Tex-ish – June 2026

[Hixee]

Alight then – this was the pseudo-companion trip to my Southeast USA trip last year. As explained there, I was tossing up between these two trips back in the 2024 off-season, and hoping to get Tormentor and Cotaland (more on those later), that lead me to doing the trips in this order. Also pushed this trip quite early in the year – with a few things coming up in my personal life, and wishing to avoid a ‘proper’ Texan summer, I tried to get this as early as I could whilst having all the parks me open. Anyway… on with it.

Day 1 – Getting Started

Had a great Avios deal to Austin, so the start of our circular route was somewhat arbitrarily started there. Flight was good (great?), with it feeling only like ~6hrs when we touched down after the better part of 10hrs, but rental car faff ensued.

“Go to Level 3 of the car park, your car is in space A2, it’s a Black Camry, and the keys are on the dashboard”
“Thanks!”
Seems easy enough.
Get to Level 3 and all the spaces are empty, except space A2 is empty. Space A1 contains a Black Camry. Fair enough, we think, this must be our car.
Load up the bags, start doing mirror and seat position faff, only for a stroppy American to start hammering on the driver’s window.
His ticket from the pickup desk? A1, Black Camry.
Ah crap.
Mercifully, he was much calmer after he saw our ticket and the state of the car park and (very kindly) came back to the rental desk with me. He was much ruder (American?) than I’d have been, but he made the chap at the counter sort it out and assign me a different car.
Nice. Space C3, Black Camry. Let’s go.
Walk into Aisle C to promptly see a Black Camry driving out of space C3 and towards the rental barrier.
****’s sake.
Back down to the desk, assigned a third car, back up to the car park, and this car was a) there and b) not being driven off by someone else. Albeit an uninspiring Buick Envista with a terribly ham-fisted attempt at a digital dash.
But hey, we have a car, it has cruise control and air conditioning, that’s all I need for Texas.

So it was an easy, but not particularly enjoyable after a long-long day, 3hr drive up to Dallas. Into the hotel, showered and passed out in bed within 30mins of parking up. Some local stuff next, let’s go.

Day 2 – Ft Worth, Dallas and local creds

We rose early, mostly thanks to jetlag, and grabbed an early breakfast. Today was planned to be a simple day, in some ways acclimatising to the heat and time zone, so we started with a morning trip to the Ft Worth stockyards. They do a longhorn cattle drive twice a day, and whilst it’s a relatively simple affair, it’s quite a spectacle.

By the time the cattle drive was over, and we’d pottered around the stockyards area for a while, it had broken midday (so dinner time for us) and therefore felt like cocktail-o-clock. Stopped off at a bar for some respite from the heat and an boozy slushie, and then wandered our way back to the car.

Next up was a quick trip round Malibu Jack’s and Alley Cats for some +1s.

Next!

Onto something a bit more notable – Prairie Playland. This place is similar to Fantasy Island, in the sense that it’s a trashy tat-market with a sizable cred.

Parked up at the peak-heat of the day, and headed towards the cred. Got in line and shortly after the ride had a technical issue (some of the restraints didn’t seem to be unlocking properly in the station – an issue that whilst they fixed and got the ride up and running again pretty quickly, seemed to plague them for a little while afterwards, but thankfully they didn’t shut down operations again).

Overall the ride was pretty decent. Markedly larger and more intense than other “galaxy-esque” coasters, it was smooth and rode comfortably with some decent pops of airtime, and its colour scheme looked great – particularly against a clear blue sky!

Didn’t stay for much longer after that – jetlag was starting to catch up with me and the heat wasn’t helping. Headed back to the hotel for a bit of R&R, before heading into downtown Dallas for dinner and to meet an old colleague for a catch up. Dinner was fantastic, at Terry Black’s, and feeling very full we wandered around Dealey Plaza, the JFK Memorial, and soaked up some of the [surprisingly lively for a Sunday evening] atmosphere.

Okay, first day over and time for bed. Big day in the heat coming up…

 

[Hixee]

Day 3 – Six Flags Over Texas

Okay then, first big park of the trip. I’d visited SFOT back in 2013 on a trip with some CFers, so not everything was new to me – in fact I only needed a handful of creds – but it was a good excuse to revisit, give my wife the first taste of a ‘proper American theme park’, and hopefully tick off Tormentor (womp womp).

Got to the park nice and early (it was only five minutes away from the hotel, so hardly difficult) and started knocking through some of the smaller creds. In part to get them done early while there were no queues and in part to let my wife ‘warm up’ a bit to the bigger stuff. The two mine trains are good fun, and gave us a good start to the day. Decided I’d try to get on Joker next as I don’t particularly like these and I wanted to get it out of the way. It was, as expected, not very nice.

We headed for Batman next, which my wife rode twice in the front row, as it was a walk-on. I’d forgotten quite how unrelenting these are, and they still hold up after all these years. Fantastic coaster model.

We pottered around that side of the park for a while, riding Aquaman (with chronically slow operations), Judge Roy Scream (this isn’t in very good shape anymore), and finished up on Runaway Mountain (which is enjoyable and surprisingly intense – especially the steep drop just after one of the MCBRs).

