June 8, 2025, 5:53 PM ·
If you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t have any idea Six Flags America is operating in June for the final time. There aren’t, as of yet, massive markdowns on merchandise that must be sold. There are no “final season, thanks for the memories” banners adorning the park. And it would be a surprise to see the scores of tweens running from coaster to coaster wearing glum faces as they contemplate their final trip to their local amusement park. But Six Flags America is closing. Its final operation day will be in early November. This is the end of the road for the regional theme park closest to the capital city of the United States. I visited the park last week for the first time in the hopes of capturing what we’re losing as the much-maligned park closes for good. Six Flags America is nowhere near as bad as I’d heard it described many years ago. The park was clean, the foliage nice and the placemaking about what you’d expect from a regional theme park. It doesn’t stand out in any particular way; its attraction lineup is so-so, its landscape lacking any dynamism and its food scene is virtually nonexistent. But it offers affordable entertainment to the aforementioned tweens, who have long been the lifeblood of regional parks like this. An unremarkable coaster lineupSix Flags last built a brand-new roller coaster at Six Flags America in 2001. George W. Bush was president of the United States, the iPhone had not been invented, and Steel Dragon 2000 was the tallest roller coaster in the world. That coaster, Batwing, is not currently operating. Rumor has it that a motor blew on its lift hill. A cherry picker aimed toward the top of the lift hill seems to support that rumor. I don’t know if they’ll get Batwing back open, but it’s admirable that they’re not just throwing in the towel. Less admirable is how much downtime I experienced in my one visit to the park. Joker’s Jinx, Ragin Cajun, Firebird and Superman: Ride of Steel all experienced extended downtime. The only coaster running two trains was Wild One. This may suggest Six Flags is attempting to keep parts fresh on coasters it can relocate (Wild One is not expected to survive); though it may simply be minimizing the amount of crew needed to operate its coasters. Of the coasters I was able to experience, Ride of Steel is certainly the best. It’s no Millennium Force, but the view from the top of the lift hill is excellent and it carries a tremendous amount of speed through the course. Wild One is a lovely throwback and surprisingly smooth given its age. The same cannot be said for Roar, the Great Coasters International (GCI) build whose best days are long behind it. When I was young, GCI were the “It” kids — building wooden roller coasters with dynamic elements without sacrificing comfort. They were the antidote to Custom Coasters International, whose reputation had been tarnished as its coasters aged. You either die a hero, or live long enough to become CCI, I suppose. Are you open?
Filament’s Steampub never opened during my visitI didn’t get anything to eat at the park, though not for lack of trying. An astonishing number of restaurants were closed, some with signage and most without. A couple of locations in Gotham City, which eats up the back half of the park, were open. There was a small cafeteria at the front of the park, too. I didn’t see any food carts or drink stands open; and none of the various bars or beer stands were open. I assume they (correctly) figured there weren’t enough over-21s at the park that day to justify opening them. More disappointing were the handful of non-coasters closed in the park. Two of them had signs explaining to guests that maintenance was hard at work to bring them back on line (one of them is pictured above). The splash boat attraction will, in this writer’s opinion, never run again. There were tool boxes and remnants of work in the station, but they may as well knock down the sandwich board.Live entertainment is still alive and wellPerhaps more astonishing than anything else I witnessed at Six Flags America was the show schedule. The park closed at 5 p.m. on the day of my visit (absolutely wild!) but there were multiple shows with multiple showtimes. I caught a bit of the Wild West Stunt Show, which was a pleasant throwback to the days when these were the bread and butter of regional theme parks. How to explain the discrepancy in budgeting between a fleshed out show schedule and a dire ride operation budget? I have no idea. A slow day that still managed to feel busyIt is my humble opinion that nothing has hurt regional theme parks quite like their poor ride operation standards. Walking into the station only to wait 30 minutes because of slow ride ops is a particular kind of hell. It’s not just a lack of urgency; it’s clear that many of these kids haven’t been trained well. I’d need to do a lot more reporting before I started properly diagnosing this problem, but you can tell when someone is lacking confidence while checking lap bars or answering a guest question. A unique problem for regional theme parks is the need to quickly train a large number of employees all at the same time. Getting returning employees is a godsend in this regard, but it’s still much more challenging to have one or two trainers teach 10 kids in a week than it is to onboard an employee or two at a time. I don’t have a solution, but this is a problem that will exist long after Six Flags America is dead and buried. The best of the restThe highlight of the park is the steampunk area. I find the choice of theme baffling, but there’s some nice placemaking in what’s essentially a refreshed Old West town. The park’s Vekoma Suspended Looping Coaster is one of the more comfortable I’ve experienced thanks to its relatively new trains. The rapids ride is a bit more puzzling. There are a handful of rudimentary dinosaur animatronics around the station and throughout the ride, but it’s not all that clear why. My best guess, inferring from some doodads in the station, is that we go through some sort of a time portal and… voila, dinosaurs. Now, you might be wondering: Why? And if the boats are being transported back in time… how do we get back to the present? And why can we see dinosaurs from off the ride? Of course, the answer is: Shut up nerd. It doesn’t matter. In the end, Six Flags America is a land of contrastsI had a nice time at what may be Six Flags’ worst park (comparison is the thief of joy, etc. etc.). Theme park fans, families and tweens who live in the D.C. area will now need to drive quite a bit further for their closest regional theme park. Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Kings Dominion are, with little doubt, better parks. But their distance from D.C. will naturally limit how frequently residents of the capital city can visit. And ultimately, the vast majority of guests at regional theme parks don’t evaluate their local park based on what else is out there. Six Flags America never needed to be as good a park as Great Adventure; it simply needed to be the park close by.
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