Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Colossus Misplaced

Recently, enthusiasts and Agawam locals have noticed an alarming sight at Six Flags New England: a skyline devoid of Colossus, the park's signature Giant Wheel. Rising hundreds of feet into the air, the massive family attraction provided spectacular views across southern Massachusetts and northern Connecticut.

With the new claims by Six Flags that the chain will be focusing on family rides instead of teen-targeted thrillers, it seemed a puzzle why SFNE would remove a ride that both fits the new strategy and provides a well-known landmark that can be viewed from far outside the park grounds. At a press conference today, SFNE officials met with reporters to explain their actions.

It turns out that they didn't mean to remove it at all.

"We just misplaced it," admitted the park's Vice President of Public Relations Sandy Pittsfield. "We just put it down for a minute somewhere over there, and turned away to take care of something else, and when we came back...poof! Just like that, it's gone."

"I'm such a ditz," she added. "I'm always doing stupid things like putting down a huge signature ride and forgetting where the hell it is!" Pittsfield added that she "was constantly losing pencils and socks, too."

"We were doing our big spring cleaning," said Head of Sanitation Services Walter Hewitt. "You know, most of the time, you just dust the fronts of the bookshelves and vacuum, but then every few years you actually take down all the books and you even move furniture around to really get the grime off the floors and the walls? Well, it's the same for us. We hadn't really gotten in and hosed off those crusty hard-to-reach corners under and around the major rides in several years. So we shifted some of them around and did our cleaning, and then...well, we couldn't find Colossus. It's got to be around here somewhere, right?"

His eyes then lit up, and he then poked around behind the park's nearby Top Spin ride, though he soon threw his hands up in disgust when Colossus failed to appear there.

"It the damndest thing," said Park Employee Training Master Tom Lampers. "But hey, it happens to everyone. You plop something down nearby and it just seems to vanish. I did the same thing with my chapstick just yesterday, and I ended up having to get a new tube even though my wife kept telling me the old one would turn up if I just retraced my steps enough."

Lampers publicly blamed "underwear gnomes" for stealing both his chapstick and the Colossus.

--JCK