Strathven
Roller Poster
On November 20th, 2023, as I nervously courted a migraine and tried not to be too concerned about Google saying the park was closed, I made the hours-long drive to San Antonio to visit my home-away-from-home for the first time in half a decade. What followed was a day that frequently threatened to be ruined, but never was!
Not wanting to tempt fate re: the headache that was quietly trying to blossom inside my skull, I chose to begin with something smooth. My first choice was Iron Rattler, but, as it is wont to do, it had decided not to stick to the park’s regular operating schedule. That was fine; it was all the excuse I needed to go instead with what was really the only correct choice: Dr. Diabolical’s Cliffhanger, which would become my very first B&M dive machine.
Notes on Dr. D’s Cliffhanger: The ride is fantastic, wonderful, spectacular, all the best adjectives. I can only imagine what riding the larger ones must be like, as the effect of hanging stopped over the vertical(+) first drop on even this relatively scrawny dive coaster was absolutely surreal! I also got to experience those vest restraints I’ve heard so much about; they were maybe less than ideal for me, a taller rider at 6’3”, since they contacted my collar bones in a way that was a bit uncomfortable. That only really lasted as long as the wait in the station though, as I found I hardly noticed once the actual ride was happening around me.
I do have one big gripe about Cliffhanger, and it’s one I hate to make: it’s a beautiful ride when you get to it, but entering the ride involves committing to a 5+ minute pre-show. Look, I absolutely love that Six Flags went to the effort to write a story for the ride and put together a sequence with animatronics and nicely designed sets and effects. This ride certainly deserves that sort of investment. It’s just…it’s hard to hear the recording in the first showroom when the space is full of people all talking amongst themselves, the fact that mechanical elements are cordoned off with metal guardrails doesn’t do much for immersion, the sparking effect in the second room is *ridiculously* loud, and ultimately it’s just several minutes of extra wait time every time I want to get on the ride. Again, I love and appreciate the effort, but I just feel like it was ill-advised in this case.
The rest of the day proceeded very nicely. Poltergeist, followed by Superman: Krypton Coaster, then the now-awakened Iron Rattler. Exiting IRat happened to put me near the entrance to Dr. D’s Cliffhanger again, and here is where my troubles began.
Having ridden the ride’s front left seat on the first go, I tried the front right this time. As an aside, I think I prefer this seat, it gets you very close to the ground on the final helix. Once again, it gave a splendid ride. So much so, that I immediately picked up my bag, left the exit pathway, and walked my happy self right back to the entrance again. I decided to go for the back row this time, sure that the beyond-vertical drop would give some solid airtime to row 3.
I’m happy to report that I wasn’t wrong! I floated out my seat the entire way down, it was magical. The third row was certainly a lot bumpier than the first, which is a property of dive machines I feel like I’ve seen some enthusiasts comment about. Upon return to the station, I heard the ride ops announce that those in rows 2 and 3 were free to ride again, and I was not about to refuse the offer. I should maybe have refused the offer.
Along with my general bleariness from the migraine with which I’d been playing an incredibly high-stakes game of chicken, I was also very hungry. I’d eaten breakfast, but no lunch, and only two homemade cookies and a handful of peanuts on the way to the park. I was truly in no condition to be doing what I was doing. There was a moment on my fourth ride of Cliffhanger where I distinctly remember being shocked when the second drop happened, because for some reason, I could have sworn it already had. This needed to be my last ride for a while.
Thankfully, I stopped myself before any sort of crisis happened, but I was not doing well at this point. I took half an hour or so to just enjoy the park, bask in the ambience, sketch some of Cliffhanger’s maintenance access structures, grab a gigantic Super Pretzel. This is something I’m going to resolve to do more often; it was actually really nice to settle down for a few minutes and enjoy being there without riding anything. Also that pretzel was definitely one of the highlights of my day.
