Jarrett
Most Obnoxious Member 2016
It's that time of year again! Every year since 2014, my season has always been highlighted around a single trip, which I now refer to as a region trip. This trip takes me to a different part of the country to experience not only the coasters there, but that particular corner of the world, and this year it was bigger than ever. My buddy Ben and I headed to the great Lone Star State of Texas. Known for its size, extravagant culture, and for coaster nerds, being the RMC capital of the world.
And only a week before we left did I discover that it isn't a desert state.
Day 0
In typical region trip tradition, I did work the night before, and for the second year in a row, I got off and went home pretty ticked off, needing a vacation. Once I woke up, my parents were cool enough to send me off with a great surprise, my favorite pizza sub from Penn Station! After lunch, I hugged both of them goodbye and got on the road to meet Ben in Columbus, where I would be staying that night.
Drive to Columbus was a breeze considering I do it all the time to see my grandparents. After I got there, Ben (a former Cedar Point ride op) took me to his new place of employment to show me around, the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium where he works as their rides manager!
Our first stop was Mapori in the zoo's newest area, Heart of Africa. Now I've been to Columbus Zoo before but never eaten there. At Ben's request, I tried their cookies and it was amazing, not only was the restaurant really well themed but sitting on the edge of that grassland with all those animals living together totally wrapped it up, it feels like you're really in Africa.
Next up was what Ben said was their signature attraction, Dinosaur Island. A Hopkins water ride, the ride features a queue done up like a Dinosaurs Alive-type attraction but much better, including this incredible river view.
The ride was fun! It's a nice fun scenic ride that's set up really nicely, but what got me were the special effects. No, they aren't Hollywood, but all of them were on and working. Didn't see a single effect turned off, as Ben told me was kind of their goal. I got a bit wet on it, Ben warned me not to take any electronics out on it because the dinosaurs spit water at you.
After that we went to check out a part of the zoo I'd never seen before, the gorillas! They're smaller than I expected them to be, but also pretty smart. I love how they aren't afraid of humans at all, they'd just chill up by the glass watching people, it's like they find humans just as interesting as we find them.
Columbus Zoo has an exhibit that doubles as a rehabilitation center for manatees. Nicely themed as a Florida bayou, all of the manatees here have been injured by a boat propeller or one of their many threats in the wild. The zoo brings them in, nurses them back to health, releases them, and when a manatee leaves they get a little manatee-shaped plaque on the wall with their name and how long they were there, and there were at least 25 up there.
We were walking to another part of the zoo when we were able to catch Surfin' Safari, the zoo's pet tricks show. I've seen another one of these shows once at Busch Gardens Williamsburg 11 years ago so it had been a while. Columbus Zoo did a great job with it, but what made it special was there regardless of the show quality. Columbus Zoo rescues all the dogs and cats in the show, trains them to perform, and at the end of the show they're all available for adoption. It's the most positive thing I've seen a park do!
After this we went back to Ben's place, played Skyrim for the first time, and then hit the hay. The next day was bound to be brutal, involving a two hour drive to Cleveland to catch our flight to Dallas.
Day 1
I barely slept the night before, taking my sleep medication and passing out, but waking up at 3:45 to go catch our flight. I hung out for a bit while I waited for Ben to get up. But he finally got up, we got in his Mom Mobile, and headed for Cleveland.
Then Ben realized he left his ID behind.
So we turned around, drove back to his hometown, and got his ID from his mom. Then we headed back to the airport, got our stuff, and said goodbye to Ben's dad after he dropped us before heading into the gate.
Then Ben realized his phone was still in his dad's car.
We called his dad but before he even picked up he had already made the round and pulled over to drop the phone off. From there we got through security with no issues and made a run for the terminal, only to find ourselves still making great time, even enough for Ben to grab a sandwich for the flight.
As a space geek, I LOVED this image of our Spirit plane pulling into the airport in front of NASA's Glenn Research Center.
Time to hit the skies!
