Evel Knievel Media Day June 19th 

Back in August of last year we started noticing a large amount of land clearing where the Moon cars and the parks defunct kids area was. Speculation went rampant that we were getting everything from a EURO Fighter to a Wooden GCI coaster. It’s odd looking back to that time and seeing how we all laughed at the possibilities of SFSTL getting another woodie. After all only around 11 parks in the US had three woodies, and none of them were a Six Flags property. So the rumor at the time was absurd. Well in October everyone was surprised when it was announced that a GCI woodie would be coming to SFSTL in the summer of 2008. Even more people were shocked and confused by the name of this new ride...Evel Knievel!

Many coaster enthusiasts and the general public were all confused by the name and surprised by it.  Furthermore many people complained that “Oh no SFSTL is getting another wooding coaster and it will be like the Boss”. Well my friends after today’s media day I can tell you it all works and works VERY well.

The park was kind enough to invite both myself and Bucky out to the park for the Media day events. I will say that it was a nice presentation and everyone from the park employees, GCI and Linda Knievel were all very nice and pleasant to talk to. Not to mention the opening ceremonies were well done and included a special tribute to Evil Knievel himself.

Justin (Bucky) and I arrived in the morning to the employee entrance and as we waited for are escort, a bunch of bikers rolled up. This was a sign that there might be a bit of a ceremony to the rides opening at 11 am to the contest winners and media. Sure enough when our escort came, she came to get us and the bikers. Now I have worked in the park for many years and this was the first time that I was flanked by 7 Harley Davidson’s through the park on our way to the ride. It was an interesting an odd site, as we would later find out these bikes would be a large part of the ceremony.

While we wait for the opening ceremony to commence at 11 am we run into Paul D and another coaster enthusiasts who had been there 6 am, who had been painfully forced to ride with media as “coaster enthusiasts”.  Paul tells me that this was the best GCI coaster that he had ridden to date and went on and on about it.  That right there says a lot since the guy was used to riding Raven, Legend and The Voyage often.

At 11 o’clock the ceremony begins with the Harleys driving down from the midway to the ride entrance where the speakers had gathered. We heard from the parks GM, Krystal Knievel, GCI and a few other officials as well.  All talking about how this was a well built coaster and how Evil would have been proud to stand there today to ride it. After all as Linda recounted in 2005 Evil and her went to park and rode Boss together.

During the ceremony the parks director of marketing and entertainment told us that they wanted to have some sort of memorial for the late Evel Knievel.  They had decided the most fitting memorial would be to send the first official train through the course empty. Once he said that the train that had been sitting on the lift lurched to life with Harley’s in the back ground revving their engines as loud as they could.  It was a fitting tribute to a man, whose name was on the ride.

After the train had ended its run, the family, along with a few of us were invited up to the station for the second official ride before opening it to the contest winners. The family and invited guest loaded the train and they were off.  As you will see in the pictures there was a camera rig on the front of this train to document the occasion.  When the train came back into the station the whole family was excited and looked as if they loved the ride. At this point the ride was open to all media, contest winners and invited guests.

There was not a single unhappy face in the crowd of riders. Everyone we saw had nothing but good things to say about the ride. It really seemed to be a crowd pleaser. Now it was me and Justin turn to take a spin and weigh in. I had ridden many coasters and so has Justin. Unfortunately neither of us had ever ridden a GCI, and did not know what to expect.

Words cannot explain that first ride or the ones that followed. It was amazing experience, which seemed to never end. We had expected the ride to be a bit sluggish and rough, since it had only been running for two weeks. It was none of these things. It kept a constant pace and tons of air time. Even in the front there is TONs of air time. Did I mention it’s probably the smoothest coaster in the park, because it is. Hopefully soon when we get the reverse POV of me and Justin riding you can see the sheer amount of negative g’s you experience.

The front seat is wide open and you feel like your suspended above the track and moving very quickly and aggressively through the course, with tons of air time. The middle is a great place to go for a mild, somewhat relaxing ride, where as the back is fast, fun and constant air time.  The back right seat is the seat you want to be in for the best ride at the park. I encourage everyone to go out and take a ride on this coaster as soon as you can. It is definitely worth an hour plus wait.

Thank you again to our hosts for not only the invite, but for building a wonderful new coaster for all to enjoy.

p.s. July 3rd would be a good day to visit the park.

Click for Media Day Pics!

Believe it or not there are still people working on the site and monitoring the forums from time to time. It’s been a rather busy six months for myself and Justin.  Things are finally starting to slow down for us to some degree, which means we will have time to work on the site again. Justin is already playing around with version 3.0 of the site as well as looking for some better gallery software since A.) There’s a glitch with IE 7.0 and B.) I need a better way to do updates.  Essentially we are working on this and that as we have time when we do. Which means I cant give you a time line yet. You can start looking forward to a few updates from time to time and some more embedded video as well to start.

Now if I were you I would check back here in the late afternoon of May 19th for a look at the parks newest ride. Until then feel free to poke around the site I have updated a lot of pages and welcome any corrections.

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Went out to the park again this weekend to check out progress of the new ride, and as many of you already know it has gone vertical. It also looks like about 75% of the concrete work is done. In other news it appears they have already been very busy painting The Log Flume and I do like the new forest green color on it and they have retracked sections of track and have replace lots of wood on The Boss. Most of the work appears to be taking place on the West side of the ride on the first drop and turnaround. Hopefully in the near future I can show some of the Screamin' Eagle work as well. If things continue to rise at a good rate, expect weekly updates (if permitted).

 In other news I have spent a good many hours fixing most of the web pages, adding embedded videos to some of the rides and generally updating any and all information I could. Thanks to SFZIP for all the new information which has allowed me to update the "Park History" section of the site. I have also readded the park maps section. Hopefully in the next few weeks I will get the site back to where it was, prior to being hacked and destroyed. Further more the Gallery is still having issues and trying to figure out why for a lot of people it looks disorganized. The easiest way to find a picture is to goto the individual ride pages and click on the "More pictures" link.

If there is any broken links or things you would like to see fixed or brought to site please email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Also if you have old park maps and pictures I would like to see them and with your permission add them to the site.

As always a big thanks to the park for letting me come out and take pictures to share.

To the update

As promised here is the first of many photographic updates of Evel Knievel (EK). For the next month or so, construction should be relatively slow and not a whole lot going on, so for now I will probably do an update every other week until thinks pick up. After all there is only so many ways to photograph a cement slab.

At current a large amount of lumber is on site and being staged up in the employee parking lot, meanwhile the concrete work looks to be about half way done with the southwestern edge of the ride area still exposed dirt and some rebar. My guess is they will probably be finished pouring in two or so weeks. If you look at some of the photos you will not be able to get a better orientation of where the ride will sit, including the station and transfer house and where moon cars could possibly go around the coaster, so much for a nice quite ride.

On a side note some more lumber has shown up for Eagle and/or Boss, but at this time I am unaware of any construction on those rides.