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SIX FLAGS OVER TEXAS
& Six Flags Hurricane Harbor
Dallas / Ft. Worth, Texas
Six Flags Theme Parks
---- THE LATEST BUZZ ----
(7/2/2024) Six Flags over Texas To Open Two New Kiddie Rides This Week
(6/30/2024) More Insight Into The River Rapids Incident
(6/27/2024) River Rapids Incident with Explanation
(6/16/2024) Watch the Dino Off-Road Adventure POV
(6/15/2024) A Near Drowning of an Employee at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor Arlington
 Park News - (6/30/2024) Screamscape has been sent another interesting tid-bit of information about what led to the incident on the Roaring Rapids ride at Six Flags over Texas in the first place. While we’ve all seen the video footage that ends with some guests jumping into the water, I’m told that the spark for the entire problem started long before the camera was rolling. From what I’ve been told, a raft with guests aboard came under fire from that directional water nozzle designed to help push the rafts towards one of the two lanes that lead to the station for Unload/Loading.
Everything was running as normal at this point, when either a single guest, or several guests aboard this particular raft did not take well to the water being aimed at their raft. Against the rules, these riders proceeded to stand-up and move about the raft, and even made motions as if they were thinking of jumping out. It was at this point the ride’s E-Stop button was pushed and the rafts began to collect at the point where we see them in the video.
This also goes a long way to explain the body language of the ride op on the pier who probably had been telling these people to calm-down and stay seated for several minutes after E-Stop was pressed, only to have them jump in the water anyway. This may also explain the mix of either calm or amused faced on the riders on the other boats, watching the drama unfold.
To see the view of how this section of the ride plays out to riders on the rafts, click here to watch a video posted by Six Flags themselves about 6 years ago. I’ve queued it to start as the raft passed under the bridge structure and past the two directional water nozzles built into the walls, through a very slow moving and calm section of the river, leading into one of the two lanes and up the lift to the station. A second video here shows the action on this section of the river from the point of view of the bridge, looking towards the station which really gives you a good view of how those directional hoses work, and where the ride ops sit and monitor this section of the river.
(6/27/2024) If you’ve heard some buzzing on social media this week about an incident at Six Flags over Texas on the Rapids ride, then go ahead and watch the video below. Now, before you jump to conclusions, know that the video is edited, so we sort of jump from a boring part where it looks like a bunch of rafts are bunched up, unable to pass through, to suddenly passengers are trying to jump from a boat filling with water to a small dock structure, with several landing in the water.
We don’t know what led to this moment, but I can share what i do know about these rides that may help make sense of what you are watching.
To start with the obvious… River Rapids rides are not on tracks. Just getting that out there, and as true water rides, the rafts float down a course where they are subject to the unpredictable nature of water flow, and a bit of chaos theory is involved in that. So what we are seeing at first is that it looks like a couple of rafts arrived at the end of the rapids run, where the river is divided into two lanes where the boats are sent back into the station for unloading on separate conveyors, and the small dock you see sits in between the two lanes.
Six Flags being… well… Six Flags… They don’t always use both lanes due to staffing. I don’t know what mode the attraction is running in during this video however. These kind of rides will typically use large water cannons to blast water into the river at this point to try and direct the boats towards one lane or the other as needed. In this case, you can see one of those water cannons going off to the right, where it is trying to push the boats into the far lane, as the back-up is being caused by two rafts trying to enter the lane closest to the camera in the foreground. Boat after boat backing up is making the situation worse, and things are getting tightly wedged up, but you can see a employee in place keeping everyone in place, and making no effort to evacuate any boats.
Then the video cuts ahead several minutes to a panic point, people are jumping from the boat to the dock, and if you notice, the flow of the water is actually going backwards from what it was going before. One of the rafts involved in the pinch appears to have gotten into the near lane, but it’s now flowing backwards again towards the end of the video, while guests begin jumping into the water as their raft moves away from the narrow dock structure.