The flight there was awful. I got the middle seat, which was fine, but the guy next to me told me I could put my personal item (a backpack, the same one I used for school that I repurposed as luggage for this trip, holding all the clothes I needed for a week, my electronics, and some empty space for tat) in the overhead, reserved for larger carry-on bags, even though Spirit technically wasn't okay with it. Not wanting to break the airline's policy, I put my big, bulging backpack at my foot, not realizing I had just taken up a large portion of my already limited budget airline legroom. In my new tradition of buying a new album to listen to every trip, I bought the new Thirty Seconds To Mars album, making it a point to listen to Dangerous Night as we took off. Ben fell asleep after maybe ten minutes in the air, I tried to follow suit considering my awful sleep the night before. But in those tiny seats with minimal padding (think a public bus), over half of my legroom taken up by my backpack, and me not having my hat on to cover my eyes, I couldn't sleep. So I just listened to the album, busted my iPad out, and played RCT Classic until we landed. But eventually, we approached over the open prairies of Texas and touched down smoothly at DFW.
Welcome to Texas! State credit 28 for me!
We got off and made a run for Hertz to grab my rental car that would serve as our transportation around the massive state, and that's where the trouble started. They built a nice new rental car facility in a really efficient airport and I was liking it, but then it went wrong when I tried to rent my car. I swiped my credit card...and then it declined. I'm traveling, my bank is just looking out for me, so I call them to tell them what's up. Turns out there's nothing wrong with my card, no travel block, but I look down and see a few scratches on the magnetic strip. The lady on the phone tells me it's not taking my CCV correctly, but trying it on another machine should work, as it's just a freak chance thing. Well the lady behind the counter decides she HAS to be right telling us it won't work, despite my bank telling her it would. Ben and I argued back and forth with her for about an hour until Ben put his foot down and she did it...and on another machine it took the card on the first try. Killed a full hour of our SFOT time, I was stressed and not happy, but we went and picked out a nice Nissan Versa like the one I'm thinking of buying once I have my adult job I'm looking for.
I took my car, threw our stuff in the back, and pulled out of the airport to head to the first park of the trip, Six Flags Over Texas! Ben had control of the music for the trip and picked an Ariana Grande song as our first song (and I HATE her), but his selection was perfect, getting dramatic just as we pulled out of DFW and entered the fray that is major city traffic, seeing our first Whataburger. It was a short shot through Dallas to Six Flags, but eventually we got there!
We got in, used Ben's Diamond Elite membership to get flash passes for the only ride with a line, and used them on the first credit of the trip, and a very interesting one at that, La Vibora! Ben had ridden Disaster Transport but I'd not ridden an Intamin bobsled before, so first of its kind for me. I have, however, ridden Flying Turns and Avalanche, both of which I consider pretty amusing rides.
Worst way. To start a trip. EVER.
There's no question that this is the worst bobsled I've ridden. And I don't say that because it was boring, I say that because it's actually awful. I was legitimately offended by it. There's a ton of space where you sit but no padding, and the car skips and rattles around the trough, jostling you around and into the hard, unpadded train, making for an absolutely terrible experience. This is my new worst Intamin right here, and not at all how I wanted to get the trip started.
Regardless, Ben and I continued through the park, which we noticed pretty quickly was gorgeous.
Next up was a dark horse cred you never hear about, Runaway Mountain. I went in knowing very little about this one. Why the park installed it, what the layout was, what restraints it had, what the theme was, I was pretty clueless. I knew the manufacturer was Premier and that it had a chain lift but that was about it. But it was really good, actually! I expected something kind of rough but it's really smooth, and actually kind of intense. There's a dive off an MCBR that really took me by surprise, it snaps around really nicely, and served as the perfect surprise coming off of La Vibora's disappointing experience.
Now needless to say, it's Texas, and it was HOT. By this point, Ben and I had probably already asked for at least ten waters between the two of us, but one thing I'll give Six Flags Over Texas is that it's really well shaded. The whole Western area was practically in a forest and that took a lot of heat off.
Didn't ride it, but El Asserradero was Arrow's prototype for the famous log flume water ride that eventally became a staple at parks everywhere, so seeing it in person was kind of cool.
