Three hurt, one in medically induced coma, after Fright Fest fight at Six Flags America

Given the rep the park has, I suspect I've been very lucky.

It's one of the few parks we've stopped in to customer service to make sure they knew we had good things to say.

I, too, had a decent time when I went to SFA. The clientele wasn't anything to write home about, but the staff was a little on the lazy side and playing on their phones a lot.

It wasn't terrible by any stretch. Wasn't spectacular, either.

Man Gonch I don't know what SFA you're talking about. Oh yeah I forgot you love Dorney that much. You are a ghetto boy. ;-)

I stopped buying six flags passes because of SFA. I don't go to dorney anymore. Even Hershey and knoebels is getting harder because the ghetto crowd is expanding into their parks. It's a shame.

Okay, I am starting to get a little uncomfortable. I realize I am the first one to bring up the word "thugs." Now we are adding the word ghetto. I think maybe there are some undertones developing that I didn't intend in my post.

I hear Gonch has a ghetto booty.

"My anaconda Don't..."

I'm all about that bass, myself...

Tekwardo said:

I hear Gonch likes a ghetto booty.

FTFY :)

Come to think of it, it might not have been the rides at SFA that I remember so fondly...

Blame teh Twitter!!!11!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/teen-injured-during-assau...story.html

And here I was thinking that it's a nice little park in a decent area. Not! Actually was hoping to get there before the season is over to ride some new coasters and take advantage of my Six Flags season pass. Maybe not a great idea. BTW, does anyone know whether Joker's Jinx is up and running? Asked that question on SFA's Facebook page and didn't get an answer. Not much point in going to a park with a relatively small selection of coasters if one of them is still down.

Just check Twitter first to see if there are any fights scheduled.

If you do a quick search, you'll find that crime in that area is very comparable to the averages across the country.

(source 1, source 2, source 3)

So where does this perception that it's so bad come from?

So it wasn't just me. Gonch, I was trying to do the same thing to see how dangerous of an area it is and really its not any worse than any other metro area.

I think its because it happened at an amusement park rather than a club is why people are making this assumption. These kinds of fights happen a lot.

~Rob

The immediate vicinity isn't usually the issue... it's the public transportation that goes there. That may sound "classist," but as crime is most prevalent in poorer, inner-city areas, enabling cheap transportation out of those areas to the 'burbs tends to brings the crime with it. Now add the cheap gate and babysitting behavior it encourages, and you can see why there can be a problem.

I'm not saying the park is a degenerate wasteland of crime, only that there are plenty of reasons why it would be present.

While I agree with all that that still doesn't answer the question as to why people think that the part is in a bad neighborhood it's not necessarily in a bad neighborhood in fact it's in a middle-class neighborhood it's the clientele to come to the park outside of the neighborhood to make it a problem.

The people who think it's in a bad neighborhood don't understand what I just explained. I'm not sure if it matters if it's in a bad neighborhood... a "bad element" apparently likes to hang out there.

But does a 'bad' element hang out there?

If I look at the news articles posted here about SFA over the last 4 years, this is the only violent or remotely serious incident.

I suspect it's more about how comfortable we feel around the clientele that frequent the park than the actual actions of those people.

Travis may have hit on something earlier. We're using terms like 'thug' and 'ghetto' - which is basically acceptable code for a certain kind of urban black kids.

I have no reason to believe it's actually more dangerous there than anywhere. It's just somewhere our lily-white, reasonably middle-class-or-better, suburban crowd isn't exactly comfortable hanging out.

...

Well, you guys, at least. I've had perfectly good times there ;)

I went by myself to SFA one weekday, early in the season. I thought it was an ok place, there were several coasters that I enjoyed immensely, and it was very Flags-ish. I had heard for a while that there could be a rough crowd, but I didn't encounter that. However, I wasn't there at the height of the summer, on a Saturday, or during Fright Fest. The park was slow and most everyone was at the water park.

The thing I did have trouble with was finding a nice place to stay. The area around the park is middle class suburban, I guess that would be D.C. suburban, and the place I chose kind of sucked. It never occured to me when booking that the area hotels would likely be host to large tour groups, mainly students. And when I got there after a big day at the park I was concerned from the minute I drove into the parking lot. Everything about that hotel was so worn out and cruddy. And they had weird rules posted about who was allowed to visit, how many could occupy a room, what time you could come and go, stuff like that. My room was awful, the curtains were crappy, the windows were sealed shut, all that. I was glad to leave after one night.

Whatever is to be said about the park or the hood, these fights are disgraceful. I think this thug mentality that many teenagers and young adults carry these days is so disturbing. Who in their right mind would think something like that is the right thing to do? And do we blame a sense of entitlement? TV and movies? Broken homes and lack of leadership? Or social media where bad ideas can travel like wildfire and situations can get whipped up into a frenzy?

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!

Lord Gonchar said:

But does a 'bad' element hang out there?

Regularly? I dunno. They obviously did over the weekend.

I went sometime in the early 2000's and again in 2004 and had a decent time both trips. Didn't have any problem at all with staff or clientele. I did have a problem with how far S:RoS and Batwing were from a bathroom and how often Batwing went down, but I don't think I can blame young, black males for either of those.