The Fifty Coasters that Doomed Six Flags — 50
The Boss — Six Flags St. Louis
It’s February of 2006, and you’re Daniel Snyder. Or maybe you’re Mark Shapiro, whichever, but you’re taking a victory tour of one of your flashiest new parks while speaking with a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News, explaining your differing vision for Six Flags:
For Six Flags chief executive officer Mark Shapiro, the future of the theme park giant known for teenage thrill rides lies in parades, fireworks and other attractions to offer well-rounded family experience.
It almost sounds like a visit to a certain Anaheim theme park.
“We’re ramping up our Main Street USA strategy,” Shapiro said Tuesday during a visit to Six Flags California Magic Mountain, a park now building its 17th roller coaster. “At the same time, we’re not abandoning our teenage roots. … (but) it’s going to be more oriented for the family this year.”
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Six Flags has been struggling in recent years in the competition for entertainment dollars while saddled with some $2.1 billion in long-term debt — including years of capital and coaster investment. Shapiro was brought in after shareholders led by Washington ******** owner Daniel Snyder ousted top management.
“The industry has gotten a bit drunk on roller coasters,” Shapiro said. “You need to get a return on your investment.”
That means a shift away from the mechanical thrill rides to lure more families. Daily parades and fireworks shows and a Chinese acrobat show are slated to join Magic Mountain’s repertoire of coasters and other attractions this year.
Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., understood the company’s needs to hold down costs.
“If you have a theme park, about every two years, you have to put in a new ride. You have to find land,” he said. “Parades are a lot easier to tweak. Just change the light bulbs and the costumes.”
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Shapiro said the initiatives are intended to strengthen the Six Flags brand as a family entertainment destination.
“If you’re 10 years old, you can’t get on Tatsu — you’re not tall enough,” he said, referring to Magic Mountain’s new coaster slated to open in April. “So what are you doing to keep them here?”
When I started this project #1 was obvious from the very beginning. And no, don’t worry, it’s not Tatsu. Our #1 coaster will be the coaster that inspired this whole thing, but we won’t get to talk about it until the very end. Hopefully we’re actually riding roller coasters by then.
I figured that as easy as #1 had been, it would probably be more difficult to settle on a #50. After all, being as far from the top spot as we’re getting, this should represent what is essentially the best coaster investment of Burke’s Six Flags.
And yet, as I worked down the list, scratching off options, I realized very early which coaster would take that spot, and spent hardly any time having to debate it.
The Boss at Six Flags St. Louis is the very epitome of the kind of investment Snyder and his followers would have begrudgingly admitted admiration for. It represented the kind of shrewd investment Burke had earned a reputation for making which might have attracted them to invest in the first place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vH2r5ZcyYs
As Premier Parks purchased Six Flags in 1998, St. Louis was busy with Premier Rides putting the finishing touches on Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast. Premier Rides’ LIM launch technology was all the rage at the time, and Premier Parks would end up reconnecting with Premier Rides to install two more Premier Rides rides at Premier Parks parks for the 1999 season. Premier.
But that’s not something Burke bought, so it’s not something we’re thinking about. That was there when we showed up.
For 1999, Six Flags’ St. Louis first major addition under Burke was the Hurricane Harbor water park. The kind of thing enthusiasts wouldn’t care about, but during their tenure Snyder and Shapiro will show an affinity for waterpark investments. Other parks would debut as Six Flags with at least one or even two new large coasters. St. Louis built a waterpark. Not flashy, but probably smart.
When The Boss showed up for 2000, it would be the only major coaster addition at the park for the Burke era. St. Louis didn’t even receive the typical SLC and Boomerang combo- the park already featured a Batman clone from its Time Warner days, and Boomerang wouldn’t be installed until well after Snyder and Shapiro were out of the picture.
For the 2001 Golden Tickets Boss would debut at #15 on the list of Best Wooden Rollercoasters. It would be the best positioning on the awards one of Burke’s wooden roller coaster ever received.
By 2005 when, everything is crashing down around Burke, it would still be ranked at #36.
Only one other wooden roller coaster commissioned by Burke would immediately make and not leave the Golden Tickets list: Villain at Six Flags Ohio, another CCI creation.