Here’s a little photo dump from the morning.

It was heading well into mid-afternoon at this point, and my wife was flagging a bit. I was too, but perhaps a bit more experienced in this sort of thing by now. The only stuff left was stuff she had no interest in, so we popped out of the park for some lunch (food options are terrible in the park), dropped her off at the hotel, and then I headed back in.

After quickly ticking off Pandemonium (this had been suffering from 90+ minute queues earlier in the day, but was down to 15 minutes by this point), I headed over to Titan and New Texas Giant. They were both running very, very well, and this brought back memories of seeing these first RMC conversions coming along and how game changing it was for the industry. Only real gripe was running NTG on one train only, when the queue could easily have justified two. I used my one-time fastpass included with the pass I have to get on it quickly, but it was a shame to see them not running a second train. Titan’s had a repaint since my last visit, and I must say it looks great in the blue/white colour scheme now.

After a few more laps on those, and deciding I couldn’t face the queue for Mr Freeze (I think, due to having an air conditioned queue, this was popular all day and had a 60+ minute queue almost all day), I headed out. I’ll finish the pictures bit off with some photos of the rides from my way out – you get a particularly good view of Titan from the car park, a ride that’s quite hard to actually see from inside the park. Same with Tormentor, actually, although I don’t know what pathways they’re going to build around that area – it was all still fenced off inside the park.

So my thoughts on SFOT overall? It’s a decent park. It’s got a good selection of coasters with a good variety of ride experiences. Drawbacks from our visit were that operations were not great (which initially I put down to “Six Flags…”, but SFFT were doing a much better job, so maybe the SFOT teams just didn’t care very much. One train ops on almost all coasters, staff not being particularly attentive towards loading/unloading, and of course the heat, meant that queues and general ‘vibe’ weren’t as good as they could have been. It was disappointing, albeit not hugely unexpected, that Tormentor didn’t open. As I mentioned in the construction thread, I heard many people (I reckon at least a dozen groups) express surprise it wasn’t open for the start of the season. I guess that’s Six Flags for you… although maybe it’s just parks in general these days.

Start heading out of Texas next.

 

[Hixee]

Day 4 – Magic Springs & Hot Springs

As is commonplace when you start planning a trip, you start scouring the map for other parks. Magic Springs shows up conveniently on the way to Silver Dollar City from Dallas, so we slotted in a stop at Hot Springs.

Had an early drive up to Hot Springs, which was pleasant enough, and dropped my wife off in the city and headed up to the park. A somewhat extortionate $20 to park at Magic Springs, but such is life, and then headed over to the park entrance.

Now, I already knew the woodie was shut, but this was still a convenient +4 so figured I’d go for it anyway. At the front gate though, there was a sign noting that both Big Bad John and X Coaster were closed for the day. Had a quick chat with the ticket desk and they said that X Coaster hasn’t run in weeks, and Big Bad John looked unlikely to open today. That just leaves an SLC and some random kiddie cred. For $60 admission? Yeah, wasn’t feeling it. Debated for a little while with the staff that given half of their coasters are shut, that I’d like a refund for the parking and be on my way. Eventually they caved (after a few rounds of “but we have lots of other things to ride too”), and I sacked it off. Shame really, cos the setting of the park looked nice and it would have been good to tick off. One for another time if I’m ever back in the area… which feels unlikely…

So, headed into Hot Springs for a walk round and some drinks and dinner. Hot Springs somehow treads the line nicely between being a bit tourist tacky and actually quite quaint. It’s fair to say we had a nice few hours milling about and thankfully the temperatures were significantly lower than Dallas, so all in all it was a pleasant day out. I’d recommend taking a few hours in the town if you can. SQZBX pizza get’s a great double-thumbs up from me too!

And that was that for Day 4. Alpine creds tomorrow…

 

[Hixee]

Day 5 – Branson Alpine Coasters

Motoring through this trip report now – jetlagged in a hotel so got plenty of time to push through this.

The drive from Hot Springs up to Branson is rather lovely – lots of nice twisty roads and scenic views, so it was a pleasant few hours pootling along. Decided to add a stop into another ‘bowling alley cred’ to be able to tick off at least one Arkansan coaster, so first stop was Fast Lane Entertainment in Lowell.

Onwards to Branson now, and we opted to spend a bit of time this afternoon mopping up the +1s around the area. Firstly, the three alpine coasters in the area.

• Copperhead Mountain Coaster – very nice coaster, smooth and fast, but would have been nice to have a little bit more length. Second best in the area, I reckon.
• The Runaway Mountain Coaster – length on this one was impressive, but it’s an older model and you can feel it in a lot of the corners. It did have some good variation between terrain interaction and high-up sections though. Weakest one in the area overall.
• The Branson Coaster – feels a bit like it’s cheating with the second lift hill, but it does basically feel like two rides in one. It was also the smoothest and most interesting layout-wise. Not to mention the staff on this one were excellent and its location is so convenient. Best one in the area, I think.

My wife shared very similar views – she loves these alpine coasters and thoroughly enjoyed these!

