Every ride at an amusement park is somebody’s favorite, but parks always need to add new attractions and experiences to get guests coming back year after year. This means that sometimes a popular ride must make way for something new. Such seemed to be the case for Mr. Freeze: Reverse Blast at Six Flags Over Texas, which recently announced the “last chance” to ride it, but now things aren’t so clear.
Last week, Six Flags announced that September 11 would be the last chance to ride Mr. Freeze: Reverse Blast, the coaster named for the popular Batman villain. Certainly, the words “last chance” gave the impression that the ride was closing down, likely to make way for something new. This upset many fans who love the coaster, many of whom begged on social media to spare the ride. And then the official Six Flags Over Texas posted a tweet which simultaneously confirmed the “last chance” date, while also indicating that the ride was not going away after all.
Last chance to ride MR. FREEZE: Reverse Blast is Sept 11…. But do you really think it’s going away? Not a chance! Stay tuned for more…#mysixflags #sixflagsovertexas pic.twitter.com/EBIWvdkyTcAugust 29, 2022
Needless to say, this is more than a little confusing, is the ride closing down or not? Your last chance to ride it is less than two weeks away, but it’s not going anywhere? Clearly, Six Flags is having some fun.
There are a number of possible ways to parse this language in a way that makes sense. The most likely is that beginning Sept 12, Mr. Freeze: Reverse Blast will go down for an extensive refurbishment, but also a retheming. If it was just a refurbishment, the park would almost certainly just say that. Such things happen all the time.
Perhaps the ride will remain, more or less as it is, but when it comes back it will do so under a different name, similar to what Disney is doing with Splash Mountain. Maybe the ride will lose its Batman connection entirely, or maybe the theme will be given to a new character. Six Flags has the rights to use most any DC characters because back when many of these rides were first created WB owned the parks, and a deal was struck to allow tights to continue after Six Flags was sold.
Alternatively, the theme may stay the same but the ride may change in some significant way. This has actually already happened once. The original Mr. Freeze coaster opened in 1998 at both Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags St. Louis. The original coaster was forward facing, but in May 2012 both versions of the ride reopened as Reverse Blast, using backward facing trains.
Perhaps the decision has been made, after a decade of Reverse Blast, to go back to the forward moving train at Six Flags Over Texas. No changes have been announced in St Louis, so perhaps the idea is to have one coaster going each direction, allowing each park to have a unique version of the ride. Alternatively, maybe some other significant change is on the horizon that will make Mr. Freeze a different coaster than it is today, without making it fundamentally something entirely new.
These seem like the most likely scenarios, though it’s possible something else is in the mix. Hopefully we’ll know what’s up before Mr. Freeze: Reverse Blast shuts down, at least for now.
