More “Abandoned” Six Flags America
My wife and son were recovered enough (and no longer contagious) to get out of the house yesterday, so we spent half a day at Six Flags America. I really enjoyed putting together my previous post, “ Six Flags America: Abandoned, Backstage, and Closed”; so I had planned to take a couple more pictures of the water park (from the parking lot) to add to that post in the comments. However, we ended up finding enough material for a separate, sequel post.
I took these pictures from the parking lot on my way in to the front gate. Nobody was parked this far back, because the park (having just recently opened for the year, and the temperature still being in the forties and fifties) isn’t very crowded yet - which is as I prefer it. So, I had to walk a bit out of my way to get close enough for these shots. I got these while Q and Richard were already in the park, and grabbing lunch (on Six Flags’ new meal plan). I met up with them at the swing ride as soon as I’d finished snapping pictures on my way in.
These pictures were taken within the park, and are the entrance to the Hurricane Harbor area. For most of the year, this entrance is open. In the fall, the water park is closed down again and used for costuming/makeup for the various monsters and zombies that haunt the park during Fright Fest. (If you hang around here in the evening, you can see them staggering out on their way to their positions.) Right now, however, it’s just empty and unused.
Another sign that the park isn’t crowded or busy yet is that they have yet to open the Flash Pass booth.
The fountain was on last week, but it was’t turned on yesterday. It did get a new paint job, though; it was looking rather old at the end of last year. They still haven’t replaced the fife-player’s missing instrument, though.
I just thought this was a good picture of a bench. Nothing to see here, move along.
After I rendezvoused with Q and Richard, she told me she’d seen another closed-off area looking down from the swings. We investigated, and found another fenced-off area. The first picture above looks like it used to be the entrance to whatever-that-was, and the second picture looks like it was the exit (and is now a smoking area - you can tell by the blue benches that they use to mark smoking areas).
Q asked a couple of employees, but they had no idea what was in that area. I took a few pictures through openings in the fence. Whatever ride used to be there is gone; but it didn’t have a very large footprint, and appeared to have taken up a roughly circular area. There were some vehicles in there, which could have indicated that they were leftover from the mystery ride; or they could have just been dumped there from somewhere else in the park. Given that there was also a wooden lobster and some skeletal torsos in there, “dump” seemed as good a guess as any.
To the best of our recollection, these weren’t there last year, either. They dumped some piratey props along one of the paths leading to the area with pirate-themed rides. I wonder if they were also left over from that pirate water ride I mentioned last time, that was broken down and recycled into several other rides.
I’ve only personally seen this stage in use during Fright Fest; but according to some pictures Q took last summer when they went to the park without me, it is occasionally used for some children’s events during the year. (This is not the only, or the largest, stage in the park; but it is the only one completely open to the outside.)
They used to do a Batman stunt show in the Gotham Arena (I have a picture or two from when Richard was still a baby), but now it’s pretty much sealed shut all the time except for the occasional special event. (There was a concert there one night last year; but no one we’d ever heard of, so we didn’t bother going in.)
Q spotted that you could see into the Gotham Arena from The Wild One roller coaster, so I snapped this picture from the ride’s exit.
Remember the Batmobile I photographed in the woods last time? This is where it’s parked when it’s on display.
This is another smoking area (note the blue benches). Normally we ignore those (since we don’t smoke), but as they tend to be crammed into corners and out of the way, I decided to see what was visible from those vantage points. In the second picture, note another view of that disused tower behind the Apocalypse roller coaster.
In the Gotham City area are several games of skill. At one booth, I won a penguin hat for Q playing Whack-a-Mole. This was in the same area, and apparently used to be part of another game of skill both, but now contains a wheelchair and a first aid kit. We saw more of those scattered about the park for quick and easy access.
Most of the (non-water) rides were running yesterday, despite the cold and wind, but the Superman roller coaster wasn’t.
I couldn’t see anything beyond this gate except for that fire hydrant, so I guess that’s where fire engines pull up and connect if there’s a fire nearby. This was located in between the Superman roller coaster (obviously) and the children’s Whistlestop Railway area (which has a lot of wooden construction).
Speaking of Whistlestop, anyone who has children (particularly boys) of a certain age will recognize this building as the Tidmouth Sheds from Thomas the Tank Engine’s island of Sodor, only with a different paint job and sign. That’s because this whole section of the park used to be Thomas-themed. We only saw it after Six Flags terminated the license and gave everything in the area a more generic appearance. We were still able to spot the similarities.
We went on the Penguin’s Blizzard River, which is open because it isn’t considered a water ride (I asked) despite all of the, you know, water. Anyway, at one point near the end of the ride you pass this concrete penguin which used to spray water from a pipe in its mouth but now just kinda sits there.
Behind the ride is another concrete penguin, beside a gravel path that leads down to the pavillion area. This path is for park personnel only; on the other side of the Penguin ride there’s a footpath to the pavillion area for guests (who don’t want to wait for the train, I guess); this path is only open to those guests who are part of a group using the pavillion (and is also used to exit from the haunted path through the woods during Fright Fest).
This is the overflow line area for the Roar roller coaster when (during the summer) the lines are long enough to need it. Right now, you can bypass this and head straight up toward the platform (and line up there). This was also used to hold the line for the Blood Factory during last year’s Fright Fest. (That’s where Q worked, and it was inside one of the buildings to the rear.)
And to the left of that line area was stored a boat for the spashdown ride.
The Pirate Stunt Show Arena also looks old and abandoned, but that’s because it’s supposed to.
We took a shortcut through one of the little children areas, and I was pretty sure there used to be a ride here, on the circular concrete pad under those chairs and tables. I went back through my old pictures of coming here when Richard was a baby, and found that there used to be a small kiddie carrousel here. (Behind the circular concrete pad is a square one, over by the trash cans, which is where the control booth was set.) I’m not sure why they took this down without having something else to put in its place, unless they decided the park only needed one carrousel - Or it had something to do with lost extremeties:
