Specific Type: Iron Horse
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It’s been a long time since the old Rocket at Playland Park. Imagine 12 years ago, it’s 1992, one of the biggest wooden coasters ever is being built on the side of a cliff! It’s Six Flags Fiesta Texas or just Fiesta Texas’s at the time, Rattler! The most venomous wooden roller coaster, it is huge at the total height of 180 feet tall at the top of the lift, an original 166-foot total first drop right off a cliff! Then through the fan turn! Can You Take This Snake? Cause This Snake Doesn’t Stop Until It has you Screaming!
When the park was being built in 1991 and 1992, They were also building the John Pierce giant, Rattler. It was very difficult to build. The old quarry cliffs where the park was built limited what the ride could do. So it was decided that the cliffs would be incorporated in the ride itself. The ride originally opened with painful Morgan wooden coaster trains but that was changed not long ago to pretty comfy Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters Trains. The ride has been modified way too many times, some of the most biggest modifications have been 4 years after Rattler opened in 1996 that took the 166-foot drop and cutting off 42 feet off of it making it a 118-foot drop. The second biggest modification was when they took the huge fan turn and helix and put a trim brake right after the big fan turn making the helix no fun, unneeded, and very slow. Over the years the coaster has changed a lot. Six Flags Fiesta Texas announced that the ride would close at the end of the 2012 season with the words “slithering away”. Later that year, the park announced Iron Rattler, the revamped version of Rattler. Rebuilt by Rocky Mountain Construction, it would be the second coaster to get the Iron Horse treatment, with the first being the Texas Giant into the New Texas Giant. OnIron Rattler, the original drop would come back, and featured many overbanked turns on the top of the quarry. Also included is a barrel roll over the bottom of the first drop up onto the top of the quarry. Another change is that it would be running on steel rails, and therefore be a steel coaster. Riders just took their seat and the ride ops check their restraints. The train makes, a little turn and up the lift, some really cool views of the park and the San Antonio area are visible from here and some other rides. At the top riders can see Superman Krypton Coaster cresting the edge of the cliff too. Time to drop, here we go, the train hits the top speed of 65 miles per hour at the bottom of the drop. The train quickly goes up and turns going through the fan turn, right into the helix but the train is unfortunately slowed down by the trim brake which makes the helix very painful and not any fun. After that riders go through the mid course brake run, Then they drop into a quick turn around into a tunnel carved out of the quarry walls! It’s Air Conditioned in there, so it’s very cool in there on a hot day! Then the train makes a quick turn out of the tunnel into a fly by the station of the ride. Then it almost has a collision with the Road Runner Express, the parks Arrow mine train, which interacts with Rattler. Next, riders take a quick helix like turn, another one, and through the brake run. Now was that so bad? The ride is quick and never lets down. So make a trip to Six Flags Fiesta Texas to ride one of the biggest wooden roller coasters in the world, The Rattler! |
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