The Coaster Critic's Blog

Batman: The Dark Knight @ Six Flags New England
No, I don't have a time machine (yet!). I rode the floorless roller coaster formerly known as Batman: The Dark Knight at Six Flags New England in 2005. This year, Six Flags renamed it Batman: The Ride so that they could add one of the three new Batman: The Dark Knight clones to the park. Make sense? Onto the review.

Batman The Dark Knight was a floorless roller coaster with open cars. It had a mostly smooth ride, some decent theming, and a nice looking station. My favorite inversion, the zero-g roll, was among the coaster's five loops. Also, because of it's capacity, (like with most B&M's) the line should always move relatively fast. However, when I was at Six Flags New England there wasn't a line. All of these pluses added up to a 'Good' coaster, but nothing more.

The layout was pretty short and uninspiring, while still being a good use of the little land they had to work with. The ride started with a swooping 117' foot drop that's immediately followed by a large vertical loop. A dive loop follows and then a banked turn that passes through the previous vertical loop. Next is a sweet zero-g roll that twists over a path. The Dark Knight's finale was the B&M signature interlocking corkscrews (seen here). Unfortunately, they are uncharacteristically rough and they're immediately followed by the brakes. The train was still traveling at a pretty good pace as I hit the final brakes, and the ride's over.

I'm not a huge fan of compact roller coasters with multiple loops as they tend to have their inversions too close together. That wasn't so much of a problem with the first three inversions, but the rougher than usual corkscrews and slamming into the final brakes hurt this coaster's chances of a higher rating. Lastly, it's compact size keeps the speed and intensity at a minimum. Which isn't completely a bad thing, but when I got off I wasn't like, "Wow that little coaster packed a punch". It was more like, "Okay. That was a B&M floorless." The Dark Knight is still a good installation for any park. Final Rating - 7.0 (Good)

Check out this onride video of Batman The Dark Knight at Six Flags New England. Warning! It's got yet another terrible techno-pop song. It was the best video I could find, but you may want to mute it:



Have you ridden Batman The Dark Knight (now known as Batman The Ride) at SFNE? What did you think? Leave a comment below.