Heading back further, Ben and I encountered Titan, the park's Giovanola hypercoaster, and a sister coaster to Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain. It's in kind of an inconvenient location, branching off down a hill into a corner with virtually nothing else there.
I was amused to see Nissan advertising on one of the trains, seeing as I tend to like renting their cars the best. I specifically picked the Versa for this trip because it seemed to be a good first car in my price range and I wanted to test drive it.
And as with Goliath, it's pretty boring. No airtime, spending ages pounding us with the same force magnitude when it could be doing crazy maneuvers, nothing I hadn't seen before. As with Goliath and Intimidator 305, I'd label this as a gentle giant coaster. It's big, it's imposing, the GP trembles and wets themselves looking at it, but the experience is tamer than the Fun Sized cred in a shed just down the midway. One and done.
It's strange, but I absolutely love cacti for some reason. So seeing that they seem to just grow wherever in this state made me really happy!
But more importantly, Titan was Ben's 199th credit, which meant it was time for...
It's the one that started it all. There's now a divide in the coaster community over the ethics of ride preservation vs progress, a cult of nerds that practically worship a ride manufacturer, a household name in the industry often referring to precision and build quality, several wonky new elements more screwed up than ever imagined in the past, and parks now selling merchandise bearing the name of not the ride but the business entity that manufactured it, and this is the roller coaster that started it all. The industry debut from Rocky Mountain Construction, the company that sparked my interest in manufacturing and subsequently my major change with focus on it, Ben's 200th coaster, and the first featured coaster of the trip, New Texas Giant!
The walk out to the RMC prototype takes forever but gets you some really nice views of the coaster.
I stopped to take several nerd shots, noticing two distinct differences in structural hardware on the coaster, with this being the first. Every other RMC coaster has its rails held to the C-channel ledgers by means of a hinged bracket, two bolting plates held together by a pinned hinge allowing it to rotate about one axis, and enabling them to use the same part to connect any piece of track to any ledger, regardless of angle. New Texas Giant, however, has two bolting plates instead connected by a piece of what looked to be galvanized tubular steel cut on a bias, allowing the bolting plate to go on at different angles. This is obviously easier to make on a small scale as opposed to one of those complex hinged brackets, but to mass produce? Just get the robot to crank out a thousand of the hinged ones, one works for every piece of track as opposed to cutting a custom part for each individual joint.
The other mechanical difference I think I'll save for after the ride because it affects the ride experience...
New Texas Giant's station is easily the worst station for any RMC I've been on. Now the theming is okay (it really reminded me of my RCT3 coaster 66 Turbo if anyone remembers it), but the problem is that there's no airflow. So you're baking in the Texas heat, it's stuffy, and there's no fan or open space for a breeze to come through. The back wall on load side is completely solid, and when you get a bunch of guests in there, it's possibly the hottest single place I've been for coasters.
And it's a great ride! We took the back for our first ride and I was really impressed. The first half of this ride is actually really good, all of those air moments are killer and it flies into and around those overbanks with some serious gusto. Now the second half is why this RMC doesn't rank any higher for me, it seriously dies in the second half. The powerful RMC ejector dulls into floater and even airtime-less hills in the second half, plus the geometry on one of the turns in the tunnels is just a lazy flat turn. New Texas Giant feels like an a mid-high tier RMC in the first half, but dies into...something. It feels less and less like an RMC the deeper into the ride you get, and by the time you're in the tunnels, it feels like something that wouldn't even hit my top 30. But the first half of the ride more than makes up for it, landing it a spot above Goliath in my RMC rankings and narrowly squeezing into my top ten. It's not the worst RMC, but you can tell it was a prototype and that they wanted to play it safe for that reason.
Another major differeince I noticed in the structure was that New Texas Giant doesn't have laminate on its rails. Most RMCs have strips of steel bolted to the tops of their rails, joining at joints cut at an angle, and now I see why. When New Texas Giant passes from one segment of rail onto the other, there's a seam that hits the wheel perpendicularly to the direction of travel, and you certainly feel it. It wasn't painful by any means, but there's a pretty distinct click when New Texas Giant passes from one segment to the next. Not sure if this is the main reason they did the laminate (though it definitely fixes the clicking completely), but you can see a very clear effect of it here.
