Six Flags seeks boost in new ride.
Six Flags hopes new thrill ride will entice guests to come back
Six Flags Fiesta Texas officials hope a new aerial thrill ride that premieres Saturday will help the park bounce back from a pandemic-induced attendance slump.
The Steampunk-inspired ride, Dare Devil Dive Flying Machines, gives passengers a sense of weightlessness with aerial banks, loops and dives.
Its base rises 48 feet, with four-seat cars made to look like retro airplanes attached to its six legs.
The ride had been scheduled to debut Memorial Day weekend last year, part of the time-honored theme park tradition of introducing new attractions every year or two.
But construction of the multimillion ride stopped after the pandemic closed the San Antonio park back in March 2020.
With the new attraction, Jeffrey Siebert, president of Six Flags Fiesta Texas, is looking to bring in season-pass holders who make up a large chunk of the park’s business.
“They are extremely important,” Siebert said. “They are our most loyal fans, and there’s no doubt we like building new and crazy innovative rides so they can not only hopefully come one time, but multiple times throughout the year.”
The theme park has struggled over the last year, with a state orders closing theme parks throughout Texas. After
reopening June 19, the park experienced a sharp drop in ticket sales.
Grand Prairie-based Six Flags doesn't disclose attendance figures for each of its more than two dozen parks, but the overall number of visitors plummeted to 6.8 million visitors in 2020, a 79.3 percent drop from 2019, according to the company's most recent financial report.
Six Flags lost $423 million last year, compared to a profit of $179 million in 2019.
Gov. Greg Abbott plans to end the state mandate requiring Texans to wear face masks in public places on March 10. Yet Six Flags and other major San Antonio attractions say they'll keep their face-covering rules in place.
But Six Flags could drop the requirement as early as this summer as more people get vaccinated, Siebert said.
“Hopefully, sometime this summer we'll be able to pull back and go to our normal mask-less operation and see all those smiles again and all the screams that we missed while we're all wearing masks,” he said.
Six Flags officials won't say how much Dare Devil Dive Flying Machines cost to build, but several theme park consultants estimate the price at about $5 million.
The ride wasn't the only whose opening was pushed back because of the pandemic. Other Six Flags locations and theme parks worldwide delayed new-attraction openings last year, said theme park consultant Dennis Speigel.
“In 2020, do you open the Christmas present now when nobody may be coming, or do you save it for next year and reintroduce it?” he said. “I think Six Flags Fiesta Texas did the right thing.”
The San Antonio theme park last opened a major new ride in June 2019 when it premiered the
Joker: Carnival of Chaos. The 17-story pendulum ride also features a funhouse.
Regional theme parks like Six Flags Fiesta Texas depend on repeat visitors, so it's important to have a new ride to give them a reason to visit, said Martin Lewison, an associate professor of business management at Farmingdale State College.
“Typically, if you're going to go back to your local park every year, then your local park has to offer something,” he said. “They have to make a value proposition and say, ‘Hey there's a reason why you need to come back this summer.'”
Seaworld San Antonio, the city's other major theme park, won't introduce a new ride this year. But the park opened a major new wooden roller coaster, Texas Stingray, in February 2020, just weeks before the park was ordered closed.
Seaworld officials say they plan to promote the attraction again this year since the pandemic prevented many people from trying the ride in 2020.