A High-Speed Cool-Down

No-Helmet-Required Halfpipe Is Newest Six Flags Thrill

If you were one of this weekend's inaugural riders on Tony Hawk's Halfpipe, a GenX water slide opening at Six Flags America in Largo, take a moment before you plunge to thank the test sliders. They took the chill to provide your thrill.

Before the slide could open to the public yesterday, the park was required to make sure it was safe by running 100 "test cycles" using volunteers of various heights and weights. And so on Thursday, an usually cool day for late May, 22 underdressed friends and family members of Six Flags employees shivered atop a four-story platform, waiting for their chance to get goose pimples in the name of public safety.

Two days before its public debut, the Halfpipe was rife with that new-ride smell of recently welded metal and fresh topsoil, a few tons of which was being pushed into place by a garden tractor even as the volunteers climbed the stairs.

But the slide itself was bolted into place and ready for action: a 40-foot-high trough similar to the halfpipe rigs used by skateboarders for airborne stunts. But this halfpipe is flooded with 100 gallons of water per minute, and riders swoop up and down its face on inflated tubes.

With hard-hatted workers pausing to watch, the first test riders -- two off-duty Six Flags lifeguards in a double tube -- shoved off.

Their reaction?

"Oooooh [minor violation of the park's no-profanity rules]!" the lead rider hollered as the bright yellow tube raced down the slope, where speeds can reach 23 mph.

[And as this reporter can attest, the initial plunge is as close to stomach-floating freefall as one is likely to experience on any day that doesn't include a plane crash.]

The pair blasted through the trough of water at the bottom and zoomed up the other side, provoking another shriek as the tube neared the top edge. Then back and forth they went, like a lemon rolling around a bathtub, before coming to a rest in the ankle-deep water.

The verdict of riders coming off the slide was split between those who were sold and those who were cold.

"It was more the cold than the thrill that got me," said Bridget Rafferty, 21, of Annapolis, a friend of a Six Flags accounting intern. "They wanted us to go on it four times. I'm probably good for three."

Her boyfriend, Zack Smicker, 19, of Erie, Pa., was in it for every ride.

"Awesome," Smicker said.

On they slid, cycle after cycle, brave and shivering. Staff members at the base of the slide monitored each ride and checked each tube as it came out of the water.

"So far, it's working perfectly," said E.J. Randolph, director of operations.

One thing these pioneer riders quickly demonstrated was the range of amusement-park archetypes that will characterize the Halfpipe riders: the Screamer, the Teeth Gritter, the Bug-Eyed and the Uncontrollable Giggler.

"Did you see her face?" Rachel Sealy, one of the lifeguards, asked as one Screamer progressed loudly down the slide. "She was feeling it."