Most Pointless Coasters At Six Flags Parks

Not a coaster and not pointless for the park, but I hate the Houdini ride at Great Adventure - possibly because I was expecting a well-themed dark ride, not a barf-inducing flat ride.

In my opinion, Scream is not really that worthy of a ride for a park like Six Flags Magic Mountain considering it’s literally just Bizzaro at Great Adventure but is a mirror version. I think in 2003 (The year Scream opened) Magic Mountain should’ve gotten a record breaking floorless coaster because Magic Mountain back then and even now is all about the record breaking. Instead I would’ve had Scream built at a park like Six Flags St Louis, Six Flags Great America, Or Six Flags America.

I'm not surprised that you mentioned Scream, Typhoon2000, as that ride wasn't actually meant for SFMM. Originally, the plan was to build it at either SFOT or SFStL (forget which), but when Six Flags got wind of Cedar Point adding Top Thrill Dragster, the ride was redirected to SFMM to ensure the park stayed ahead of Cedar Point's coaster count. After receiving six coasters in the previous six years, nobody was expecting a coaster for SFMM in 2003, but the ride randomly appeared in November of 2002, was immediately announced, and assembled quickly to open for spring break and beat Top Thrill Dragster by a couple weeks. It has never really fit in with the park, and definitely qualifies as a pointless coaster.

However, there are some other coasters in the Six Flags chain I'd consider to be pointless (or, at the very least, questionable)...

-Sticking to SFMM, two other coasters at that park don't belong. First is Speedy Gonzales Hot Rod Racers, an unneeded fourth kids' coaster for the park. By the time it was built, the park already had Canyon Blaster, Magic Flyer, and Road Runner Express, so this one should have gone to a park more in need (such as SFStL, which doesn't have any kids' coasters) rather than showing up at SFMM just for the record. The other is West Coast Racers, which fails to bring anything new to SFMM's lineup and is inferior to other rides in the park with similar elements.

-Moving to SFGAdv, I'd say that Harley Quinn Crazy Train is a tad pointless. This coaster is located directly adjacent to Skull Mountain, and is a very similar ride but outdoors with no theming. It is a little less intense and less scary due to this, so perhaps there is a weak justification for its presence at the park, but given that Skull Mountain is far superior the justification is minimal.

-I'm probably in the minority here, but I personally consider Wonder Woman Golden Lasso Coaster to be redundant at SFFT. The park already has an RMC (Iron Rattler), already has two intense twisted coasters (Goliath and Poltergeist), and already has two coasters with good drops (Iron Rattler and Superman Krypton Coaster). I get that the single rail provides a different experience, but I think it would have made sense to put this one at a park without a RMC or compact multi-inversion coaster.

-Harley Quinn Crazy Coaster at SFDK is pointless, but that's mostly because the ride is terrible. I also actually consider Joker at that park to be a worse fit for the lineup than Roar was even if it is technically an upgrade to the coaster.

-Tantrum at SFDL, while not pointless, isn't the sort of coaster that park really needed. It would have been a better fit for New York's other Six Flags park, Great Escape, as they lack a large steel coaster.

-Lastly, the most pointless coaster in the Six Flags chain: Ednor-L'Attaque. La Ronde installed Vampire, a B&M Batman clone, in 2002. Eight years later, they installed a used Vekoma SLC for no apparent reason. This ride is little more than a worse version of a ride that already existed at the same park, and serves no purpose other than giving La Ronde an additional coaster. Of all the questionable ride installs Six Flags has made, this might top the list for me.

-Also, at any Six Flags park with a Vekoma Boomerang, I consider that ride to be pointless if it was installed after the park already had another large looping coaster (so SFDL, SFFT, SFNE, and SFStL).

Vertical Velocity at SFGA. I mean its a cool coaster to look at, but it doesnt offer much. I think if it was more of a Vertical Velocity at SFDK, then it would be more thrilling because of the inversions. To me, the one at SFGA and Wicked Twister at CP are bland. It's not even a bad ride with too intense forces, it's just a ride thats cool to look at.

Goliath at Fiesta Texas was completely unnecessary because SeaWorld which has a Batman clone named Great White is literally only 25 miles away.

