Coasterbill's Alcohol, Coaster and Culture Trip Reports Land

Do not adjust your monitors... I actually got off (or on) my ass and wrote another trip report!

We had been wanting to do a Texas trip for a long time but for whatever reason it always eluded us or got put on the back burner for something else. Lucky for us that all changed last June when our favorite sh*thole airline randomly dropped a crazy low fare from Philadelphia (which is only a few hours from us) to Dallas and that finally gave us the incentive we needed to pull the trigger (get it? Like a gun... because Texas... ah whatever).

Greetings from Philadelphia airport! We fly the Klassiest airlines.

The flight was uneventful and after landing at DFW (F*ck that airport by the way) and waiting an hour to drive the rental car out of the garage once we were in the car (yeah, you read that right) we were on our way to our hotel. God, what an awful airport...

Our hotel was pretty close to the airport and by the time we got there it was about 11:45 (or 12:45 at home) so we were definitely ready to crash. Unfortunately the location in the Choice app was a little screwy and combined with the fact that this was my first encounter with Texas' obsession with service roads (Texans love nothing more than Jesus, guns and service roads) we missed the turn and ended up having to backtrack a little bit.

I know what you're thinking... Bill... who the f*ck cares? Get to the coasters.

Well for some ridiculous reason about 1/8 of a mile from our hotel we randomly passed an SBF spinner at some little miniature golf course that (for some reason) was open at 11:50 at night on a Thursday. I don't whore kids coasters, but for some reason I've decided that these things are acceptable since they're actually really fun (and often marketed to adults... see that weird place in NJ) so we walked into this deserted bowling alley and mini golf place 10 minutes before close and overpayed for an SBF spinner. I'm not proud of it and Brit was probably cursing me for missing that turn as I legitimately had no clue the place even existed and never would have known if I had properly followed the directions but... cha ching. These things are fun. Sue me. I should also note that there was one of those weird Texas thunderstorms in the area so the wind was whipping and you could hear rumbles of thunder but nobody cared as it was content to just sit over the same place for hours and wasn't actually headed our way. That whole night was weird.

No pictures of the coaster because my phone died as soon as we walked in. It's probably better that there's no evidence of this crap actually occurring.

Anyway... on to more respectable things, the next morning we woke up and made the short drive over to our first *real park of the trip, Six Flags over Texas!

Obviously this was a park that we were really excited to visit. It had about as much history as a ground-up Six Flags park could reasonably have and their ride lineup looked really impressive on paper. The forecast for the day (and every day) of our trip was in the 100-105 degree range but that did nothing to put a damper on our moods. At least it was a dry(ish) heat, right?

Good morning!

The park's entry area was quite nice and well shaded. Right off the bat it was clear that this park was sort of a relic of the days where Six Flags actually gave a sh*t and there were plenty of legitimately nice areas here. Over the course of our trip it became clear that if you lived in Texas and never ventured to any other parks you could probably think that Six Flags was a proud stamp of quality.

We budgeted for Flash Pass but since it was a weekday with 105 degree weather we didn't purchase it in advance and instead just decided to hit the rides that we wanted to ride and buy it when we encountered our first actual line. This turned out to be the right move as that never actually happened so I scored some additional beer money in the budget for the rest of the trip.

First stop!

Unless there's a ride with hilariously atrocious capacity we've sort of settled on a new strategy when visiting new parks and that's to ride the rides that you came for before anything else. I know we probably should have hit La Vibora or Pandemonium but Texas Giant was closed for a few weeks (and gave us a bit of a scare) and had only reopened a few days prior so when we saw it running on our way into the park there was no question as to where we were headed first.

It may be 105 degrees in June but the New Texas Giant ride sign is ready to feel it all around.

The ride was a walk-on so in no time we were strapped in and ready to go. Brit was a little freaked out about this ride at first (due to it's..um... history) but as soon as we were on our way down the drop she seemed to be totally over it and happily threw her arms up in the air a few moments later (I was already there from the minute we crested the lift).

Such a cool looking ride...

Make no mistake, this is a great ride. We found it to be extremely tame compared to every other RMC we've been on with very fluid, drawn out transitions but it has really solid airtime and it's a really long ride. Personally I think it rides more like a B&M hyper than an RMC, but that's not a bad thing. If you can take a rough, dumpster fire Dinn Corp train wreck and make it ride like a butter smooth airtime-filled B&M then that's a massive home run.

RMC has come a long way since New Texas Giant, but it was great to ride the OG RMC. It's easily one of the best rides in the park and it was a great way to start off our vacation.

After grabbing our first of 500 free waters that day we decided to check out Texas Giant's awesome looking neighbor, Titan! We had been on Goliath and found the ride to be a total blast, so we figured that riding a near clone of it would be a similar experience.

Titan certainly lives up to it's name

The ride was a complete walk-on so we immediately walked straight on to the back car of the familiar, Goliath-like station. The lift offered awesome views of the ballpark (that we would be visiting later) and the Cowboys stadium that at first glance made me think that an alien mother-ship had crash landed next to Six Flags (that thing is massive).

Unfortunately while the experience started out on a promising note, Titan was probably our only disappointment of the trip. While it seems like it would offer about the same ride experience as Goliath, it absolutely doesn't. I think it was just a flat wheel on our specific train but the ride shook violently throughout the entire course. On it's own that wouldn't really ruin the experience, but that extra helix really makes a big difference and not for the better.

