Six Flags Darien Lake
Darien Center, New York
By Nate Kohlrusch
August 14, 2000
Note: I use the Griswold scale of �3 to +5, with 0 being slightly favorable.
THE PARK: General Impressions: +3
If you go to Six Flags Darien Lake, plan on a lot of walking. The park has one of the
stupidest layouts I have ever seen, making it impossible to just do one
sweep through the park. I thought the themed areas at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom were bad (T2
Area, Chang Area, etc.) until I got to SFDL, where the only themed areas
are "Midway", "Superman: Ride of Steel Complex", "Main Street",
"Darien Square", and "Looney Toons Seaport". And trust me - there's no
way of knowing which themed (or not themed, as the case may be) area
you're in.
The park has five coasters, and overall it leaves something to be
desired. The parks only woodie, Predator, is horrible. A CCI here would
be great. The other coasters are an Arrow Megalooper (yawn), a
boomerang, an SLC, and (the only decent coaster) an Intamin hyper.
I also found the lack of park boundaries to be odd, to say the least.
The boomerang is located across from a large open field of grass leading
to a lake, which isn't even roped off. Sometimes it felt as if I were
no longer in the park at all. SFDL has a gotten a good start, but the
park has a long way to go. I also found Six Flags' varying opening
times to be confusing (some parks open at 10, some at 11, and some, like
SFDL, open at 10:30). This meant I spent a lot of time waiting for them
to open the gates, which didn't make me happy to begin with. There's
still a mad dash for S:ROS in the morning, so be prepared to run. Of
course, they let the campground people in first, so I still had to wait
for S:ROS. Grrrr....
One last bit before I start with the coasters. By this point in my trip,
I was so completely sick of fast food, so I finally got some really
decent food at SFDL. There's a nice Italian restaurant near Hook's
Lagoon called Maria's Spaghetti House. The food here was great, and
there were free refills! The service here was lacking, but this is a Six Flags park. I also saw some other nice
sit-down restaurants in the park, so at least they have the food variety
down. Now if they'd work on the layout, the theming, the coaster
selection, etc.
SUPERMAN: RIDE OF STEEL - 1999 Intamin Out & Back Hypercoaster. + 4.5
Beautiful ride. From the back, the first drop is fantastic, and every bit as good as the drop on Millennium
Force. But the rest of the ride is entirely a front seat ride. The
second hill is a bit too tall, and the airtime suffers. The helices are
nice, but I would have preferred some swooping turns instead. The large
hill on the way back is great, and the bunny hops are incredible.
S:ROS features some of the most violent ejector air I have ever
experienced. They only ran one train all day, and I overheard a
maintenance guy saying they need to replace one of the wheels on the blue
train. But the blue train just sat there all day! This, of course, made
the lines extremely long (more than an hour) all day, meaning I only got
in two rides. Overall, the ride is good for speed on the helices, and
for nice airtime. But there's just too much dead track, especially after
the turnaround. Still a good ride, though. Now if only I could ride
SFNE's�(*sigh*
BOOMERANG: COAST TO COASTER - 1998 Vekoma Boomerang. +3.5
My first boomerang, and I really liked it. This particular boomerang is
fast and smooth, and gave a nice ride. As I've stated in the past, I love
going backwards on coasters. I'd certainly be happy with a boomerang in
my backyard. I wish Vekoma would modify the design a little, though (not
just make it taller, as they are) and perhaps add different types of
inversions, just for variety. Yeah, right, like that's ever going to
happen�(another *sigh* here)
PREDATOR - 1990 Curtis D. Summers out and back woodie. PTC trains. +.5.
Bad ride. Bad, bad ride. The trains do not track well at all, and there's a lot of
shuffling and bouncing around. There's no real airtime, either. I saw
on the side of the operator's panel there's a few plaques declaring
Predator is such a great coaster. One of them is from one of Inside
Track's Reader's Poll. Hmmmm�I guess I missed the ride while it was
good. It's in a beautiful location along the water, but unfortunately,
it's a piece of junk. (and another *sigh*).
MIND ERASER-1997 Vekoma SLC. +3.5
This is my favorite of the three SLCs I've ridden. There wasn�t a line for this all day, so I got several consecutive rides. I think the layout problem is to blame here, as it�s located far away from any other major attractions. What works best to minimize banging is
to push out on your OTSRs so your back is pressed hard into the seat. As is, though, this one is fast and relatively smooth.
Personally, I like SLCs (especially the fantastic drop next to the
station) though, of course, I'd like to see a little more variety.
VIPER-1982 Arrow Megalooper (5 loops). +1.5.
The brochure for SFDL describes Viper as having "Five upside loops." I never found out what the difference between an �upside down loop� and a regular loop is, but all five are inversions here. J
Viper is a
typical Arrow looper and, of course, quite painful. The helix in an
underground tunnel is nice and sets the ride apart from other Arrows.
It�s an okay ride, but nothing I'd wait in line for. It was on
Viper that I realized that I gray out on every single Arrow vertical
loop. I don't mind it (actually, I think it's fun) but it stuck me as
odd. I could see SFDL changing the name to Riddler something (since it's
already green). This could work well with the location next to the
Batman show. Then I'll start praying for a good B&M.
Next stop: Six Flags Ohio.
-Nate
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