Afterwards, we headed to the front of the park to clean out the other half of it. Forgot to take photos of either cred, but we went for Mini Mine and Runaway Mine Train next. Mini Mine wasn't too bad, but the layout was odd. However, upon getting on Runaway, we could tell Mini was designed to emulate elements of the larger one's layout. Runaway Mine Train is probably the strangest mine train I've been on. It obviously had influences from Wild Mouse coasters, but most of it was spent rolling along the ground past some nice scenery. The finale through the saloon and into the dive underwater was kind of cool.
Thought we'd chill on the Texas heat a bit next with Mr. Freeze. I'd done the one at SFSL and it's one of my favorite rides there, and possibly my favorite themed DC coaster.
The lack of station theming was a disappointment. St. Louis blasts their A/C in line for this, you enter the building through one of those clear plastic flap curtains, and there are large tanks of R134-a and stuff in the station accompanied by trippy music. SFOT had a bit more queue theming but the station was awful, just a shipping crate with badly painted graffiti on it.
SFOT's Mr. Freeze is certainly a different experience. Launch is a bit stronger, ride felt more intense, but there was a very distinct rattle that SFSL's didn't have. Still though, I loved its clone and this one also blew me away, though I think I prefer SL's.
Batman was next, and it wasn't much to write home about. Batman clone, pretty standard, we all know I find them kind of boring, but 1/3 on the trip. But the noteworthy part was that I'm now only two Batman clones from having every one in the US!
Getting in line for Joker we walked past Harley Quinn Spinsanity, work was being done on it but it was obvious it wouldn't be up and running anytime soon. Would have been cool to try it but I'm not heartbroken about it.
Continuing our pattern of systematically knocking clones out in the DC area, Joker was up next. Both of us had ridden one of these before and we got exactly that. Both SFGAms and SFGAdv's felt almost exactly like this one. Riding as the sun set over the huge Dallas metro area was kind of cool though.
Our last cred of the day was Shock Wave, a Schwarzkopf double looper that was kind of out of the way, and it impressed me! New favorite Schwarzkopf coaster easily, the dives off those high turns actually had some really good ejector to them, and it didn't set you down until the coaster leveled out. It actually kind of scared me!
Park closed early so we met up with a Six Flags employee that Ben worked with for sometime during his Cedar Point days for dinner. And what better place to grab a first dinner in Texas than their infamous fast food chain Whataburger? This is easily my new favorite fast food burger (emphasis on fast food, I still think Smashburger and Red Robin are both better). I got a simple cheeseburger and fries with Dr. Pepper, which I was told was the most Texan meal ever by another enthusiast who met us later on the trip. Burger was a knockout, fries were above average, but the appeal to Whataburger is that little black packet next to my fries. Their spicy ketchup is to die for, I was dipping my burger in it to get more in the bite, eating like seven fries dripping with the stuff, even worked up the nerve to go ask for more. They're proud of their condiments here to the point that they bring out a whole tray of sauce cups with your food for you to pick from. Liked the spicy ketchup so much I got more and threw it in my 3-1-1 bag for the flight home. This was the perfect Texas welcome right here!
Our last stop of the night was to replace Ben's phone charger he accidentally left in his car back in Ohio, and where better to go than the place where I got days off from to take this trip in the first place? I burn PTO at Walmart so I can go to Texas instead of working there, fly halfway across the country in some medieval torture device passed off as an airline seat, and I still can't escape this place.
But that Walmart (which was much bigger and much more crowded than mine) was right across the street from Dallas's Texas-sized AT&T Stadium. Home of the Dallas Cowboys, this is easily one of the biggest buildings I've ever seen, photos don't do it justice. You could see it all over SFOT, but driving right up next to it just shows you how massive it is.
After this, we got back to the hotel around 9:30, meaning I was up for almost 18 hours at that point with no sleep on the plane, so when we got back to the hotel, I just about died instantly. I took a nice long cold shower, threw on the new pajamas my parents got me for my birthday the week before, called my folks, and just blacked out the second my head hit the pillow. With how much we managed to get done at a dead Six Flags Over Texas that day, I knew we would have a much less stressful day tomorrow...
