FEATURE: Six Flags Great Adventure says goodbye to Kingda Ka, but welcomes The Flash
Photo: The Flash: Vertical Velocity is the new roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey. Photo courtesy of Six Flags Great Adventure / Provided by SFGA with permission.
Temperatures are becoming warmer in the Garden State, and that can only mean one thing: It’s time to head to Jackson, New Jersey, for a visit to Six Flags Great Adventure, one of the most important roller coaster capitals in the world. There have been a lot of changes at the Central Jersey amusement park these past 12 months. For starters, Six Flags combined with Cedar Fair to become the largest operator of amusement parks in North America, and then there is an exciting ride addition and some sad goodbyes.
At Great Adventure, the 2024 season ended up being the final one for Kingda Ka, a beloved coaster that broke world records and was a prominent feature on the skyline of the park. Also shuttering was Green Lantern, a stand-up coaster that didn’t have the same outpouring of devotion as the mighty Ka. Though there were frowns from diehard Kingda Ka fans — this reporter included — there are new attractions at the park that are winning over thrill-seekers.
This season began with a literal flash — The Flash: Vertical Velocity, located right near the main entrance of Great Adventure, is now open for business. This super-boomerang coaster is being met with positive word of mouth and repeat riders, becoming the talk of the amusement sector in the greater New Jersey region. Plus, there are hints that something BIG is coming to Great Adventure in the future. What that might be is still under wraps, but to better learn about the future of the park, the excitement for The Flash and the memories of Kingda Ka, Hollywood Soapbox talked with Ryan Eldredge, regional manager of public relations for Six Flags Great Adventure.
For Eldredge, the excitement and focus right now are on The Flash: Vertical Velocity, which is open and welcoming riders on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, with summer hours set to begin soon. The coaster was designed by Vekoma Rides.
“I think the coaster itself provides a really thrilling experience, so for me it really is something that we haven’t had before,” Eldredge said in a recent phone interview. “And what I mean by that is obviously you’ve got the multiple launches, but not only do you get to do them forward-facing, but you also get to do them in reverse. So you’ve got seven launches. You’re going 60 mph. The height is 172 feet, which is 17 stories. There are 10 airtime moments. All that stuff is really cool, but I think the thing that’s really amazing is you have this inverted dive stall. And so when you come up out of the station on your third launch, you’re going 60 mph, and you go through the first inversion, which just means you’re going upside down. You’re hanging upside down for 3 seconds. It’s really a unique experience. You have enough time to process what’s happening and look over at your friend if you’re riding with somebody and just really enjoy the moment, and that’s right before you dive into another launch where you hit 52 mph. So it’s a really unique experience.”
Eldredge also pointed out the color contrast of the coaster itself, with its red and yellow tracks standing out against the blue sky of Jackson, New Jersey. Plus, there’s the location of the new ride, which is situated almost right at the front entrance. Most of the coasters at Six Flags are hidden along the periphery of the amusement park, especially Medusa and El Toro, which are located in the far back. Not so with The Flash: Vertical Velocity, which is front and center.
“I think everybody is kind of going in, I’m going to be honest, with low expectations because they’re like, ‘Ah, it’s not that big. It’s a boomerang.’ Even though it’s a super boomerang, it’s a boomerang, and so everybody just goes, ‘I don’t know. OK.’ Then they ride it, and they’re like, ‘Wow, that was really awesome,'” Eldredge said. “And so I’ve been really impressed by that, the fact that people really love the Vekoma ride and that it’s done so well.”
It’s not a coincidence that The Flash takes a prominent spot near the main entrance. Eldredge said the park is trying to change the perception that it’s surrounded by coasters; they want to have the middle of Great Adventure as much of a thrill as the outskirts.
“It was intentional to put it there at the front,” he said. “Obviously it was originally anticipated that it would have been completed at some point during the 50th anniversary season [in 2024], and then when that didn’t happen, it doesn’t really change the mission of trying to utilize some of those spaces within the park that aren’t utilized or under-utilized. And that’s a model that I think we’ll look at moving forward. There’s been a tendency maybe the last 20 or 30 years in the business where you kind of build your larger attractions on the outside or the periphery of the parks. You can think of a couple of rides: Medusa and El Toro and Kingda Ka. They’re all toward the outside. There’ll be a goal now to add more rides and more experiences within the central framework of the park, and this sets us up for that because it works in two different ways. A.) It just catches your eye as you’re maneuvering into the park. … And then B.) It just gives the park a buzz. If all the great attractions are on the outside, it feels kind of hollow in the middle. That’s something that we want to avoid and change moving forward. I think The Flash is a great start with where it is in Metropolis and where it is right near the main gate. It just has high visibility all throughout the park, and that’s kind of what you want from these attractions.”
Great Adventure, which also sports a water park called Hurricane Harbor and Six Flags Wild Safari, has always embraced its identity as a roller coaster capital. Many ride enthusiasts will travel many miles to experience the coasters in Jackson, New Jersey. After the closing of the Green Lantern and Kingda Ka, and with the addition of The Flash: Vertical Velocity, the current roster includes everything from Batman: The Ride to Nitro to Jersey Devil Coaster to El Toro, with this last one sometimes being considered the best wooden roller coaster in the world. Plus, there’s Medusa, Skull Mountain, The Dark Knight Coaster, The Joker and Superman: Ultimate Flight.
