Trip Report: Six Flags Elitch Gardens
Denver, Colorado - 06/21/2006

"Where the heck is the entrance?"

The New Elitch Gardens is located in downtown Denver, squeezed in between a freeway, a railroad yard, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It took me almost an hour of driving around the place to figure out how to get into it. It can only be accessed from one street, and while that street can be accessed easily from the expressway, the expressway looked more like a parking lot. That street can be accessed from other streets, but only from about six blocks away from the park. I was able to completely circle the park without being able to get into it. When I finally got to the parking lot entrance, I almost wished I hadn't.

Parking: $15.00.

Somebody is out of his mind, charging fees like that for parking. I think my butt still hurts from that one. Well, no matter, it just means I won't buy anything else in the park today. At least it is a small lot, and I got a spot not too far from the park entrance. Since the space is so crowded, Elitch Gardens did not pull the usual stunt of building a gigantic plaza between the parking lot and the park that requires a whole bunch of extra walking just to get into the park. Instead, Elitch Gardens puts the gigantic plaza inside the gate, as part of the front gate structure. After a bit of a hassle with the me_al detectors (I'll skip the usual rant this time...) I scanned into the park on my Wyandot Lake pass and went inside. "Inside" in this case means into a very large octagonal building containing a couple of gift shops, a couple of food joints, and the usual assortment of front gate offices and facilities. I noticed that the one gift shop is selling a selection of Disney merchandise, as I have seen at other Six Flags parks. I wonder which company is the bigger whore: Six Flags for selling the Disney merchandise, or Disney for allowing Six Flags to sell their merchandise?

Immediately inside the gate is the park's carousel, the observation tower, and the entrance to the waterpark. One of the first things I noticed was the warning sign for the observation tower...a 5' tall by 4' wide sign with lots and lots and lots of text on it that was almost impossible to read. First I noticed the impossible-to-read sign, then I realized that it wasn't the standardized grey "ripped off from Cedar Fair" sign that gives the identical warnings for every ride that I had seen at Kentucky Kingdom and at St. Louis. I also noticed that the observation tower was closed.

I started my visit by wandering through the waterpark. I think the waterpark at Elitch Gardens is smaller than the wave pool at Wyandot Lake. Okay, that's exaggerating a little. But it is not an exaggeration to say that the Elitch Gardens waterpark is smaller than the Christopher's Island section with the childrens' play area and treehouse with dumping bucket. The waterpark is tiny, and I didn't bring along my swim trunks anyway, so after the brief tour, I got back to the main park.

Once inside and past the waterpark, Elitch Gardens begins with a long, narrow street...yes, it even looks like a street...lined with shops and with a garden down the center. At the far end is a theater building on the right, and it opens out into a good-sized plaza. At the end of the plaza is the park's Giant Wheel, with a legend on the center that reads, "Not to see Elitch's is not to see Denver." To the left of the Wheel is a dead-end kiddie ghetto, "Looney Toons Movietown." I took a quick stroll through there and looked over the various rides. Of course the one that got my attention was The Great Chase, the park's kiddie coaster. It looks to be an Allan Herschell coaster, and they don't allow people of my height to ride it. It does have an interesting sign on it, though. The sign is a large arrow pointing to the top of the lift and a message which reads, "ACME ROCKET HIGHEST LAUNCH POINT 12'3" ABOVE SEA LEVEL". I thought about that a moment, then realized that it is completely wrong. This is Denver, Colorado. Shouldn't it say, "5,292'3" ABOVE SEA LEVEL"?

