The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 81, No. 223, Ed. 1 Sunday, July 6, 2003 Page: 31 of 87
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: The Baytown Sun and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Sterling Municipal Library.
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J U ii
Amusement
FAST AND FURIOUS
Thrill-ride king Stan Checketts
raises the bar on fun by using
one part extreme science,
two parts terror.
■
life gets busy,so fumade wireless easy.
warrior, leftovers expert.
self-made man
tickethoKlet, llaianci
lawinte tmele.
amaleur 11 leellana..
huff, do it-\(Hirselfer,
lies! man, best I riencl.
BY ELIZABETH KAYE McCALL
■■ EW PEOPLE UNDERSTAND the delight in being terri-
■■ fled better than Stan Checketts, the Stephen King of thrill
■ rides. He’d like nothing better than to strap you into a con-
traption (the smaller, the better), thrust you a thousand feet into
the air at NASCAR speed, then drop you back down in the time
it takes to tie your shoe.
His adrenaline-fueled inspirations have launched literally
hundreds of amusement park rides in the last decade, including
the first high-tower drop. This summer, Checketts raises the
amusement park bar with two new rides that seemingly defy the
laws of physics, tossing you around within an inch of your life.
One, the ThrillShot at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia,
Calif — called ErUPtion at
Frontier City outside Oklahoma
City and at Six Flags Great
Adventure in Jackson, NJ. —
sends riders seated in carts up and
down 300 feet The second ride,
called Swat and launched this
summer at Six Flags AstroWorld
in Houston, smacks people seated in a grid 100 feet toward the
ground. Like a fly swatter? “Exactly!” Checketts shouts.
A self-professed “life-long adrenaline junkie,” Checketts likes
his rides fast, furious and fun. “I’m a high-thrill person,” he says.
Rides that make you lose your lunch are not his idea of amusing;
few of his last longer than 30 seconds. His compressed air-
powered roller coaster in Japan holds the Guinness record as
the world’s fastest (zero to 107 mph in two seconds). There’s only
one other such coaster, at Paramount’s Kings Dominion outside
Richmond, Va. Also designed by Checketts, it reaches 30 mph.
His Utah-based company S&S Power (named for himself and
wife Sandy), has conceived more than 115 tower rides, 150 chil-
dren’s rides and three coasters in 24 countries around the globe
since it was founded in 1994. Rides don’t come cheap; S&S’s cost
"If it pumps up your
adrenaline, but doesn't
leave you nauseated,"
Checketts says,"that's
what I push for."
Simply called Swat
this contraption
looks like a human
fly swatter meets
The Terminator.
hIv bills
toutr;u ts. mont
extni tli.irjif lor voice in.iil, c;iller II) .inti c;ill w.iitmu
cxtni ih.ii'iw lor iKitionu ide lonjj <lis!;mct'
WAL*MART
iracp ne
Walrnarf.ee
B USA WEEKEND ' July 4-6,2003
Called ErUPtion or ThrillShot this giant
sling catapults riders 300 feet into the air.
between $1 million and $20 million.
What makes his line of work more
challenging is that Checketts is no kid
— he’s 62. He test-rides everything
first dozens of times, and he often visits
parks just to gauge riders’responses to
his creations. One time, he recalls,
“these young kids came over to me and
said, ‘You going to ride it, Mister?’ I
said, ‘Yeah, why?’ and they said, ‘Well,
you’re not too old. Go ahead and try it’ ”
They didn’t know he was its inventor.
Checketts, a carpenter by trade,,
built kitchen cabinets before making
his first leap into the thrill-ride busi-
ness more than a decade ago with
bungee-cord jumping. Soon, he was
dabbling in hydraulics, suspension sys-
tems and compressed-air propulsion.
Today, he holds a drawerful of patents
on his mechanical designs. The ride
that put him on the map was The
Stratosphere Big Shot, atop the famed
Las Vegas casino. His signature tower
drop rides are now the focal points of
dozens of parks.
For Checketts, the biggest thrill is
dreaming up new ideas; he scribbles
many of his designs on paper napkins.
Many are inspired by other thrill-
seeking concepts; snowmobiling in-
spired the world’s fastest roller
coaster. Although technology has aided,
his designs, “we do amazing things
with air,” he says. “In fact, one of my
goals in life would be to launch all of
“ our airplanes out of airports with air
and get them into the air before they
turn those big, loud, noisy fuel-burning
engines on. Of course, maybe I shouldn’t
be saying that, because somebody
might do it before I get it done. I
haven’t patented that yet” For now,
he’s happy; “You know, I really didn’t
have any mentor or hero growing up.
The whole driving force was truly just
to thrill people.” C3
USA WEEKEND • July 4-4,2003 9
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Cash, Wanda Garner. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 81, No. 223, Ed. 1 Sunday, July 6, 2003, newspaper, July 6, 2003; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1051924/m1/31/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.