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Travis Scott is a very proud Houston native, consistently showing his support for the city and especially for its sports teams, spotted in the crowd for Rockets and Astros games. Scott’s popularity has grown with each album release, but Travis-mania might’ve hit its peak on the release of his 2018 record, Astroworld. This album wasn’t inspired by a person or even the streets of Houston, it was inspired by the city’s former premier theme park, Six Flags AstroWorld.

AstroWorld, the theme park, formed part of an idea of ex-Houston Mayor Roy Hofheinz, who intended it to be part of his plans for Astrodomain, which would include the park and the Astrodome, which famously sheltered refugees during Hurricane Katrina. An ambitious plan, reflected in Scott’s ambitious album, Hofheinz opened the park on June 1st 1968, three years after the opening of the Astrodome.

The park was notorious for two of its rides, the Texas Cyclone and Thunder River. The Texas Cyclone was modelled after the Coney Island Cyclone after Hofheinz realised that it would be too expensive to purchase the iconic Coney Island ride and relocate it to Houston. Thunder River, on the other hand, is said to be the world’s first river rapids ride.

Maybe somewhat inspired by Disney, Astroworld even had its own crew of original characters and mascots. The face of the park was Marvel McFey, a red-bearded pirate figure, branded ‘The Ambassador of Happiness’. He was accompanied by Winston Wolf, the sheriff of Astroworld, Beethoven Bear, whose defining quality was that he was apparently a checkers champion, and Lester Lion, somehow a frustrated baseball player.

The Cyclone drew large crowds to the park, standing at 93 ft tall, with a ride time of two minutes 15 seconds, though eventually tragedy struck. On July 29th, 1983, the park was adding a new train to the ride to increase its capacity. When doing so, a section of track must be moved to roll the new train on and then placed back. The manager in charge of the procedure forgot to replace the track, leading to the train crashing through the storage shed, injuring 14 and killing one employee.

Six Flags purchased the park in 1978, which saw them make many changes over the years. In 1984, Marvel McFey and his zany crowd were shown the door and had to make way for Bugs Bunny and the Looney Toons crowd instead. Eventually, in the 1990s, Six Flags were even able to access DC Comics characters as Time Warner owned both companies. They pounced on this by installing Batman The Escape in 1992, only for it to lose the Batman theme altogether by 1998.

All good things must come to an end, and in 2005, it was announced that Six Flags AstroWorld would close its doors to the public permanently on October 30th 2005. The park itself was eventually demolished and sold at auction. The majority of the land eventually became car parks.

The influence of the park on Scott is evident. Even from a simple glance at AstroWorld’s original sign or ticket stub, it’s noticeable that the font is the same as Scott later went on to use for the album and its promotion. The album cover itself is a tribute to the Texas Cyclone, as the entrance to the ride featured a walk through the mouth of a cartoonish character.

Scott explained in an interview with GQ, “They tore down AstroWorld to build more apartment space… we want it back. That’s why I’m doing it. It took the fun out of the city”. The album certainly delivered, providing extreme highs from massive collaborations with the likes of Drake combined with the amplified energy of Travis and his beats. Sadly, Travis’ efforts to bring the spirit of AstroWorld back to Houston through his Astroworld festival were marred by tragedy as ten were killed in a crowd crush on November 5th, 2021.