More on Coasters

This is pretty cool since it fills in details I was missing about those coasters I rode. The first coaster I was able to summon the courage to ride was the Wild Cat. After reading this, I know how old I was when I rode it, 7 and 8. This also shows just hold old that old wooden coaster, the Thunderbolt, really is. My memories make that my favorite coaster no matter what they build next.

   1840 was the year that Gallops Grove opened in Agawam, Massachusetts as a picnic grove located on the west bank of the Connecticut River. Throughout the 19th century and well into the 1900s, the picnic spot remained that and not much more, later being renamed Riverside Grove and, eventually, Riverside Park.

   In 1940, however, a century after initially opening, Riverside Park hired wooden rollercoaster builder Joseph Drambour to construct a signature attraction to draw in visitors. The coaster that he built, known as the Thunderbolt, opened in 1941 and did just that, with a swift run through a figure-eight / oval layout.

   The NASCAR Speedway opened in the 1970s and attracted racing fans to the park as well as coaster riders, and proved a top draw for years to come. But for over thirty years, the Thunderbolt would reign as the one and only coaster at Riverside Park…

   Then came the new steel coaster technology made popular in the ’70s. To keep up with the craze, the wraps were pulled off of Wild Cat in 1974, a compact steel Anton Schwarzkopf-designed twister. Following the Wild Cat was the Arrow Dynamics shuttle-looping Loop Coaster (later renamed Black Widow) just three years later.

   The Wild Cat’s life at Riverside came to an end in 1983, but the same year also saw the addition of one of the largest milestones in the park’s history. Riverside asked William H. Cobb to design a major new wood-tracked ride and the result was the Cyclone which hit the coaster world and became an infamous ride for its fast and relentless twister layout.

   In 1996, a growing amusement park chain called Premier Parks saw potential and took the reins of Riverside, and so began a 40-million-dollar expansion kicked off with the opening of the Vekoma Inc. Suspended Looping Coaster Mind Eraser in 1997, new flat rides, a splashdown water ride, and other attractions.

   20 million dollars of the multi-year expansion was pumped into an adjacent waterpark, Island Kingdom, which opened up in 1998, then Blizzard River, a wet and wild million-gallon whitewater raft ride, was added the following year.

   The year 2000 would bring expansion at an unprecedented level with the single largest year for new additions to the park, when Six Flags acquired the Premier Parks chain and thus converted Riverside Park into Six Flags New England. With the transformation arrived numerous new rides, attractions, and a whopping three new steel coasters: Taking the place of the Black Widow, Flashback, a Vekoma Boomerang shuttle-looper; a family twister, Poison Ivy’s Tangled Train; and, above all else, the dominating Superman: Ride of Steel, an Intamin AG hypercoaster with an out & back / twister layout, a portion of which replaced the Speedway.

   And the park continues to add to their lineup of rides and attractions with the 5-inversion floorless steel coaster Batman: the Dark Knight in 2002. And it certainly won’t end there.

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