The 105 degree weather probably didn't help, but we were seeing stars by the time we hit the midcourse. The midcourse brought the train to a complete stop which was a nice reprieve, but we didn't really have the chance to recover before entering the next helix which proceeded to do the same thing.

The ride definitely LOOKS awesome

I love intense coasters, but this ride just feels like pointless intensity. Rides like I305, Skyrush and Maverick kick your a** while flying through crazy awesome elements and that's great, but this ride just makes you see stars by going around in circles endlessly. It's sort of like the "Gravitron" of coasters. I don't get this ride... I didn't totally hate it but neither of us really enjoyed it either.

We didn't have much of a plan after riding Titan so after that we just sort of went around and rode whatever we happened to come up to that seemed appealing. The next stop was this weird thing that I never knew existed and even as we approached the ride we had no idea what to expect.

There's something really cool about coming up to a ride that you've never heard of and know absolutely nothing about. Obviously this is pretty common for most people when they visit parks but this hobby sort of spoils that so it's a rare event and on the few occasions where it DOES happen the reason that you've never heard of the ride is usually that it absolutely sucks.

Texas loves their guns

The boats were super sketchy, felt like they were going to sink and at one point I felt like I needed to push but the ride was actually really fun. Obviously nobody is going to confuse this for Navi River journey but it's a really cute, corny old ride where Six Flags really tried to take advantage of their lone IP. It's a pretty long ride, the effects seem to (mostly) work and it's totally unlike anything you would expect at a Six Flags park. I'm not recommending that anyone wait an hour for it but for what it is it's a lot of fun.

We continued our circle of the park and quickly came up on Shockwave (which is sort of located on a dead end path under the observation tower). The observation tower was closed for painting and actively dropping paint on people so everyone sort of cut and run under it, but we made it through unscathed and were rewarded with a walk-on line for the classic looper.

The first rule of the coaster universe is that if there's a coaster named Shockwave then it's supposed to suck, but this ride dared to be different.

I've never met a Schwarzkopf that I didn't like, and this was no exception. It's basically Mindbender-lite with the same awesome loops and green paint but it trades the awesome location with terrain elements for an overgrown, hot-as-the-surface-of-the-sun field near the highway and the layout is a bit abbreviated.

The theming is really immersive.

This ride is all about the loops but the loops are great so I'm totally okay with that. They're really forceful and super fun (which shouldn't be a surprise because it's a Schwarzkopf) and even though the ride pretty much dicks around and does nothing after that it barely matters. Shockwave is an excellent ride.

Once in a blue moon I actually take a halfway decent picture...

Up next were the two mine trains and while there's not much to say here they were both quite enjoyable. The larger mine train has a cool themed section before the final drop which was totally unexpected and they were both loaded with weird, wonky, Arrow goodness.

The finale of this ride is really neat.

Sometimes Texas just has to Texas

I don't mean to gloss over the mine trains but even while at the park I was sort of doing that in my head as I had my eye on Mr Freeze up ahead. I was already excited for it but Mr Freeze interacts with the mine trains a bit which served to build the anticipation even further as we watched it rocket overhead while we barreled through atrocious (but fun) coathanger turns down below that really do make you wonder if Ed Morgan and Karl Bacon were on meth.

The ride entrance and queue area are actually really cool and (by Six Flags standards) well themed. There was a bit of a line, but a quick check of queue times showed that it was pretty much the only ride with a queue (and it was only about 30 minutes) so we decided to stick it out and forego the Flash Pass. The queue was air conditioned and it was (according to the national weather service) approximately bullsh*t degrees Fahrenheit so you didn't really have to twist our arms.

The long queue for this ride either means that it's awesome or that everyone found out about the air conditioned queue and it was music to their ears.

After about 30 minutes of standing in line (and getting tons of chiller vibes) we were next to ride. Unfortunately the ride had other ideas as the train in front of us roared back into the station and (upon stopping) all of the service lights popped on and the ride ops informed us that the ride was down and that (while we were welcome to wait) it would be a minimum of 30 minutes.

Since we were next to ride we did decide to wait it out, but 45 minutes later there was still no sign of life and we finally decided to admit defeat. I assume that they were waiting for the LIMs to cool and on a 105 degree day they seemed to be taking their sweet time.

The queue was already giving me a strong dose of Chiller nostalgia and the frustration on the faces of the maintenance workers was doing the same...

Up next: Six Flags over Texas: Part 2!

Great report!

Did you ride Shockwave in the back? It had some surprisingly strong airtime back there. Combined with the crazy forceful loops, I preferred it to SFOG's Mind Bender.

Mr. Freeze was a royal pain when I visited as well. It also was a 100 degree day. I guess Freeze issues and insane heat go hand in hand with guns and service roads down there.

ditto. . great report thus far!

don't feel too bad about Mr. Freeze - until our visit last year, I had never gotten to ride it, as it was down EVERY TIME I EVER WENT prior to last year's visit.

in fact, it went down after I got my 1 ride in, and wasn't able to get another ride in since my spouse was itching to leave.

it's a great ride tho, and hopefully you got on it in part 2.

as to Titan? LOVED it when it first opened, before they started trimming to a complete stop prior to that 1st helix (think it's because people were blacking out). Agreed you must have just caught a bum train, because other than my issues with the almost complete stop midcourse? I've always had smooth rides on it.

(and you know you rode multiple history - not just 1st RMC, but the mine trains are the 1st tubular coaster tracks. And the log flume, if you got on it, was also the 1st of it's kind. . but I'm sure you got on that in part 2).

Cliffhanger!