Wanting to get back on a ride, but also wanting to be smart about it, I needed something small, something tame, something with a long line to give me more time to recover. Kid Flash Cosmic Coaster was exactly what the doctor ordered. I don’t have too much to say about it; it was fun, it’s worth checking out if there’s not much of a line, or if you have kids, or if you’ve done something questionable like take three consecutive laps on one of the biggest coasters in the park after not having eaten anything and while trying desperately to keep your head from imploding. I rode the red “DC” side, which has a fun little double-down toward the end. It was not as smooth as I expected it to be; the ride isn’t rough at all, but there is a persistent vibration to it. Overall, a nice addition that looks very pretty and delivers an enjoyable ride experience.
It was now an hour before closing, and I had a choice to make: do I go for a night ride on Poltergeist, something I had specifically wanted to do on this trip, or do I skip that in light of my current wellness situation and take the opportunity to leave a little early and beat the traffic? I decided to take a ride on Scream! while I made up my mind.
Scream! is my favorite non-rolling, non-coasting ride in the park. It’s never a bad time. It’s gentle, it’s relaxing, it’s pleasant, it’s a good thing to go on when I need a break. This was the first time it ever actually made me scared: I opted for a seat facing inward toward the structure. I don’t know if I had just never done this before or what, but something about being able to actually gauge how high you are by looking across to the other legs of the tower…does something. And seeing the triangular peak of the tower slowly lower onto your head as you’re carried up for the final drop is absolutely surreal.
So…while I did not feel close to being sick, I had had some moments of discomfort on both Scream! and Kid Flash. A couple seconds of woozy-headedness at points of significant Gs, even on such tame rides as those. If a kiddie coaster was enough to do that to me, I thought, maybe I’m just not in the right state of body to be here right now. I’ll head home without my Poltergeist night ride, but I’ll be back sometime and I can get it then. And if there were a smarter version of me there that day, that’s what they would’ve done.
But there wasn’t, so I gathered what stamina I had left in me and waltzed through the gate to Bartholomew Mansion. And here is where I would like to talk a bit about Poltergeist’s renovations.
Notes on Poltergeist: Unlike Dr. D’s CH, I have no complaints whatsoever about Poltergeist! The new colors, which I was not sure I would like since I had grown up with a yellow Poltergeist, look stunning and quite ghostly at night. I also love, love, love the new theming!! I always loved the subject Six Flags had chosen—not a DC character or something generic, but a haunted house—but, while I enjoyed the elements that were there, there just wasn’t enough. It was a roller coaster with some cute horror elements duct-taped to it. This is not that.
It’s not Disney or Universal, but honestly, I don’t want it to be. It’s the exact amount of setting and story that I like my coasters to have: something that sets a mood and puts you in a space unique to the ride, but not in a way that feels like you’re missing something if you aren’t paying attention or can’t hear over the din of other people in the station. I love the spooky statues around the building and the old car in the garage that comes to life and honks, I love the interiors of the station building that now have real ambience, I love the dimming and flickering lights, and perhaps most of all, I love that the other side of the station is now closed! There’s something so deliciously unreal about standing in a closed room with a roller coaster train that launches right in front of you. It’s best experienced at night, when there’s no outside light making its way into the building, but the effect is largely preserved even during the daytime since part of the renovations for the ride included adding a covered section to part of the turnaround back to the station.
Poltergeist is low-key one of my favorite rides in the park, and it warms my heart to see them taking such good care of it. It runs fast and smooth too, like it just opened yesterday.
And amazingly, I actually felt mostly fine during and after the ride! The gamble paid off, and I got my night ride free of medical consequences. It was, however, the last and final thing I would possibly have had stamina for, so it was good timing that the park closed while I was in line for it. What a marvelous final ride of the day!
Overall, the day I had was incredible. The park looked splendid decked out in Christmas lights and decorations, it was my first truly solo trip to a Six Flags park, my first visit to a major park in four years, and I came away warmed by the soft glow of two new credits in my pocket, bringing my total to 43. There were a couple of rides I had wanted to go on, but missed: I was looking forward to getting on Boomerang again after watching Ryan the Ride Mechanic’s video about that model, but with my head in this condition, I knew that wasn’t going to happen if I wanted to enjoy the rest of my day; I had hoped to ride Goliath, but by the time I might’ve been ready to circle back to it, I was in my “trying not to dissolve into a puddle” era from my consecutive rides on Cliffhanger; and Wonder Woman was experiencing maintenance issues and I didn’t feel like waiting in line to see if it would open.
