Thrill seekers: 2 new rides open this year at Six Flags Over Texas in Arlington
When she was 8, Andrea Luttrell experienced her first roller coaster at Six Flags Over Texas.
“I remember just being terrified of it,” Luttrell said. “But the minute I got on it, I just loved the physical sensation of sort of flying and the anticipation of it and the feeling that I had conquered this fear.”
Ever since, Luttrell has been riding roller coasters regularly. The only time she stopped was for the two years of the pandemic.
Luttrell and other thrill-seekers will have two new rides to try this spring and summer at Six Flags Over Texas: Aquaman: Power Wave and Pirates of Speelunker Cave.
“They’re going to be really new kinds of coasters, so people wouldn’t have experienced them before,” Luttrell said. She recently wrote about the new Texas coasters for Texas Highways magazine.
Pirates of Speelunker Cave is a reinvention of The Speelunker’s Cave, also known as The Cave, a dark ride that ran from 1964-1991. It opens May 14. Six Flags Over Texas pass holders can get a special preview of the ride May 13.
Pirates of Speelunker Cave will take the place of a similar ride, Yosemite Sam and the Gold River Adventure, which opened in 1992 and closed in 2018.
“With all the technological advances and the storytelling that we’re going to be able to do in that ride, it’s really paying homage to the past, but providing a state of the art ride for guests to enjoy well into the future,” said Brad Malone, a Six Flags Over Texas spokesperson.
The family-friendly ride will place you in the middle of a pirate treasure hunt thwarted by resident Speelunkers. You’ll board a six-passenger boat for your descent into the Speelunker’s Cave, featuring cinematic projection, immersive sets and animatronics.
Each trip through the cave will take about six minutes, taking riders through a story Six Flags Over Texas says will be immersive with a custom soundtrack. It’ll include wanted posters for some of the pirates passengers will encounter along their journey.
The Aquaman: Power Wave is a multi-launch water coaster, the first of its kind in North America, according to Six Flags. The ride will suspend two 20-passenger boats up 148-foot high twin track towers and hurtle them across more than 700 feet of track at 63 mph toward a massive splash.
“It just kind of shows the innovation that our guests are accustomed to, and having the latest and greatest in terms of technology when it comes to our roller coasters,” Malone said.
The ride was originally set to debut in 2020 but the pandemic delayed those plans. During that time, Six Flags decided to increase the capacity so it can run two trains at the same time.
Aquaman is scheduled to open in the summer. It’ll be the 15th roller coaster at the amusement park.
“It functions almost like a shuttle,” Luttrell said. “The coaster looks like a U, and you go up one side and it sort of dangles you there and then you go down quick and go up the other side, almost like you’re a ship going back and forth, but the last pass will make a gigantic wave through the reservoir of water at the bottom and get really sopping wet. If you’re there in August, and it’s 100-plus degrees outside, I would imagine that that’s going to be a huge relief. You get the benefit of a coaster and the benefit of cooling down.”
Luttrell recalled experiencing her first taste of freedom as a teenager at Six Flags. Her parents would drop her off, then her and her friends pretended to be adults for the day. They’d get their picture taken, ride the coasters, eat junk food and get the giggles. During the summers, Luttrell would use her season pass to go every weekend.
Luttrell says she’ll be first in line to try the new rides. The new roller coasters are likely to inspire amusement parks across the country, she says. Six Flags Over Texas has built several first-of-its-kind rides.
“Texas is such an interesting place because we sort of have this bigger and better attitude about a lot of things,” she said. “And so I do think we’re innovators, and Six Flags was very innovative. I’m sure they’re going to be setting precedent. We’re going to build these really cool rollercoasters, people are gonna come from all around the country to ride them and other amusement parks I’m sure are gonna use that as a model of how do they one up, how do they get to the next big thing after that?”
What makes a good roller coaster?
That depends on preference, Luttrell says. Some love big drops and the feeling of free falling. Luttrell prefers raised slopes and anything that’s unexpected.
Luttrell’s favorite roller coaster is the Texas Giant, one of the first big coasters she went on and one she says she could ride several times in a row. She said she loves how it combines the smoothness of metal tracks with the nostalgia of a wooden coaster, and how it unexpectedly sways riders sideways. The Runaway Mine Train was another of Luttrell’s childhood favorites. She also likes the Batman ride, which flips riders upside down and sideways.
Luttrell now has a 10-year-old son. Getting to see him conquer the same sort of fears that she did with roller coasters is exciting, Luttrell said. He was just as terrified as she was at first, but now loves to join her on roller coaster rides.
“It’s about a controlled fear,” Luttrell said. “There’s so much in the world that is terrifying right now. Being able to do something that you know is safe and conquer that fear just feels so good. It feels good to have that little bit of a thrill knowing that you’re really OK in the end.”
Staff writer James Hartley contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 2, 2022 at 8:00 AM.
