Dark Knight

The Dark Knight opened on May 21, 2008, timed to coincide with the theatrical release of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight that summer. Rather than building a new structure, Six Flags Great America gutted and extensively rethemed its existing Theater Royale building — previously used for stage shows — into a Gotham City Rail terminal, one of three near-identical installations built that year and the next at Six Flags Great Adventure and Six Flags México, all manufactured by Mack Rides at a reported cost of $7.5 million each.

Before boarding, riders pass through an interactive pre-show staged as a Harvey Dent press conference that the Joker hijacks mid-broadcast, complete with simulated gunfire and practical effects, setting up the premise that guests are fleeing through Gotham while being pursued. The ride itself is a compact indoor wild mouse coaster — tight, low-speed switchback turns with no inversions — but the complete darkness and themed scenery around every corner give it a sense of unpredictability that a daylight wild mouse coaster couldn't replicate.

As the park's only fully indoor coaster, The Dark Knight occupies a different niche than Six Flags Great America's outdoor thrill machines, aimed more at family-friendly scares than airtime or inversions. A single-rider line was added in 2022 to improve throughput, and the ride remains a fixture of the Gotham City area alongside Batman: The Ride, more than 15 years after its film-tie-in debut.