UP NEXT: More fun at the OG Six Flags Park, a hidden gem, and my RMC Coaster Curse strikes!
And only a week before we left did I discover that it isn't a desert state.
Day 0
In typical region trip tradition, I did work the night before, and for the second year in a row, I got off and went home pretty ticked off, needing a vacation. Once I woke up, my parents were cool enough to send me off with a great surprise, my favorite pizza sub from Penn Station! After lunch, I hugged both of them goodbye and got on the road to meet Ben in Columbus, where I would be staying that night.
Drive to Columbus was a breeze considering I do it all the time to see my grandparents. After I got there, Ben (a former Cedar Point ride op) took me to his new place of employment to show me around, the Columbus Zoo & Aquarium where he works as their rides manager!
Our first stop was Mapori in the zoo's newest area, Heart of Africa. Now I've been to Columbus Zoo before but never eaten there. At Ben's request, I tried their cookies and it was amazing, not only was the restaurant really well themed but sitting on the edge of that grassland with all those animals living together totally wrapped it up, it feels like you're really in Africa.
Next up was what Ben said was their signature attraction, Dinosaur Island. A Hopkins water ride, the ride features a queue done up like a Dinosaurs Alive-type attraction but much better, including this incredible river view.
The ride was fun! It's a nice fun scenic ride that's set up really nicely, but what got me were the special effects. No, they aren't Hollywood, but all of them were on and working. Didn't see a single effect turned off, as Ben told me was kind of their goal. I got a bit wet on it, Ben warned me not to take any electronics out on it because the dinosaurs spit water at you.
After that we went to check out a part of the zoo I'd never seen before, the gorillas! They're smaller than I expected them to be, but also pretty smart. I love how they aren't afraid of humans at all, they'd just chill up by the glass watching people, it's like they find humans just as interesting as we find them.
Columbus Zoo has an exhibit that doubles as a rehabilitation center for manatees. Nicely themed as a Florida bayou, all of the manatees here have been injured by a boat propeller or one of their many threats in the wild. The zoo brings them in, nurses them back to health, releases them, and when a manatee leaves they get a little manatee-shaped plaque on the wall with their name and how long they were there, and there were at least 25 up there.
We were walking to another part of the zoo when we were able to catch Surfin' Safari, the zoo's pet tricks show. I've seen another one of these shows once at Busch Gardens Williamsburg 11 years ago so it had been a while. Columbus Zoo did a great job with it, but what made it special was there regardless of the show quality. Columbus Zoo rescues all the dogs and cats in the show, trains them to perform, and at the end of the show they're all available for adoption. It's the most positive thing I've seen a park do!
After this we went back to Ben's place, played Skyrim for the first time, and then hit the hay. The next day was bound to be brutal, involving a two hour drive to Cleveland to catch our flight to Dallas.
Day 1
I barely slept the night before, taking my sleep medication and passing out, but waking up at 3:45 to go catch our flight. I hung out for a bit while I waited for Ben to get up. But he finally got up, we got in his Mom Mobile, and headed for Cleveland.
Then Ben realized he left his ID behind.
So we turned around, drove back to his hometown, and got his ID from his mom. Then we headed back to the airport, got our stuff, and said goodbye to Ben's dad after he dropped us before heading into the gate.
Then Ben realized his phone was still in his dad's car.
We called his dad but before he even picked up he had already made the round and pulled over to drop the phone off. From there we got through security with no issues and made a run for the terminal, only to find ourselves still making great time, even enough for Ben to grab a sandwich for the flight.
As a space geek, I LOVED this image of our Spirit plane pulling into the airport in front of NASA's Glenn Research Center.
Time to hit the skies!
