Six Flags America unveiled the “Apocalypse: The Last Stand” ride Thursday just in time for summer.

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The massive steel rollercoaster is two minutes of turns, drops and spins, hurling you at a speed of 55 miles-per-hour.

Want proof? Ask the Ringas family. They drove all the way from Richmond, Va. to Thursday’s grand opening to be some of the first to board the beast.

"There's fire going off, and there are all these sounds and there's booms, and there's lots of stuff to look around and see," Elizabeth said.

"Of the ones I’ve ridden, this is one of the smoother ones and one of the ones that's best themed I’d say," said Evangelos Ringas.

Six Flags America already has plenty of older, very popular roller coasters. But when they decided to build something new, they wanted something very different. So why not the region’s first standing roller coaster!

"This is great, we had so much fun riding it,” said Elizabeth Ringas.

Calista Ringas added, "I loved it, it was awesome!"

Larry Chickola is the theme park’s chief engineer. He said the Apocalypse, which took several months to build, turned out exactly how he wanted. Literally, you're standing up inside the ride, fully up right and on top of the track so you get this really high view of the track," said Chickola.

"This was a great site for it. Central to the park, you can see behind us how it really fits in with this great orange and black color scheme," he added.

Along with the scheme and the zombie theme, came a sign of doom and destruction.

Dr. Arnold Blumberg teaches a course on zombies at the University of Baltimore. He says that the t that the Apocalypse is opening in the year 2012 is perfect.

"We're just so enamored in this twisted kinda way with could we make it? Could we survive? How can we stand up to our fears? And here we have a stand up roller coaster that is all about that and what better way than to bring the zombie symbol together with the roller coaster it’s just a perfect blending of these ideas," said Blumberg.

But would ABC7’s Jummy Olaganji survive a ride on the beast? Or rather, could she do so without losing her mind or lunch? Nine-year-old Calista gave her some advice.

"I’ve been on a coaster with tons of loops so it wasn't very new to me," she said.

With Calista’s help, Jummy boarded the ride for the ride of a lifetime.

“I made it!” Jummy screamed as the ride concluded.

For theme parks hours and ticket information, visit http://www.sixflags.com.