I remember in 2004 when the park opened for the season Ragin Cajun was a concrete plot with the one small hill at the end of the ride as the only thing built, and King Chaos was completely built at that point. Cajun still managed to open earlier than Chaos.
Ragin Cajun opened memorial weekend and King Chaos a few weeks (if not longer) after that. I remember seeing King Chaos cycle for the first time when the HUSS engineers were working on it, man that thing was jacked up. I'm talking severe swaying and loud banging noises, it looked like it was going to collapse. The look on SFGAm maintenence staff's faces was priceless.
Also SUFs opening day the railings in the exit path were still covered with newspaper because they handnt been painted yet, there was just a grey frame with no sign at the entrance, and the ground was all mud that still had tracks from construction vehicles. The grass didn't start really growing in until like August, and even the small things like the yellow station gate lines in the station didn't get painted until late summer/fall. Was kind of funny the pre recorded spiel saying "please stand behind the yellow safety line" when there was no yellow safety line.
I consider DejaVu a new for 2002 ride, a very small miniscule amount of people got on it in 2001 considering it was only "open" weekends in October, how much it was downtime it had during the day, how low the capacity was, etc. Even in 2002 the ride rarely ever opened before the late afternoon, if at all. In 2003 it didn't even open until late July. So really it could have been new for 2003 considering most people that went to the park didn't even get a chance to ride it until then
. Also it's kind of ironic right when DejaVu opened in 2001, V2 had some sort of major break down and was closed all of Fright Fest.
We can talk about the lines for the new rides when they opened, but in my opinion nothing compares to Hurricane Harbor in 2005. Hurricane Harbor's line would fill the entire queue area back past the entrance, I even saw it once going into Hometown Sqare next to Orbit in the middle of the day. Keep in mind this was just to get in the park when it was already at capacity, the lines were still long once you actually got into the park. That would be extremely frustrating to say the least.
Another fun fact is that try riding Viper before 10:30 in the morning, it's in warm up mode until then, which means the chain does not slow down at all making the ride track significantly faster unlike how it normally runs where it slows down at the top to reduce stress. Also another thing about Viper is that it's first year its entrance was in Hometown Square right next to Rolling Thunders entrance. Obviously the entrance was moved the next year when and Southwest Teritorry was built (as part of a several-stage expansion as Viper opened in 95, SWT opened in 96, Giant Drop opened in 97, and Raging Bull opened in 99) and Rolling Thunder was sent to the Great Escape.
On the topic of SWT, back when Time Warner owned Six Flags they had plans to make the queue and part of the ride have more detailed theming, but when Premier bought the company from Time Warner they cut pretty much cut all of it and just built the ride with the themed station building. The same can be said for many other parks around this time, as you can see the Superman at SFMM which has Time-Warner esque theming compared to Premier-era esque theming on the later Superman rides.
In the case of rides like Bull and Goliath at SFMM it really turned out to not be a big deal as no one could tell and they were both extremely popular, but for later rides it became pretty evident that the company had gone from the story telling path that Time Warner was big on with relatively well themed rides like Batman and Giant Drop to a more traditional approach (or in SUF at SFGAm's case, plywood walls). However, the story that the Time Warner creative team came up with for the ride was put in the press release.
Raging Bull is named after a ferocious beast that terrorized the citizens of the old Southwest Territory until they fled the town and built the beautiful courtyards and mission seen today. The raging bull still lurks in the ruins of the old mission, which today serves as the loading station for this unpredictable, wild roller coaster.
http://www.sfgamworld.com/coasters/PressRelease/RagingBull.php
