It was also obvious that we weren't the typical hotel guest. All the other people in the restaurant were smartly dressed business people but the hotel wasn't too expensive to us at about £50 a night.
Following breakfast and a trip to the Starbucks next door for compulsary morning coffee fix we hired one of the taxi drivers touting outside the hotel to take us to the park. In fact we were so impressed with him we used him for the rest of our stay in Mexico City.
Six Flags Mexico is the largest park in Mexico, in Latin America in fact and it seemed to be pretty popular with lots of cars already arriving with ours for the start of the day. We even noticed a Volkswagen beetle with more than a dozen people squeezed into. Alas that was before I could get to my camera out to photograph it, but Jeppe will vouch if need be. Dominating the skyline were Superman, a big steel coaster and Medusa, a large wooden coaster. We'd asked our cab driver to come back in 4 hours figuring it would be enough time to get around the park.
Cute t-shirt in the queue line but still not as good as the kid I saw once in an Italian park who was there with his clearly non-english speaking parents and a hat emblazoned with "Fuckmaster III".
Having entered the park (350 pesos / £17.50) we figured the majority of the crowd would go to Superman, so we headed to the back of the park to ride the Batman Inverted coaster. Hold on, something doesn't look quite right with that track...
Shocker number 1, the coaster wasn't the normal B&M inverted coaster, it was an SLC (which I don't actually mind despite their headbanging reputation)Shocker number 2, I wasn't allowed to take my backpack onto the station, which meant that I'd have to use the lockers; something I figured I could avoid.
Shocker number 3, the lockers didn't open for another hour so to get around this stupidity one of us had to look after the bags whilst the other rode, then we'd swap; not too different from a baby swap in fact - as long as you kept the baby in a bag.
Shocker number 4, Single people weren't allowed to ride, you had to be paired up. This was just dumb, but fortunately we could get around that by just hanging around the station and waiting for an odd-numbered group then hopping in beside the single person.
A lot of hassle for a fairly average coaster, and a number of issues that didn't appear to be being enforced anywhere else. One extra bonus was that the soundsystem in this part of the park was playing some great trance music including a track by someone I know back in London. So whilst Jeppe rode, I had a little dance around the bat-mobile much to the locals' amusement.
There are lots of SLC coasters around the world, and there are lots of Boomerangs too. So that would be our next coaster to ride. These things are never smooth, and this one was no exception.
Tsunami was down, its the crappy green coaster in the foreground in case you're confusing it with the big one in the background - that's Superman that we'd be riding later on.
Liking the tiki statues
and the pineapple themed breakdance was the first one like this I'd seen
Away from the tropical part of the park into the Western and an opportunity to ride the wooden coaster in the park, Medusa. Rather strangely, the entrance was at the back of the gift shop; you usually just get to endure that when exiting.
The ride was atrocious. We put our hands up for the first drop then braced for the rest of the ride. Really really bad. It sort of does a two lap circuit so as you're suffering on the outer drops you see the inner ones knowing that you still have them to endure.
Rollerskater was much better by comparison and thats just a kiddy ride.
Close to Medusa was the park's big wheel which we rode to get some shots of the park. Here you can see Superman stealing the background.
Medusa is much nicer to look at than ride. In the background you can see the sprawl that is Mexico City going off as far as the eye, could see and the infamous smog would allow. The Six Flags park lies about 30 minutes south of the city.
Hot sweaty staff dressed as pigs with no pants on. The roadrunner was quite cool though. An ideal job for a chronic anorexic perhaps. They could fit up the neck no problem.
We're not sure what this dark ride attraction was but it seemed quite popular. The guess given the way the queue was entering in chunks makes us think it was one of those madhouse attraction where the room rotates and tricks you into thinking you're spinning upside down.
Cute castle in the European part of the town.
Superman is the stand out ride in the park, a big massive red Morgan monster, and I would come to ride many of these rides on the trip. Before being allowed in I had to dump the bag in the locker, which took a lot of translation from a staff member who's English was as good as my Spanish, and therefore took some time to sort out. I'd eventually figured out that in giving the key the time is recorded and you pay based on how long you had the key when you return it.This ride had the longest queue by far taking us around 40 minutes to get through it. Rather strangely there wasn't much queue forming behind us once we'd joined it, which meant a second go was much quicker. I can only assume we'd joined at the same time a show began, and that's where everyone had gone.
The ride itself is a lot of fun, better to ride in the front than the back. However there are some laterals that throw you into the side of the car if you're not ready. The second ride was much more enjoyable than the first because we'd learnt the layout. No loops or inversions, just big hills and helices. There was also some nice airtime that caused my cap, which I had been sitting on, to float up in front of me.Oh, a little tip, the Mexican food stand opposite the entrance to the ride served some really nice food, just be aware of the portion size. One of us didn't order enough first time around :D . I was quite impressed with my Spanish here as I was able to order everything, only blowing it when I didn't know how to say ice (hielo).
On the way out we thought we'd see if we could sort of some currency for Jeppe only to find out that we'd stumbled into an commercial shoot. Everyone in this shot is an actor.
Six Flags Mexico isn't a bad park at all, and we'd got around everything in the time we had with the exception of the haunted swing thing. Not getting out of the park properly (public can't leave the driving exit where we'd agreed to meet the taxi driver) we were relieved to see the driver spot us and drive over ready to drive us back into Mexico City.
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