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Sisters Give New Six-Flags Ride a Whirl
"Tornado -- ride the ultimate storm! Some 5,000 gallons of water send riders whirling and spinning back and forth, from side to side as they slide into a 60-foot-diameter funnel!" This budding journalist and her 18-year-old sister were two of the first people to ride Hurricane Harbor's newest attraction, Tornado.
A day for media and contest winners to try out the new attraction was held Wednesday, May 25. The public will be able to take Six Flags St. Louis Hurricane Harbor's newest plunge this Saturday, May 28. Children must be at least 48 inches tall to ride the Tornado. Six Flags opens every day at 10 a.m., and Hurricane Harbor will have the same schedule after this weekend for the remainder of the summer. Closing times vary. A Thrill Seeker's Tale Taking the assignment was the easy part. After all, I've mastered every roller coaster at Six Flags, and have proven my immunity to motion sickness by performing stunts such as riding Tom's Twister three times after eating a hamburger with all the fixings. Which is why I brought my little sister, Suzanne Haberberger, who lives in Union. I needed an opinion of the ride from the opposite side of the fence. Suzanne is not your typical fearless teenager. She gets queasy just watching roller coasters. She had seen Tornado from Interstate 44 during trips to St. Louis, so I couldn't try to tell her this would be a wave pool or something like that. When I asked her if she would like to go to media day with me to give the new attraction a whirl, her face turned a slight shade of green, mixed with the paleness of fear. But she agreed to throw her swimming suit on under her clothes "just in case." When we arrived, we were escorted through the locked gates of Hurricane Harbor and led through the empty water park. The Tornado is a looming figure among the other attractions. It is 75 feet high, and the bright blue and yellow funnel looks like a gaping mouth waiting to swallow bathing-suit clad visitors whole. When we arrived, a handful of children and adults were racing up the concrete stairs, their wet feet slapping on the concrete. The Tornado begins with a tunnel that is wide enough to accommodate a tube for two or four people, which dumps into a large funnel. A rail spans the wide opening of the funnel, and Suzanne and I leaned against it so we could watch a few people "ride the ultimate storm," Six Flags' slogan for the water ride. We looked into the wide, black tunnel as screams echoed against the inside walls. After a few seconds, a couple on a two-person tube came careening out of the tunnel, and the force of the water swept them up the side of the funnel like toys. They rushed to the bottom of the funnel, and down the side again, and back up again, until they hit the waterfall at the bottom and splashed into a catch pool. Suddenly I, the thrill park veteran, was feeling a little nervous. I walked down to the catch pool to get the opinions of some of the riders. I heard one of the visitors describe it as a giant toilet, and it feels like you're being flushed into the pipes. One little boy kept repeating over and over again, "It was awesome!" A mother-daughter pair were on their seventh trip when Suzanne and I encountered them, and they had no intentions of stopping any time soon. I asked the public relations spokesperson on hand what made Six Flags officials decide to place this monstrosity in their park. "People come as a group, and people want to do things as a group. Water is such a group activity," replied Elizabeth Gotway. No more excuses. Time to give this water beast a try for myself. The sun was getting hot, so it didn't take too much persuading to get my "chicken livered" sister on the ride. We grabbed a two-person raft and scaled the six flights of steps to the top of the ride. The lifeguard helped us into the tube, careful to hold on to us so we wouldn't be swept into the tunnel. We had to almost lay down, with our legs sprawled across the tube and our rear ends sticking out of a gap that partially submerged us in the icy water. The lifeguard waved innocently as he pushed us off. My sister and I were submerged in darkness, as our thin tube smacked and sloshed water into our faces as it picked up speed. It wasn't more than two seconds before we started screaming our lungs out, the high-pitched screeching bouncing off the tunnel walls. We hit an incline that felt like we were going straight down into sudden doom. My screaming went an octave higher, and then I saw it. A light at the end of the tunnel! But my troubles weren't over, because we had been dumped into the massive funnel. I suddenly understood why they had called it Tornado, because the force of the water knocks you around with no mercy. It took only a few seconds of splashing chaos for us to reach the bottom of the funnel. We went through a waterfall and were greeted by a lifeguard, who was laughing loudly at our chorus of squeals. We rode it twice more before I told Suzanne we had to go back to the office. But she was pulled in for one more ride with three other girls. This time they used a four-person tube. After she finished, I asked her if it was any different with four people. "It's a lot scarier with four people because you hit the sides a lot harder," she said. That will be something I'll have to try out next time I come, when I don't have to go back to work to make deadline!
©Washington Missouri 2009
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