Mr. Freeze is an awesome ride. Obviously Chiller closed before I got to Great Adventure, but it sounds like it's Chiller 2.0. Hope you got to ride it....I'll just be waitin' on this here seat edge if'n ya wanna scribble s'more.

Nice report! Looks like our decision to do Texas the week before Christmas was the right one. We had mid-60s all week.

I had a different experience with Titan. I thought it was great and would loved to have had less trim. I hope you get on Mr. Freeze: Reverse Blast in part 2. It was a unique and very fun coaster. I also have yet to ride a Schwarzkopf that I didn't like. If only Arrow loopers aged like that.

Great trip report so far. The balls hot summer weather here is a blessing and a curse. You might die of dehydration, but it tends to dilute some of the crowd on weekdays.

We do love our service roads in Texas. It gives us plenty of high visibility and high traffic locations to build more Wal Marts or fast food joints or churches or gun ranges. That's pretty much their only purpose since they do nothing to alleviate traffic.

I always thought the roadside setting of Shockwave was part of its novelty, both as a rider and when I worked at the park. As a rider, it offers up a nice view. As a worker, the drone of the highway noise filtered out some of the repetitive noise of the ride and every now and then you could witness a pretty cool traffic accident.

We do love our service roads in Texas. It gives us plenty of high visibility and high traffic locations to build more Wal Marts or fast food joints or churches or gun ranges.

Wait, you mean Texas still doesn't have a place that is all those things in one?

Great report! I had the same feelings you did upon walking into the park. SFOT has a nice collection of flats and coasters; hoping you got on Mr. Freeze but if you didn't something tells me you didn't care once you got on the OG log flume.

im stealing the expression bullsh$t degrees Fahrenheit the first day it gets really hot here and using it.

Thanks guys!!!! I always appreciate you actually reading and commenting on this crap. I don't get it but I appreciate it.

Now that Brit has taken away my trip report privileges until I get caught up, I figured I'd actually work on that.

For the record, this trip report is from June 8th of last year so I got this trip report in *JUST* under the one year mark (by 2 days). That's efficiency right there...

Anyway, back to the story. We were a little bummed about Mr. Freeze, but thankfully it's located right next to one of the best rides in the park and it was sporting absolutely no wait so we didn't have too much time to dwell on it. Clone or not, this ride is fantastic and the thought of riding it on 100+ degree day was borderline nuts knowing how the ride runs on 20 degree Holiday in the Park nights at Great Adventure.

You could easily argue that this is the best ride at Six Flags over Texas.

As expected, the 100 degree heat had this ride running like a... (ugh, I hate myself)... bat out of hell. This is such a brilliant ride. You can clone it all you want. Put it on every street corner in America for all I care. I won't complain.

Killing it per usual

Sticking with the theme, we decided to continue our tour of Great Adventure South and pass by their Cyborg-style ride to hit Joker. I loved it, Brit hated it... nothing new to report here. She still hasn't seen the light.

They totally wedged this ride in. It's pretty impressive actually.

It was hotter than the surface of the sun at this point so the last thing either of us wanted to do was ride a Bill Cobb woodie but if we passed it up we'd be sure to hear from some enthusiast about how awesome it was the next time I got up on my soap box and talked about how mediocre everything this man touches turns out to be. Yeah, I know... it's blasphemy in the coaster enthusiast community but "blasphemy in the coaster enthusiast community" is sort of my thing so there you go.

The queue is actually really nice as it goes through a quick tunnel which gave us a quick reprieve from the sun and then passed along the water with a nice plaque that we didn't bother to read because it was probably about Bill Cobb or some sh*t.

As for the ride itself... WOW!!!!! I didn't expect much but the ride was absolutely great! I take back everything I said. The ride was loaded with airtime, ran really smooth and was overall just an awesome experience.

Behold...

... I'm kidding of course. The ride was whatever. It exists. The only thing noteworthy about the experience was the kid puking his brains out on the exit ramp after drinking an entire blue icee and then his mom immediately buying him another blue icee. Murrica.

You'll have to forgive me, at this point I think it was so hot that my body was starting to shut down so I forgot to take any good pictures for a bit. Every picture I have is pretty much of a ride sign just to remember that we rode it.

We were sort of just going around riding the few coasters we still needed to ride at that point. Lucky for us, the next on one on the list was Runaway Mountain, the "Skull Mountain" of the south. We actually had some hope that the ride would have an air conditioned queue but sadly this really wasn't the case. The station itself had a bit, but the vast majority of the queue was outside. Thankfully we wouldn't have to wait long.

I believe this is just a Windstorm but it was actually a f*cking blast. This is a cool, fun ride layout when it has lap bars and the patented "death-spiral" drop was absolutely insane in the dark when you couldn't see it coming. Honestly, I love Runaway Mountain. I'd be totally on board with more parks throwing windstorm clones in dark buildings.

Next up was La Vibora which was actually the first wait we experienced all day. It was almost 4pm so we weren't about to buy Flash Pass that late in the day (we had budgeted for it but never ended up needing it) and we stuck it out for the 30 minute wait.

I had never been on a bad Bobsled before and I liked the ride's clone at Great Escape so we were definitely looking forward to it. The ride looks like it was recently painted and it actually looks great in the park's "Spain" section. For a Six Flags park that whole area was pretty impressive looking and it was nice to see one of these old bobsled rides getting some love.

That's the good news, the bad news is that this ride was actually terrible. The lap bar is entirely to blame, it just slams into the sides of your legs over and over and I'm pretty sure we both walked off with bruises. I don't know how you screw up a bobsled but we were pretty disappointed with that one.

