26/08/2025
My final visit to Six Flags America!
By now it's common knowledge that Six Flags America in Bowie, MD is closing forever after this season, so I had to make time for one last visit! I've been here once before back in 2019, but my goal this time aside from riding as much as I could was to document everything that caught my eye.
Six Flags America has long had a reputation as one of the weaker parks in the Six Flags chain, and this is because the park has seen minimal investment since the early 2000s when it first took on the Six Flags name. Under normal circumstances this would make it seem tired and dated, but given the park's impending closure, what I found instead was a glorious time capsule of an era of Six Flags that has long since passed.
When walking in to Six Flags America, the first thing I noticed is the park's beautiful entrance plaza. It's full of that 1700's colonial-era architecture that really drives home the whole American theme, and the music playing overhead was also period-accurate and was wonderful overall. It makes a great first impression! Venturing further into the park, I found that it has a rather strange layout. There are a lot of themed areas that lead to dead ends, forcing you to backtrack. Steamtown, Looney Tunes Movie Town, and Gotham City are all guilty of this, but I didn't mind since I'm used to a lot of walking.
Not counting relocations, Six Flags America has not received an original ground-up roller coaster since Batwing in 2001. This made the ride lineup feel trapped in time, so to speak, but that was certainly not a bad thing. Powerhouse coasters like Superman: Ride of Steel can still hold their own against more modern thrill machines (although I think I prefer Darien Lake's iteration over SFA's just because of the location). I was fortunate that Superman reopened the day before my visit, as it had been closed for weeks before. Sadly it looks like it will be running with one train for the rest of the season, but it's better than being closed.
Speaking of being closed, Batwing is completely dead, and it looks like it will stay that way. This was a real shame, as it was my favorite coaster in the park back in 2019, and it likely still would have been if it was open. I will be shocked if Batwing gets relocated after the park closes. I feel pretty confident saying that the Vekoma Flying Dutchman is now officially extinct, which hurts to say. I always preferred them over the B&M flying coasters.
The standout coaster for me on this trip was Wild One, the park's trademark wooden roller coaster which dates back to 1917. Now make no mistake, the coaster has been relocated and modified over the years, so how much of it is accurate to how it was in 1917 I can't be sure of. What I can say though, is that this is one phenomenal wooden coaster. The layout has it all, great drops, moments of airtime, near-misses with ride supports, laterals, and one turn that will catch you off guard if you're not prepared. I'm so upset that this will likely be torn down once the season concludes. If one coaster at Six Flags America gets saved, I hope it's this one.
Not far away is Joker's Jinx, a Premier Rides LIM spaghetti-bowl coaster. This was the best Premier launch coaster I've ever been on, and it beats Flight of Fear for sure. I went in expecting a shaky ride, but it was relatively smooth overall, the launch was forceful, and it had a great sense of speed right up until the end. We even overshot the brakes and ended up getting stuck on the brake run for like ten minutes. It really was a Six Flags day! Sadly Joker's Jinx will likely become a parts donor for the other Premier coasters in the chain, but as it stands, I thought it was great.
Those were the standout coasters to me, but Six Flags America has more where that came from. Roar is a pretty by-the-numbers GCI wooden coaster. It's not terrible, it just doesn't do much. There's no airtime, a bunch of turns, and it just kind of wanders through the layout. There's no way this thing's getting saved.
Ragin' Cajun actually surprised me with just how much it spun. This may just be the most I've ever spun on a Wild Mouse, and it was hilarious. It may be a pretty common coaster, but it was worth the wait to me. The jazz playing on the lift hill was a nice touch too.
Professor Screamore's Skywinder, formerly Mind Eraser, received a repaint and some new trains last year as a part of the short-lived SteamTown expansion. The new trains are definitely an improvement, but when you get right down to it, it's still a Vekoma SLC, so you're in for a shaky uncomfortable mess. At the very least, it went from a once and done to something I might consider riding again.
Firebird is an abomination and I hate it. Please tear it down.
Earlier I mentioned that Six Flags America feels like a park stuck in the early 2000s. Well, nowhere is that more obvious than in Looney Tunes Movie Town, the park's kids area. The whole area has definitely seen minimal updates in the last 25 years, with old signage still proudly displayed, and statues based on decades-old iterations of classic characters. Paint was fading and you could see the cracks starting to form, but you know what? I loved it! For a moment, I felt like a kid again, transported back to Looney Tunes Boomtown at Six Flags Worlds of Adventure, which I ran around in 2001. It was a feeling I've not experienced in quite some time, and I spent a solid hour wandering back and forth through the land, reminiscing about my other local amusement park lost to time. Near the back of the kids area, tucked into a corner, was an unassuming-looking building called the Looney Tunes Prop Warehouse. I thought it was a gift shop, but a closer inspection revealed it to be a Gotcha Games, very similar to the one that used to be at Geauga Lake. It wasn't open to the public, but I was dumbfounded that this was still standing, as it seemed like something the current Six Flags management would have bulldozed long ago. Looking in through the netted windows, I remembered climbing a nearly-identical set of mesh steps at Geauga Lake 24 years before, in order to reach the second level and shoot foam balls at my parents. I sure didn't expect it going in, but Six Flags America sent me on a nostalgia trip the likes of which I'll probably never experience again.
Sadly things weren't all positive. The weakest aspect of the park was the operations, as they were horrendously slow. We sat on the brake run of Wild One for ten minutes before they sent the other train and allowed us to disembark. Ride ops across the park took their sweet time checking restraints, which caused lines to build up fast even on coasters running two trains. The park also seemed to be overtaken with swarms of bees and wasps. They were all over the place! I even got stung by one while going up Skywinder's lift hill. Just when I thought you couldn't make an SLC even more unpleasant! There were also a few areas of the park that just smelled like straight sewage, so that was gross, mostly near Shipwreck Falls.
Overall, I find it a shame that Six Flags did not continue to invest in this park, instead leaving it to stagnate with minimal investment over the last 20 years. The park has a ton of land surrounding it which could have been used for expansion, but this was not the case, and now none of this will exist in the near future. I'm glad I got to visit one last time, and I had a lot of fun all things considered. I don't think Six Flags America is as bad as everyone has been saying for years. It's clearly one of the weaker Six Flags parks but there are still some good rides in its lineup. It'll be interesting to see which of these rides will get a new lease on life at other parks in the chain. For now though, Six Flags America will finish out its final season, with the last day being November 2. I'm sad to see it go, but with this new management, I have a bad feeling it won't be the last park in the chain to close.
