Six Flags: The Mexican Section — 1961
by Paula Bosse
by Paula Bosse
The image above is from a Six Flags Over Texas postcard. The description on the back reads:
Geometric Patterns — Mexican Section
Multi-colored lighting effects reveal a fascinating and beautiful picture of the Canopied Garden Walkway leading into the Mexican Section at this new 105-acre $10,000,000 family entertainment center.
Here it is in the daytime, still kind of attention-grabbing, but nowhere near as cool-looking:
via Ken Collier
I just wanted to post this Six Flags picture I’d never seen and move along, but why not add a few more postcards showing attractions in this part of the theme park: the “Mexican Section.”
There was the Fiesta Train (which I was surprised to see was originally called Ferrocarril Fiesta), which was topped with colorful sombreros and chugged by all sorts of “festive” scenes which might seem a little culturally eyebrow-raising today.
via Ken Collier
via Ken Collier
There were animatronic bull fights. “Olé!”
There were … dancing tamales. DANCING TAMALES! (Designed by Peter Wolf.)
Dancing Tamales — Mexican Section
One of the most popular of the many colorful and comical animations on the Fiesta Train ride, this group of Dancing Tamales perform to the gay strains of Mexican music that fills the air.
via Flickr
And speaking of Mexican music, there were strolling mariachis.
via Flickr
And there was an even an El Chico restaurant.
Six Flags Gazette, Sept. 10, 1961
Here is an interesting article about what visitors to the brand new amusement park could expect to encounter on their visit to the Mexican Section, written by the Six Flags promotion department (click for larger image).
Six Flags Gazette, Aug. 6, 1961
And, no, I couldn’t find a 1961 photo of the sombrero ride!
UPDATE: Found one (from 1965)!
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Sources & Notes
Sombrero ride photo is from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections — more on this photo is here.
Info about the Six Flags Railroad is here; more about the Ferrocarril Fiesta Train is here.
Apparently those tamales (with a face lift) are still around? I LOVE THESE GUYS!
via GuideToSFOT.com
Ken Collier is The Man for all things Six Flags. See his great site, here.
Other Flashback Dallas posts on Six Flags Over Texas can be found here.
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Copyright © 2016 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
I don’t remember much about it but my family went to Six Flags the first week it was open.
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I wonder what headlines today will have a different connotation in 50 years.
The reason you couldn’t find a photo of the Sombrero ride in 1961 is because it wasn’t installed until 1965. It replaced the La Cucaracha roller coaster, which I never knew existed until now: http://guidetosfot.com/rides/elsombrero/
Here is a photo of the ride in 1965 from the UTA digital archives: http://i.imgur.com/jDpDmZ4.jpg
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Thanks. From the “Six Flags Gazette” (Apr. 18, 1964): “LA CUCARACHA is a fast moving roller coast type rail ride especially liked by teenagers.” I think this is it: http://bit.ly/1MXN5dJ
Thanks for the UTA photo!
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Thanks for the photo link. It came from parktimes.com but that site is not working for me right now. A copy was at the Web Archive and it has a few more photos of the tiny coaster: https://goo.gl/qwnmzh
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Yeah, I think you have to log in to the site to see images so I just linked to the Google image page.
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