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As usual our first stop of the day was to say hello to my favorite wooden coaster in the park; The Screaming Eagle.  So you wonder how was the Eagle doing after another winter?  Smooth, fun and fast...not as fast as it runs on a hot summer night but there was plenty of airtime to keep us riding it five or six times before people in line caused our mini-marathon to come to an end.



Here's a minor obsessive compulsive coaster geek pet peeve of mine.  The real coaster in the picture does not invert.  It is Raging Bull; a hyper coaster at Six Flags Great America designed by Bolliger and Mabillard that has no loops.  Six Flags corporate graphic designers tend to grab whatever picture they like and flip it around or use it for a completely different ride than the one they are trying to depict.  It annoys me.



Back to the coasters and the park a bunch of new paint showed up around the park in the off season including a fresh coat of paint on Pandemonium.



We had to hit Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast for a ride and were very surprised to find not one train running but both of them!  The standard for opening weekend for years has been one train on each of the coasters.  This year despite having the shortest off season for rehabbing the rides; due to the addition of Holiday In The Park, every coaster with the exception of Boomerang that has only one and the Screaming Eagle every coaster was running two trains.  This made for no lines and a very happy bunch of coaster enthusiasts.  I would like to send a massive thank you to Six Flags St. Louis' maintenance department for their hard work.  I hope two trains for opening day becomes the norm from now on.



I should say that I was surprised to see that Thunder River was up and running but it normally is and surprisingly there are always a bunch of people ready to catch hypothermia as that water can't be warm with temperatures from the 40's to lower 60's for the day.
 


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Paul B. Drabek