What appears to be happening is the E-Stop was pushed, stopping the flow of water down the river. All rapids rides have a reservoir where all their water floats to at the lowest point in the attraction when the water pumps are shut off, allowing the river bed to eventually completely dry out. In the case of this ride, the water is flowing backwards at this point because the entry to this reservoir (where they also store the boats not in use) is located a few hundred feet to the right of where this video is being shot.
While there is a good bit of water inside the raft that the guests are jumping out of, the raft should not sink. These rafts are not sitting in deep water by any means, and are designed to still “float” even when completely filled with water. Unfortunately, guests panic and what I believe we may be seeing here is guests in full “titanic” mode, thinking they are sinking, trying to make an unnecessary jump to safety. What may be making the panicked situation worse is if any of these guests are locals and aware that a deadly incident did take place in this very spot in the 90’s, which involved a raft that did get pushed/flipped over and a guest became trapped under water, unable to get their seatbelt off.
Since the E-Stoped was pushed, what needed to happen was just have everyone sit calmly in their rafts for several minutes while the flow of water stops and runs back into the reservoir. As I said, this would take several minutes to happen, but towards the end of the video, you can see this is what is actually taking place as the flow of water has been reversed. Unfortunately, human panic elevated things to another level and things got infinitely more complicated when people start flinging themselves into the water.
(6/15/2024) Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in Arlington made the news this week, as a 911 emergency call was made by the park just before 9pm on Thursday night. A male employee nearly drowned and had already been pulled out of one of the pools and CPR started before emergency crews arrived to transport him to a local hospital. The park was closed at the time, so exactly what happened isn’t known, but the employee was said to be breathing by the time they got him to the hospital, though their current condition has not been reported. We wish them a speedy recovery.
(5/28/2024) Some more operational reports have come my way about how things are going at Six Flags over Texas, who seem determined to irritate their local fanbase to the bitter end. The budget cuts continue to fall, and along with the elimination of virtually all in park entertainment, and the upcoming cuts that will keep the park closed on Tuesdays for the summer, it seems select ride will also only operate either during certain hours of the day, while you may find that other rides may only run on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, such as El Diablo.
Oh… and while the Cars are closed while they slowly install the dinosaurs for the season, I’m told that the Pirates of Speelunker Cave is now closed again for the foreseeable future after the attraction once again suffered some kind of flood damage.
A few pictures were sent in from the weekend as well that everyone may enjoy, along with an menu featuring the latest outrageous prices for the most meager food offerings. This includes $16.99 to $17.99 (plus that $1.30 surcharge) for a tiny “Walking Taco”, $15.49 to $16.49 for a tray of nachos. At least the nachos have twice the calories of the walking taco, which should give you an indication of the size of the walking taco. And perhaps just as disturbing is a $5.99 churro that is only 240 calories, which sounds like a very small bite-sized item, or they’ve cut back on the amount of sugar they put on them. For comparison’s sake, when Costco still had churros on their menu for $1.49, they were 570 calories each.
(5/20/2024) A little bad news has come to light for Six Flags over Texas fans… especially those who like to visit on a quiet Tuesday. According to the current operational calendar posted on the park’s website, while they will start the busy season open 7 days a week, starting on Tuesday, June 18th and every Tuesday for the remainder of the summer, the park will be closed. This means that from mid June through to August 10th, the park will only maintain a 6-day a week operational schedule. Then as the school season kicks in early, things get much worse the week of August 11th when the park will stay closed on that sunday, and then move to a weekend only schedule for the remainder of the summer, with the exception of being open on Monday, Sept. 2nd for Labor Day.
(3/10/2024) Some changes are taking place over at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in Arlington. Based on photos posted to Twitter, the top platform of the slide tower that held Der Stuka and Dive Bomber is being removed via a large crane. Over the past couple days not only has the top platform been removed, but also the top sections of both of those slides, while still leaving the remaining lower slide sections intact. The Geronimo slide that departed on the deck below however is still fully intact.
Currently the official website for the waterpark still lists all three slides in their list of attractions for the season. It is worth mentioning that the park wont open for the 2024 season until May 11th however, so they website could be updated between now and then, but they could also be simply replacing the top sections and platform for both of the slides as well with the goal is having it all returned into place before the season opens. Stay tuned!