That ride delivered quite the beating and after spending way too long in the heat and riding that giant multi-color turd of a coaster we were definitely feeling it and needed a breather. I had behaved for most of the day but with the oppressive heat and most of the coasters under our belts I finally decided to cave and head over to El Aserradero.

The original Log Flume!

El Aserradero actually consists of two flumes and I'm pretty sure that the one that was open that day wasn't the original but honestly, shut up... let me have my moment. The fact that Six Flags over Texas was home to the original log flume was a major selling point for me, and with the heat well over 100 degrees I couldn't have been happier to be riding it. After a few wrong turns we made our way over, headed towards the queue and were greeted with a chain and a "ride closed" sign with a ride still cycling with riders behind it.

It was only about 4:00 so it seemed super early to close a flume for the day (even for Six Flags) but it looked like that was exactly what they did. It cycled for awhile so we were optimistic, but a few minutes later they shut the pumps off and the staff left the ride entirely.

... ouch

Down, but not out we headed to a nearby air conditioned bar which was music to my ears at that point.

I won't lie, we were sort of needing a break at that point. The heat was awful and we were pretty bummed about Freeze and El Aserradero. Thankfully a solid half hour in the air conditioning and a few beers really hit the spot and we had the extra boost that we needed.

We still needed to ride Pandemonium and we knew it would be a blast so we made that our next stop. We're used to the New England version so I was impressed with this park's efficient setup. Not only is there a single rider line (not that we used it), but the cars keep moving in the station so they get them in and out really quickly.

These rides are great.

Since we were a group of two they sat two kids from the single rider line with us who were having the time of their lives and it was pretty infectious. They weren't budding enthusiasts, they were just two kids at Six Flags and loving it. They told us that they kept using the single rider line and rode tons of times in a row and they kept sitting them together and that we should try it too. Then they proceeded to sing some weird song for the entire ride super fast trying to finish it before the ride hit the brakes. It all made for a ridiculously fun ride.

We walked over to Mr. Freeze to see if there were any signs of life but didn't see much of anything going on and the greeter (who remembered us from earlier) sort of told us in code that "Mr Freeze froze the tracks and it would probably be like that all day" so we quickly made a 180 and abandoned any hope of that. At that point we had been on everything that we really wanted to ride that was operating and we only had about an hour left so we figured we might as well go do what any self-respecting coaster people would do and marathon New Texas Giant until it was time to head to the baseball game next door.

New Texas Giant was down but after waiting around for a few minutes we heard an airhorn (or buzzer, whatever it was) and decided to stick it out. We were pretty happy since we figured that meant that we were about to be treated to a near-walk-on ride for Texas Giant, but instead we heard a rush of water behind us and realized that sh*t just got serious. I don't know if New Texas Giant ever reopened and I don't care, the airhorn didn't belong to New Texas Giant, it belonged to El Aserradero.

We immediately bailed on from the group gathered around the New Texas Giant entrance and joined the group gathered around El Aserradero... and by "the group gathered around El Aserradero" I mean us. We were the group. Whatever, I'm a free bitch.

I wish I could tell you why they closed the flume for an hour in the middle of a 100 degree day when there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it or why they bothered to reopen it when it was about to get dark but I can't tell you that and I'm not one to question my good fortune. My best guess is that the crew took a lunch break since I know Michigan's Adventure does the same thing but whatever, we were going to get to ride it.

It's alive!

El Aserradero is a really old flume and it shows. It does more rolling and banging around than floating and it barely gets you wet at all but it was so cool to be riding it. I loved it but it's a flume... of course I did.

New Texas Giant was still down and not testing so I really wasn't sure where to head next. I didn't really care since I was just happy we got to ride El Aserradero but Brit reminded me that they had one of those new Enterprise rides and a Zamperla giant frisbee and (at the time) we had never been on either of them and she really wanted to try them. Personally I was totally on board so as weird as it was, we were on our way to Gotham City to end our day with some flat rides.

As we made our way over we both noted that this was a really nice Six Flags park. There were some areas (like the new part of Gotham City) that were very much what you would expect from Six Flags, but for the most part this place retained a lot of charm and had a ton of great, older areas. I actually feel like I may have overhyped the ride lineup a bit, but I underhyped how nice of a park it was. If you never left Texas you would probably think that Six Flags was a major stamp of quality.

We slowly made our way back to Gotham City, walking by the cool old mine trains and hilariously Texan swing ride covered with guns and were in great spirits. The heat got to us for a bit but overall we had a great day and were really enjoying the park. We were perfectly happy with life, but Six Flags over Texas had one more suprise for us as we made the turn by the swings and a fully loaded Mr. Freeze train blasted (err... Reverse Blasted) overhead.

Well, I guess we'll be a little late to the baseball game.

At this point we were obviously taking the first available row since they apparently decided to build a ride in Texas that doesn't run well in the heat. We were a few rows back, but they decided to open the other load platform as soon as we got to the merge point so what we expected to be a long, nervous wait hoping that the ride didn't go down actually turned out to be about 2 ride cycles.

Blasting backwards was weird, but cool. In true Premier fashion everything about this ride is super smooth and super, super forceful. The top hat is absolutely great and the pullout of every element will definitely give you Schwarzkopf vibes. Being blasted up the tower is a really wonky moment also and I'm not sure if it would be as cool if you weren't facing the ground.

