Great Escape/Six Flags (2020)
Six Flags Great Escape hoped to lasso the Adirondack Outlaw in 2021, but an official for the theme park told the Queensbury Planning Board last night that the ride will get away.
The 165 foot tall, “giant arm” ride is basically a tall pole with a spinning, propeller-like arm. This ride has seats for 16 riders at each end of the spinning propeller.
After significant push-back from the Glen Lake community at the end of 2019 and into 2020, The Great Escape had planned to build the ride in a zone that allows taller rides, near the front of the park by the Steamin’ Demon loop coaster. Access to the ride would come from the Ghost Town area of the park.
Chalk it up to COVID.
Danielle Smith, an official with the Great Escape, said the state has not given guidance to theme parks about when and how they might reopen next year. The Great Escape did not open for the 2020 season because of the coronavirus pandemic.
She said that at first staff worked on the project from home during the pandemic and then they stopped even that.
“We kind of just stopped the project in its tracks,” Smith said.
“While we hope [the pandemic is] ended for 2021, just in case it is not we wanted to seek the approval for 2022,” she said. She was asking for an extension of the current site plan which would have ended January 2021, and it surprised board members that she was asking for an 18-month extension--July 2022--to get the work going.
“We are going to try” to start work sooner, she said, adding: “I think we’d be open to a shorter extension, so long we get guidance from New York State.”
Board members suggested that she ask for a shorter delay, and come back again if needed.
However, board member Brad Magowan was OK with delaying. He said shipping of parts could be backlogged, or the vaccine, which everyone hoped would work, is still an unknown.
“I think it’s a fair thing to go” two years, given the number of variables, he said.
Board member Michael Dixon reminded everyone that the Great Escape doesn’t build in summer when guests are present. This shifted the board and the measure passed.
As with many plans at the Great Escape, noise from the proposed ride and the height of it was an issue when the plan was moving forward at the end of 2019 and into 2020, according to Planning Board documents.
Magowan said he lives nearby and joked that he liked the quiet this summer with the park closed. After assuring Smith that he was kidding, he said, “I could hear the birds.”