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"Er, it looks like it is a good thing I was here!"
Everything takes longer than it should, and some things cannot be rushed. Then there is Denny's. They can't be rushed either, at least not at 1:00am. It shpuldn't take two hours to have a late-night dinner, but it did, and that pushed back my wake-up on Sunday morning a few hours later. That, in turn, meant I was late getting out of Mount Vernon, IL, and that meant that I didn't get to Eureka until lunch time. Lunch time at a local fast food joint [Footnote 1] turned out to be anything but fast. After a series of delays and blunders (tip: "Main St." in Eureka, MO is anything but...), plus parking and the line for the me_al detectors, it was 3:00 pm before I made it into the park.
Six Flags St. Louis opened in 1971 as Six Flags over Mid America. It was intended from the start to be a regional showcase park, the kind of project that got built in the 1960's and 1970's. It was a new concept back then, and simple economics have prevented it from being repeated in the past twenty years. But for a while, we got some nice "mini Disney World" amusement park resorts, each with a park, working class resort hotel, and often a campground. These places were built outside major cities, such as Cincinnati, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Kansas City, Toronto, Richmond, Williamsburg, and Saint Louis, and they were built from the ground up to consider such issues as access, visibility from the Interstate, traffic flow, maintenance and operations infrastructure, and indeed pretty much every important issue except for their own expansion. The point here is that Six Flags St. Louis is one of these "modern" resort parks. It has its own exit from IR-44, it has a gigantic backlit sign on a buffer median, a four-lane highway running into and out of the parking lot, and in general, it just has the stature and infrastructure to say, "This is an important place." To put it another way, the park was built when Six Flags meant something very special. The good news is that Six Flags St. Louis has not forgotten this.
Of course it is inevitable that some of the 'new' Six Flags would rear its ugly head. Witness the $10 parking fee and the absence of two major coasters (Ninja and Mr. Freeze). Not to mention the annoying metal detector setup. I really thing metal detectors have no place at an amusement park. Bag searches are annoying (and mostly useless) but at least they don't score a false positive on every person who comes through. Metal detectors do that, and it makes them a colossal waste of time and effort.
Once inside, I noticed a very large number of people just milling around the entry plaza. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were posing for photographs and greeting customers. I searched a bit, then did the customary thing that people often do when entering an amusement park, thinking all the while that the layout was lacking a bit here. When I came back out, it looked like Bugs was ordering a pretzel at the pretzel stand. I headed off to the right, towards the "Studio Backlot". Up the hill was a sandwich-board sign that said, "Meet Bugs Bunny and friends here!" (or something very much like that). Nearby, Yosemite Sam and Speedy Gonzales were greeting customers. Naturally I had to make some snide remark about neither one of them being Bugs Bunny (as Bugs was back at the front gate trying to get a pretzel). This part of the park contains a lot of facades, most of which are not in any way useful. I did notice that the "saloon" front is built on a revolve, and I suspect that there might have been a midway show there at one time. Today, the live entertainment was provided by a trailer-mounted Sling Shot ride. I also noticed that the derelict teacup-type ride has still neither been removed nor pressed back into service. It's well hidden, but it's there. Of course, I examined all of the various facades and attempted to identify the attraction or back-end service behind each. I rode the pendulum boat ride, which appears to be a small version of the Intamin model, and took a ride on Batman. Thematically, the ride is still full of 'plot holes' but that's mostly okay because it's a pretty darned good coaster anyway. I do hope that the age of the mega-long queue path with no short-cuts is now behind us, though. Six Flags St. Louis has a few of those, with Batman and The Boss the worst offenders.
