My wife and I took the day off with a couple friends of ours to go down to Fiesta Texas. (Actually, we intended to go to Schlitterbahn, but only the new part was open, so we went on to SFFT.) We had been to Fiesta Texas once before and really liked it quite a bit that time.

While we still had a good time during this visit, I was disappointed with the changes in the park made by Six Flags. (It was previously operated by USAA Insurance, of all people, but SF has now signed a 10-year operating agreement with an option to buy.)

While Six Flags has not entirely Warner-fied it, I do find the changes in theming moderately annoying, with cartoon characters at every turn. It is still a beautiful park in a unique setting (old quarry). Unfortunately, they had all the major fountains and the waterfall off in recognition of the drought we're having down here.

That said, on to the specific rides:

The Joker's Revenge: This coaster was added this year. It's what would ordinarily be considered a run-of-the-mill looping steel coaster (or perhaps even a bit below average, considering its slowness and brevity), but it does have a gimmick or two. First, the ride is themed fairly elaborately, wherein the line goes through a "funhouse", which I found fairly unimpressive (having worked for a few years at the Minnesota State Fair, which had better funhouses in truck trailers). An interesting idea, though, and better than a generic queue. Second, you ride the coaster facing backwards. This did less for the ride than I expected; I think this works better somehow on wooden coasters (e.g., the racing coaster at Paramount's Kings Island). Part of my enjoyment of looping coasters is seeing the track right in front of you as you loop around; that was missing here. I suppose it was fine, but nothing to get excited about.

Rattler: Dove down significantly lower on my favorite wooden coasters. The evil ones have added astonishingly annoying brakes. In past rides, I've really enjoyed the bumpy "triple-helix" thing, where you go around a circular area a few times, but it's really lost its interest now that it's slower. The particular combination in that part of the ride was unique in my experience - somewhat like the double-helix on the Beast, but with lots of little hills and valleys giving many vertical g's - without speed, it was wasted. There were also new coaster brakes right before the hill entering the tunnel, which severely interrupted the flow of the ride. I asked one of the operators why they slowed it down; apparently they had a bunch of complaints about the speed. (Hello? It's a roller coaster. It's supposed to be fast.) An article in the local paper recently confirmed that SF management has actually slowed it down at least twice. I also asked if they ever ran it without the offending brakes; he said only when they were running just one train, which they very rarely do. (On the day we were there, the park was virtually empty and they still ran two trains.) There are still very nice parts of this coaster, and it's worth riding for the height, beauty, and design, but the new brakes really reduce its value in my eyes.

"Virtual reality" stuff: in the location where there was a roller rink last year, they've installed two pay-extra activities. One of them is a space shoot-em-up ride where you ride in little pod things (2 people/pod) and do essentially a Star Wars-esque thing, flying through tunnels, getting fuel cells, shooting things, etc. That one we found to be virtually unplayable - at least on the first try. Neat technology, and having the pods actually moving (around in a large circle) did provide more "realism", but this technology has a ways to go. The other was a Laser Tag, the first one any of us had tried. It was actually a lot of fun, good technology, and a good long time for a reasonable price. I'll be doing that again.

Otherwise, we pretty much rode the typical carnival-type rides, which were fine but nothing new. We saw no shows, which I understand are good. We had a pizza in the 50's-themed area; it was fine.

All in all, I'd give SFFT a marginal recommendation, but if the Rattler were at full speed, it'd definitely be a thumbs up.