Unable to ride any of the kiddie rides (not that I wanted to, apart from the coaster...) I went back out the way I came in, and made my way into the bulk of the park. There is a curving pool, nicely landscaped all around, and in the middle of it is a swing ride of a sort I have never seen before. The seats are a little bit small, and are uncomfortably molded, but the ride is fast and smooth, and an attractive fit for the park. A bit further along I passed the park's Spider and through a small opening beneath an Arrow launched loop coaster. "Oh, that's right," I thought to myself. "They have one of THOSE things." I think they call it the Sidewinder. I went up the stairs, and as I did so, the smell of coal filled the air. I realized it wasn't coal smoke, a smell I am familiar with thanks to many days spent at Cedar Point, but rather coal dust, kicked up from the hundreds of open hopper rail cars just over the fence. I was the first to the top of the stairs after a dispatch, so I got assigned to the front row. These are neat rides, but they are showing their age, and the payoff is hardly worth the time spent hiking up and down the stairs. I suppose if the vertical loop were a new experience it would be neat, but now these are just a small-footprint diversion. That also makes them ideal for a park such as Elitch Gardens. Oh, I also noticed that a sign on the far-end platform indicates that the "Operator must remain in booth at all times." That's different from the way Thunderbolt Express (Camden Park) and Afterburner (Fun Spot) worked...on those, the operator would come out of the booth, re-check all the restraints, then go back in the booth and dispatch the train. At Elitch Gardens, there was no delay. The operator let the train park itself on the second platform, then sent it back where it came from.

Back on the ground, I opted to ride The Flying Coaster. It was a very short wait for this Zamperla Volare coaster, similar to Tomb Raider: The Ride at Canada's Wonderland. Remembering my experience on Tomb Raider I was careful not to step quite as high onto the car this time around, and I got a slightly better ride. Honestly, these rides are not nearly as horrible as some of the reviews make them out to be, and I do think that of the three 'flying coaster' designs, only Zamperla has really got the riding position even close to 'right'. I do think the inversions are a little silly, and my biggest issue with the ride is that it squanders its height and space, opting to do the Wild Mouse thing instead of the high-speed flying it could do. The problem isn't that The Flying Coaster is a bad ride, the problem is that it isn't a particularly good one. Oh, I noticed that the cars on the Elitch Gardens ride do not seem to have the on-board electronics package that the Wonderland ride has.

Speaking of "not very good" rides, Elitch Gardens also has a Vekoma suspended looping coaster called Mind Eraser, a Vekoma Boomerang, and a Chance Aviator. The Mind Eraser is one of the better SLCs, with the 10-car train, comparable to Geauga Lake or Darien Lake. I did notice that while T2 at Kentucky Kingdom got new forged metal wheels similar to the ones on the Geauga Lake ride, the Elitch Gardens ride still has the original-type cast Vekoma wheels. Across from the Mind Eraser is the Aviator, Chance's bad copy of a Flying Scooter. The dual sails is a neat idea, but switching to rigid suspension and designing the sails so that they cannot point inward hardly at all makes for a very dull ride. Incidentally, there is a sign on the ride which explains how to fly the thing so as to incrementally increase the amplitude of the swing. It doesn't work well on the Aviator but if you follow those posted instructions on a good Flying Scooter you'll have the cables whipping in short order.

When I went past the Boomerang I saw that the train was sitting between the vertical loop and lift #2, and an evacuation was in progress. Lest this reflect badly on Elitch Gardens, I should mention that I saw the same thing happen at Worlds of Fun a couple of days ago. In fact, I should also mention that within a couple of hours, Elitch Gardens managed to get the train reset and the ride re-opened, so I was actually able to get a ride. Predictably, it was about the same as any of the better Boomerang coasters out there.

Next to the Boomerang is a very strange contraption that looks a little bit like a gigantic letter "U". It has a car on it with two groups of seats, all seats facing outward and arranged in a tight circle. It appears that the seat groups are free to rotate as the car is driven back and forth. So it appears to be a little like a Zamperla Disk'O only with the ride vehicle in miniature and with a larger, non-circular track...oh, and the car rotation seems to be inertial instead of driven. Notice this is all based on ground observations. The Halfpipe is the first Intamin ride I have ever encountered where when I tried the test seat I not only didn't fit, it wasn't even close. Come to think of it, I think it is the only ride I've encountered where I simply cannot fit. Even the B&M stand-up coasters, which I don't ride because I cannot fit comfortably, are sized in such a way that I can physically cram into them. The seat on the Halfpipe is simply ridiculous. I can't imagine who the intended audience must be!

