April 10, 2013
I feel a bit jaded. It seems like sometimes I am not impressed as easily having seen in the inner-workings of our industry. Or perhaps it is because it is now a job for me and there is no mystery to it anymore (hint: the booth meeting rooms at IAAPA are not as alluring as I imagined when I visited my first trade show over a decade ago).
But, sometimes I feel like we can still build a bit of magic, no matter where that may be. Last Friday I was in in the Dirty South at Six Flags over Georgia, checking out their StarFlyer. It is the third 242-footer we have built for Six Flags. Although still awesome, and in a beautiful location, it felt a bit like old hat because we have done so many with them. Yesterday I dropped by Six Flags over Texas to see the Texas SkyScreamer, a 400-foot StarFlyer that we sold and are installing.
Wow. Everything on it just makes the other StarFlyers look, dare I say it, a bit puny. Here the tower seems nearly fifty percent wider and the star is larger by a third- it is just massive. Our team, led Bill Wright, a seasoned amusement industry veteran who is the MacGyver of our industry, is working hand-in-hand with Funtime putting this monster together. As of today we had 8 of the 9 tower sections built and we needed to dress out (steel worker talk for fully assemble) the star. The last (bottom) tower section we will stick build (more jargon for assemble piece by piece instead of in a template) and then we will start stacking the tower out.
Looking around I was a bit in awe at the scale of the ride. The only thing that impressed me more was Austrians from the Alpine foothills working hand-in-hand with steelworkers from all over the United States. It is one of those things that should not work- but somehow it does.
-AFS