AGAWAM — With a click . . . click . . . click, the Wicked Cyclone roller coaster car slowly rises 112 feet into nothing but sky. As it levels at the top, riders get a quick view of the Six Flags amusement park and the treetops of Agawam beyond. Then, the car drops at a 64-degree angle, propelling its 24 screaming passengers along a twisting track with two “zero gravity” corkscrew rolls and a turn that banks at an unprecedented 200 degrees.
Once the rickety wooden cousin to the park’s steel coasters, the 32-year-old Cyclone has been remade and renamed. Topped with a new type of metal track, the Wicked Cyclone is one of five such wood-steel hybrid coasters in the country. Now, the ride rivals the park’s sleek Bizarro as a favorite of both casual riders and a community of devotees known as coaster enthusiasts.
Chrys Garber now counts herself among them. A full-time mother from nearby East Longmeadow, she stood in the Wicked Cyclone line with her kids on a sunny, late June afternoon. Garber said she’s ridden at least 40 times — pretty much every day since the ride reopened in late May.
“I love it. Oh my gosh,” she said. Garber loves the corkscrew spins, the drop, and the hang time. “I thought it was more scary than Bizarro. This has more adventure from start to finish.”
Riding the Wicked Cyclone with the Go Pro from Tinker Ready on Vimeo.
The network of organizations, websites, and social media feeds produced by coaster fans buzzes with news and reviews of the Wicked Cyclone. American Coaster Enthusiasts, a 40-year-old group that counts more than 5,000 members, held an ERT event (for “exclusive ride time”) at the park in July.
“I’ve never been on a coaster that inverts that only has lap bars,“ Acquafresca wrote. “I haven’t felt that way about a coaster since I first started riding. The experience of just hanging there with nothing over your shoulders is a glorious feeling.”
Some pay for that feeling with their keys, phones, or sunglasses, which, unlike passengers, tend to fly out during the ride.
Nikki Wilson of Middletown, Conn. walked down the ride’s exit ramp seemingly unrattled after riding with her brother. Still, she was wary when she sat down and strapped in. “I didn’t see anything going over my shoulder, and the ride goes upside down,” she said. “So, I was a little nervous, but then I saw the little kids getting on, and I said, I’ve got to get on there too.”
One of those kids was Matthew Keegan, 8, of Milford, who marched down the ramp with a slight weave in his step after his first ride. He said he liked it, but hesitated before saying he wasn’t scared. Keegan admitted that he was frightened when the car took its plunge.
“Because you lean forward when you go down the drop,” he said. “It’s just so scary.”
The Wicked Cyclone pulls cars up a 109- foot hill — the equivalent of a ten story building.
The designer of the original Cyclone would be pleased to hear that. A veteran coaster engineer, the late William Cobb copied the Coney Island Cyclone when he created the new wooden coaster for what was then Riverside Park in 1983. For a family-owned operation, it was a big investment at $2.5 million. With a 96-foot rise, it was one of the biggest of its time.
Cobb wanted it to be one of the scariest too. “I want people to ride my coasters so that when they get over the first hill, they wish they had never gotten on,” Cobb told the Valley Advocate newspaper. “I want them to get off, say they’ll never ride again, and then get right back on the end of the line.”
Not that the old Cyclone wasn’t thrilling. Shilke said he tries to make his revamped rides more exciting than the original. This one offered a challenge.
“Typically, most of the coasters I redo are so boring that anything I do surpasses what was there,” he said on the phone from his Utah workshop. “This was one of the first coasters where the original rise really took advantage of every turn. I had to come up with reverse bank turns and a whole bunch of stuff that I had never done before just to pack as much into this coaster as I could.”
Tim Baldwin of American Coaster Enthusiasts agrees. He said the Agawam Cyclone was one of the last coasters designed by the now-legendary Cobb.
“He really put some wild craziness in it.”
Speaking from the group’s convention in Atlantic City, Baldwin said some of the older wooden coasters are being torn down, and the group has many members who are lamenting the loss of the traditional rides. Baldwin thinks the hybrid is the answer.
“We can’t deny the success the parks have had with these smoother rides,” he said. “You have a wild, out-of-control ride, but it’s glass smooth.”