Can’t wait to go back, hopefully in better health!
Not wanting to tempt fate re: the headache that was quietly trying to blossom inside my skull, I chose to begin with something smooth. My first choice was Iron Rattler, but, as it is wont to do, it had decided not to stick to the park’s regular operating schedule. That was fine; it was all the excuse I needed to go instead with what was really the only correct choice: Dr. Diabolical’s Cliffhanger, which would become my very first B&M dive machine.
Notes on Dr. D’s Cliffhanger: The ride is fantastic, wonderful, spectacular, all the best adjectives. I can only imagine what riding the larger ones must be like, as the effect of hanging stopped over the vertical(+) first drop on even this relatively scrawny dive coaster was absolutely surreal! I also got to experience those vest restraints I’ve heard so much about; they were maybe less than ideal for me, a taller rider at 6’3”, since they contacted my collar bones in a way that was a bit uncomfortable. That only really lasted as long as the wait in the station though, as I found I hardly noticed once the actual ride was happening around me.
I do have one big gripe about Cliffhanger, and it’s one I hate to make: it’s a beautiful ride when you get to it, but entering the ride involves committing to a 5+ minute pre-show. Look, I absolutely love that Six Flags went to the effort to write a story for the ride and put together a sequence with animatronics and nicely designed sets and effects. This ride certainly deserves that sort of investment. It’s just…it’s hard to hear the recording in the first showroom when the space is full of people all talking amongst themselves, the fact that mechanical elements are cordoned off with metal guardrails doesn’t do much for immersion, the sparking effect in the second room is *ridiculously* loud, and ultimately it’s just several minutes of extra wait time every time I want to get on the ride. Again, I love and appreciate the effort, but I just feel like it was ill-advised in this case.
The rest of the day proceeded very nicely. Poltergeist, followed by Superman: Krypton Coaster, then the now-awakened Iron Rattler. Exiting IRat happened to put me near the entrance to Dr. D’s Cliffhanger again, and here is where my troubles began.
Having ridden the ride’s front left seat on the first go, I tried the front right this time. As an aside, I think I prefer this seat, it gets you very close to the ground on the final helix. Once again, it gave a splendid ride. So much so, that I immediately picked up my bag, left the exit pathway, and walked my happy self right back to the entrance again. I decided to go for the back row this time, sure that the beyond-vertical drop would give some solid airtime to row 3.
I’m happy to report that I wasn’t wrong! I floated out my seat the entire way down, it was magical. The third row was certainly a lot bumpier than the first, which is a property of dive machines I feel like I’ve seen some enthusiasts comment about. Upon return to the station, I heard the ride ops announce that those in rows 2 and 3 were free to ride again, and I was not about to refuse the offer. I should maybe have refused the offer.
Along with my general bleariness from the migraine with which I’d been playing an incredibly high-stakes game of chicken, I was also very hungry. I’d eaten breakfast, but no lunch, and only two homemade cookies and a handful of peanuts on the way to the park. I was truly in no condition to be doing what I was doing. There was a moment on my fourth ride of Cliffhanger where I distinctly remember being shocked when the second drop happened, because for some reason, I could have sworn it already had. This needed to be my last ride for a while.
Thankfully, I stopped myself before any sort of crisis happened, but I was not doing well at this point. I took half an hour or so to just enjoy the park, bask in the ambience, sketch some of Cliffhanger’s maintenance access structures, grab a gigantic Super Pretzel. This is something I’m going to resolve to do more often; it was actually really nice to settle down for a few minutes and enjoy being there without riding anything. Also that pretzel was definitely one of the highlights of my day.
Wanting to get back on a ride, but also wanting to be smart about it, I needed something small, something tame, something with a long line to give me more time to recover. Kid Flash Cosmic Coaster was exactly what the doctor ordered. I don’t have too much to say about it; it was fun, it’s worth checking out if there’s not much of a line, or if you have kids, or if you’ve done something questionable like take three consecutive laps on one of the biggest coasters in the park after not having eaten anything and while trying desperately to keep your head from imploding. I rode the red “DC” side, which has a fun little double-down toward the end. It was not as smooth as I expected it to be; the ride isn’t rough at all, but there is a persistent vibration to it. Overall, a nice addition that looks very pretty and delivers an enjoyable ride experience.