Just down the road from The Branson Coaster is one of the Tracks parks (I’d visited a few of these along the Gulf Coast last year). Picked up the SBF cred, and then took a spin on the go karts – I always love these things and this one was no exception with a great downhill section to really make the kart engines whine!

That was about it for this day. We grabbed some dinner in ‘old town’ Branson (Tai Kitchen – again, recommend), and then called it a day.

One of the best parks in the world next…

 

[HeartlineCoaster]

Now, I already knew the woodie was shut, but this was still a convenient +4 so figured I’d go for it anyway. At the front gate though, there was a sign noting that both Big Bad John and X Coaster were closed for the day. Had a quick chat with the ticket desk and they said that X Coaster hasn’t run in weeks, and Big Bad John looked unlikely to open today. That just leaves an SLC and some random kiddie cred. For $60 admission? Yeah, wasn’t feeling it. Debated for a little while with the staff that given half of their coasters are shut, that I’d like a refund for the parking and be on my way.

Fair shout, place is nothing without the legendary Big Bad John!

 

[Hixee]

Day 6 – Silver Dollar City

Boy I was looking forward to this day. Silver Dollar City is one of my favourite parks, and I was excited to revisit and perhaps show my wife how ‘good’ a park can actually be.

Started the day with a short tram ride from the parking lot into the park, and made a beeline for Thunderation and Time Traveller.

Thunderation was, as I had remembered, truly excellent and I love the way it keeps building speed all the way down the hillside. It’s got such a great layout and was actually running very well given they’re retiring the ride – I was expecting much worse. This will be a big blow to the world of unique mine train coasters, but fingers crossed it’s replaced by something equally as fun and different.

Time Traveller was next door – and not to my wife’s taste – so I rode this alone. The start of the coaster is quite intimidating, especially from the station platform where the trains just disappear down the vertical drop, and I must say overall the ride experience was very good! It had great flow, good pacing and a good-but-not-excessive amount of spinning. Helped that being a single rider got me past most of the queue (no single rider line, but they were calling for single riders to help fill trains so I got to skip a fair bit of the queue).

Nabbed the kiddie cred on the way round, and then next up was [NEW] Fire In The Hole. Man this thing is awesome. Longest wait of the day, at around 45 minutes, but well worth it. It rides so well, keeps much of the original charm, and the “FIRE IN THE HOLE” sound effect as you hit the ride finale was goosebump inducing (both on the ride and thinking back to it now writing this). Would have loved to ride this a few more times, but it’s queue times never seemed to drop throughout the day, so we didn’t end up going for another lap, but yeah… awesome.

It was round to Wildfire next, which was a walk-on. Front row ride was enough to convince my wife to ride and she loved it. As did I – I think the setting of this coaster could be one of the best out there. The view from the lift hill, the layout and smoothness was exactly what I remembered and it was ear-to-ear smiles from us. I took another quick lap in the back row (also great) while it was a walk-on as it seemed rude not to!

Lunch stop next, and a park that has great food (including gluten free options), so we ended up getting some food and sitting by the waterfall in the middle of the park. Such a nice atmosphere and the love for this park was being firmly cemented in my mind.

We rode the train next, which was charming and entertaining, as well as offering up some great views of the coasters, particularly Outlaw Run. Although you do have to get lucky with the timing if you want to get a view/shot of the train flying round the track.

Headed for Outlaw Run next, and after Fire In The Hole the longest wait of the day as around 15 minutes. Hard to complain about that!

The ride is still holding up. It’s dynamic, fast, smooth and so much fun. I quickly hopped round for second lap and left feeling thoroughly impressed.

At this point, my wife decided cinnamon bread and watching some of the [brilliant] craftsmen stalls was in order, so I snuck off for another lap on Time Traveller. It was just as enjoyable a second time round, and the spinning adds such a great variety to each lap you take. Bothered to loiter for some shots out of the windows in the queue line too – thankfully managed to avoid most of the grubby fingerprints on the glass!

Timing was in our favour at this point, as we were just in time to join one of the Marvel Cave tours. I hadn’t done this before, and it seemed like a ‘missing from the SDC tick off list’ type of thing. Well… suffice to say it was great! The tour guide was entertaining and informative, and the formations are truly a marvel. The highlights for us being the view as you first enter the cave, their incessant reminders of how hard it would be to exit if the train broke down, and the train ride (which didn’t break down). It took about 90 minutes all in, so worth factoring in if you’re interested.

Powder Keg was suffering from reliability issues all day, but when we left Marvel Cave it was running so I made a beeline for that to hopefully get a ride (already had the cred, so was just another lap for nostalgia). Sadly, just as I got into the queue it went down again and they advised us all to leave the queue as they couldn’t guarantee they’d have it open again before the park shut. Oh well, my memories will have to suffice.

We decided the day had been such a success that we’d call it there (I’m not one for these mega-marathons anymore – even with walk-on rides), so we headed back to the car.

So… did Silver Dollar City live up to my memory? Heck. Yes. This park is wonderful. Those who’ve been will know, but it’s such a charming park and such a pleasant place to be, but it’s got some excellent coasters and their operations were great. My wife loved it too – bingo – “this is what the hobby is all about” I excitedly kept telling her and by the end of the day she ‘got it’. It’s a bit of a pain to get to, but I encourage you to make the effort. I can’t wait to go back… lord knows how long it’ll be (I say, with a heavy heart).

