On a recent trip over Thanksgiving week to SeaWorld San Antonio we experienced the Shark Tour. If you’re a platinum pass holder this is one of the tours you can select for your “free animal tour” benefit and regular guests can get this tour for as little as $10 (potentially discounted further with a season pass). It’s a chance to go “behind the scenes” of SeaWorld and see how the park creates an immersive animal experience and actually touch a shark!
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While wooden roller coasters generally cost less to build, they generally require more maintenance compared to steel coasters. A park generally wants to keep a wooden ride in good condition so to avoid customer complaints of the ride becoming uncomfortably rough and potentially even unsafe. A major wood coaster is going to be $5-$10 million while a major steel coaster is probably going to be between $10 – $25 million. However, with wooden roller coasters the maintenance is greater with reports of some requiring $500,000 annually and costly rebuilds of well over $1 million. So it’s the classic case of lower capital cost with higher operating cost with wooden coasters versus the inverse with steel coasters. For places like Dollywood, maintaining Lightning Rod and Thunderhead is just a part of doing business, but for places like Alabama’s Adventure, large annual maintenance costs on their wooden coaster Rampage are a tension they’re actively grappling with today.
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After years of rumors, Pokémon is finally coming to Universal theme parks. It was announced on January 22, 2026 that the Pokémon IP will debut in Japan, but is then “Universal Destinations & Experiences will deliver unique Pokémon experiences across the company’s global footprint”. There were no dates, rides or attractions announced and this is probably a couple years out in Japan and probably 2029 or later in the United States. The release was very simple and vague, but it got the point across that Pokémon is coming!
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A Bluey roller coaster has nearly completed construction at Alton Towers in the United Kingdom for a 2026 opening. The ride is located in the park’s CBeebies Land and signage around the construction leaves no doubt as to what is coming. For Americans who may not know, “CBeebies” is a free British public broadcast children’s television channel owned and operated by the BBC. Alton Towers is leaning into the attraction heavily for its 2026 marketing as you’d expect and no doubt this will be a huge hit with families who love the iconic show.
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I visited Six Flags Fiesta Texas on Saturday, November 22, 2025, the start of Holiday in the Park. It was a beautiful fall day and the park looked awesome. I had purchased the Flash Pass for my son and I several days in advance anticipating a busy day due to the great weather forecast and t. The Flash Pass was $39.99/person for the standard version which holds your place in the virtual line, so you can enjoy the park while waiting for your turn to ride. In theory this should approximately double the amount of rides you can get on in a day as you can be two places at once by virtually waiting for one ride while riding another ride, enjoying a show or having a meal. Was this a worthwhile purchase? The answer is a resounding “maybe” as although we saved a relatively minimal amount of time for our $80 investment, we did legitimately enjoy a few more things at a more relaxed pace than we would have without it.
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Six Flags America is closed, likely forever, unless the land is bought by a group who intends to reopen it, which seems unlikely. There have already been reports of trains from Professor Screamore’s SkyWinder being moved to Canada’s Wonderland for their Vekoma SLC Flight Deck (now The Daredeviler), so it appears the dismantling is underway. Six Flags also announced on an earnings call its intention to divest other “non-core” parks, but it is yet to be seen if these sales will be to another operator or result in closure with the land seeing other uses. A closure is often in the best interest of a seller in order to drive business to their other parks nearby. National news gave lots of coverage to the Six Flags America closure, laying part of the blame on a “sluggish economy that’s hit Six Flags’ core middle-class customers particularly hard”. So what does this mean for the industry going forward?
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LEGOLAND Billund Resort is opening a new roller coaster in 2026 (or actually two credits due to the two tracks and dueling nature) called Minifigure Speedway. The attraction is already open at LEGOLAND Windsor Resort, where the picture above is from, and features a duelling element with each team having their own minifigure captain. The ride will be located between Knights’ Kingdom and Adventure Land at a height of ~50 feet and is being built on the site of the former Vikings River Splash. This is a “shuttle” style coaster manufactured by Zierer, so the fact it experiences the layout both forwards and backwards makes the most use of the 843 feet of track.
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SeaWorld has announced a new indoor ride for the second consecutive year with the suspended dark ride, SEAQuest: Legends of the Deep. This is not a suspended coaster, but a powered suspended dark ride. Based on permits and activity at the park it appears to be headed to a parking lot behind the Ports of Call ballroom near Expedition Odyssey. The ride will be themed to a submarine taking an underwater voyage.
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Kentucky Kingdon has announced its new suspended family coaster for 2026, Flying Fox by Vekoma. The theming on this ride looks great with a Kentucky farmland setting complete with the queue in a barn. The ride looks great and nearly identical to Dragonflier at Dollywood, but that’s not a bad thing as Dragonflier is a great ride! The specs are also sear identical with Flying Fox being 65 feet tall with 1,380 feet of track at 37 mph over 63 seconds while Dragonflier is 63 feet tall with 1,486 feet of track at 47 mph over 60 seconds. It’s not a clone, but so similar that Kentucky Kingdom actually used stock footage of Dragonflier in the Flying Fox promo video. Here’s the the description the park has provided about it:
Continue readingUpdate June 2026: New Trailer is out! See above.
here is a new movie coming out in 2026 featuring the Looney Tunes characters which are a prominent license of Six Flags. Although it is entitles “Coyote vs. Acme”, it features other iconic Looney Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny. The movie stars John Cena who is red hot right now with his WWE retirement tour, “Peacekeeper” show and new Amazon movie “Head of State”. This can only be good for Six Flags as anything that brings attention to an IP in your park can generate visits and merchandise sales.
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