to be let into the station when my stomach decided I needed to be elsewhere. So it was here that I started my love/hate relationship with imodium, which I had brought on me just in case. As it happens it did the trick and I was able to ride.
The ride was a lot of fun, quite intense but not overly. The corkscrews were a bit of a struggle though.
From there we went to Goliath, which having ridden lots of Batman rides already didn't offer anything new, other than a vibrant paint job. In hindsight I realise how my opinon has been tainted by having too much of a good thing. I used to love these rides when I first joined the club but now I've ridden so many the pleasure has become diluted.Before being our ERSs the park had kindly invited us to two of their shows with a designated VIP area to boot.
First up was "Country Rocks", which I didn't twig straight away was a stage show featuring covers of rock songs done in a country style; the reason I wasn't quick on the uptake was because I didn't recognise any of the tracks they were covering :(The show was pretty decent I suppose and made a change from young teens doing silly choreography to pop hits. These guys were slightly older and could sing, and they line danced. At least I figured out what happened to one of the guys from The Vengaboys (2nd from right)
The second show was a lights, fireworks, lasers and sound spectacular using the quarry wall as a projection screen. It was a bit overly patriotic but thats just something we as a nation don't do and Americans always do over the top.
The finale featured a series of explosions detonated from the top of the quarry. No wonder Cliff is always angry if he has to put up with that going on every night. IT also highlights why we weren't offered the photo tour at the end of the day :DOnto the ERS and it was superb. I spent most of the time riding Superman and decided to introduce my alter-ego El Retardo to the club. I'd bought a wrestling mask in Guadalajara and paired it up with a Batman cape I'd bought in the park. I thought it would be fun to wear the outfit during the ERS.
There were however a few problems1) I couldn't wear the mask and my glasses which meant I couldn't see the ride.
2) The forces would cause the mask to float off my head so I spent a lot of the second half of the ride with my finger in the eyesockets trying to keep it on.
3) Someone called me a gimp
So El Retardo only survived with the club one day before being retired. What was quite odd though was that the ride operators didn't acknowledge my outfit at all, which we couldn't understand. Part of the fun of being a dick is the reaction and I failed miserably there. Perhaps real luchadors visit this park a lot.
A cute sign we walked past on the way out. It's not always the kids' fault.Six Flags Fiesta Texas is actually a wonderful park, and seems to be putting its customers above its shareholders. The Shapiro effect seems to be working, at least here.
No comments:
Post a Comment