Please forgive me for not knowing all the park area themes. I came around the corner and down the hill and through an aread that is just stuffed with retail operations. Special points for clever theming, though, go to the rest rooms, which are set up to look like a filling station. Well, if you're out on the road and you need a donniker, you find a gas station, right? So it actually does make sense. That path led ultimately to the River King Mine Ride which I still think is one of the better old-school mine trains out there. I especially like the pop of airtime in the tunnel on the last drop. I also like the fact that I can get into the trains, in spite of the very low seats, and get the lap bar down without a struggle, unlike the way things work at Cedar Point these days. And the geek in me is interested in the odd collection of brakes on the ride. Each blocking point seems to have at least one of the caged-spring type calipers that are common on wood coasters. But it seems odd to me that they would do that, given that most of the brakes on the ride are the (rare!) Arrow cantilever brakes. I think I have talked about this before, both in regards to River King Mine Ride and Big Bad Wolf, which is where I first saw these calipers. The common Arrow brake has a simple frame holding a pair of brake shoes, which are held open with a pair of leaf springs. An airbag positioned betweeen the caliper frame and the brake shoe actually pushes the brakes closed when inflated. The cantilever caliper [Footnote 2] has the brake shoes attached so that they pivot on the caliper frame. Eleven little coil springs on each shoe hold the brake closed, and an airbag positioned above the pivot point actually forces the brake open. So the brakes are fail-safe, but the closing force is determined by the springs instead of by the air pressure.
Next door is the Riverview Racers which are a Chance Yo-Yo. It seems an odd name for such a ride, and I wondered if the queue had originally been for a different kind of ride. This was also one of the examples of the park's air conditioned queue spaces, although the air conditioner was actually turned off. It wasn't 104 degrees as it was the last time I visited. Anyway, this ride could have been better...first, it seems kind of slow, and second, while the kicker cylinder is present at the top of the tower, the head does not tilt.
Nearby was another disappointment: Ninja was out of service for the day. I actually kind of like the Ninja and in particular I like the head-chopper visual coming under the lift hill. No word on what was wrong with the ride, but I did think it interesting that with one train in the station and another on the safety brake, all of the shoulder bars were open.
As I cut across the center of the park, I got slightly confused. I was walking through the Bugs Bunny National Park, which appears to be a dead-end. It's the park's new kiddie ride section, and it is very nicely done, but I had forgotten that it was a new section, and that I was thinking about the dead-end in the park in Chicago. So some momentary confusion finally led to me finding the secret pathway that goes over to the Carousel and The Boss. I rode the Carousel which is credited to PTC, but they didn't say where it came from (I know PTC was not building carousels in 1971...). I do know that it is running with genuine carved wooden horses, as the one I rode was missing most of its paint, showing the bare wood. I hope a restoration project is in the works for this ride.
Next up is The Boss. I really, really, really want to love this coaster. It epitomizes the best and the worst that CCI ever had to offer. It's a huge ride, and the first drop sequence is entirely different from anything else I've ever ridden anywhere: It's effectively a triple-down with a very long flat section at ground level at the bottom of the first drop, followed by a double-dip. The ride delivers lots of airtime, especially in the back seat, it's fast, it's aggressive, and has all those qualities that we all seem to love in CCI coasters. Unfortunately it also has the mediocre "beat itself to pieces" trackwork, and it is running a set of Gerstlauer trains that simply don't have the cushioning or the performance required for a ride of this type. It's a great ride, spoiled by a set of less-than-spectacular trains.
Xcalibur, the Evolution ride (moved in from Great Adventure?) was actually running all day, but the loading procedure takes about ten minutes per cycle, and the length of the line scared me off. Mr. Freeze was also down for the count, for reasons that are not presently being discussed. I did ride one of the almost-twin log flumes, and I noticed how much more smoothly it runs than the one at Kings Island. Both rides are Arrow flumes, but Kings Island replaced the trough and the boats with equipment from Hopkins, and the Hopkins boats rattle around in the flume, while the Arrow boats are literally steered by the water flow, and don't bounce around much at all. Apparently there is more to designing a good flume than meets the eye.
