A Different Drummer: Fright Fest, the best in the west

Here’s our take on the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Fright Fest extravaganza. We love it. Susan and I again took a couple of youth, our grandson Jack 13 and his Benicia friend Lucy, and let them run wild. We took them two years ago, stayed 11 hours, and walked 12 miles. This year we were smarter, and older, and stayed only 10 hours, and walked only six miles. We still had a ball.
Six Flags goes all out. The park gets an entire spooky makeover. Elaborate props are set up along the walkways featuring partying skeletons, open coffins, and funny tombstones. Red dye is poured into the central fountain. It spews gushers of fake blood into the air.
During the day, that’s all you see of Fright Fest are the great props. The rides, the animals, the concessions go on as usual… until sundown.
At sundown Six Flags becomes haunted. As the sky darkens around 7 p.m. on center stage a well-choreographed macabre dance begins. A young, energetic cast of monsters, zombies, and ghouls dance to a Monster Mashup of classic tunes with laser lights, fog machines, and pure talent.
As the crowd thickens and consolidates around the stage, encircling the fountain of blood, behind them the fog machines planted along the many tree-lined, well propped walkways go into overtime and other monsters, zombies, vampires and ghouls come out of woodwork all around the park behind the audience. When people turn around at the end of the performance and begin to walk away, they are confronted in the dark with monsters in their midst.
They walk amongst us!
Dozens of park employees professionally costumed in elaborate ghoulishness have as much fun as we do haunting the foggy recesses of dimly lit, tree-lined walkways, running up on people and spooking them. They charge, they stalk, they follow, they face off, but they don’t touch. No touching. Just startling and scaring.
Jack and Lucy are rollercoaster fanatics. We arrived early not simply to hang out at the park all day, but because by arriving early – and unfortunately due to the recent fires, smoke, and sadness – the crowd was thin, and the thrill-ride lines didn’t exist. Susan and I would find a bench while Jack and Lucy rode again and again.
I need to back way up here. There is a story as to why we returned to Fright Fest again after two years. Early September Lucy had a birthday. Her parents asked her what she wanted. Lucy replied, “I want to go back to Fright Fest in October with Steve and Susan Gibbs, and Jack.”
So Josh and Rene contacted us with Lucy’s request and we agreed immediately. We love Lucy, and I love rollercoasters.
About that, I arrived at the park with great enthusiasm for walking, spooking, and especially riding rollercoasters. I joined the kids on Kong and Kong. Then we ran right over to Medusa. I’ve ridden Kong before, but not Medusa. Jack was a bit terrified. Last visit the kids avoided Medusa as too scary and long.
A few fun Wikipedia facts: Medusa opened in 2000 as the first floorless roller coaster on the west coast. The ride is the longest in Northern California at 3,937 feet. The first hill is 150 feet high. It has a 128-foot tall vertical loop, a dive loop, 2 corkscrews, a Sea Serpent Roll, and a Zero G roll.
It was the Zero G roll that did me in. I was fine after the first ride, a bit disoriented, a rail grabber for sure, but exhilarated. “Ready to go again, Papa?”
“Eh, sure. Might as well go now before the stampede.”
Everything was cool on the second run up the steps, the buckling into the seat, the steadily climbing lift to the top of the hill, the peak view of I-80, Vallejo, the Bay, the Cove, the bridges, and then the 150-foot screaming fall and the first few loop-de-loops, even though Jack had been talking since before the first Medusa ride about maybe losing his IHOP breakfast. At some point while upside down and backwards, I began thinking, “Uh oh.” Then the ride seemed to go on for another 20 minutes.
“Ready to go again, Papa?”
“Eh, I’m gonna go sit with Nana on the bench. You kids carry on.”
“How’d it go?” asked Susan as I reached the bench and collapsed into it beside her.
“Don’t move me,” I said. She put her hand on my forearm. “Don’t touch me.”
“What’s the matter?” she asked, laughing.
“Don’t ask me questions,” I said. “Just let me sit here with my eyes closed.”
I love rollercoasters. I did my best. The mind and the heart were willing. The stomach, and perhaps the big sampler breakfast, felt otherwise. I sat with a thin veil of perspiration welcoming only the breeze. Twenty minutes later, I was OK, and the kids tricked me into riding V2: Vertical Velocity, another 150-foot ride. Never say die.
I resisted at first. Jack and Lucy ran on ahead. From the elevated platform Jack appeared. He waved to us on our bench. “Come on, Papa. V2 a three-seater!” he yelled. “We can all sit together.”
“Oh, OK,” I said and climbed the stairs. As we were ready to board I noticed something. “Hey, Jack. This ride isn’t a three-seater. It’s two seats.”
They both started laughing. “We lied.”
“Why, you little—“
“All aboard.”