Sentimental journey.

Another artifact unearthed during Project GOOD: old Six Flags maps! My family had these on our gameroom wall in Tyler. You could say we're big SFOT fans!

I'm not sure when this map was made,

but it's from the Big Bend days! I was technically tall enough to ride that coaster before it was torn down, but I never did. Bummer.

And there's the big slide coming off the Oil Derrick! This was pre-Shock Wave, and LaSalle's Adventure was in the spot where the Roaring Rapids is now.

Remember the Mexican train? A few of the characters from that attraction are now along the regular train route.

There was a dolphin show and some kind of petting zoo, too. Crazy!

Here's another Six Flags map from the Dub Archives (a.k.a. a pile of stuff that's been sitting on a bedroom bookcase since I hauled it over here from my mom's apartment):
The Judge! I can remember using this map to memorize that ride, tracing my finger over the hills, trying to recall each dip of the roller coaster.

Remember the Roto-Disco? It was also called Rotoriculous (or something like that). That part of the park has really changed. On this map, the bumper cars were called the "Infernal Electrical Bumping Machines" (How '70s is that?), and now they're gone completely.

The Texas Chute-Out was a big hit when it first came out. I can remember seeing a model of it at Tyler's Broadway Square Mall. The model had little motorized chutes going up and down, and I could barely wait for the ride to open. The first few times we got to ride it that next summer, we had to wait FOREVER just to board!

Bugs Bunny's Gold River Adventure was still the Spee-lunker Cave (which apparently has a cult following—who knew?), and my FAVORITE ride was still there near the Southern Palace: the Spinnaker! Runaway Mountain is in that vicinity now.

There's the tower without the big slide, but the Shock Wave is there! I think it's funny that the extraordinarily long queue for that big ride is represented on the map. We have told R&K about the line that used to be two hours long and how it extended to where the go-cart track is now.

Six Flags used to be a once-a-year event, and every year I could hardly sleep the night before our visit. I have so many great memories from that place, and I would love it if someone would write an illustrated history of the park. Seriously! The few old photos that are hidden there in France make me want to see more from back in the day. At least I have a few old maps to remind me of the park I got to visit when I was Ryan and Katie's age.