Titan

Six Flags Over Texas, Arlington, Texas

Arlington, Texas is the home of the first themed thrill ride park, Six Flags Over Texas. In 2001, it celebrated its 40th year of operationin a big way. A really, really big way. Titan, in fact. It stands over 200ft tall, is painted bright orange, and is visible for miles before you even get to the park. It is large and in charge. The trains are bedecked in various shades of warm colors and are more comfortable than many found on other hypercoasters.  Restraints are unobtrusive and minimal.

The ride is kicked off with a slow crawl around a rigt-hand 180 turn to the mammoth lift. Heavy clanking signals your ascent, looking right at The Ballpark at Arlington, with the park at your back. Glancing over your right shoulder, you can see the mighty Texas Giant... from the TOP. You're only halfway up the lift when it dawns on you that you've already surpassed the Giant's height, and will neary double it before you reach the top.  Hoo boy... visions of the Giant's seemingly endless first drop run through your mind as you try to imagine falling TWICE that far.  Topping the lift, the train slows to a crawl, allowing you one last look at the scenery before things get hairy.

Then it happens. Front seat riders get a spectacular view of bright orange track curving down, down, impossibly down, disappearing into a tiny hole in the earth. Back seat riders don't get the view, but they get the delicious, perfectly engineered floating freefall airtime,almost to the tunnel at the bottom. The tunnel is almost invisible at the speed you fly through it. Soon, you are racing for the clouds into a turn that is perched precariously on a minimal framewrok of supports, high in the Texas sky. No time to admire the architecture or worry about the stability of the structure, however, since the train races around the turn like a crazed greyhound chasing a motorized rabbit. The turn ends with a very smooth drop that is so perfectly designed that it isn't until you see it from the ground that you realize just how wicked it is. The track is seriously banked, the drop is unspeakably steep, and all of it is so smooth that most riders won't even notice it.

If you'd like to download a short movie of this turn, click here.

After the train drops out of this crazy curve (seen at right), riders encounter engineering nirvana: The Float Hill.

The Float Hill is a moment of Texas-sized floating airtime that might just be longer than all the airtime on every other Texas coaster combined. That's because most coaster designers of the past designed hills for thrill: sharp, steep, and scary.  When airtime happened, it was usually a happy by-product and would only happen to the very front or very back of the train.  Lately, however, designers have been listening to the riders and actually building engineered airtime moments into their rides. The Float Hill is one such design, and it disappoints no one. Every single rider on the train floats up and away from their seat, as if by magic spell, then when they finally make contact with the lap bar, they are held there in the air above their seats for a long, long time. Well, just a few seconds, actually,but by coaster airtime standards, it's an eternity. Elated enthusiasts fling their arms up into the air and lift their feet off the floor in order to get the maximum effect of flying. Terrified novices begin frantically searching for something, anything, to pull themselves back down, while cursing the folks at Six Flags for not paying this month's gravity bill.

Fear not, folks. You're about to become very, very familiar with gravity.

As soon as the Float Hill sets you gently back down into your seat, the Headchopper Helix holds you there like a grape in a wine press. Your body goes from weightless to nearly six times its normal weight in a fraction of a second. The change in gravity drains the blood from your head, causing the world to go black-and-white like old reruns of I Love Lucy. If you can see anything other than stars, you'll notice how the Headchopper Helix gets its name from the huge support posts that come amazingly close to the train. Anyone with a Marge Simpson hairdo might want to see a sylist for a new look before riding this one. 

You can download a video of the float hill and headchopper helix by clicking here.

A heavily-applied midcourse brake follows, usually a very bad thing, but almost welcome here, in order to get your vision back and your blood flowing again. It's a short reprieve, however, as the front car begins a steep dive off the brake. The drop is actually a two-part "S" - shaped monster leading right into the ride's most celebrated (and hidden from the queue line) element: the Centrifuge.

The track twists and lays almost completely over on its side, then coils into yet another helix. This one is set down into a low place in the ground, so you don't even know it's there until you're on the ride. What makes this one different from the Headchopper you just went through is that it is tighter, faster, and goes downhill instead of uphill. This means that after you get the initial burst of eye-popping G-forces, they don't gradually ease up as the train travels the spirals... they INCREASE. Faces become like rubber, arms that once reached high are forced down, and brains that were just beginning to enjoy the flow of blood are once again drained. Serious vertigo sets in as the mad orange streak whirls faster and faster into the vortex, a dizzy delight of speed and senses not normally available to mere mortals.

This is the stuff of mythology, and we are afforded but a small taste of it before being safely escorted to the final brake run... where a set of sprayers cools down the wheels on the train, hot from the intense workout they just endured.