Near the flume is a collection of kiddie rides stuffed off into a little kiddie ride ghetto. This is the section that used to be "Looney Toons Town" and while it didn't have as much stuff in it as the Bugs Bunny National Park, it was nicely done with a collection of building facades surrounding the ride. Now, it contains the four kiddie rides that didn't get moved over to the new section, including the Bradley & Kaye kiddie coaster. It actually looks kind of sad now, more resembling Tuscora Park than Six Flags.
During a brief rain shower, I chatted for a few moments with Scooby Doo, pointing out that as I had seen him most recently at Kings Island, he gets around almost as much as I do. As is usually the case when chatting with these characters, the conversation was a bit one-sided, but (perhaps noticing my Kennywood shirt) his guide chatted with me a bit about the park, and commented on how the park was one of the best in the chain, and...well, obviously he was very proud to work for Six Flags St. Louis. It's just the kind of attitude I love to see in people who are working in parks. Which reminds me...one of the little changes I noticed in the park was the name tags on the employees. Every employee in the park has a word stamped on his name badge, as an official title. The title is, "Entertainer." This is important. It means that the park takes to heart the fact that they are in the business of delivering entertainment, and every person in the park...including park services, retail, foods, games, and yes, even security...is ultimately an entertainer. To me, it is a much better word choice than the all-too-common "cast member", and makes a whole lot more sense than the ubiquitous practice of referring to the customers as "guests".
I climbed aboard the park's train, perhaps the least useful in-park railroad to have more than one station. The ride circles the park, but the layout is generally dogbone shaped, with the two stations located at the points where the tracks are closest together. I boarded at the Bugs Bunny station and rode all the way around. We chugged out of the station and into the undeveloped area between the main park and the waterpark, behind the River King Mine Ride. Then the train stopped unexpectedly and was set upon by three thieves. It wasa classic train robbery scene similar to the one I last encountered at Silverwood. This is going to sound really stupid, I know: I wasn't expecting the train robbery [Footnote 3]. But seriously, I've ridden this train before, and there was no show element, just a cruise around the park with a nearly inaudible sound track. It's a little thing, really, but it is the kind of thing that the new bosses at Six Flags have been talking about doing.
Of course, the park's other major coaster is the Screamin' Eagle. It's not quite fair to call it an "out and back" coaster. Insyead, it is more of an "out, then out some more, and back" ride. The ride is hidden back in the woods, and when you get to right about where the turnaround should be, the track curves to the left...then goes out some more. It's a really good ride in any seat, but it's lacking just a little. It rides nice and smooth, but...well, let me put it this way...it's a ride that Jeff Gramke from Kings Island would approve of. Front or back, there is simply no airtime to be had on this thing. For airtime, one has to go back to The Boss.
For dinner, I tried the Mooseburger. I was a little worried when I saw a sign outside that said, "If your food was good, ring the bell," with no bell anywhere in sight. I wondered if that meant they knew the food was no good. As it turned out, the burger was good, but the seasoned cross-cut fries were pretty much inedible. I also tried to buy a polo shirt with a The Boss logo on it (you know, something I could wear to work...) and learned that no such product exists. In fact, their selection of coaster merchandise in general is somewhat lacking. I finally found a shirt that was okay, but not quite exactly what I wanted.
I stayed until the 9pm close, then made the long drive to Columbia, MO, about halfway across the state, and a good jumping off point for visiting Worlds of Fun.
In all, it was a good day at Six Flags St. Louis. I've visited the park twice now, and I've had a good time both visits. It's a beautiful park, it's in good condition, it's well run, and I certainly had a good time. The good news is that if Six Flags can deliver this kind of experience with some consistency, they will have no problem fixing the problems with the chain. The bad news is that it seems that this park has been doing just that for years. Six Flags is a troubled park operator, but by and large, the problems don't appear to be at their St. Louis park.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: I'll mention no names, but their logo is a great big letter "M"...[Return to text]
Footnote 2: My name for it. I don't know what S&S/Arrow calls it. [Return to text]
Footnote 3: Well, a train robbery is supposed to be unexpected. I told you it was going to sound stupid. [Return to text]
--DCAjr
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