Six Flags Astroworld
August 15th, 1999
S T A T S
| Six Flags Astroworld August 15th, 1999 S T A T S |
Cripes, the guy invented the shuttle loop, did he not? Perhaps what the company is best known for now are portable coasters that travel with European carnivals. Parks often purchase the layouts and set them to themes because the engineers at Schwarzkopf know a thing or two about packing in as much oomph! into a circuit as possible while still making it easy to set-up and tear-down in three or four days. Among the most jaw-dropping portable creations still operating, Weiner Looping and the awe-inspiring Olympia Looping Bahn, which rides almost as good as it looks (its five loops are arranged to form the familiar Olympic circles.) Tight curves, insane degrees of slope and that trademark Schwarzkopf Smoothness all figure into The Texas Tornado, inspired by the Tasmanian Devil--that whirling, swirling, maniacal dervish that's always trying to eat Bugs Bunny for lunch. After getting a glimpse of this beast in action, we were ready to be devoured too. Little did I know. It's a beautiful ride, given a festive Mexican-flavored queue and show building to accent its commanding curls, twists and drops. The train rises up a curving lift powered by drive-wheels and the noisiest anti-rollbacks that I've ever heard on a coaster, but no matter. Once you crest the lift, silence. Then the screaming starts. Rocketing up an incline and then diving down to the left at an insanely wicked angle, those familiar Mustang-looking trains scream over the next hill and then slam into yet another loop, this one 56 feet high and angling out in an odd way at the bottom, sending you screaming madly into more blurred yellow trackage. Of course, the close proximity of track supports is played up in a huge way. The designers seem to tease you with the idea that if you raise your hands, they're gone. And if you lean your head too far to the left or right, it's gone too. This isn't true--we know. But tell that to your hands and head. Am I drooling over The Texas Tornado? Wholeheartedly. It's a slam-bang assault of a rollercoaster that delivers unbelievable thrills time and time again. Riding something like this makes me long for the days when Anton got aggro and designed stuff that would just eat up the countryside. I don't know what the problem is, why parks are just gobbling up B&M creations left and right--because until you've been "Schwarzkopfed", especially like this, man--you just haven't lived. I'm losing composure over a production coaster, so sue me. Ride it first, then we'll compare notes. It was great to be back at Astroworld again--we hadn't been since 1996 and revisiting classics like The Texas Cyclone, with its "coffin-cars" and punishing layout, XLR-8, which still gets the heart pumping faster, and the delicious Ultra-Twister with its near straight-down first drop and insidious spin-action, well--it was like coming home again. After dinner at a really nice Mexican restaurant on Kirby, we retired to our hotel and prepared for a grueling straight-shot drive to Las Vegas through the third level of Hell, which resides somewhere in the middle of Kent, Texas. Awaiting us in Vegas were a few familiar tracks that we couldn't wait to hit again.
Before there was B&M, there was Anton Schwarzkopf. The man whose silver logo would become synonymous with intense, hardball, G-force-inducing coasters seems to have taken an American holiday from the graceful, monstrous creations that still blow minds today. Anyone who has ridden The Great American Revolution (screw what they call it now--I remember it before they added shoulder harnesses) or The Mind Bender knows that when it comes to efficient, speedy and smooth-as-hell rollercoasters, Schwarzkopf has a niche carved in the annals of white-knuckle history and no-one can take that away.
Setting riders up with a gentle little speed bump, the train takes a serious nose-dive down to the right. It's a 112 foot plummet at a 70-degree angle and lemme tell ya something--if you're sitting in the back seat, expect to find a few gray hairs the next morning. This is one of the best first drops I've ever experienced on a coaster, at least from the back seat, where I remained for my first four trips. The ground leaps up and says "howdy" at 60 m.p.h., but before you slam into it, you slam instead into a 98 foot tall loop and then immediately zip down and up into a second loop at 82 feet. No kushy little piece of straight track there to give you time to recover from the first inversion, nope. Just a huge double-whammy of giant loops, and you're still in the first fleeting seconds of the post-lift fall.
The last loop is a puzzler and every time I rode this critter, the same reaction spilled out of me upon engaging that final inversion. It's so wrong-feeling. A sideways skitter of loop--the bastard child of a tear-drop and a corkscrew, even as you're coming out of it 48 feet above the Earth, you feel that something isn't quite right, and you don't seem to stop rolling over until you're heading up into the next hill again. Hard to explain, but suffice it to say that each time I rode, when that element hit, I just shook my head and smiled in an "I can't believe that just happened" kind of way. Wicked. Better than wicked. After this point, the ride sort of peters out and galumphs along the rest of the 3,280 feet of track. Not that that's a bad thing, you'll need that time to consider what has just happened to you, you've been victimized by a rollercoaster with a hidden agenda.