A lot of less good stuff coming up, but some good experiences along the way.

 

[Hixee]

Day 7 – Frontier City & Oklahoma City

Okay, the larger journey West starts now…

First stop was another “pizza cred”, as we came to know them – a few of these coming up. The Incredible Pizza Company places are a bit weird. In general, they won’t let you into the venue at all unless you buy the all-you-can-eat meal ticket, then the attraction ticket on top. North of $30 for a crappy SBF Visa isn’t palatable to me, but it turns out with a bit of batting the eyelids and making it clear I would still pay the attraction ticket, they let me in. As we found out later in the trip, if you arrive at these places closer to closing time (check their websites), they close the buffet and it’s a bit easier to convince them to let you in. Also worth noting that they run the coaster at specific intervals (e.g. 13:00 to 13:30, 14:00 to 14:30, etc), and you can’t – or rather, I couldn’t – look it up online so have to take a bit of a punt here.

Anyway, Tulsa’s Incredible Pizza Company first.

Next.

Dropped my wife at a shiny new hotel in Oklahoma City for a bit of downtime, and I headed over to Frontier City. I didn’t really know what to expect from this park – most the stuff I’ve heard over the last few years has hardly been glowing reviews, but I’ll say that overall the park is fine. It’s small, lacks a bit of modern investment, and feels more like a local park than a Six Flags/Cedar Fair park, but it was a pleasant couple of hours. I just ticked off the creds in order as I got to them – pictures are not in the same order due to lapping the park riding first, then doing another little lap taking photos.

Rode Diamondback first. It’s been years since I rode Revolution at Blackpool and I forgot that these things actually have some decent forces. It was only let down by some horrendously childish ride-ops just screaming (and I mean, full barrel top of voice level stuff) at each other and some friends they had on the train. Too long in a scream-off and not enough time operating the ride – so much so I nearly debated heading to guest services, it was awful.

Next up was the kiddie cred, swiftly followed by their invert. All nice and simple. Silver Bullet was next, and was riding pretty well overall. These models (or the very similar variants of) are very good, solid coasters in a relatively compact footprint.

Finally it was Wildcat – with the longest wait of the day at around 20 minutes. Bit rough around the edges, and only a small coaster really, but it was good fun. The only thing I bothered having a second lap on.

Attempted to ride the ferris wheel for the photos, but was denied due to being on my own and making the gondolas “too unstable”… okay…

Anyway, yeah, overall a decent park but not one I’d bother revisiting. The weather was threatening to turn, so I didn’t stick around much longer and headed out.

Last but not least, Oklahoma City’s Incredible Pizza Company (or Incredible Pizza Company [openbrackets] Oklahoma City [closebrackets], lord knows why Tulsa’s version has a different formatting of name – I’m guessing some sort of franchise thing?). Staff member here was nice and after trying to sell me the full buffet and realising I just wanted the cred, let me nip in for free and ride the coaster and decline to take my money as I was leaving again. That was nice of him.

Got back to the hotel and freshened up a bit, before heading out for dinner. It was a nice little neighbourhood with a bunch of bars and restaurants and a nice lively atmosphere. We didn’t stick around much, I must admit, but food was decent.

Peter Kay running round in my head for the next day.

 

[Hixee]

Day 8 – Wonderland Amusement Park & Amarillo

It was a reasonably long, but easy, drive from Oklahoma City to Amarillo, with us arriving bang on the scheduled opening time of Wonderland Amusement Park. Park seemed deserted, with no life whatsoever, so after a quick skim through social media it turns out they’d decided to open the park a couple of hours later due to a looming storm. Heavens opened quite soon after, so we opted to check in to the hotel and check back in a bit later.

Thankfully, a couple of hours later and the storm had (temporarily) passed, and all signs pointed to the park being open. We made the short drive back through town and parked up to see people in the park and rides running – great!

Little bit of operational faff at first, with Texas Tornado only being able to run with 14 or more riders – there were hardly any adults in the park at this point, so I cut my losses and instead headed for Cyclone. A bit more faff here as they were having some issues with the station brakes (something linked to water getting inside one of the old-school pneumatics on the brakes), but they got it up and running soon enough. The ride itself was… brutal. Virtually impossible to brace against the crazy changes in direction, and we both left with some sizable bruises on our arms! Funny, but not that good…

Park was showing some more signs of life, so I headed into the queue for Texas Tornado. I was expecting this to be quite awful, but I must admit it was actually pretty decent. Some terrible transitions and weird shaping (the ‘infamous’ loops were the least of it!), but it actually wasn’t particularly violent and quite nice to tick off one of those creds you’ve seen pictures of for almost your entire stint as an enthusiast!

By this point, their Galaxi was also running, so we took a couple of laps on that (my wife quite likes these), and lamented the fact their Vekoma was down for longer term maintenance.