The flight there was awful. I got the middle seat, which was fine, but the guy next to me told me I could put my personal item (a backpack, the same one I used for school that I repurposed as luggage for this trip, holding all the clothes I needed for a week, my electronics, and some empty space for tat) in the overhead, reserved for larger carry-on bags, even though Spirit technically wasn't okay with it. Not wanting to break the airline's policy, I put my big, bulging backpack at my foot, not realizing I had just taken up a large portion of my already limited budget airline legroom. In my new tradition of buying a new album to listen to every trip, I bought the new Thirty Seconds To Mars album, making it a point to listen to Dangerous Night as we took off. Ben fell asleep after maybe ten minutes in the air, I tried to follow suit considering my awful sleep the night before. But in those tiny seats with minimal padding (think a public bus), over half of my legroom taken up by my backpack, and me not having my hat on to cover my eyes, I couldn't sleep. So I just listened to the album, busted my iPad out, and played RCT Classic until we landed. But eventually, we approached over the open prairies of Texas and touched down smoothly at DFW.
Welcome to Texas! State credit 28 for me!
We got off and made a run for Hertz to grab my rental car that would serve as our transportation around the massive state, and that's where the trouble started. They built a nice new rental car facility in a really efficient airport and I was liking it, but then it went wrong when I tried to rent my car. I swiped my credit card...and then it declined. I'm traveling, my bank is just looking out for me, so I call them to tell them what's up. Turns out there's nothing wrong with my card, no travel block, but I look down and see a few scratches on the magnetic strip. The lady on the phone tells me it's not taking my CCV correctly, but trying it on another machine should work, as it's just a freak chance thing. Well the lady behind the counter decides she HAS to be right telling us it won't work, despite my bank telling her it would. Ben and I argued back and forth with her for about an hour until Ben put his foot down and she did it...and on another machine it took the card on the first try. Killed a full hour of our SFOT time, I was stressed and not happy, but we went and picked out a nice Nissan Versa like the one I'm thinking of buying once I have my adult job I'm looking for.
I took my car, threw our stuff in the back, and pulled out of the airport to head to the first park of the trip, Six Flags Over Texas! Ben had control of the music for the trip and picked an Ariana Grande song as our first song (and I HATE her), but his selection was perfect, getting dramatic just as we pulled out of DFW and entered the fray that is major city traffic, seeing our first Whataburger. It was a short shot through Dallas to Six Flags, but eventually we got there!
We got in, used Ben's Diamond Elite membership to get flash passes for the only ride with a line, and used them on the first credit of the trip, and a very interesting one at that, La Vibora! Ben had ridden Disaster Transport but I'd not ridden an Intamin bobsled before, so first of its kind for me. I have, however, ridden Flying Turns and Avalanche, both of which I consider pretty amusing rides.
Worst way. To start a trip. EVER.
There's no question that this is the worst bobsled I've ridden. And I don't say that because it was boring, I say that because it's actually awful. I was legitimately offended by it. There's a ton of space where you sit but no padding, and the car skips and rattles around the trough, jostling you around and into the hard, unpadded train, making for an absolutely terrible experience. This is my new worst Intamin right here, and not at all how I wanted to get the trip started.
Regardless, Ben and I continued through the park, which we noticed pretty quickly was gorgeous.
Next up was a dark horse cred you never hear about, Runaway Mountain. I went in knowing very little about this one. Why the park installed it, what the layout was, what restraints it had, what the theme was, I was pretty clueless. I knew the manufacturer was Premier and that it had a chain lift but that was about it. But it was really good, actually! I expected something kind of rough but it's really smooth, and actually kind of intense. There's a dive off an MCBR that really took me by surprise, it snaps around really nicely, and served as the perfect surprise coming off of La Vibora's disappointing experience.
Now needless to say, it's Texas, and it was HOT. By this point, Ben and I had probably already asked for at least ten waters between the two of us, but one thing I'll give Six Flags Over Texas is that it's really well shaded. The whole Western area was practically in a forest and that took a lot of heat off.
Didn't ride it, but El Asserradero was Arrow's prototype for the famous log flume water ride that eventally became a staple at parks everywhere, so seeing it in person was kind of cool.
Heading back further, Ben and I encountered Titan, the park's Giovanola hypercoaster, and a sister coaster to Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain. It's in kind of an inconvenient location, branching off down a hill into a corner with virtually nothing else there.
