Six Flags' Renovations Will Bring a New Log Flume Ride to Arlington

Six Flags is one of the country's oldest theme parks, and that may be why its parent company has announced plans for some new additions and updates to seven of its locations.

The Six Flags chain announced that the Arlington location will be part of its renovation plans and will get a new log flume ride by the end of next year, according to a press statement.

The company promises its new El Rio Lento log ride will have one giant lift hill and two shirt-drenching drops including "a giant, steep nosedive." The new Six Flags Over Texas ride will also be "one of the world's longest log flumes," the statement says.

El Rio Lento will bring riders to a maximum height of 30 feet along a river of cool, clear water through nature scenery until the flume takes some sharp twists and turns. The flume will send riders zipping down two drops at a top speed of 15 mph, according to the park's website.

Six Flags Over Texas has four operating water rides outside of its Hurricane Harbor water park on the other side of Interstate 30 in Arlington. The park opened its newest water ride last March, Aquaman: Power Wave, the first launching water coaster in North America in which passengers are launched up both sides of a single track at a 90-degree angle. The second drop dips straight into a tidal wave pool at speeds as high as 63 mph.

The log flume ride El Aserradero has been operating since 1963 and is considered to be the world's first log flume ride.

The park's two other water rides include the raft river ride Roaring Rapids, which has been at the park since 1983, and the Pirates of Speelunker Cave dark boat ride, which opened in the summer of 2022. The Pirates of Speelunker Cave is a redesign of another one of the park's oldest rides.

The boat ride first opened in 1964 as The Cave and became one of the park's most popular rides. It closed in 1991 and reopened as Yosemite Sam and the Gold River Adventure, featuring characters from the Looney Tunes cartoon series in a story-driven experience in which Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck chase Yosemite Sam through the "Unpainted Desert" after he robs a gold mine. The Pirates of Speelunker Cave is a tribute in part to the original theme as The Cave, in which guests float through scenes of animatronic characters known as the Speelunkers.