We absolutely loved Mr. Freeze, though I admit that the excitement of actually getting to ride it when we never thought we would might have inflated our opinions of it a bit. Regardless, it's a great coaster and another strong contender for the best ride in the park.

It was getting closer to game time but Brit was still dead-set on trying their new-style enterprise and frisbee. I wasn't about to argue. The new style enterprise was actually a lot of fun. I probably prefer the old school ones but these are great and I wouldn't be upset to see a sh*t-ton more of them pop up.

Great ride!

Riddler Revenge was next, but we were about to discover that it has a fatal flaw. What is that fatal flaw? Well... apparently there's not a hose near the ride and apparently it's a ride where they frequently need a hose (if you're picking up what I'm throwing down... or... up).

We still wanted to ride, but we ended up waiting a solid 45 minutes, 30 of which were spent watching the ride ops walk to a nearby food stand over and over to fill tiny, courtesy cups of water, bring them back and dump them on the piles of puke that were all over the ride platform, multiple seats and down inside the seatbelt buckles. It was like a crime scene of puke. The Riddler definitely got his revenge on that dude...

You might remember that we tried and failed to ride the Zamperla Frisbee at Discovery Kingdom, and while now they have one of these at Six Flags New England and Six Flags Great Adventure this was actually the first time we ever rode one (because this report is a f*cking year old... sorry ).

Anyway, the ride is great. These may be my favorite Frisbee rides (aside from "It" in Wildwood) and it was definitely worth the extra time investment.

The park was open for another three hours, but after the Riddler got his Revenge it was time for us to make our way out. For those unfamiliar, the Texas Rangers ballpark is located right across the street from the park and we decided to spend our evening taking in a ballgame between the Rangers and the (now American League rival) Houston Astros.

Six Flags over Texas decided to treat us to a fantastic water show on the way out. Everything's bigger in Texas. Bellagio and World of Color better bow the f*ck down.

When we got in the car we were sort of confused as to whether or not we were allowed to park at Six Flags for the game. We knew that nobody would really stop us, but we also figured that parking there would mean that if the game went long we would probably need to leave so they didn't close us in the lot.

We initially opted to be model citizens and pay to park in the official lot but, instead of exiting to a road that wasn't moving we decided to just parallel it as long as possible in the Six Flags lot. Much to our surprise the far end of the lot had an event parking sign and we realized that Six Flags was cashing in on Rangers parking at the farthest corner of their massive lot (that we were already in). We parked the car and the attendant explained that pretty much all of the Rangers season ticket holders figured out that by paying Six Flags six bucks a month they could basically get free season parking for the Rangers (which normally costs 20 bucks a game). Many of them probably never set foot in the park, but just about every Rangers season ticket holder is a Six Flags member just so they could use their lot (which is closer to the stadium than the official lots) and Six Flags is (of course) loving it. We saw one couple that looked to be in the 80's walking around with a Six Flags season pass. That whole thing is hilarious and it worked out great for us.

The third base gate which is literally a 2 minute walk from the Six Flags lot.

I know this is a theme park site and not a baseball site so for those who are out of the loop, here's the low-down on this stadium. The new trend is for these massive, multi-billion dollar sports teams to go to their respective cities crying poverty... sometimes threatening to leave for Las Vegas or something (it's always Vegas) and telling them that they *need* new stadiums and the city needs to pay for them because reasons.

It used to be that teams would do this when their stadiums were aging and lacking in modern amenities, but recently the Braves and Rangers decided to crank the insanity up to the next level and whine and cry to the city about the need to replace ultra-modern stadiums built in the mid-90's. Both cities actually fell for this crap so long-story short we decided to go to the game since it would be our last chance to catch a game at the not-at-all classic, ultra-modern, state of the art ballpark that was about to be replaced for no reason in Arlington.

If you get tired of watching the Rangers suck from your seat, you can head to the open concourse and watch Titan suck instead. Yes... this is the view from the upper deck concourse. How cool is that?

At the time we expected this great ballpark to be demolished, but now that the Rangers convinced the city to go along with this stupid plan they've come out and said that (paraphrasing) because their existing ballpark is so modern and state of the art they're going to keep this building too because it would be ridiculous to replace it.

Could you imagine the balls

View from our seats

Anyway, as hilarious as this story is and as pissed as I would be if I lived in Arlington none of this was our problem and we had a great time at the game. This is a nice ballpark, but objectively I guess it is a bit generic. It's one of those Camden Yards ripoffs that was highly popular after the famed Baltimore ballpark opened which means there's nothing overly unique about it but at the same time it's still a fine place to catch a game.

They have Landshark so I'm all in

The Rangers lost, but we had a great time at Globe Life Park. They had a great beer selection and I happily indulged and it was a fun rivalry game. In addition to the game, it was fireworks night and they put on quite a show. Actually the show was so good that they started a small fire in the bleachers. Sometimes Texas just has to Texas.

[fbvideonew]https://www.facebook.com/william.mahony.92/videos/10215125857334179/[/fbvideonew]

Yup... this is the most Texas thing ever.

Next up... Kemah Boardwalk and Galveston! (And go check out Brit's thread if you haven't already).

This is awesome! Thanks a bunch for posting! I've also checked Britt's thread and the fact that both of you are writing these and you are both very good at it makes me happy.

David

Great report! I'm glad you finally got on Mr. Freeze and (more importantly) the original log flume. Now you just need to tick off the flume at Knott's.

