The Ride Stuff
Peter Carmichael says Six Flags is more than an major employer — it’s a source of all-important first jobs as well as leadership opportunities for young people.
While the park’s gates are officially closed this time of year, this is actually considered busy season at Six Flags New England.
It’s just a different kind of busy, said Peter Carmichael, president of the amusement park in Agawam, adding that this is the season for getting the various rides and attractions ready for the official busy season, which starts in early April, around school-break time, and kicks into a higher gear on Memorial Day.
“Every year, we inspect and refresh the entire park,” he explained. “This is when we do all of our annual maintenance and checkups on all our rides and attractions to make sure they’re ready to go in the spring.”
And this offseason, during which the venue formerly known Riverside Park will mark 25 years as part of the Six Flags brand, things are even busier than what would be considered usual, with the park now in the final stages of work on its first new roller coaster in nearly a decade.
It’s called Quantum Accelerator, billed as ‘New England’s first straddle coaster,’ whereby, as that name suggests, riders sit on top of the seat, rather than inside, providing a different sensation and increased thrill, Carmichael said.
The ride, which features two launches and speeds up to 45 mph, will officially launch in late spring, he said, adding that, after his engineers, he expects to take one of the first rides on the new attraction.
In addition to the new coaster, the park is undertaking what Carmichael calls the largest investment in food services in the park’s history — a renovation of the Riverboat Café in the center of the park that will provide everything from additional capacity to new menu items.
“We have dozens, probably hundreds, of leadership opportunities, between teen leads and supervisors and coordinators that are asked to step up, lead our teams, and enhance the guest experience. It’s a great development opportunity for the individual.”
Overall, he said his work comes down to continuing traditions — not just rides, amusements, food, and adding new roller coasters, but also providing first jobs to hundreds of young people each year — the park employs roughly 3,000 seasonal workers each year — as well as leadership opportunities for younger people, experience in fields ranging from accounting to healthcare to culinary arts, and chances to advance within this industry, as he did, as we’ll see.
“What we’re really most proud of is that we tend to be, for many, their first real leadership opportunity,” he said. “We have dozens, probably hundreds, of leadership opportunities, between teen leads and supervisors and coordinators that are asked to step up, lead our teams, and enhance the guest experience. It’s a great development opportunity for the individual.”
For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Carmichael, a self-described “rides guy,” about the offseason, the 2025 season to come, the new coaster, and what it all means to one of the region’s hospitality-sector institutions.
Speed Thrills
Carmichael told BusinessWest that he’s always been fascinated by amusement parks and the theme-park world, and it has played a huge part in his life, starting when he met his future wife while they were both operating a roller coaster called the Jack Rabbit at his hometown’s amusement park in Pennsylvania.
When he was a student at Penn State working toward a degree in commercial tourism, he sent dozens of letters to amusement and theme parks seeking internships. The park that had just been rebranded Six Flags New England was among the few that called back. Carmichael came north, and his internship, as such opportunities very often do, became a career.
An architect’s rendering of the Quantum Accelerator, now in the final construction phases at Six Flags.
“I’d always known, my whole life, that I wanted to work in the theme-park industry,” he said, adding that he got his start as opening supervisor for the Superman: Ride of Steel roller coaster, opened in 2000, which he joked was the most difficult assignment he’s had in his career.
There have been several since he first arrived in Agawam, mostly on the operations side. He eventually earned the title director of Operations in 2008, and stayed in that job for several years before leaving to become park president of Six Flags St. Louis in 2016.
He stayed in that post for two years before getting an opportunity to “come home,” as he put it, and become president of Six Flags New England.
Since taking the helm, he has led the park through the challenging COVID period and its aftermath, and now the latest course of expansion, especially a new roller coaster, giving the park 12 in its portfolio, including the wooden Thunderbolt, opened in 1941 and now one of the oldest rides within the Six Flags family of parks.
Carmichael described it as much more than a blast from the past.
“We proudly reinvest in the Thunderbolt every year — it’s one of the best rides in the region and a point of pride for us,” he explained. “There’s a certain crew and a certain amount of hard work that goes into making sure that you have a good, smooth, fun, and enjoyable ride experience on a wooden coaster, and our team of carpenters treats that like their baby.”
“We proudly reinvest in the Thunderbolt every year — it’s one of the best rides in the region and a point of pride for us.”
As for the new Quantum Accelerator coaster, it is being constructed in an area of the park known as Crack Axle Canyon, on the site of the former Goliath coaster.
A significant investment — Carmichael was not at liberty to get into specifics — the new coaster gives the park its first entry into the emerging straddle-coaster bracket, its first new coaster since the Joker opened in the Gotham City section of the park in 2017, and its 12th coaster overall.
Others include the Wicked Cyclone, originally the wooden Cyclone, which was reconstructed and retracked with steel in 2015; Pandemonium, opened in 2005; Batman: the Dark Knight, unveiled in 2002; Flashback, Catwoman’s Whip, and Superman, all opened in 2000; and Riddler’s Revenge, formerly the Mind Eraser, which dates back to 1997.
Carmichael said the Quantum Accelerator, which has been in the planning stages for several years now, is a good complement to the other coasters and rides in the park, and is seen as a family attraction. And, just as with the premieres of other coasters on that list above, the introduction of the Quantum Accelerator is expected to pique the interest of roller-coaster enthusiasts, generate new visitation, and create some strong word-of-mouth enthusiasm.
“Roller coasters are really one of the cornerstones of our investment strategy,” he explained. “That’s because they can be anchor rides; they are the type of rides that are repeater rides, ones that our guests will be wowed by, they’ll be amused by, they’ll tell all their friends and family, ‘you’ve got to come ride this.’ And there was no better example of that than when we opened the Superman ride in 2000.”
Bottom Line
While the park supplies experiences and lasting memories for guests, it provides the same for its employees, said Carmichael, noting that most of them are young, many of them are in their first job, and many others are certainly in their first position of leadership. In each case, work at Six Flags is a learning experience, and one they’ll remember, he noted.
“Because I’ve been at the park so long, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bumped into former supervisors, team leaders, and team members on the midway, and they always seem to have a similar narrative,” he told BusinessWest. “They say, ‘oh my gosh, that was the best time, we had so much fun back in those days.’ I’m really proud to continue the legacy of leadership development that we’ve been able to provide over the last quarter-century.”
That’s just one of the traditions that will continue in 2025 at a regional attraction that has always had the ride stuff.
