I want 2 hours of my life back from Six Flags, THE DARK KNIGHT IS HORRIBLE
I went to Six Flags Great America yesterday and bought a season pass with parking. Cost me $160 after all was said and done. And I promptly went to go on their new “Wild Mouse” coaster “The Dark Knight”
I waited 120 minutes in line for a short 3 minute video presentation of Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent saying he is going to clean up Gotham and then ‘The Joker’ ‘hijacks’ the feed and you are let out a door to the loading area of the ride.
As you walk in you see yourself on a LCD screen that has a fisheye camera right above it, and a computer puts a joker mask on your face. It is a cool bit of face recoginition and real-time 3D rendering, but it got kinda annoying quickly.
Then you get to the ride. You enter a car that has 4 seats (the coaster is on a continuous loop, the cars are always moving) and you immediately go up a hill to the top of the coaster. You do a bunch of tight turns with things that have ‘joker’ grafitti on them, like mini school busses and walls and such, and after being annoyingly lurched back and forth you go down the first hill. It is about as steep and dramatic as a kids ride. You get back up to another level where you go by more set pieces with grafitti that light up as you go by them, but the car is going so fast that you can’t really tell what the items are. You go down and up one more time and you do a few more turns at a high rate of speed until you are finally slowed down and sent back into the station. Total time on the ride had to be less than 2 minutes, with the total time outside of a chain-lift or break felt like 30 seconds. You went so fast you cannot see the set pieces, which I would imagine is the entire point of the ride. And when you can see them, they look unoriginal.
Think of it like Disney World/Land’s Haunted Mansion, only the HM is slower and has WAY better designed set pieces (which are actually rather fun to look at.)
The Dark Knight is by far the worst waste of 120 minutes in a line that I have ever had at a theme park. It is a kids ride. I wish I could stand outside the line of that ride and tell everyone how absolutely horrible it is. If you want a ‘Batman’ ride, go over to Six Flags Great America’s crown jewel, Batman: The Ride. It is one of the first inverted roller coasters ever made, has great loops, and is just a joy to ride on. It has some of those ’set pieces’ too, only you are having so much fun on the ride itself you don’t really need to notice them.
I was about ready to go and demand my $160 back. Thank god Six Flags has so many other good rides like Superman and Raging Bull which are worth waiting for.