We also took a lap on their ghost train “Fantastic Journey” – which is strangely only included once in their unlimited wristband offer. It was a journey, I’ll give them that, but it was not at all fantastic. Sets broken, janky, and frankly a bit of a waste of time. Not entirely sure why they’re limiting rides on it – I can’t imagine people wanting to lap it much…

The park itself is nothing to write home about (he says, writing the trip report), but Texas Tornado was worth the visit and the other +1s were at least entertaining enough.

On the way back from the park, we chanced the ever-darkening skies and headed out to the other ‘famous’ Amarillo sight – Cadillac Ranch. As you’ll see from the pictures, we only just made it without getting drenched (just after we got back in the car it was torrential – and stayed that way for most of the evening). A good one of those “Route 66 things you see pictures of” visited though!

We retired back to the hotel for an early night, as we had quite a big day and early start coming up next.

 

[Hixee]

Day 9 – Cliff’s & Western Playland

This day started bright and early with the drive to Albuquerque from Amarillo. New Mexico state-cred ticked off, but we wouldn’t be staying overnight – was just a chance to tag on Cliff’s to the trip as it seemed like the sort of place that would be hard to justify on another trip.

We arrived at Cliff’s just as the park opened, which was as intended, albeit did end up standing in the baking sun for a while as security checks ensued. Felt a lot longer than it probably was in reality, but that New Mexico sun wasn’t taking any prisoners!

Once in, I made a beeline towards New Mexico Rattler, the main reason I had added this park. Ride was nearly a walk-on, so soon enough I was heading up the lift hill. I hadn’t really looked up much about this ride before the trip, and was pleasantly surprised at this coaster. It was a lot longer than I expected it to be, and was riding really well. Forces were decent, layout was varied and interesting, and the way it ducks and weaves around the whole park is quite fun. I went back for a re-ride later on, but the heat (and tiredness) did mean I wasn’t going to be lapping it much.

I quickly ticked off the SBF Visa underneath one of the turnarounds, and then headed for the Galaxi coaster. This was riding great, with smooth transitions and a great sense of speed throughout – much more so than the one the day before.

With that, and a few photos taken, it was back on the road towards El Paso.

We ended up going for dinner when we arrived, and then checked into the hotel. I think mostly in a bid to avoid the worse heat of the day, but as the sun was lowering the sky I headed out to Western Playland. This is a slightly strange little park – with rides spread out around some sort of arena (not sure if this is ever used for anything – it certainly didn’t look like it from my visit). Easy to navigate, but a Sunday evening was clearly popular season as most rides had a moderate queue (~20 mins for the two larger coasters).

Started off with a go on another Galaxi-type ride, which was in less good shape than the one from earlier in the day, but still fun enough. Then headed over to Hurricane, which was only running with two of the three cars full, so the queue for this one dragged a bit. Ride itself was nothing much of note, but the sun setting in the background did add to the ambience somewhat.

After polishing off the kiddie cred, I took a quick lap on the chairlift thing, which offered up some great sunset views of the park.

Once I’d called it a day at Western Playland, I took a route home via the scenic drive overlooking El Paso and Juarez. This was clearly a popular sunset spot, with cars littering the sides of the road all along the drive. The views were very nice though, and although I missed the sunset itself, it was worth the drive up. We went back up first thing in the morning too (see tomorrow’s trip report), to see the view when it was a bit quieter.

A break from the creds tomorrow, just the long drive back to San Antonio.

 

[Hixee]

Day 10 – The Long Drive

Nice simple one today – the 550-odd mile drive from El Paso to San Antonio. We stared off the day heading back up the viewpoint in El Paso for a coffee before we hit the road.

We did have a bit of faff at a Border Patrol checkpoint where they were a bit perplexed by an ESTA and took us 10-15 minutes and half a dozen officers (with menacingly large guns slung over their shoulders) before they realised this was totally normal and above board.

Anyway, all very simple really. It was a very easy drive and lots of interesting scenery along the way too. We were pretty wiped out once we hit the hotel though, which was thankfully very nice, so we retired early and slept like logs!

 

[Hixee]

Day 11 – SeaWorld San Antonio

We didn’t visit SeaWorld on the Texas trip back in 2013, so this was an entirely new park to me. Queues looked sizable at the entrance, but once we got through the gates it became clear it was just the bottleneck at security, and for the most part the park was relatively quiet all day.

We started the day on their new-ish family coaster Beach Rescue Racer – turned out to be a good call, as it had a sizeable queue all day but was walked on straight away right at park opening.

Moved our way round next to Barracuda Strike. Some pre-coaster experience observations on this coaster – 1) it looks brilliant, the colours, the shaping and the interaction above the paths and lake, 2) the seats are comfortable, 3) the restraints are surprisingly tight (the way the shaping of the restraint meets the seat means that the ‘lobes’ on each side pinch you slightly).

As for the ride experience itself? Rubbish. All of the promise the layout holds is trashed as soon as the train starts moving through the track. It’s rough and it judders throughout the layout, even on the slower sections. An absolutely terrible performance from B&M. Didn’t even consider a re-ride. Such a shame.

Right next door is Steel Eel, also a walk-on (all day). This was great! The ride was smooth, airtime was gentle but sustained and fast, and the pacing was spot on. This was so much fun, we ended up riding it the most on our visit. Amazing to see this holding up so well after all these years.

