User blog:RCTFan2002/Whatever Happened to... Episode 3: Whatever Happened to...Six Flags South Carolina?

Hi guys, it's RCTFan2002 again. Welcome back to an all-new episode of my "Whatever Happened To...?" series. This one will address what is probably one of the most famous and popular RCT3 park projects ever created - CD5's "Six Flags South Carolina". This RCT3 timeline park showed the park growing up from humble beginnings in the 1970's, facing financial issues and a hurricane in the '80s, and eventually becoming reborn in the '90s as one of Six Flags' most popular parks in the South, which it remains as to this day - and by this day I mean 2010, when the last update was posted. But what happened after that? What does the park look like today? Well, you're in luck because you're about to see everything that (at least in my imagination) happened to Six Flags South Carolina since then and how the park looks in 2022!

(For the record, I do NOT own Six Flags South Carolina, like at all. It belongs entirely to the very talented and skilled Coasterdude5. Kudos to him for creating one of the greatest RCT3 parks ever *cough*andaSixFlagsoneatthat*cough*)

Six Flags South Carolina: The People
First off, a brief "Where are they now?" segment detailing what happened to the three main characters of the SFSC storyline: ex-manager of the park Joseph Reynolds, the former Charleston journalist Joe Martin, who moved to Dallas in 1999, and Timmy Powers, a coaster blogger who eventually interviewed for a position at the park itself in 2011. Let's see what happened to them since we last saw them:

Joseph Reynolds: Despite retiring from his position as park manager, he still returned to Six Flags South Carolina every year not just to check out the park, but also to help out with processes like job interviews. Otherwise, his life hasn't been eventful at all, as he just enjoyed the quaint life of retirement. However, in the summer of 2020, admist the initial chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns, he tested positive for coronavirus along with his wife. Although they both made a complete recovery from the initial case, the virus had compromised Joseph's immune system, causing him to start acting sickly as time went on. It didn't help that he was already as old as he was, and eventually, his body just...gave out. He passed away in January of 2021 from health complications, confirmed by the coroner to be directly related to his former COVID case. He left behind his wife and many grateful and appreciative SFSC fans. He is currently buried at St. Lawrence Cemetery.

Joe Martin: After moving to Dallas, Texas in October of 1999, he immediately got to work at his new job as a columnist for the local Dallas paper. In 2002, he married a woman named Lisa, who he had a son, Skyler, with in 2004. Eventually, he and Lisa divorced in 2009, and in 2011 he remarried to a woman named Sylvia, who he is still with to this day. With her, he had a daughter Grace Lyn in 2013, and another daughter named Kylie in 2015. He also managed to work his way up the system at his new company over the years, eventually becoming building manager in 2014. However, he still maintains a love for theme parks and rollercoasters and occasionally blogs about them online on his own personal blog site. He started taking his kids on road trips to nearby parks like Six Flags Over Texas and Seaworld San Antonio in hopes of getting them interested in theme parks as well. After COVID broke out, he now spends most of his time working from home, writing for both his job and his personal blog on his computer and keeping people updated on the breaking theme park news.

Timmy Powers: Despite his passion for the park, he, unfortunately, did not get the job in the communications/marketing department at SFSC that he talked about in his final park update. However, despite this he still keeps a positive attitude about his home park. Eventually, in 2012 he moved to Marietta, Georgia where he DID get a job in the advertising department at Six Flags Over Georgia, mainly working on the park's website and posting updates about the park on social media. In 2015, he got married to a girl named Danielle, and they currently have two sons named River and Gabriel, both currently 4 years old and going on 5 in March. In spite of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he was able to successfully take his wife and kids on a road trip to SFSC for the first time in July 2021, stating that "they loved it".

Six Flags South Carolina: The Park
Now that we know what happened with everybody from the storyline, we can get to the park itself, and see what happened to it between the years 2011 and 2022.

In 2011, the park opened Apocalypse: The Ride, a GCI family wooden coaster with a maximum height of 80 ft and 2400 ft of track. Located in the former spot of the Skycoaster, the coaster has received rave reviews from both families and thrillseekers alike, considering it to be the perfect bridge between a thrill coaster and a family coaster due to it's small height yet exciting and thrilling layout.

2012 didn't see any major capital come to the theme park itself, but the 15-acre Hurricane Harbor waterpark did have it's grand opening right next door on Friday, June 29th. The waterpark, featuring 25 all-new waterslides and attractions - including the chain's second Polin King Cobra slide - was advertised as a separate entity from the theme park, and requires a separate admissions fee for all entering guests. However, that same year Six Flags also unveiled an all-new combination season pass for the park, allowing returning guests at Six Flags South Carolina to pay only one fee to access both the theme park and waterpark. The park also said goodbye that year to it's S&S Sky Swat, Firebomb, due to low ridership and just being an unpopular ride in general.