I was amused to see Nissan advertising on one of the trains, seeing as I tend to like renting their cars the best. I specifically picked the Versa for this trip because it seemed to be a good first car in my price range and I wanted to test drive it.
And as with Goliath, it's pretty boring. No airtime, spending ages pounding us with the same force magnitude when it could be doing crazy maneuvers, nothing I hadn't seen before. As with Goliath and Intimidator 305, I'd label this as a gentle giant coaster. It's big, it's imposing, the GP trembles and wets themselves looking at it, but the experience is tamer than the Fun Sized cred in a shed just down the midway. One and done.
It's strange, but I absolutely love cacti for some reason. So seeing that they seem to just grow wherever in this state made me really happy!
But more importantly, Titan was Ben's 199th credit, which meant it was time for...
It's the one that started it all. There's now a divide in the coaster community over the ethics of ride preservation vs progress, a cult of nerds that practically worship a ride manufacturer, a household name in the industry often referring to precision and build quality, several wonky new elements more screwed up than ever imagined in the past, and parks now selling merchandise bearing the name of not the ride but the business entity that manufactured it, and this is the roller coaster that started it all. The industry debut from Rocky Mountain Construction, the company that sparked my interest in manufacturing and subsequently my major change with focus on it, Ben's 200th coaster, and the first featured coaster of the trip, New Texas Giant!
The walk out to the RMC prototype takes forever but gets you some really nice views of the coaster.
I stopped to take several nerd shots, noticing two distinct differences in structural hardware on the coaster, with this being the first. Every other RMC coaster has its rails held to the C-channel ledgers by means of a hinged bracket, two bolting plates held together by a pinned hinge allowing it to rotate about one axis, and enabling them to use the same part to connect any piece of track to any ledger, regardless of angle. New Texas Giant, however, has two bolting plates instead connected by a piece of what looked to be galvanized tubular steel cut on a bias, allowing the bolting plate to go on at different angles. This is obviously easier to make on a small scale as opposed to one of those complex hinged brackets, but to mass produce? Just get the robot to crank out a thousand of the hinged ones, one works for every piece of track as opposed to cutting a custom part for each individual joint.
The other mechanical difference I think I'll save for after the ride because it affects the ride experience...
New Texas Giant's station is easily the worst station for any RMC I've been on. Now the theming is okay (it really reminded me of my RCT3 coaster 66 Turbo if anyone remembers it), but the problem is that there's no airflow. So you're baking in the Texas heat, it's stuffy, and there's no fan or open space for a breeze to come through. The back wall on load side is completely solid, and when you get a bunch of guests in there, it's possibly the hottest single place I've been for coasters.
And it's a great ride! We took the back for our first ride and I was really impressed. The first half of this ride is actually really good, all of those air moments are killer and it flies into and around those overbanks with some serious gusto. Now the second half is why this RMC doesn't rank any higher for me, it seriously dies in the second half. The powerful RMC ejector dulls into floater and even airtime-less hills in the second half, plus the geometry on one of the turns in the tunnels is just a lazy flat turn. New Texas Giant feels like an a mid-high tier RMC in the first half, but dies into...something. It feels less and less like an RMC the deeper into the ride you get, and by the time you're in the tunnels, it feels like something that wouldn't even hit my top 30. But the first half of the ride more than makes up for it, landing it a spot above Goliath in my RMC rankings and narrowly squeezing into my top ten. It's not the worst RMC, but you can tell it was a prototype and that they wanted to play it safe for that reason.
Another major differeince I noticed in the structure was that New Texas Giant doesn't have laminate on its rails. Most RMCs have strips of steel bolted to the tops of their rails, joining at joints cut at an angle, and now I see why. When New Texas Giant passes from one segment of rail onto the other, there's a seam that hits the wheel perpendicularly to the direction of travel, and you certainly feel it. It wasn't painful by any means, but there's a pretty distinct click when New Texas Giant passes from one segment to the next. Not sure if this is the main reason they did the laminate (though it definitely fixes the clicking completely), but you can see a very clear effect of it here.