(1/1/2024) The last update where we received a rumor that El Diablo “might” be coming down sometime in 2024 at Six Flags over Texas must have hit a nerve. Obviously fans are tired of the park removing rides without adding new ones, but several of these sources also responded that they believe El Diablo will be safe for years to come.
Instead, hints were sent indicating that a removed attraction may be coming back instead in 2024. The former Bucket Blasters ride that was removed in 2021 to make way for Aquaman: Power Wave may be coming back to the park in a new location, so keep your eyes open.
(12/30/2023) I can’t verify this yet, but a reader tells us that the El Diablo (Larson Giant Loop) may be leaving Six Flags over Texas in 2024. Combine this with the removal of Harley Quinn Spinsanity, and it would be the second large-scale flat ride being removed from the park within the past 12 months. Unlike Harley Quinn however, the word on the street is that El Diablo would be moved to another park, we just don’t know where yet.
It is interesting to note Diablo’s close proximity to the log flume, which despite having some bigger plans to merge the two into one ride canceled, the existing flumes are supposed to undergo some substantial refurbishment before reopening in 2024. Moving El Diablo out of the way would give the crews better access to work on the flume ride.
While not even rumored, I do wonder about the long-term future of the park’s La Vibora (Intamin Bobsled coaster) as well. It takes up a good sized bit of property in this area, leading out to the front of the park, and currently I believe it is the last ride of it’s kind operating anywhere in the world with the closure and demolition of the one at Six Flags The Great Escape. La Vibora first opened at Six Flags Magic Mountain in 1984 before being sent to Texas in 1986, so I do have a gut feeling that before too long we may be saying goodbye to yet another ride in the park’s Spain themed area. Of course this could lead into a big renovation as well once the merger of Six Flags and Cedar Fair is complete.
In the mean time, keep and eye out when passing by El Diablo for signs that they may be preparing to shut it down for good.
(11/10/2023) Six Flags over Texas closed the Harley Quinn Spinsanity ride back in early 2022, and walled off the pathway to it as well as removing it from the park map. I believe it may have quietly reopened briefly for a time later that year before shutting down once again, while never being returned to the park map or app. The park also confirmed earlier in 2023 that the ride was now closed for good, but according to on site reports, the ride is now finally coming down to be removed. It isn’t expected to be shipped off to any other park, as even on the best of days, this particular ride was known to have severe downtime issues.
For whatever reason, Harley’s twin, the Cyborg Cyber Spin at Six Flags Great Adventure has had a better operating history and as far as I know, is still running at that the New Jersey park. So maybe Harley was just something of a lemon, or the harsh Texas weather was just too much of a challenge.
2024 - 2 New Rides in Boomtown and Dino Off Road Adventure - (7/2/2024) Six Flags over Texas has confirmed that the park will open two more new rides to the public on July 4th at 3pm: Daffy Duck Bucket Blasters (spinning buckets with water blasters) and Sylvester and Tweety Pounce and Bounce (a 41ft family drop tower). This may be considered more of a soft-opening, as the park has also scheduled an official Grand Opening ceremony to take place on July 6 at 11am.
Diamond Season Pass Holders can get on early however, during a preview session on July 3rd that takes place after 3pm, and all Season Pass Holders and Six Flags Members can ride first on July 4th from 11am to 3pm, ahead of the public opening.
Look for both of the new rides within the park’s Bugs Bunny Boomtown area of the park.
(6/16/2024) A POV video showing off the new Dino Off-Road Adventure experience at Six Flags over Texas can be seen below. For those wondering, yes… the direction of travel on the track has been reversed for this new version of the ride.
(6/13/2024) Six Flags over Texas has announced that their new Dino Off Road Adventure attraction will open to the public on the afternoon of Saturday, June 15th. Passholders are set to have preview rides on the attraction first on June 14 as well as on June 15th before it opens to the public around 4pm.
As previously mentioned the former Chaparral Antique Cars ride has been enhanced with the addition of about 15 life-size Dinosaur animatronic figures along the route, featuring an variety of sound and motion effects.
(2/23/2024) Six Flags over Texas has confirmed the rumors… A new ride is coming, an old favorite will return, and the Dinosaurs are coming!