However, that spot wouldn't be empty for long as in 2013, the Charleston SkyScreamer opened! At only 200 ft tall, it is, oddly enough, smaller than most of the other rides of it's type in the SF chain - with the only exception being the 151-ft SkyScreamer at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (According to a later leak, the ride was supposed to be 242 ft like some of the other ride models in the chain and just be called "SkyScreamer". However, for unknown reasons the height was scaled down and "Charleston" was thrown into the name at the last second). But despite it's small height, which some people initially criticized and nitpicked about, the ride still received generally positive reviews from critics and guests, providing a very exciting and thrilling viewing experience of the park. It is also surprisingly very popular with families given how it's not as tall as it's other Six Flags counterparts.

In summer of 2013, Derecho, the park's classic woodie, began shutting down on random days with little to no official explanation, the best one being "we're undergoing some inspections right now". This sparked some debate online as to what was happening to the coaster - some people said it was just a simple ride inspection, nothing more. Others said it would be an RMC conversion, similar to what happened to Texas GIant and Rattler at SF's other parks in Texas. And others feared that the coaster would simply be demolished on the spot. Eventually, an official from the park claimed that the coaster was "receiving a significant facelift and rehabilitation for the 2014 season", seemingly putting an end to the debate once and for all...

However, the people of Charleston got quite the surprise when the "facelift and rehabilitation" turned out to be much more extreme than anyone had predicted, as in 2014, Wicked Derecho was announced at the very last second, shocking pretty much the entire coaster community who hadn't heard of any major news about the park for that season up until that moment. Until then, Six Flags had pretty much confirmed that the coaster would've just gone through a retracking or something, but nope! The coaster was converted into an RMC wood/steel hybrid monstrosity, just like the Rattler and Texas Giant. If Derecho hadn't been considered one of the park's popular coasters yet, then this conversion, which featured the ride's lift hill being extended by 15 ft and adding an 82-degree first drop along with a zero-g stall and two barrel rolls, definitely made it as one, with lines on opening day reaching up to THREE HOURS. Needless to say, when this coaster opened that year, park critics and coaster fanatics alike absolutely RAVED about it, praising it's intensity, high amounts of airtime, etc. A few people have even gone as far as to consider it to be the best RMC conversion in the Six Flags chain.

However, despite all the acclaim the coaster got when it first opened, one negative aspect came along with it: now that the old Derecho coaster was gone, the ride had to have it's National Historical Landmark status, which it was awarded with in 2006 for it's 30th birthday, revoked as it was no longer "authentic enough" to hold the status. Because of this, a couple people turned to the internet to complain, some claiming that it was "unfair, because it wasn't like the coaster was torn down or anything - if anything, the ride was made MUCH better" while others claimed that "Derecho was a staple of SFSC, withstanding Hurricane Hugo and being at the park through thick and thin, and Six Flags sacrificing such a classic ride to build yet ANOTHER cheesy RMC coaster is completely disrespectful". This debate, thankfully, seems to have died out in the years since, though there's always that one internet asshole out there who occasionally brings it up just to rant about it and use it to villify Six Flags.

If Six Flags HAD been affected by this debate, it definitely didn't show as in 2015 the park saw the addition of not one, but TWO new rides, one of them being yet ANOTHER new coaster! The coaster, Dare Devil Dive, seemed to be your Gerstlauer Eurofighter coaster opening up in Gardenhill Pass, only instead of a lift hill, it featured not one, but TWO LIM launches, both manufactured by Gerstlauer as well - one was the main launch that sent riders, after exiting the station, catapulting 115 feet up a top hat element before plummeting at a 95 degree angle back down to the ground and into a vertical loop, and the other came shortly after the mid-brake run, when riders would go through a brief drop and a small right turn before braking and entering the 2nd launch section. Yet again coaster fanatics came flocking to the park when the ride opened, raving and giving unanimous approval about how exciting and thrilling the coaster was.

The other new ride for the season, The Joker: Total Chaos, was a Larson Super Loop that opened in Gotham Backlot, replacing the old smoking area where Chaos was originally located. Some people claim the "Total Chaos" part of the name was an intentional reference to the old Chance Chaos ride that stood on that spot, but SF later denied it, claiming the name coincidence was purely a "happy coincidence". Also, Scooby Doo and the Mystery Mansion, the park's dark ride that opened in 1996, closed at the end of the season.

In 2016, Justice League: Battle for Metropolis, a Sally Corporation dark ride, opened in the Scooby Doo and the Mystery Mansion's former spot. Exactly like all the other Justice League dark rides in the SF chain, it was an interactive dark ride where riders would shoot at targets on-screen for points. It was an immediate hit with families and kids when it opened, yet one negative aspect of the ride was that the entire facade of the ride's building, the building that formerly housed the Scooby Doo ride and the original Monster Mash Hotel ride, was torn down and rebuilt from scratch to make the building look like the Hall of Justice - meaning that the last few remnants of Monster Mash Hotel's facade that was used on Scooby Doo were gone. But despite this sad aspect for the more nostalgic guests, the ride was still generally well received by the public when it opened. Wii: The Experience, which had quickly plummeted in popularity after it's first couple years of operation and began suffering from VERY heavy downtime and maintenance issues as of recent, was also closed after the end of the season and scrapped.