It was now an hour before closing, and I had a choice to make: do I go for a night ride on Poltergeist, something I had specifically wanted to do on this trip, or do I skip that in light of my current wellness situation and take the opportunity to leave a little early and beat the traffic? I decided to take a ride on Scream! while I made up my mind.
Scream! is my favorite non-rolling, non-coasting ride in the park. It’s never a bad time. It’s gentle, it’s relaxing, it’s pleasant, it’s a good thing to go on when I need a break. This was the first time it ever actually made me scared: I opted for a seat facing inward toward the structure. I don’t know if I had just never done this before or what, but something about being able to actually gauge how high you are by looking across to the other legs of the tower…does something. And seeing the triangular peak of the tower slowly lower onto your head as you’re carried up for the final drop is absolutely surreal.
So…while I did not feel close to being sick, I had had some moments of discomfort on both Scream! and Kid Flash. A couple seconds of woozy-headedness at points of significant Gs, even on such tame rides as those. If a kiddie coaster was enough to do that to me, I thought, maybe I’m just not in the right state of body to be here right now. I’ll head home without my Poltergeist night ride, but I’ll be back sometime and I can get it then. And if there were a smarter version of me there that day, that’s what they would’ve done.
But there wasn’t, so I gathered what stamina I had left in me and waltzed through the gate to Bartholomew Mansion. And here is where I would like to talk a bit about Poltergeist’s renovations.
Notes on Poltergeist: Unlike Dr. D’s CH, I have no complaints whatsoever about Poltergeist! The new colors, which I was not sure I would like since I had grown up with a yellow Poltergeist, look stunning and quite ghostly at night. I also love, love, love the new theming!! I always loved the subject Six Flags had chosen—not a DC character or something generic, but a haunted house—but, while I enjoyed the elements that were there, there just wasn’t enough. It was a roller coaster with some cute horror elements duct-taped to it. This is not that.
It’s not Disney or Universal, but honestly, I don’t want it to be. It’s the exact amount of setting and story that I like my coasters to have: something that sets a mood and puts you in a space unique to the ride, but not in a way that feels like you’re missing something if you aren’t paying attention or can’t hear over the din of other people in the station. I love the spooky statues around the building and the old car in the garage that comes to life and honks, I love the interiors of the station building that now have real ambience, I love the dimming and flickering lights, and perhaps most of all, I love that the other side of the station is now closed! There’s something so deliciously unreal about standing in a closed room with a roller coaster train that launches right in front of you. It’s best experienced at night, when there’s no outside light making its way into the building, but the effect is largely preserved even during the daytime since part of the renovations for the ride included adding a covered section to part of the turnaround back to the station.
Poltergeist is low-key one of my favorite rides in the park, and it warms my heart to see them taking such good care of it. It runs fast and smooth too, like it just opened yesterday.
And amazingly, I actually felt mostly fine during and after the ride! The gamble paid off, and I got my night ride free of medical consequences. It was, however, the last and final thing I would possibly have had stamina for, so it was good timing that the park closed while I was in line for it. What a marvelous final ride of the day!
Overall, the day I had was incredible. The park looked splendid decked out in Christmas lights and decorations, it was my first truly solo trip to a Six Flags park, my first visit to a major park in four years, and I came away warmed by the soft glow of two new credits in my pocket, bringing my total to 43. There were a couple of rides I had wanted to go on, but missed: I was looking forward to getting on Boomerang again after watching Ryan the Ride Mechanic’s video about that model, but with my head in this condition, I knew that wasn’t going to happen if I wanted to enjoy the rest of my day; I had hoped to ride Goliath, but by the time I might’ve been ready to circle back to it, I was in my “trying not to dissolve into a puddle” era from my consecutive rides on Cliffhanger; and Wonder Woman was experiencing maintenance issues and I didn’t feel like waiting in line to see if it would open.
Can’t wait to go back, hopefully in better health!
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