Six Flags Over Georgia

The final park of the club leg of the trip brought us to Georgia and to the Six Flags Over Georgia park.

Interesting Sign #22
"Keep Out - Trespassers will be prosecuted"
The new ride at SFOG travels outside the park, across what used to be one of the main roads into the park (now fenced off). The sign is there to stop people getting close to the part of the ride that sticks out. Fair enough you might think, but you also need to get beyond this fence to get to the main gate into the park, which you can see in the background.

This park was the second in the chain to open up, after Texas of course!

Our morning ERS was going to be on the new coaster Goliath however we could see that the other rides in the park were going through their test cycles too. This is Acrophobia, the parks drop tower ride.

and this is Goliath, their new Hypercoaster. There seems to be a weird mix of theming to the ride. It looks futuristic, but has a 50's radio channel playing in the ride station. It's like the executives couldn't agree on a final theme so they plumped for both. To be honest, I loved the radio station. I didn't like having to say "Yeah Baby" before the train would depart though. It might sound good in an American accent but during the ERS we sounded like we were in an Austin Power's appreciation club and not a coaster one.

The ride has plenty of airtime and I'm not going to complain about that, but for me the ride was too clinical, too calculated. It's like the park wanted a coaster that would keep people out of their seats but to do so gently so that they don't get sued. It's hard to explain why I'm thinking like this; whilst I don't like rough rides I think there needs to be a little something to scare you or make you think you overcame the challenge in riding it, but this ride lacks that.

Even so I'm sure it's going to do very well on the polls this year.

The helix was pretty intense though. This is the bit of the park that runs outside the park boundaries. After our fill of "Yeah Baby"s it was time to explore the rest of the park whilst the public ran over to ride the ride we'd just left behind.

The park's old style freefall ride was actually the best one of these I'd ever ridden with loads of speed on the way up that did give you airtime before it made its way to the drop section. I'd never experienced that before.

Georgia Scorcher is the park's stand up coaster and being shorter in length and height than others I'd been on meant that it was a bearable experience.

After a quick bout of stand up riding it was time for more reclined riding and given that the Gotham part of the park was empty it made sense to head over that way.

What superheroes get up to with their time off.

Mindbender is a great ride made even better by an excellent ride operator who had the station playing "Six Flags Trivia" and "Eye Spy" whilst waiting for the train to come back into the station. Why can't other parks do that? Give the kid a bonus, he deserved it.

Nemesis in the UK has its red waterfalls. Mindbender has gone for a bright green to fit with the Riddler colour scheme on the ride.

The Gotham bit of the park, where you'll find Batman and Mindbender also has a Gotham Circus area as its centre piece. I'm not sure if they still put on a show here or not, certainly not whilst I was in this bit of the park they didn't. Admittedly it was within an hour of them opening and the probably had shows on later in the day.

It was hard to choose what was the better ride so far; Goliath or Mindbender?

The Batman ride is exactly the same as every other Batman ride although it has more to it's theming. In addition to the scrap yard theming around most of the loop, its also able to accurately reflect 2 different Batman movies.

Here it is themed as "Batman Begins"

and this is it themed as "Batman Returns".

They'd done a good job on the wave swinger too. The character on the left is Harley Quinn, which movie director Kevin Smith used to name his daughter.

The rapids looked really good with plenty of wide waterways. I have no idea how wet it got you as I chose not to ride it.

Deja Vu at Magic Mountain caused me a lot of problems on the last US trip as it kept breaking down as I got to the front of the queue. Fortunately this ride did not live up to its name as after a short wait I got to ride one of the front seats. The ride worried me for a couple of reasons: it was a little shaky for a ride of this type and they had ridiculously long lap straps that were left hanging free whilst the ride was running. I wouldn't be surprised if they catch onto something at some point. A few club members complained about the operations on this ride but I think got lucky as I had no problem whatsoever!

Ninja looks like an impressive ride but it is atrociously bad. I will salute David Ellis for saying that its name is short for "Neck INJury, Aaaaargh!" I think everyone who rode this once (and I doubt anyone rode it more than that) came off holding their neck. My injured neck had sorted itself by the time we'd got to this park so it wasn't that!

In the afternoon we were subjected to a mighty thunderstorm which passed straight over the park. I know this because I saw lightning strike this very point under the sky coaster.

Skull Island is the park's water park play area. The bucket at the top of this wasn't tipping properly only spilling out a little bit of water every 10 seconds or so rather than the full on splash every 10 minutes.

Great American Scream Machine is the park's classic wooden coaster and having ridden it in the front thought it was a really fun ride. However the girl in the row immediately behind us burst into tears after the first drop and continued to cry all the way around. As she departed the train she was crying "she told me it would be OK, I didn't expect it to be like that". What had I missed? Well at least the ride lived up to its name, at least for her.

After lunch we headed over to Superman, similar to the one in New Jersey but with a slightly different layout.

It still had that awful pretzel loop, which would prove to be just as saw as the other one I rode.

Its still a good ride but this had the longest wait of the trip. After waiting just under an hour to get to the front of the queue, a storm came over the park closing all the rides for about 3 hours altogether. At one point lightning struck the station we were standing under and gave it a power cut. To say that everyone in the station crapped themselves would be close to understating the fact. Actually the geese under the skycoaster did just that when the lightning hit (so I've been told)

Patience is a virtue and Six Flags really tested that. Admittedly following the powercut they had to check every ride in turn so bringing the park up to normal service would take them some time. We only found this out by eavesdropping on conversations and phone calls in the station. Very little was communicated to us.

There is a roadrunner themed kiddy coaster buried in the middle of the park. We eventually found it but then got lost trying to get to the mine train behind it.

An interesting recruitment poster in the Acrophobia queue line. Does anyone really think that being in the forces is going to be as exciting as visiting a theme park?

Acrophobia is a pretty decent drop ride made fun in part by the people I was riding with who insisted I screamed as loud as I could.

The Georgia Cyclone is pretty rough and perhaps the worst ride in the park, but it was operated really well, with two trains even when half a train would do.

More dressed up characters in fortunately cooler temperatures following the storm. The girls on the right didn't expect Taz to be in front of them when they turned around, hence the look of shock on their faces.

Riding the train around the park it was great to see all the staff waving at us, even the dressed up characters; a nice touch. I did however spot this weird bit of trackwork hidden in the back of the park. Clearly they don't use the top track anymore, unless they like riding through fences.

After an end-of-day ride on the Mindbender, which I missed because I was filling my face with chicken, it was time to head to the final hotel.

Goliath was stull running very well at the end of the day, it's a shame there couldn't be more traffic on the road as I thought that looked pretty cool as you dived towards it. Ah well, park rules are park rules even if they're stupid ones.

Six Flags Over Georgia was a nice park to finish the trip with. Whilst it was spoiled by the weather and lengthy re-opening following, I still got to ride on everything I wanted to. The evening was spent in a bar next to the hotel getting very drunk and making sure a few of the group had a decent hangover to take back to the U.K. I on the other hand had planned nothing but rest for the next day of my holiday, an opportunity to recharge the batteries.

Time to relax in Atlanta