“It’s in the name,” Eldredge said. “It’s Great Adventure. We want it to be a great adventure, and so I think in order to have an adventure there’s got to be thrills. There’s got to be entertainment. There’s got to be something that I’ve never seen or experienced before, which is why I do think the Wild Safari is a huge part of that and what we’re doing in that space, but also you’ve got to have the roller coasters, man. Whoever said they went on a great adventure and didn’t do anything thrilling. The more thrills you have and the more accessibility of those thrills you have, the more likely folks are going to have a great adventure, which is why Flash is so great because it has that 48-inch height requirement. My son is 7 years old, and he can ride it. He’s tall enough. That would provide accessibility for families. This could be a little one’s first big roller coaster experience, at 58, 59, 60 mph and a height of 172 feet. It’s not going to be the most intimidating ride. They should be able to have an enjoyable ride, too, and have some great memories.”
The Flash: Vertical Velocity only has one train, just because of the nature of being a super boomerang. The train shoots up, down and around, and then reverses itself, so there cannot be a second train on the tracks. One would think this could cause even longer lines than anticipated because it’ll take some time to get visitors on and off, but Eldredge said they have the process down to a science.
“Having one train is always limiting, but a new attraction is always going to have a long line, to be honest,” he said. “We’d anticipate a long line whether we had one train, three trains, four trains. That’s just kind of how it works. With this ride, the way that Vekoma has designed it, you’ve got a 68-second runtime, and with the way it loads, it actually loads pretty fast. Vekoma, the manufacturer, anticipates that we can get 800 riders on an hour. If we had two trains and say a turntable or some kind of function that we could get the second train loaded while the other one was running and then unload it, it would have only made the capacity, according to Vekoma, about 100 riders more. So it wasn’t really like if you add another train it’s really going to help the capacity of it just because of the way the ride dynamics are, and that’s just kind of what it is.”
Eldredge added: “At the end of the day, yeah, there are going to be lines, and there’s lines at Great Adventure because people like to be there. It’s a fun place to be. It’s the new thing. We’ll try to find some things to alleviate the lines, and hopefully folks also take their time, try some other attractions first. If waiting in line isn’t what they want to do, there’s also other things for them, [like] Flash Lane. We’ll have some opportunities for season-pass holders to get in there before everybody else this year, so there’s some dynamic opportunities to avoid the line.”
There is that elephant-sized roller coaster in the room when discussing news of Six Flags Great Adventure: Kingda Ka. The beloved coaster closed for good near the end of the 2024 season, and its structure was eventually demolished. This record-breaking ride was as tall as can be and as fast as can be, and coaster-heads turned up in droves. It was sad news when the speculation turned to fact, and the ride finally said goodbye.
Eldredge, who didn’t join the company until January of this year, opened up about his personal love for the ride and what might be coming in the future.
“I grew up in the Philadelphia area, so I grew up going to Great Adventure,” he said. “I remember riding Kingda Ka for the first time and how exhilarating it was, so unfortunately for me I kind of stepped in in the transitional period. And I didn’t really become active for Great Adventure until early January, and at that point, the decision was made. I think a lot of us were surprised and shocked, but when you get into the dynamics of it and what it was able to do over a 20-year run, that is a thrill. … I think we referenced it in one of our initial press releases: The maintenance and upkeep of the ride and the overall dynamics, how difficult that was and how much of a challenge it was to keep it running every year played a big reason why.”
Eldredge said he knows about Kingda Ka’s replacement, and although he didn’t divulge details, he did open a window into how he was feeling about the future of Six Flags Great Adventure overall.
“It’s hard to say goodbye, but I have the lucky privilege of knowing what’s coming next,” Eldredge said. “And for me, it doesn’t sting as bad when you know what’s coming. When I can see the future and say, man, we’ve got some dynamic things planned for Great Adventure. It’s sad. I mean, that thing was like a monument in Jackson, but I’m really hopeful for what comes next. We’ve got really cool plans for the park that can ease the sting a little bit. Nothing can replace it, especially if it was your first thing and you really loved it. Nothing is going to replace it, but you just hope that what comes next can ease the sting a little bit. And that’s the goal.”
Kingda Ka is gone, but there is hope that memories of the monstrous ride will be around forever. Again, Eldredge offered a brief glimpse into the future of honoring Ka’s legacy.
“Some of it did go to scrap and was not in the position where we could repurpose it,” he said. “We do have some dynamic plans with it in terms of slicing it up and potentially being able to offer that to people in the park, whether sales, or we might work to give some for charity or for fundraising efforts. We have dynamic plans with the tracks, too, whether we’re going to work with a museum. I won’t say who, but we’re trying to get some things done in that regard. Can we repurpose the track in different areas of the park? We’re looking into some dynamic ways that we can incorporate it into not just the history and fabric of Great Adventure, but also the history and fabric of the hearts of our fans and guests and also the industry at large because there are so many adoring fans that have been created over the last 20 years. We do have plans, and I’m sure we’ll be able to talk about those real soon.”
Until those plans are revealed, visitors have The Flash: Vertical Velocity to keep them soaring to new heights.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
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