We hopped on Wave Breaker next, which was also very enjoyable, before I took a quick lap Texas Stingray. This was also riding fantastically – great long layout, great variation of forces and good ducking and weaving interaction with itself. Very, very good.

Took a much needed go on Journey To Atlantis to cool off, before grabbing a bite to eat for lunch. Food was fine, but glad we had the passholder discounts to bring the price down as it was rather steep!

Spent a bit of time re-riding stuff (most notably Steel Eel), and mid-afternoon Catapult Falls opened so I was pleased to be able to try this out. The launched section was quite novel, and the large drop was a good finale. Wetness was also good, without being ridiculous.

Timing had come for the Orca Encounter show, which was actually very good. Clearly a lot of ‘positive messages’ being said throughout, and the performances from both the animals and staff were very good, with a good narrative throughout (versus what I remember from seeing the Shamu show back in 2006 which was basically just “STUNTS”).

We hopped on a few more re-rides, before heading out of the park for the day. Overall, we really enjoyed our day. I had mentally prepared for this to be a long day with big queues, but this day ended up being very leisurely and great fun. Sadly Great White was down for longer term maintenance, but you can’t win them all! The park has a nice feel to it too – with a good variety of rides, decent tree cover and everything was tidy and nicely presented.

We headed into the San Antonio Riverwalk for dinner, which we really enjoyed. The ambience was lovely and I really enjoyed the escape from the ‘big city’ feel of the rest of San Antonio. Bit touristy and overpriced, perhaps, but it was lovely to be fair.

Mixed up the plans for tomorrow, more on that next.

 

[Matt N]

Great reports so far @Hixee; it’s a shame you didn’t get to ride Tormenta, but it looks like you had fun regardless!

The review that particularly surprised me so far is Barracuda Strike. I’m surprised to hear it rides so badly; I know new B&Ms have garnered a bit of a reputation for being rattly, but I personally find the rattle on Nemesis Reborn, another invert, massively overstated and largely benign, so to hear of a brand new B&M invert being actively quite rough is disheartening.

 

[Hixee]

The review that particularly surprised me so far is Barracuda Strike. I’m surprised to hear it rides so badly; I know new B&Ms have garnered a bit of a reputation for being rattly, but I personally find the rattle on Nemesis Reborn, another invert, massively overstated and largely benign, so to hear of a brand new B&M invert being actively quite rough is disheartening.

I'm not sure I would say Nemesis Reborn is particularly bad. Probably disappointing given it's brand new and the old one rode so well, but it rides just fine. Barracuda Strike is genuinely shocking, especially as it's nothing like as forceful as Nemesis. Maybe the intensity of Nemesis hides it a bit better?

 

[Hixee]

Day 12 – Austin Creds

Some needless backstory. I had been hoping that #1000 would happen on this trip. With Magic Springs and Cotaland being written off, and then a few other miscellaneous closures along the way (Shockwave at SFOT, Hornet at Wonderland, Great White at SWSA) the ‘safety margin’ has deteriorated to only one cred. I had hoped #1000 would be something someway notable, and the original plan of doing Six Flags Fiesta Texas first followed by some of the +1s in/around Austin, would have left #1000 being something completely unremarkable. My wife was after a chilled day at the hotel and had a few personal things to catch up on with her family, so I decided to swap the days round and knock out the +1s today, and leave Six Flags for tomorrow. Hope being that I could get #1000 on something like Wonder Woman.

Spoilers, if you’ve not seen my post in “worst spite”, but the trick didn’t work out…

Anyway…

Started off heading up to Ausin (which in theory is a simple drive, but there’s a lot of construction going on on I-35 so it’s relatively tedious going), and made the first stop at Tom Foolery’s.

They seemed to be having issues with the restraints not unlocking on the Big Air car, so I just rode in one of the normal cars (which was fine by me, I must confess), and then a quick lap on the kiddie coaster, and was in and out of this park within half an hour.

Next up was Austin’s, another +2. Barreling Rapids was enjoyable enough for a larger SBF Visa model, and then it was outside to ride the shameful Fiesta Express. Another goon was here too – I think we’re very easy to spot at places like this – but we both ended up riding alone due to the timing. Peak enthusiast.

So then it was heading back down towards San Antonio. I’d somewhat accidentally missed an alpine coaster on the map when first planning out this trip, but made the detour out towards Camp Fimfo on the hope of getting their alpine coaster. Quite a pleasant drive out through the hills to this park, and a slightly odd entrance (this coaster is located deep inside a camping/sports/family park thing, and the website implies you need to park at the entrance and get a shuttle down to the park, but on arrival the signage wasn’t very clear and it turns out you can just drive yourself into the park – or at least, I could on the day I was there). Parked up by the coaster and saw people riding, so headed up to the coaster. A slightly confusing conversation ensued.

“Hi, where can I get a ticket to ride the coaster?”
“Ah, you’ll need to head into the ticket office (gestures towards an adjacent building), but you won’t be able to ride the coaster at the moment.”
“Okay thanks, but… it’s operating now?”
“Yeah, but we operate the coaster on time slots.”
“Sure, so I guess I’m here during one of those time slots so I can get a ticket?”
“No, cos now we’re in one of the time slots, you can’t buy tickets for this slot anymore.”
“Huh…? Okay… well when’s the next time slot?”
“Oh you’ll have to ask at the ticket office.”
“Okay, thanks.”