In 2017, Spinsanity, a Zamperla Disk'O ride, opened in Wii: The Experience's former spot. Despite being no different than the Disk'O rides at other parks such as Six Flags Fiesta Texas and Six Flags St. Louis, the ride was still popular when it opened at SFSC, as it bridged the gap between a family ride and a thrill ride - it provided a very thrilling ride experience for thrillseekers, while also being a gentler and overall less intense ride for families and kids than certain other rides in the park, causing them to find it appealing. In other words, it was "just right". But the most noticeable change to the park that season wasn't exactly the new ride, as it was Bizarro, the park's Intamin hyper that opened in 2000. After SFNE's own Bizarro hypercoaster got a repaint and was converted back into Superman the Ride for the 2016 season, Six Flags noticed the warm reception that it got from coaster fans around the country and decided to do the same thing to the Bizarro hyper at SFSC - which is why in 2017 Bizarro's track was repainted back to red (the supports were still already blue) and the coaster was renamed Superman the Ride, just like the one at SFNE. While this may not seem that big and deal-worthy, a lot of coaster fans around the world certainly appreciated the move, as they felt it "restored" the coaster back to it's former glory.

2018 saw Bugs Bunny National Park finally get a new addition, as it got expanded and was divided up into two separate kiddie areas, one area staying the same and the other becoming the all-new DC Superfriends kids area, just like what Six Flags Over Georgia got just 2 years before. One of the two drop towers from Tweety's Twee House was relocated to the new area, becoming Superman: Tower of Power, and Sylvester's Spin was repainted green, relocated, and renamed Riddler's Revenge. The rest of the rides in that area - a Zamperla Mini Jet named Wonder Woman's Flight Course and a Zamperla Crazy Bus named Batman's Batmobile (which was, of course, themed to the Batmobile) - were all brand new.

Bugs Bunny National Park also saw some new rides being added that year as well, such as a Zamperla Watermania named Daffy Duck's Bucket Blasters and a space-themed Zamperla kiddie ferris wheel named Marvin's Space Chase. It was the first time the park's kiddie area had seen anything new in nearly 15 years, so when the new area and rides opened that year, it seemed to be a blessing for the families and smaller kids in the park, as it gave them a LOT more rides and options to do. Gotham City Crime Wave, the park's Top Spin, also unfortunately closed at the end of that year, as per Six Flags' widely-spreading "no Top Spin policy", with it's old spot being used for 2019's new ride: Harley Quinn Spinsanity! A Zamperla Giga Discovery located in Gotham Backlot, it sent riders catapulting and spinning through the air simultaneously at up to 175 feet in the air. It was a very exciting new thrill ride and was an instant hit with the adrenaline junkies.

Initially, in August of 2019, Six Flags announced that for 2020 SFSC's major new addition that year would be in Hurricane Harbor instead of the regular park, and it would be a ProSlide Flying Saucer water coaster, identical to SFFT's Thunder Rapids Water Coaster in their waterpark. However, during construction of the ride in early 2020, COVID hit, and the park temporarily had to shut down while construction was temporarily ceased. It didn't continue again until summer, and it's opening date had to be pushed back until 2021. When it finally opened in 2021, it received generally positive reviews from guests, and certainly helped bring more attention to the rather starved waterpark, which hadn't gotten anything new since it first opened in 2012. 2021 also saw V2: Vertical Velocity get a surprising change to it, as the ride was repainted red with yellow supports before the season opened, and would later be announced that it'd reopen for the season as The Flash: Vertical Velocity, assumed by many to be a nod to Vertical Velocity at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom undergoing an identical change just a few years before.

When some guests noticed that Tidal Wave hadn't opened at all for the 2021 season, some debate began to go around online as to whether or not it would reopen. Some assumed it'd be torn down for a new compact coaster, and, sure enough, in July of 2021 Tidal Wave was quietly removed from the park and formally announced that it would NOT return for 2022 just days later. That only caused MORE speculation as to what the ride's replacement would be, if it'd even be a coaster or not.

Then, in August of 2022, Charleston Cliffhanger, an RMC compact Raptor coaster, was announced! Layout-wise, it was a mirror image of Wonder Woman Golden Lasso over at SFFT (and a clone of Railblazer at California's Great America across the country), and it was announced that the ride would be built right over where Tidal Wave formerly was, with the latter's former splashdown element now acting simply as a lake for the riders to go over and make near-miss interactions with. This new ride was the park's first actual coaster in 7 years, last one being Dare Devil Dive back in 2015, so when this ride was first announced online, people. went. NUTS about it. Despite the fact that it's a clone of another Raptor coaster, it was still warmly received by the SFSC community as they'd gone on a bit too long without a new coaster and, well, it's an RMC. The coaster is still in the middle of construction as of January, but is expected to have it's grand opening, if all goes well, on June 3rd.

Overall, in the last 10-11 years, LOTS of changes have come to Six Flags South Carolina, with the addition of four exciting new coasters, the removal of a classic woodie, and a few older and outdated flats getting removed and replaced with better, trendier ones. The park, which has seen lots of changes in the past few decades, continues to thrive and attract people by the thousands from all across the country year by year, in spite of the ongoing pandemic. Truly, Six Flags South Carolina will continue to have a bright and successful future under Six Flags' care for years to come...