Afterwards, we headed to the front of the park to clean out the other half of it. Forgot to take photos of either cred, but we went for Mini Mine and Runaway Mine Train next. Mini Mine wasn't too bad, but the layout was odd. However, upon getting on Runaway, we could tell Mini was designed to emulate elements of the larger one's layout. Runaway Mine Train is probably the strangest mine train I've been on. It obviously had influences from Wild Mouse coasters, but most of it was spent rolling along the ground past some nice scenery. The finale through the saloon and into the dive underwater was kind of cool.
Thought we'd chill on the Texas heat a bit next with Mr. Freeze. I'd done the one at SFSL and it's one of my favorite rides there, and possibly my favorite themed DC coaster.
The lack of station theming was a disappointment. St. Louis blasts their A/C in line for this, you enter the building through one of those clear plastic flap curtains, and there are large tanks of R134-a and stuff in the station accompanied by trippy music. SFOT had a bit more queue theming but the station was awful, just a shipping crate with badly painted graffiti on it.
SFOT's Mr. Freeze is certainly a different experience. Launch is a bit stronger, ride felt more intense, but there was a very distinct rattle that SFSL's didn't have. Still though, I loved its clone and this one also blew me away, though I think I prefer SL's.
Batman was next, and it wasn't much to write home about. Batman clone, pretty standard, we all know I find them kind of boring, but 1/3 on the trip. But the noteworthy part was that I'm now only two Batman clones from having every one in the US!
Getting in line for Joker we walked past Harley Quinn Spinsanity, work was being done on it but it was obvious it wouldn't be up and running anytime soon. Would have been cool to try it but I'm not heartbroken about it.
Continuing our pattern of systematically knocking clones out in the DC area, Joker was up next. Both of us had ridden one of these before and we got exactly that. Both SFGAms and SFGAdv's felt almost exactly like this one. Riding as the sun set over the huge Dallas metro area was kind of cool though.
Our last cred of the day was Shock Wave, a Schwarzkopf double looper that was kind of out of the way, and it impressed me! New favorite Schwarzkopf coaster easily, the dives off those high turns actually had some really good ejector to them, and it didn't set you down until the coaster leveled out. It actually kind of scared me!
Park closed early so we met up with a Six Flags employee that Ben worked with for sometime during his Cedar Point days for dinner. And what better place to grab a first dinner in Texas than their infamous fast food chain Whataburger? This is easily my new favorite fast food burger (emphasis on fast food, I still think Smashburger and Red Robin are both better). I got a simple cheeseburger and fries with Dr. Pepper, which I was told was the most Texan meal ever by another enthusiast who met us later on the trip. Burger was a knockout, fries were above average, but the appeal to Whataburger is that little black packet next to my fries. Their spicy ketchup is to die for, I was dipping my burger in it to get more in the bite, eating like seven fries dripping with the stuff, even worked up the nerve to go ask for more. They're proud of their condiments here to the point that they bring out a whole tray of sauce cups with your food for you to pick from. Liked the spicy ketchup so much I got more and threw it in my 3-1-1 bag for the flight home. This was the perfect Texas welcome right here!
Our last stop of the night was to replace Ben's phone charger he accidentally left in his car back in Ohio, and where better to go than the place where I got days off from to take this trip in the first place? I burn PTO at Walmart so I can go to Texas instead of working there, fly halfway across the country in some medieval torture device passed off as an airline seat, and I still can't escape this place.
But that Walmart (which was much bigger and much more crowded than mine) was right across the street from Dallas's Texas-sized AT&T Stadium. Home of the Dallas Cowboys, this is easily one of the biggest buildings I've ever seen, photos don't do it justice. You could see it all over SFOT, but driving right up next to it just shows you how massive it is.
After this, we got back to the hotel around 9:30, meaning I was up for almost 18 hours at that point with no sleep on the plane, so when we got back to the hotel, I just about died instantly. I took a nice long cold shower, threw on the new pajamas my parents got me for my birthday the week before, called my folks, and just blacked out the second my head hit the pillow. With how much we managed to get done at a dead Six Flags Over Texas that day, I knew we would have a much less stressful day tomorrow...
UP NEXT: More fun at the OG Six Flags Park, a hidden gem, and my RMC Coaster Curse strikes!