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Analysis of The Joker, New for 2017 Coaster at Six Flags Great America
Six Flags Great America, along with two other Six Flags parks, Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags New England, announced it would be opening The Joker, a copy-cat of the namesake at Six Flags Great Adventure, for the 2017 season.
The coaster will open as one of six installations of the model in the entire world, all of them are exactly the same and are clones of the original, named Batman: The Ride, at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. Six Flags Great America's will open as the park's fourteenth coaster, putting Great America ahead of the many parks it was once tied with for the fifth largest coaster collection in one amusement park. Six Flags Great America will still be in fifth place, but it will no longer be tied with other parks. The Joker will take riders 120 feet off the ground up a 90-degree lift hill, and it will then release the cars along the 1,019-feet of track to spin freely on both sides of the track. The amount of times the car will flip depends on the combined weight of the passengers and its distribution. This will provide a different experience every time you ride. What are my feelings about this? I am not disappointed, but I'm not extremely excited. Because Six Flags Great America is my home park, I do have a special place in my heart for it. Last year's teasing, which was much more thought out and thorough than this year's, led to the announcement of Justice League: Battle for Metropolis, which opened this year. The 2015 teasers had many "Easter eggs," or hidden messages to give clues, in them. One of them was graffiti on a tunnel wall that looked like the number "10," which made some people speculate that it would be a roller coaster with ten inversions, but many other graffiti writings and other small hints led people, (including myself), to speculate that it would be an S&S 4D Free-Fly Coaster. Of course, we were wrong, but now, the park has finally announced it is going to install one. I am not a big fan of this kind of coaster. I have not ever ridden one, but I am not absolutely thrilled about it. The park has many holes in its coaster line-up, and a 4D coaster was one of them, but 4D coasters are technically wing coasters, and Great America already has one, X-Flight. So, my overall thoughts: not the best choice. This coaster is definitely a filler coaster, and it had really no purpose besides putting the park in the news and giving it another coaster to add to its world-class collection. I am still waiting for the park to get a giga coaster, which is a roller coaster between 300-399 feet in height or one with a drop within the same classification, which it needs very badly.
Header picture of The Joker courtesy of Six Flags.