Awesome man! Glad you had a Six Flags day. We were in Arlington a couple weeks ago and the new ballpark is well underway now. It looks remarkably like the old one. Someone clearly cashed in on some government connections and is gonna make bank on that.

Freeze is awesome, and it's better in reverse, especially in the front row. Good call on taking first available seats on everything though, closures are really unexpected there.

Also I had no idea the Rangers were getting a new ballpark. Those poor taxpayers.

Awesome update!

Thanks guys!!! I really appreciate it. And yeah, they’re actually getting a new ballpark.

Awesome update!

Right???

Great report! And yes, Mr. Freeze is an AWESOME coaster. I've ridden the one in St. Louis and it's one of my all-time favorite steels. Glad to see you share the love.

really great report. . . when we were at SFOT last year and i *finally* got to ride Mr. Freeze (after years of trying, and it ALWAYS being down every time we made the trip up to Dallas). . . it also broke down on me while I was in line and I went right next door to an almost walk on Batman

LOL. .it's like the park planned it.

tho we didn't see any puke on Riddler, and LOTS of it at Catwoman (the Enterprise) - you'd think they wouldn't have built it behind the Johnny Rockets, and many people do seem to eat first then get on it. At least Catwoman had a hose there tho.

again tho, great report, and worth the wait to read.

Thanks guys! I know I don't always respond to all the comments but I always enjoy reading them.

So if I REALLY hurry and bang out these Texas reports I'll actually get them done within a year of the trip. Right now we're about 2 days away from the 365 day mark so this dream is totally about to die but hey... it's worth a shot. I'm really quite the overachiever.

One thing that's interesting about America is that it's a very culturally diverse country given it's massive size and part of that is driving culture.

In New York City or Hollywood (for example), drivers are very skilled but also colossal assholes. In rural Pennsylvania, people have no idea how cars or roads work and they believe that they get a dollar every time they tap the brake pedal on a wide open highway for no reason. They're not assholes, they're just absolutely incapable of operating a car. Texas is the best of both worlds. People are colossal assholes but also have no idea how to drive. Other than my first time driving in New York City I've never actually feared for my life while driving but Dallas... wow.

When we left the Rangers game, traffic was awful and we were in a city so I sort of expect aggressive city driving. Whatever, we're New Yorkers... we can deal. Eventually though we made it to the interstate and it was a horror show. Texas is a plain state so it's really, really flat. We were on a perfectly straight piece of road where we were all coasting along at 70mph and 2 miles ahead traffic was at a stand-still. Since it was a perfectly straight road with a long downhill slope we knew about this a solid 2-3 minutes in advance, but the guy next to us proceeded to slam into a stopped car as if they were shocked by this development. I mean screeching tires, everything. It's not like they looked down to write a quick text, they must have looked down to write half of a f*cking novel to miss that.

This was a common theme of the weekend. People in Texas can't drive. They all have huge pickup trucks (which I expect in a southern state) but many of them have no clue how to drive them. Thank god we booked through Chase and had a killer damage waiver.

Anyway (now that that tangent is over), I mentioned driving because the next day involved tons and tons of it (a little over 8 hours to be exact). Our final destination was San Antonio, but we were going in a convoluted way because while I talk a big game I'm probably more of a whore than I like to let on so we were headed to Kemah and Galveston to ride a tiny Euro-fighter and a wood coaster that everyone seems to hate.

Greetings from Kemah Boardwalk!

Texas weather is weird. We knew storms were in the forecast but we also only had to ride 2 rides all day so we didn't really care. In most parts of the country a line of storms will form and actually move but in Texas they just like to form and f*cking sit there. Once the storms pass they provide no relief at all from the heat and humidity. We ended up hanging out at Kemah for a little bit because even though a storm formed and the sun was out when we got there, it wasn't moving much so the rides were still closed for "lightning in the area". Luckily that gave us the opportunity to check the place out a bit and it's actually very cool.

I'm not sure if I'm alone in this or it's a common trend among the vast majority of the community but aside from Boardwalk Bullet I knew nothing about this place. I knew that it was a boardwalk on an inland bay with no beach that was really close to a beach on the gulf that also had rides and just assumed that it was stupid and that nobody would ever go there when they could just go to Galveston but it actually had a really cool vibe. It was REALLY nice and it was also very busy. The place is packed with dining, games, rides, water sports, an aquarium and tons of cool things to do. We were impressed. It's also an open container area... just saying.

Kemah is a blast

After walking around and taking it all in for a bit and grabbing a beer the sun started to peek through a bit more and some rides began testing. We went over to the ticket booth and bought some Bullet tickets and made our way over.

Ready to ride the "Coolest Coaster on the Coast"

The entrance to the hilariously long queue

Boardwalk Bullet gets very few reviews and the reviews that it does get are very mixed so we really didn't know what to expect. There are lots of complaints about roughness and it's a wood coaster in the Texas heat and salt air with tons of laterals running PTC trains that runs year-round that was designed by a manufacturer that I've never f*cking heard of so I wasn't exactly expecting greatness.

Please don't kill us.

One thing that nobody can deny is that it's an awesome looking ride. The setting is fantastic and I was really rooting for this ride to be good. We opted to wait an extra train for the front row, figuring (if nothing else) we would get some great views and we'd see what was coming so we could brace for impact.

Roaring down the first drop

I guess I get where the complaints of roughness come from but I wouldn't call this ride rough. It's similar to the Knoebels Twister, Silver Comet or Great White where it's a very aggressive ride and you might not want to marathon it but it's not rough or in any way painful. It's just shaky and aggressive. It's actually a really, really good ride. If you like the coasters that I just mentioned then you'll probably like Boardwalk Bullet.

