Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Busy, busy

It's been a busy month.

We've been kicking things into high gear lately, in preparation for Opening Day, which is only 7 short weeks away!  Supplies are getting ordered.  Training materials are being finalized.  Today, I sent out the final proofs for our certification cards so that they can get printed, and ordered some supplies for a couple of new initiatives for our "Speak First" campaign we have going on this season.  Don't worry, you'll hear all about it soon enough.

Construction is moving along at a steady pace down in the DC area---and I'm not just talking about Superman.  In case you haven't heard, we have 2 new attractions coming into the park for 2009, and both of them are being installed in the DC area of the park.  

First, after a long run here at Six Flags New England, we have decided to bid farewell to Nightwing and bring back the Joker's Wild Card in its place.  The ride was installed in the current Hall of Justice building until 2006, when it was removed so that the Hall of Justice character meeting was installed.  For those of you not familiar with the ride, it's a fine example of a Chance Wipeout attraction (you can check out a spec sheet for the ride on the Chance website here.) 
 
As you can see, the hub of the ride has already been installed, and new decking is being installed to, you know, cover the GIANT HOLE left in the ground from Nightwing's enormous footprint.

Also, we're installing a type of attraction that Six Flags New England has never seen before.  Blitz will blast riders up to a height of 197' and subject them to launch forces as high as 5 g's!  Located at the far end of the Gridiron Challenge field, Blitz will make an exciting addition to the DC skyline.  Since I'm sure I wouldn't explain the thing very well, you can get all the info you want about the style of ride at Funtime's website, here.  
In any case, you can see the cement pad that was hiding under the Gridiron challenge field all year, which will be used as the foundation for the attraction when it shows up at the park in early March.  

Finally, Clawshun Industries has released some photos of the Superman: Ride of Steel transformation which you can see here.

It's purple.

...and I see it's snowing, again.  Fantastic.

-John