Six Flags St. Louis

Visited: October 25, 2024

Attending: Just Brian

This park was kind of the motivating factor for the whole trip, and also the one with the stupidest logistics. I’d been at a work meeting in St. Louis all week, which was perfectly nice. The meeting ended on Thursday, but if I wanted to hit up the park, I had to wait around all day Friday for it to open. Which I did, at a local public library, and then briefly at a mall. I suspected it would be crowded, as a Friday night with nice weather right before Halloween, and the line to get in proved me right. Fortunately, my Diamond pass afforded me a spot in the premium parking lot, so I saved a bit of time there, and not carrying a bag allowed me to skip security, so I breezed into the park shortly after opening.

American Thunder

Once again, I was operating without a map, but I could spot Mr. Freeze above the trees, and I figured that was the best direction to head. However, I came to American Thunder first, and it appeared to have no line, so I chanced a quick ride. It’s a wooden GCI, only about 80 feet tall, with Millennium Flyer trains, so I didn’t have high expectations. Being conscious of my violent wood-coaster rides at Kentucky Kingdom, I opted for a seat a few rows from the back, which may have been a good idea. It’s not very tall, but it’s awfully twisty, as one would expect from a GCI. And it was running pretty fast, which surprised me a bit. Just about the right length, and some decent air pops. I’d put it in the upper half of GCI’s, but not a standout.

Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast

This was my biggest priority at this particular park, because it’s a mostly unique coaster. “Mostly” because it has a twin at Six Flags Over Texas, but that one launches trains forward, whereas this one launches backward, hence “Reverse Blast.” I’ve been on a handful of coasters lately that feature spikes where the train stops and reverses direction. Generally speaking, I’ve found that reversing up the spike is preferable, but on this occasion, with a coaster I’d never ridden before, I think I would have preferred going forward up the spike, because it’s a little less scary, in my opinion.

I was worried about a line for this one, as it’s a shuttle coaster, and it sometimes has reliability issues, but I needn’t have been. The park was worried about it too, once upon a time, because the queue is absolutely massive. But at this moment, it was so empty that I had a hard time following where to go. I did get a good view of the ride, which really isn’t all that long, and decided that it wasn’t as tall as I feared. Of course, I should know better than to judge height or speed when I’m on the ground, but I never learn.

When I got to the station, there was no line at all, although it did fill gradually enough that each train was launching mostly full. The dual switch-track system for the launch is interesting from a technical perspective, but does nothing for the ride. I found the backward launch kind of intense, and taking the top hat backward, especially in the dark when I had no idea where it was, a bit nerve-wracking. The spike was no big deal, especially as it has no hold at the top, and simply drops the train once it reaches maximum height. Once I could see where I was going again, the forward stretch was no big deal at all, possibly even a bit short. The second time through the top hat had an unexpected loss of momentum right near the end, leading to some surprise hang-time, but that was kind of cool. I’d ride it again sometime, but I had other things to do right then.

Pandemonium

At this point, it was pretty dark, and the Haunt atmospherics were in full effect, which meant a lot of dry ice. More than I’ve seen at other Haunt events, in fact. I was trying to aim for the back of the park because I could see some other wood coasters back there. A rest-room stop consumed more time than I expected, because of the general confusion. Anyway, I came across Pandemonium next, and decided to give it a shot.

The ride is a Gerstlauer spinner, cloned at several Six Flags parks, but by coincidence, I’d never ridden one. Spinning Ninjas at Worlds of Fun was down last year, and although I’d ridden the two at the Nickelodeon parks, I wasn’t overly impressed with them. Pandemonium has a different layout, a bit more intense, I think, because of its origins as a Tony-Hawk themed coaster. There was a bit more of a line at this point, maybe a 15-minute wait. I ended up grouped with a Mom and two pre-teens, and that made the car really imbalanced, which always results in more spinning. Which most people really like; I could have done with a bit less. Personally, I prefer the Mack spinners, where the seats face away from the axis of the car, to the Gerstlaurs, where the seats face inward. However, going around a helix while sideways is always good fun, and that happened several times. Unfortunately, we still had a good bit of spin going on the brake run, which wasn’t as fun, but there you are.

The Boss

This woodie was the next coaster I found, which was good, because it was my next highest priority. Once again, the queue was crazy long, requiring quite a hike from the midway. The park was also starting to fill up. I’d been lucky so far, I think because I got there in daylight and the haunted houses were drawing most of the crowds, but my luck was starting to run out. There was also a distinct increase in fast-pass riders. I had to wait about 20 minutes, all told.

The Boss has a bad reputation as being unbearably rough, which I accounted for by sitting a few rows from the back. Still, I didn’t really know what to expect. It turned out to be a coaster of extremes. The bad first: It was unbearably rough. The handful of straight stretches and speed hills, I could feel my teeth slamming together, and a coaster headache coming on. I gave up on keeping my hands up and tried to hold on loosely, just to stabilize a little bit. Apparently there used to be a helix at the end, which has since been removed. I can’t even imagine how bad that would have been.

Now for the good: The layout is amazing. It’s on the side of a hill, so although the official height is 120 feet, the drop is 150 feet, and the second hill is very nearly the same height. It’s also on the edge of the park, which meant a good portion of the ride was in total darkness. If it had actually been smooth, the night ride would have been legendary. It keeps its speed all the way to the brakes, probably because of the missing helix, and again, that would have been awesome if I weren’t begging for it to end. If you’d told me that this was an old Dinn & Summers rather than a CCI, I would have believed you, because normally only Dinns beat me up that badly.

At the time of this writing, in 2024, the Boss is probably the leading candidate for the RMC conversion treatment. Prior to riding this, I thought that was just because it’s so rough, it should be put out of its misery. But now that I’ve experienced the layout, I really want to see what RMC could do with this thing. It could very well be awesome. But even some Titan Track on the existing layout would do wonders.

The Rest

After the Boss, I became aware that the lines were getting kinda crowded, and I still had a two-hour drive to get to my hotel, so I wanted to bail by 7:30. The crowds and the Haunt were making it harder to navigate, and while I wasn’t disturbed by that, I don’t like it either.

I managed to find the entrance to Screamin’ Eagle with a little effort, but I estimated the line at 20 minutes or more. Not bad for a normal day, but that was when I decided to pull the rip cord. A shame, because a night ride on that could be very cool. I continued counter-clockwise around the park, just in case of miracles, but I didn’t find any. The Boomerang wasn’t running, which is fine by me; I didn’t expect anything from that. Ninja was mildly interesting to me, as a custom Vekoma, but not enough to stand in line. The Batman clone was also of mild interest, as it’s a mirror of the ones I’ve ridden before. But still, a clone. So I left with fewer than half the credits, but I got Mr. Freeze and the Boss, and American Thunder was better than expected, so not bad.