Racing along the bay

As you walk up to the park the ride looks really small and compact (and it is) but the thing that struck us the most was how long it was. When you're on the ride you keep expecting it to be over but it just keeps on going. I have no idea how they managed to fit so much track into such a little space. I'm glad this ride was awesome because if it was as rough as people said it would be constant disappointment as you rode over hill after hill praying for a brake run but instead being hit with another hard lateral.

This ride is an endless mess of track.

This ride is just f*cking fun. It's not going to shatter anyone's top 10 list but it's a super cool ride in a great location with tons of laterals. I really don't have anything bad to say about it. I know that it's kind of out-of-the-way but if you have some extra time in Texas or if you're in the Houston area you're doing yourself a major disservice by not riding it. I feel like we could have spent hours at Kemah riding bullet and maybe that cool boat ride and eating at one of the restaurants on the water. I know this place doesn't get much attention but don't discount it. We loved it.

We walked around for a bit more (grabbing another beer in the process), and did a bit of shopping but after awhile the pull of Galveston became too strong and we decided to head out. I'll be honest, the fact that the ride to Galveston would take place in an air conditioned car may or may not have been a big part of the appeal.

Hello from Galveston!

Our initial plan was to grab something to eat before heading to the pier, but the skies were ominous once again so we instead grabbed our wristbands and decided to get one Iron Shark ride in just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately after we grabbed the wristbands and made our way over we saw them cycling empties and they told us that they were closed for lightning in the area. Oh well, we tried...

I pulled up the radar and realized that (once again) it was a storm that wasn't moving and may actually never even reach us so we decided to hang out on the pier. It proved to be the right move as most of the rides remained open and the many of them were worth a ride since the Galveston pier definitely used their location to their advantage.

See? PS: I love Chance ships. Chance or GTFO. All you other Slim Shadys are just imitating.

This one had us staring straight down at the water.

We were having a blast on the flats (even waiting an extra cycle on the SeaDragon for the end seat over the water) but after we got off of the awesome Fireball we saw some signs of life at Iron Shark so we made our way over.

As expected, it never rained and the storms seemed to get far enough away that they no longer cared so a few minutes and a few test trains later we followed the greeter through the queue and onto the front row of Iron Shark.

Iron Shark do do do do do do (yes I did... suffer)

Iron Shark is a really, really short ride. It's actually shorter from lift to brakes than Dragster is from launch to brakes (I'm serious) but it doesn't feel like it when you're on it. After riding it I was actually convinced that this would be a great ride even if you threw it in an empty field and a few weeks ago I tested that theory at Darien Lake and it proved to be true, but the location of this ride takes it to the next level.

The first drop is awesome

The first drop is great but everything that followed it proved to be equally great. It's a very forceful and compact layout and it seems like you're repeatedly diving into the gulf. It's short, but you should get a wristband anyway and re-ride it a bunch so I don't mind. Iron Shark definitely exceeded expectations.

So good...

After our second or third Iron Shark ride that Bubba Gump at the front of the pier was starting to look more and more inviting but with the weird weather we decided to hit one last ride before heading over. At a normal park this would be a dumb statement, but it was probably my most anticipated ride of the day.

You can't beat this location...

A giant starflyer ride is always awesome, but this one might have the best location of any of them. Obviously we couldn't take pictures or video but showing you pictures from the ground doesn't do it justice so thankfully TPR managed to film it a few years ago and I'll just pop that video in here...

Here you go, support TPR... click on all of the ads.

So yeah... this is the best ride here. This is the best ride in the Houston area. Hell, this is the best ride in Texas that's not designed by RMC and sitting in a San Antonio rock quarry. I could have ridden this thing all day. Brit, on the other hand was overcome with white knuckle terror.

So good...

I'm happy to report that Brit has since conquered her fear of starflyers but she hated this thing. Swinging hundreds of feet over possibly-shark infested water and a pier infested with sharks made of iron wasn't her idea of fun back then. Oh well

After our near brush with death, we had had just about enough of the Texas heat and decided to grab lunch at Bubba Gump. Bubba Gump is a tourist trap staple but somehow this was our first time ever eating there. While not amazing, it was probably better than I expected and you really can't beat that location.

Cheers to air conditioning

The day was growing short and we needed to get going on our way to San Antonio but before we left Galveston there was one thing I had left to do.

Hurricane Ike hit Galveston hard. It's actually the reason that the Galveston Pleasure Pier exists since it completely destroyed the hotel that used to occupy that site on the pier. White it obliterated a giant hotel, one thing that took it in stride was a tiny sh*thole bar on the seawall called the Poop Deck.

The Poop Deck is a PROUD sh*thole dive bar. It's atrocious. I remember watching the news as Geraldo was pleading with these idiots to leave so they didn't die but they weren't going to let trivial bullsh*t like local officials warning them of "certain death" and the mayor asking them to at least have the decency to write their social security numbers on their arms so they could identify their bodies ruin their hurricane party. I'll just highlight this...

“We never punked out before. Why start now?” said Marie Creasy, the owner of the Poop Deck, a biker bar just stumbling distance from the waterfront. She said her patrons had a proud, defiant and downright stupid tradition to uphold. “We’re not about to break our streak over some Category 2 nonsense.”

And this...

Down on the sea wall, Robert Shumake laughed when asked why he had not left the island. Walking with the American flag on a four-foot pole, Mr. Shumake said he had not broken his routine in seven years and, “by golly,” he was not going to deviate now.