In fairness to this kid (clearly some 17 year old working on his summer vacation), he was clearly just repeating the rules he’d been told. I thought I’d go and check at the ticket office. Sadly, similar conversation ensued.

Basically, they were running the coaster for 30 minutes starting on the hour. Once this 30 minute window starts, you can no longer buy tickets for this window and have to wait for the next one. So despite arriving at around five-past, during an operating window, I would have had to wait for 55 minutes to be able to ride the coaster. Urgh, what a faffy and annoying system.

I’ll confess by this point I was a bit fed up with cred-spite, and having had such a nice evening in the Riverwalk the day before, I sacked if off knowing I’d probably have a better spend of the ~$20 enjoying a drink down there than waiting it out for another small alpine coaster.

So yeah, headed back into San Antonio for another evening pottering around the Riverwalk. All very lovely in the sunset.

More Six Flags, and last day of creds, next.

 

[Hixee]

Day 13 – Six Flags Fiesta Texas

Another Six Flags park just down the road from the hotel, meant we were easily there at park opening and right at the front of the preferred parking area. Parking lot was quiet, which was good news, and we were quickly into the park before opening.

Chupacabra was running already, so I grabbed that cred (we were rained off from this back in 2013). Colour scheme was excellent, and it rode very well.

We walked round to the ‘rope drop’ area, which offered some good views of Iron Rattler testing, and once the rides had opened staff were quick in getting trains loaded and dispatched. Iron Rattler is particularly hard to photograph due to it’s setting (most of the ride either being up on the cliffside or hidden behind other rides), but there’s a good shot available of the train diving back off the cliff.

Dr Diabolical had been having some teething problems first thing, but it opened by the time we’d done the mine train and Iron Rattler. The queue for this is a bit faffy, with a mandatory pre-show even with only half-a-dozen of us in the queue. Fine the first time, I suppose, but a bit annoying for re-rides.

The ride itself was actually very good. The drop was good (though I can’t say I particularly noticed the beyond vertical element), and the layout had some decent forces. Had hoped the ejector hill (who’s shaping looks pretty nuts off ride) would deliver a bit more, but there was very little roughness to the ride and a free choice of rows was nice.

We took another lap on the mine train before heading round to the DC area. Superman was first up, and was running great. A nice old-school B&M, and I’ve always liked the interaction with the cliffs on this one – inspired many a RCT and NL ride over the years! Only gripe here was the slightly odd baggage storage situation at the bottom of the stairs, which does not instil confidence that your stuff isn’t going to get damaged or stolen.

Finally, I arrived at Wonder Woman. I was exited to ride this – my first RMC Single Rail – and from off ride the pacing of it looks wild. How did it ride? Well. It’s very dynamic, fast and forceful, so all good news there, but it was quite rough and the shaping of the elements did lead to some awkward transitions (something I’ve slated RMC for several times in the past – your body is moving in one direction and the train yanks you in the other). I also think the seating position - or rather, how this seating position forces you to climb on and off the train – is a bit crap. Similarly silly baggage system too – in my case resulting in someone’s drink being spilled all over my bad (thankfully just water, and no damage done). So yeah… I wanted to love this, but I couldn’t quite.

Okay, all the big stuff done now. Quick rattle through the rest of the creds:

• Batman – meh, just as crap as the others.
• Boomerang – horrible +1.
• Pandemonium – this was down for most of the day, but thankfully opened at one point for me to grab the +1.
• Batgirl – pleasant +1.

I didn’t bother with Poltergeist as I already had the cred and the queue was a bit unappealing. We also took a ride on the train for some shade and a scenic sit down, which was a nice break. Grabbed another few rides on Dr Diabolical and Iron Rattler, before heading out of the park.

Sounds like a pretty average day, but the park was quiet and rides were being operated well, so it was quite chilled out and despite the heat didn’t feel too tiring overall. I quite like this park – it’s got a good selection of solid rides, and the setting in the cliffside is a nice change from the usual Six Flags affair.

We drove up to Austin in the evening and stopped for dinner at Torchy’s. A bit more commercial than I expected, but man the food here was good! Would recommend if you’re looking for some nice, simple, tasty and quick Tacos.

Checked into our final hotel of the trip, and had a chilled evening with some beers watching some TV.

That wraps up the coasters for this trip, but one more day of sightseeing stuff left before this trip report comes to an end.

 

[Hixee]

Day 14 – Austin

Alright then, last proper day. No creds, so feel free to skip to the summary.

We started off the day with lunch at Leeroy & Lewis, a highly acclaimed BBQ spot in Austin. There was a sizable queue for the walk-up line (reservations only have access to a more limited menu) – turns out the longest queue of the trip! – but it’s fair to say the food was excellent.

I’ve always taken the chance to visit the state capitol buildings when available, so we popped up to the capitol building and took one of the free tours. These are always good (at least, in my opinion of the few I’ve done), and it took us through the various representative and senate rooms, as well as some of the key artwork and viewpoints. Good way to spend an hour or so, and we walked the grounds afterwards for some more views of the (in my opinion, rather attractive) pink granite building.