New Ride - Sylvester and Tweety Pounce & Bounce is the name of the park’s new ride, a family drop tower standing 41 feet tall that will bounce up and down.
As rumored, the park’s former Bucket Blasters ride that was removed to allow for the installation of Aquaman will return as Daffy Duck Bucket Blasters, added to the Bugs Bunny Boomtown section of the park in time for Memorial Day Weekend.
And also as rumored… the Chaparral Antique Cars will be transformed into Dino Off Road Adventure this Summer, featuring a “redecorated queue” and 13 animatronic dinosaurs added along the route.
Other park improvements were also announced, such as “new theming elements” coming to the queues for Batman: The Ride and Mr. Freeze, as well as the “building of a permanent structure for the Boomtown Bar.”
(2/8/2024) Remember that little rumor we posted a couple of weeks ago, claiming that a potential renovation could be coming that would add Dinosaurs to the Chaparral Antique Cars ride? Well… Six Flags has yet to announce or confirm any of this, but the locals are already in quite an upROAR about stopping the concept before they even get started. To that end, they’ve launched an official “Save the Chaparral Antique Cars” petition on Change.org that you can check out. To help navigate better, it seems they’ve even purchased the SaveChaps.org domain name which links you right to the official petition sign-up page.
Considering that so much of the chain’s parks were just purchased willy-nilly and added to the chain over the years, it is easy to forget that Six Flags over Texas is the original Six Flags park, and the theming placed around each of the lands was really meant to represent the history of the state over the decades. So they are quick to point out that Dinosaurs, while popular with the kids on and off over the years, really does not have much of a history within the state of Texas. In fact, the most well known Dinosaur that comes from the state of Texas would be Barney the Dinosaur, who’s creators birthed him in Dallas.
The rest of the world may never forgive Texas for unleashing that purple demon upon the world, but I digress…
After all…kids still always seem to love Dinosaurs, so I can’t blame them for coming up with the idea. Heck, even Legoland California is remodeling a couple of their rides and adding Lego Dinosaurs. From Six Flags point of view, as they scramble to find new things to add to SFOT after their log-flume-merger concept fell apart, they did the same thing at Six Flags New England last year and the kids seemed to enjoy it. So I get how we got here. A quick chat with another reader also revealed that the Chaparral Antique Cars location also is one of the first places in the park to flood when the waters rise, which is probably not going to go over well with those dinosaur figures, especially if any are animatronic.
As for the rest of the park… well… I’m hearing things are a bit of a mess currently. With Spring Break on the horizon, apparently the park is said to still have a lot of Christmas season decor still up, due to lack of staffing to remove it. Meanwhile towards the end of last season they put that new Speedy Parking system into place that was just not working well and created some serious traffic concerns. With the world watching how things play out between the potential merger of Six Flags and Cedar Fair, it seems an odd time to let your original park get a bit “sloppy” looking, because that won't please your investors at all. Let’s hope they can renew their focus sooner than later…
(1/22/2024) A series of interesting photoshopped posts added to the Texas Thrill Seekers group on Facebook seem to be throwing out hints that Dinosaurs should be expected to arrive at Six Flags over Texas in the Spring or Summer of 2024. As odd as it sounds, Six Flags over Texas could be trying to steal an idea put into effect at Six Flags New England last season where dinosaur figures were added all over the landscape of a kiddie car driving ride to create Dino Off-Road Adventures. In the case of Six Flags over Texas they could also be easily added to t he park’s Chaparral Antique Cars ride, which many would normally consider to be a little on the dull side due to the layout’s use of extremely long sections of straight roadway with nothing to look at.
(1/21/2024) While the article doesn’t have the details about what rides are coming, the Dallas Express does report that Six Flags over Texas will be adding two new rides to Bug Bunny Boomtown this year and provides a link to a filing. The official document confirms a project that will provide ‘New Paving and foundations for two new rides in the Bugs Boomtown section of the park” with work to start Feb. 20, 2024 and to be complete by May 31, 2024.