The park was certainly proud of themselves at the time, too, so I’ll let them shoulder the work of actually describing the ride experience:
“This is a Super Bowl caliber roller coaster already considered one of the world’s blockbuster wooden coasters of all time. It is so vast, steep, deep and just plain wild the experience would be like riding a roller coaster over and through the Grand Canyon,” Ivens said. “It will it at the top of every list of greatest and grandest wooden coaster experiences of all times.”
Called “The Boss,” the 122-foot tall giant wooden coaster dominates the skyline over the Park.
“The Boss packs powerful credentials,” noted Tom Iven, vice president and general manager of Six Flags St. Louis. “A gripping 52-degree, 150-foot double-dip-double-drop hill at the beginning of the ride sets an intimidating tone. Sleek ultra-fast trains will race over 5,051-feet of sprawling, twisting, turning and banking terrain track. The big-time features on this coaster create a lot of “float time” for riders, making The Boss one exhilarating experience from start to finish. The experience is completely different from the Park’s legendary Screamin’ Eagle roller coaster, which is a traditional out-and-back configuration.”
“The Boss configuration is one of the most inventive designs I’ve ever seen in my life for a wooden roller coaster,” said Gary Slade, editor and publisher, Amusement Today. “It is simply spectacular. The ride experience on this coaster will be beyond description because of features like the double-down first drop and the tight crosses, twists, turns and banks. This Boss will really rule as one of the top wooden coaster experience in the world when it opens.”
The Boss takes charge right from the start. After the stunning first double-drop, The Boss crosses over itself six times. A number of stomach-turning drops including one of 112-feet and one of 103-feet, a head-spinning 570-degree Helix and a series of “air-time” rabbit hops and high-banked turns keeps The Boss in command at all times.
The addition of another mega-attraction following last year’s building of a new multi-acre and multi-million dollar water park once again broadens and diversifies the overall entertainment offering available at Six Flags St. Louis. It also signals the continued commitment of Six Flags to having a Super Bowl caliber Park in this part of the country, noted Iven.
(In 2000, the St. Louis Rams won the Super Bowl, and were favorites to repeat for 2001. They’d end up losing The Big Game to some nobody named Tom Brady. Anyway, that’s why this guy keeps talking about the Super Bowl.)
(Washington went 8–8, missed the playoffs, and became the first NFL franchise worth at least $1b.)
Yeah, in the year 2005 where I’m looking back and considering all the different investments made in our parks, I’m probably mad more didn’t look like this. Why couldn’t we build more inexpensive world class woodies? Why do they need these expensive B&Ms and Intamins? CCI made us a gem and they weren’t even charging enough to stay in business!
In fact, CCI would only go on to build coasters for two more years- the 2000 season being the company’s last big one- opening seven wooden roller coasters across the world. Two others were commissioned by Six Flags and will pop up on this list later. A fourth, MegaZeph at Jazzland, was destined to soon be a piece of Six Flags property as well.
None of those other stories turn out half so well, just telling you now.
Custom Coasters had already split off in the nineties, losing some key designers to a new company called Great Coasters International. After their final coaster in 2002, CCI would reform and return in 2005 as Gravity Group- but they have not yet built another coaster at a Six Flags park.
Boss was the St. Louis’ only major coaster investment of the Burke era, and came early, when still things looked so bright and promising. It was an undoubted success, and was so at one of the company’s more high profile parks, the final of the so-called “Original Three.” The best evidence we have today for that being the common thinking among Snyder’s followers is in their actions once they took over: They actually commissioned a roller coaster for Six Flags St. Louis.
As mentioned in the introduction, Snyder-era Six Flags would commission only two new major roller coasters for their parks, and they would go to GCI for both of them. The first would be Evel Knievel, now American Thunder.
Hey, remember that thing Snyder said about being paid to use the right IPs? Evel Knievel. Evel. Knievel.
American Thunder is currently Six Flags St. Louis’ best candidate for an RMC conversion. Boss is arguably still its signature attraction.
And while Boss may have undergone a helixectomy in recent years to drop it far down the list of longest roller coasters in the world, it’s still going strong. For the 2019 Golden Tickets, the de-helixed ride still came in as the 36th best wooden roller coaster in the world. The highest ranking of a wooden coaster currently owned by Six Flags that doesn’t cheat by going upside down a bunch of times.