After that, we did a bit of souvenir shopping for family, and crashed out at the hotel.

 

[Hixee]

Day 15 – Departure

No pictures from today, but we had a pretty chilled day before our flight at dinner time. We checked out of the hotel, grabbed a Waffle House for brunch (which was exactly as chaotic and tasty as you want it to be), headed to the cinema (Disclosure Day – s’alright) to have some time out of the heat, and headed over to the airport for our flight home. Easy-peasy.

 

[Hixee]

Summary

New creds: 49
Total creds ridden: 80
Total cred spites: 4
New parks: 18
Total parks visited: 21

Milestones: Just missed 1000!

Best Park:
Silver Dollar City – I mean, it’s gotta be, right? This park is awesome. I love the coasters, the scenery, the atmosphere, the ‘vibe’, the whole place is just great. Easily one of my favourite parks in the world, and I enjoyed getting to revisit and showing my wife around the park. Notable shoutout to Six Flags Fiesta Texas too – tough in the heat, but I did enjoy the day there.

Best Cred: This one’s quite tough – it’s probably a split between Outlaw Run, Iron Rattler and Dr Diabolical, though in writing this trip report I think the coaster we both (my wife and I) enjoyed the most together was Steel Eel. We had such a laugh on this.

And the route(s):

Green = Transportation, Blue = Nights, Red = Parks

Overall this trip, despite being so tantalizingly close to #1000, was a lot of fun. Whilst ostensibly being a coaster trip, there was actually probably an even split between creds and culture, which meant the whole thing felt quite laid back, and definitely how I like these trips to feel these days. Tormenta and Cotaland being the main disappointments, but it’s likely I’ll be back in the Austin area for work in the next year or two, so I’ll hopefully tack those on at some point soon.

Thanks for reading and hope the pictures made it more enjoyable!

 

[Hixee]

Bonus – Castles n’ Coasters

Bonus day! Well, not part of the original trip, but in close proximity both in time and distance (in relative terms), so I’m going to include it here.

I was in Phoenix for work (which annoyingly couldn’t align itself with my previous trip, so spent far too much time flying basically the same route from the UK), and whilst most of the trip was work focussed, I had a bit of time after everything finished up to explore a little bit of the local area.

Started off with a trip up to Tortilla Flats – a scenic drive heading north-east-ish towards… well… nowhere much. At some point along the drive the road turns into a gravel track. Probably safely passable in any car, but there’s a point along the way where the road becomes particularly ‘off-road’ and I didn’t fancy the capability of my cruddy little Nissan Versa (which was happily outpaced by 18-wheelers on motorway entrances) and getting stuck and missing my flight!

All quite picturesque and I’d like to re-do this drive in a more capable car on day in the future and carry on all the way to Roosevelt Lake. From there it was a 2-ish hour drive over to Castles n’ Coasters. Parked up, checked the coasters were running, bought a ticket online (to make sure I got the discount!), and got ready to brave the heat.

Rides opened promptly at 5pm, but as I was there slightly before I took a quick lap on the go karts first. Once I’d finished with this, I headed up to Desert Storm – their most notable coaster.

The ride was actually pretty good. I was expecting much worse, but for the most part it was smooth and tracked pretty well. The most jarring moment was the exit of the second loop, which harks back to old NL creations when you couldn’t get the banking to work properly on the vertical section. Laughable though, not awful.

The only ‘watch it’ with this coaster is that they only run it every 15 minutes unless there are 10 or more riders. Given how quiet the park was, this did mean a ~12 minute wait depending on your timing. In this heat (see previous picture of 116°F / 47°C air temperature) it was a bit brutal though. Thankfully there was a breeze and shade in the station!

Tucked away at the back of the park is Patriot – their other Hopkins coaster, which is a kiddie coaster of sorts. This coaster has a slightly interesting entrance, with a very tight spiral staircase up and over the track. Thankfully they were being pretty good running this one, and I was on pretty quickly. You get two laps, and the layout is pretty pleasant overall. The final helix is surprisingly intense, and there’s a few moments on the ride where it’s unexpectedly rough, but overall it’s a pretty enjoyable ride.

Why not a little summary for this bonus segment too?

New creds: 2
Total creds ridden: 3
Total cred spites: 0
New parks: 1
Total parks visited: 1

Milestones: None

Best Park: Erm… seems a bit moot.

Best Cred: Desert Storm, obviously, but not much competition.

Okay, that’s it for this summer’s American adventures. Thanks for reading!

 

[Hutch]

Good work on prioritizing the "good" parks with your wife and allowing her to skip the cred whoring/do other things. That'd be a slog for anyone who's not an enthusiast, but also don't want to give them the wrong impression of the hobby by showing them all the bad parks!

I still need some of these notable parks (it's blasphemous I haven't done SDC and SFFT yet), but I doubt I'll get to the other crap anytime soon. I do like the idea of doing more of a southwestern road/hiking trip far off in the future... at the very least would try to tie in New Mexico Rattler!