AJ Hummel, the reason they added the Vekoma SLC is because when Six Flags bought the park from the government of Montreal they made a minimum investment agreement. With Six Flags on the road to bankruptcy they didn't want to spend any money on La Ronde but still had to invest a certain amount in new attractions in order to meet their obligations. There was a recently removed Vekoma SLC sitting in Great Escape's parking lot which wasn't very far away so they just added that and passed it off as a big investment. Ednor is Ronde spelled backwards which is a fitting name for a ride there, as it seems everything done at La Ronde is backwards.

Knowing that to me the most puzzling [coaster] addition SF made around that time was Kingda Ka. SF didn't really have any way of knowing how other big prototype rides like Superman the Escape, X, and DejaVu were going to turn out, but everyone in the industry knew full well that Xcelerator and Dragster were major headaches that were down more than they were up and it was an extremely stupid idea to build another one at that time (especially the tallest and fastest). After TTD was built that June Dick Kinzel even said in an interview with NPR that it was the worst addition he ever made and Six Flags still spent $25+ mil to build a clone of it. Kirean Burke and Gary Story really wanted the worlds tallest and fastest coaster at their park in the New York market regardless of whether it was going to work or not, and they got it, and all the nightmares and headaches that came with it. Right after it opened it spent months SBNO and Six Flags lost millions and it spent the next decade being a huge thorn in their side. I had a friend that worked maintenance at Cedar Point at the time and he said SF was so desparate that they offered to pay CF to fly their engineers out to GADV to help them with Kingda Ka in any way they could (and CF basically laughed and said no and made fun of them for being a bunch of idiots).

In regards to my thoughts on most pointless coasters I think all regular Boomerangs, SLCs, and Volares at every park they are at (not only SF parks). Coasters have moved beyond the 90s Vekoma/Arrow bash-you-around phase and I think we're all ready to move on from all of those rides by this point. Also most non-RMC additions made to every SF parks during the Jim Reid Anderson era, it seemed like he was a big fan of adding cheap carnival rides and advertising them as big coasters.

Larson Loops are by far the most pointless coasters at Six Flags (and those are their words, not mine). They are, quite simply, low-capacity eyesores that you can find at various carnivals around the world.

I don't see anything wrong with having Wonder Woman Golden Lasso Coaster at SFFT. It's not in any way similar to the other RMC in the park so is therefore not redundant. It fits perfectly in the available space and one can get a great shot of both that and Superman Krypton Coaster in one frame. As to Kingda Ka, it may be a headache for the park but is immensely popular with guests. I don't know the official statistics but would guess that it's the 3rd most popular coaster in the park, after El Toro and Nitro. And while this was very much an afterthought, it provided a good framework for the 2nd best drop tower I've ridden (Falcon's Fury is the 1st). Of course that caused even more problems because Kingda Ka can't be launched until the gondolas on Zumanjaro have dropped and the catch cars have come down but on a good day the two rides can co-exist peacefully. Harley Quinn's Crazy Train offers an experience different enough from Skull Mountain to justify its existence. The sheer length of the train is nothing short of remarkable.

I don’t mean to be so disagreeable on my first ever post but... I went to SFMM on my honeymoon 15 years ago and actually loved Scream... not only that my wife who doesn’t like a lot of the ups and downs and airtime (she didn’t let me know this until AFTER we were married.) liked it too. It was nice having a coaster she really liked. My home park is SFOT and I have been on the similar Superman Krypton Coaster at SFFT and had always loved it as well. At Fiesta, i like Golden Lasso and found that it gives some lovely sensations I haven’t felt since my honeymoon... from the X at SFMM. But I digress. The boomerangs also are nostalgic for me (I’m 45 i can be nostalgic, right?) from the anticipation of the Flashback at SFOT... also I think they serve as a gateway coaster to others... at least it has for my son. I would like a record breaking flying or floorless or something here... it was cool having the first RMC in the Giant but wish we had gotten some inversions with it. Given my access mainly to the parks around here I guess I don’t consider ANY pointless, I’m just glad to have some options!

Mardi Gras Hangover at Great America. Just one single 100-ft tall loop, that's it.