This matches up with a rumor we posted on Jan. 1st that was sent in, claiming that the park was going to bring back the former Bucket Blasters ride. No word on what the second ride might be yet, though a much older rumor claimed that the park’s former Troika ride, “Crazy Legs”, that was removed in 2018 is in storage and might someday return. (Fun fact, in 2016 Crazy Legs was renamed Harley Quinn Spinsanity as well only to be removed in 2018). Again, no current rumors floating that it may be the second ride, just a leftover hanging thread from a much older tale.
2024 - El Rio Lento - CANCELED - (10/6/2023) While the news is unverified at this time, some comments made on Screamscape’s Facebook post indicated that the rumored cancelling of the SFOT 2024 Log Flume project came about after some initial inspections were done. According to one comment, the two flumes will remain and see some maintenance work and updates done to each, but they are no longer planning on linking them together for one super sized flume ride.
(10/5/2023) Screamscape in unable to verify this at the moment, but according to a Screamscape source, Six Flags CEO, Selim Bassoul, is rumored to have quietly canceled the El Rio Lento attraction project for 2024, which would have seen the two El Aserradero log flumes combined into one super-sized log flume ride. According to our source, Selim is rumored to have canceled the project before it even began due to high costs.
I’m not really sure how this all went down, as you would have assumed that Six Flags would have had a pretty solid lock on the costs before giving the project the green light. With any project, once you get into it there are always items that can cause cost overruns, but since they had not even started construction yet, it is hard to believe that this is what happened. The only alternative is that either Six Flags just announced it without doing the proper research ahead of time, or perhaps early inspections of the existing attraction infrastructure may have revealed that they were going to have to rebuild / restore more of the original attraction to make this work than initially anticipated.
Again… this is just a rumor right now, as Six Flags has not announced anything, but I also no longer see any mention of the “El Rio Lento” attraction name on their website either. However, mentions of it still exist on some of Six Flags’ social media channels as well as the press release itself on BuisnessWire. Given that Six Flags over Texas promoted the heck of this new ride with the Season Pass sales media, I’m not sure how everyone who signed up for Season Passes is going to take to the news about this project being canceled, leaving the park with no new attraction at all in 2024. Or at least if this is true…
On another strange note, according to our source it seems Selim Bassoul hasn’t been around the corporate office much as of late. (Update: Selim was spotted at a few of the company’s parks in the park couple weeks, so perhaps he may be making an effort to make some visits to the various properties.) Prior to his last move of canceling the log flume project, it was confirmed that yet two more executives had parted ways with the company. The first was Six Flags’s Chief Legal Officer, who is apparently departing with a golden parachute worth $1.6 million in severance. The second departure which I had heard about but could not originally confirm was the departure of Don McCoy, park President of Six Flags Magic Mountain. I’ve lost track of how many park Presidents and corporate VPs have come and left the company over the past couple of years. The rotating door at the corporate office has been spinning so far, it has become a unique thrill ride of its very own.
(8/30/2023) Six Flags over Texas has something special planned for 2024… El Rio Lento (The Lazy River). According to the statement, not only will this be “the world’s first ever log flume”, but it will now become “one of the world’s longest”. The official description ends there, but it sounds as if a rumor that Screamscape had first posted a couple of years back may now finally be coming to pass.
The description of the El Rio Lento is essentially the same text that the park currently has posted under the current El Aserradero name, but if this is indeed the old rumor coming to fruition, then you are about to see El Aserradero’s Flume #1 and #2 somehow linked together to become one massively long flume ride. Exact details are not being given, only that a new lift hill will be added and that the flume will now feature two drops instead of just one.
Years back El Aserradero’s original flume was kept closed, and according to rumors at the time, in addition to just being a labor saver, the original station was not ADA compliant and there was no good way to update it so the park just kept using the second flume for the most part. Thankfully Flume 1 was refurbished and returned to service in 2021 for the park’s 60th anniversary, along with the return of Casa Magnetica. So now it does indeed look as if the two flume’s will be linked into one giant flume by adding a new lift hill to connect the two together.
2028 - Six Flags Entertainment will have the Option to purchase 100% Ownership of the Six Flags over Texas property. For more details, click here.
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