I made my way back to the extreme back corner of the park. There I found perhaps the most important ride entrance in the park. It's the entrance to Twister 2, the John Pierce interpretation of the original Elitch Gardens Mr. Twister. Now today is my first visit to Elitch Gardens in any of its incarnations, so I never got to ride the John Allen version. But I have ridden John Fetterman's reinterpretation, the Knoebels Twister. Imagine my disappointment when the ride was closed because of mechanical trouble. My disappointment eventually turned to guarded elation when the ride did, in fact, open up. The queue runs through the middle of the ride, over an asphalt path just sort of plopped down in the dirt under the ride, and occasionally bordered by a wooden fence rail. The ride is protected from the queue by chain link fencing. Under the station, there is a line of large pictures depicting scenes from the old Elitch Gardens. It is clear that large sections of Twister 2 track rails have been re-capped recently. Up in the station, I noticed that the platform gates are operated by a large handle manipulated by the ride operator. It's a clever arrangement as both the full-open and full-closed positions put the link arm in the mechanism into a position where it is effectively locked from motion by any means other than the control handle...much like the door control on a school bus. But both the manual gate control and the entry path suggest that the ride was built 'on a budget'. It's literally the only ride in the park that isn't a standard catalog model ride, and yet little or no effort was made to make it special. The ride itself is decent, and I can see the family resemblance to the Knoebels ride, particularly in the curve off the top of the lift and the helix section. A park employee suggested that a brake had been added to the ride on the second hill, but I can't confirm or deny that. I heard something, but I didn't feel it, and I didn't see it. If that is true, it might explain why much of the ride seems a bit slow. In reality, I think the slowness is just because Pierce designed a slower ride than Fetterman did. It's a decent ride, the kind of ride that any park needs as a signature attraction. I happen to like the Knoebels version better, and that may be at least in part because the Knoebels ride runs a lot smoother. Part of the reason for that may be because Elitch Gardens is running 3-bench cars on their ride, cars that can't take a curve as fast (referring to angular velocity, not travel speed) because of their longer wheelbase...making them less well suited to a ride that is nothing but curves. I like Twister 2 but I would like it a whole lot better if it ran better.

Looking around Elitch Gardens, several thoughts came immediately to mind. First was that while it is a very small park, it is also really quite a nice park. It has a reasonably well-rounded selection of rides (although their coaster collection is kind of heavy on shuttles!), it is beautifully landscaped, and operationally it seems to be in reasonably good shape. But three days after visiting Six Flags St. Louis, I look around the park and realize there is simply no comparison between the two parks. If Six Flags St. Louis represents what the Six Flags brand is all about, then there is no way that Elitch Gardens has any business trying to pass itself off as a Six Flags park. It's way too small, there isn't nearly enough space to apply any kind of coherent theme to any section of the park, all of the rides are catalog model rides, lacking even custom decoration, let alone custom design. In fact, Elitch Gardens looks for all the world like a very traditional local amusement park. It's not a Six Flags regional destination resort wannabe. I have to think that PKS decision to brand Elitch Gardens as a Six Flags park has probably been detrimental to both Elitch Gardens and to Six Flags. For Elitch Gardens customers, the re-branding may lead people to expect something more like the big Six Flags parks, but the park can only deliver Elitch Gardens. The park over-promises and under-delivers just through its association with Six Flags. Meanwhile, anyone who visits Elitch Gardens may associate that kind of an experience with the Six Flags brand name. It cheapens the Six Flags brand, and it gives the neoclassical park delusions of inadequacy. In reality, Elitch Gardens is a nice park, and I would love to have it in Downtown Columbus. But it truly isn't fair to the park to try and operate it as a Six Flags branded park. The Six Flags and Looney Toons and DC Comics overlays in the park could be stripped away (as happened at Geauga Lake) and what would be left would be a very nice traditional park which could build its own image, and probably be far more successful than a miniaturized Six Flags. I also wonder if Six Flags has had some similar thoughts about the park. One of the things I noticed was that the ride safety signs had not been standardized; that and some other minor observations (such as the wheels on Mind Eraser) have me wondering if Elitch Gardens is being considered for sale, or possibly to be 'de-flagged' to be operated more like The Great Escape or...well, Six Flags already said they are getting rid of Frontier City...

Speaking of traditional parks, right around 6:00 pm, I left Elitch Gardens and headed out to Lakeside Park.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Next: Lakeside Amusement Park

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