 

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, he said, he has not missed a day of his morning ritual of walking along the shore carrying the flag. “This is nature meets the proud United States of America, and my US of A is going to win,” Mr. Shumake said.

Link

So basically this guy in real life.

I don't condone this. I don't understand it. I would have evacuated. I wouldn't have even been upset if Darwin had his way with them. It's all terrible but I NEEDED to see this dumpster fire with my own two eyes. I had to. I'm sorry.

God bless 'Murrica

This bar was a sh*thole. There are empty cans, cigarettes and ash trays everywhere. I don't know if they even have food but if they did nobody would ever order it and I'm pretty sure beers were 2 bucks all day. Like... every beer.

Cheers! Note the statue of liberty covered in Mardi Gras beads for no reason.

I don't even think the taps worked so the beers were all in cans (this is not the kind of place where glass bottles would be a good idea). It was a disaster but a wonderful disaster. I wasn't let down.

Everything about this picture is the "Poop Deckest" thing possible.

I finished my beer and Brit was more than ready to leave so after getting the full Galveston experience we decided to walk back to the car along the beach. Galveston is a cool town. The pier is honestly awesome and the beach was a lot nicer than I expected. I actually regretted not bringing a bathing suit.

Bye Galveston! We'll be back.

We managed to park right across from the pier but it actually took us 45 minutes to get out of the lot. Apparently the lot wasn't designed for Texas drivers, so both exits were blocked every few cars by giant trucks and drivers who wouldn't properly navigate the turn through the parking gate. At the time it was infuriating, but looking back it was probably just part of the Texas experience. Look... I get that you insist on buying huge trucks for no reason but at least know how to drive them.

Sitting behind yet another stuck truck but hey... it's a cool view of the pier.

Our rental car obviously had no issues getting out and finally after what felt like forever we managed to get out of the lot and on our way to San Antonio. It was a long, but mostly uneventful drive and we had some time to reflect on our great day.

Galveston and Kemah both exceeded expectations. I sort of expected the day to be a whore run but I really enjoyed it and wish I could have spent more time in both places. Aside from that, the rides exceeded expectations too. Iron Shark was really good and Boardwalk Bullet (shockingly) was too. Plus, that starflyer... omg

We grabbed some Jimmy John's for dinner. Their bathrooms never disappoint.

Excellent report. That Poop Deck restaurant is so intriguing, whenever I get down to Texas for the first time (which is most likely going to be next May! Excitement!) I hope my parents put Houston on the itinerary, it sounds really cool.

Love it, another excellent update. Boardwalk Bullet was one of my first "bucketlist" coasters when I got one of my first TPR DVD's years ago. I still haven't ridden it but it looks wild. I just watched a POV tho. Still looks wild.

Great report! I also loved Boardwalk Bullet last year, but I remember seeing a lot of fresh wood. I can definitely see how a layout that aggressive could be brutal without TLC.

I agree that Star Flyer at Galveston is fantastic. There's nothing quite like swinging out over the water. That's why I actually really like Cedar Point's Windseeker when it actually decides to operate.

In New York City or Hollywood (for example), drivers are very skilled but also colossal assholes. In rural Pennsylvania, people have no idea how cars or roads work and they believe that they get a dollar every time they tap the brake pedal on a wide open highway for no reason. They're not assholes, they're just absolutely incapable of operating a car. Texas is the best of both worlds. People are colossal assholes but also have no idea how to drive. Other than my first time driving in New York City I've never actually feared for my life while driving but Dallas... wow.

Nailed it.

Galveston is actually a pretty cool place and I probably like it better than most, if only because it is the closest beach to me. That's a cool story about the dive bar, but yeah that dude's a moron.

I always enjoy your reports, but I'm especially enjoying this one since I'm from Texas. Your observations about weather and trucks are spot on.

I'm torn on the replacement of Globe Life Park. I'm happy for a chance to see a game indoors in mid to late summer without experiencing total swamp ass and I'm happy for a 20 minute drive to the ballpark from house that would have gone away had the Rangers moved to downtown Dallas or the suburban hinterlands. I'm afraid that the new stadium is going to lack all of the charm of the old one (yes, it has some, I've grown fond over it in the last 25 years) and that they will keep the roof closed far more than it's open. I went to a game in April where there was rain around the area that missed the ballpark and the game time temperature was 70 degrees with a steady 15 mph wind. It was awesome. In the new stadium, the threat of rain would have likely kept the roof closed.

If I'm reading right, you did Dallas to Galveston to San Antonio in one day. That is some hellacious driving. Galveston is pretty touristy but still has a little grit that hasn't been whittled away by hurricanes. Port Aransas to the west near Corpus Christi is even more rough than Galveston.

Oh my god you aren't lying about Texas drivers. They're in Orlando a lot and they're always either in a Sierra 2500 with 18 additional wheels cutting you off on the highway, then slowing down to 10 below the speed limit, or they're in an extended-length Tahoe making a right turn out of the left lane and nearly ending your life. Or, worse, they're a rental Tahoe with a Texas plate, which is even more unpredictable.

I f*cking love Boardwalk Bullet and the entire Kemah Boardwalk, too. I'm actually a big back-row fan of that coaster, the laterals are so crazy and aggressive but I would never accuse it of being rough, either. If you have "Thunderhead Derangement Syndrome", where you're a p*ssy and can't take Thunderhead, then you won't like Bullet, either.

Awesome reports, really loving it!