Click on any photo to see a larger version of it.



Leading to X2 what happened was that one year Arrow was pitching Six Flags all of their ideas and none of them even vaguely interested the chain.  Then as the meeting was coming to the end; with no sale in sight for Arrow, a young designer Alan Schilke (who currently designs for Rocky Mountain Construction and others) threw out the idea of a 4D coaster.  That is a coaster with cars that can flip while the coaster moves along its course.  Intrigued, Six Flags said three things:

  1.  They would buy it. 
2.  It had to be ready by Memorial Day of 2001. 
3.  It had to be huge with a drop of over 200 feet.



Arrow got right to work and X was announced as Six Flags Magic Mountain's new ride for 2001.  Unfortunately with limited development time and being extremely complex with two sets of rails; one for the coaster and one set to control the flipping of the seats, there were a lot of gremlins to get out of the system.  This delayed opening to January of 2002.  Delays cost in the seasonal world of amusement parks and it cost Arrow Dynamics enough to close the company for good.



"X" as the ride opened as had issues with serious roughness and with Arrow gone S&S Powersports bought what was left of the company.  In 2007 Six Flags asked that they continue to work on improving X's ride experience.  What happened was a massive redesign of the trains reducing excessive weight that led to maintenance and ride roughness.



In 2008 the rebranded and reinvigorated X2 came back to life.



I was really looking forward to trying this out as the ride just looks so insane.  Before getting on X2 I have been on three of the Alan Schilke designed 4d free fly coasters so flipping head over heels while a coaster moves forward was no big thing.  On X2 the flipping is not random like on the free flys but it is controlled and that intrigued me.



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Paul B. Drabek