The Joker is Six Flags over Texas’ latest attraction, serving as a green and purple billboard that greets guests during their drive along the park’s entrance. As the latest addition to the ever-expanding Gotham City section of the park, The Joker draws you with a brightly-colored entrance. Immediately afterward, a large group of switchbacks send you around a series of TVs broadcasting the inner thoughts of the DC Comics villain. Other activities throughout the queue line are designed to keep you occupied during your wait.
The Joker’s entrance features a test seat for riders to ensure they’ll fit.
As the queue continues, it splits into two paths to two separate loading stations for the green and purple sides. The Joker’s split trains and low-hanging tracks makes the separate stations necessary. An over-the-shoulder restraint with a flexible vest conforms to your body, comfortably hugging your chest to prevent movement… Something you’ll come to appreciate while being whipped upside-down around a swooping drop. Each train consists of two rows, each with 2 passengers on the green and purple sides, for a total of 8 riders. Riders initially face each other as the ride begins, though that changes throughout the ride based on which way the trains are headed on the track.
Riders initially face each other during boarding of the trains
The Ride Experience
The vertical lift hill leads to a series of milder dips leading to the first big drop, a swooping “beyond vertical” drop that triggers rotation in the ride’s free-spinning seats. From there its another series of dips, followed by the finale – a long swooping drop into another smaller drop that doubles as the brake run. Along the way, fins mounted in strategic locations induce extra rotations in the free-spinning seats, ensuring some degree of discombobulation.
The Joker’s vertical lift hill makes short work of the initial climb
What makes The Joker interesting are its free-spinning seats, meaning no two rides are exactly the same. Depending on the weight distribution for your seats, the wind, the position of your arms and legs, and a variety of other factors, you could be facing any direction for any segment of the ride. Strong positive G’s on one ride could be negative G’s on another. You could experience a relatively tame level ride one journey, and an intense flip-a-thon the next.
What makes The Joker interesting are its free-spinning seats, meaning no two rides are exactly the same.
Though smooth-as-glass, The Joker is quite possibly one of the park’s most intense rides. Not because of high G’s (that honor belongs to Shock Wave) or duration of G’s (like Titan‘s second helix), but due to rapidly-changing forces and dizzying spins that make it difficult to anticipate what’s next.
No two rides on The Joker are guaranteed to ever be the same with its free-spinning cars
If one could find a complaint about The Joker, it might be its short length at approximately 23 seconds from top of lift to brake run. But given its potential for an intense ride with dizzying drops and spins, it still feels appropriate. Any longer and the park might have to provide barf bags upon exiting. Few rides pack as mighty a punch as The Joker does in such a small package. It rounds out a nice collection of other intense rides in the Gotham City area including Batman and Mr. Freeze.
Future Impact
The Joker is the first attraction to encroach upon property previously held by the former shopping mall at the corner of Six Flags Drive and Copeland Road. The property, which Six Flags purchased several years ago, is valuable in that it’s one of the few obvious areas of potential park expansion left. And with Joker’s relatively small footprint taking up little of its space (in the shopping mall’s previous parking lot), it leaves open a decent plot of land for future expansion.
Undeveloped land between The Joker and the rest of Gotham City could house future attractions
Your Turn
Have you ridden The Joker? What did you think? Leave a comment with your review!
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