Tac Talks Coasters - Bonus Post 2
Photo Sources: All photos are mine
Riddler Revenge at Six Flags New England!
<- Previous | Start | Next ->
Opened: 1997 Manufacturer: Vekoma Height: 109 ft (33.3 m) Speed: 49.7 mph (80 kph) Length: 2,260.5 ft (689 m) Place in my rankings: #162 (falling between Skull Mountain and Cedar Point's Wilderness Run)
Time for SLC (Suspended Looping Coaster) two of two. Having ridden Professor Screamore's SkyWinder about a month before I got up to Six Flags New England to ride this, at least I had a better idea of what to expect going in. I knew that the ride was going to track nowhere near smoothly, but that the elements packed in some solid intensity. Back in 2015, Riddler got the same new train/retheme/repaint treatment that SkyWinder would later get in 2024. It had initially opened in 1997 as Mind Eraser (a very fitting name for how much headbanging you'd get on the ride) until it got it's new name, theme and the same updated vest restraint trains I talked about yesterday.
Clearly, considering it doesn't even rank 10 spots higher than SkyWinder in my overall rankings, I wasn't a huge fan of Riddler Revenge either lmao. I was sort of disappointed with Riddler (or at least as disappointed with an SLC as you can be lol) because I had heard that once it's got those new trains, it was one of the better SLCs out there. Usually people put it second for the model behind Great Nor'easter at Morey's Piers. But if this was considered one of the better SLCs and it still sucked, that really does not give me much hope for the model as a whole lmao. Great Nor'easter not withstanding since that one got a full retrack in 2017 making it actually smooth and very good from what I've heard.
The one thing Riddler did better than SkyWinder, and why I place this one a little bit higher was because it did feel marginally smoother than SkyWinder. That may have been added to by the fact that I rode SkyWinder in the back row, where as I rode Riddler in the middle, but still. Thanks to the vest restraints, you still don't get headbanging here, but the whole train just jolts side to side really jarringly throughout the ride, which was really uncomfortable.
Anyways, I said I'd break down the ride layout a bit more in depth today, since yesterday I mainly talked about my thoughts on the model as a whole, so let's get to that. You start off by swooping down the ride's curved first drop before straightening out briefly and then flipping up into the model's signature roll over inversion. From the drop to the short moment of straight track is where you hit the ride's first bad transition, giving a nasty jolt, and get used to that because there are a lot of those on these SLCs lmao. This rollover inversion was pretty cool though. It's basically an immelmann immediately followed by a dive loop. Or you could also think of it as two half loops separated by an in-line twist at the apex. Either way it's a surprisingly whippy moment.
Coming down out of the roll over, you hit another harsh jolt as you rise back up into an elevated banked hill. This element didn't really do anything for me on Riddler or SkyWinder since it's mainly a way for the ride to cross over some other sections of track and line itself up for the next inversion. This inversion is a sidewinder, which is basically like half of a cobra roll. You rise up into a half loop and then twist out of it to the side. Kind of like an immelmann but not really since you exit perpendicular from the direction you entered from. Like the roll over, this element had some solid whip, but the transition from the half loop to the twist out as easily one of the most jarring and violent on these rides.
Following the sidewinder was a 270 degree helix leading into the ride's final two inversions, a double in-line twist. If I had to pick, these would probably be my favorite inversions on the ride, since they have really strong whip and laterals all the way through. But, like with just about every element on these SLCs, the transitions in and out of them are brutal. The ride then sort of circles around the layout, dipping up and down and side to side a little bit before heading into the brake run.
Of all the coasters I've ridden that I would say are outright bad, Riddler Revenge is probably the best of them. The best of the worst you could say. It's not good, but it wasn't absolutely abysmal. Like I've said, the forces on these rides are surprisingly solid and the compact layout has good bones to it. It's really just the roughness and bad track profiling that make these rides so awful. So it's the forces and the layout that put Riddler above other outright bad coasters I've done like Shockwave, Corkscrew or Trailblazer. And the slightly less jerky ride places it a bit ahead of sister coaster SkyWinder. But in the race for last place, is "the best of the worst coasters I've ridden" really all that much of a victory?
Thanks for checking out today's coaster post! Keep an eye out for tomorrow's coaster!
