First SFGAm Coasters After Dark Wednesday Night

Just a reminder for those that are Six Flags Season Pass Holders that Wednesday night is the first Coasters After Dark event at SFGAm.

You have to be in the park gates by 8:30pm and you must have a valid season pass (from any SF park).

Wouldn't you know, the forecast is already calling for thunderstorms.

According to John Curty, plans are to have all coasters running as well as Giant Drop. Possibly Revolution also.

John who?

I believe John Curty is the operations manager at the park.

Anyway, going to give this Wednesday a try. Thursday morning going to work is going to suck. :)

You are correct...John Curty is the ops manager. Seems like a great guy from contacts I've had in person and by email.

I'm going to take a hard look at the forecast before I decide on whether to come or not. It's close to a 4-hour drive for me.

Brad

That's what I thought (referring to John).

Is he a heavyset guy? I see this heavyset guy constantly roaming the park. He was also on that special covering the history of Chicago and other places in the Chicago area including SFGAm.

Yeah, He's a little chunky I guess and usually wears glasses. He's almost always out front by the gates at opening time.

I was planning on going to this with 3 of my friends, but sadly we are only 14 and need someone to pick us up at...midnight. So far we haven't found a parent/sibling that is willing to do that for us, so I may have to miss it. :(

This one ends at 11pm

Do you know how they check for the season pass holders for this event? Can they really get everyone else out of the park so it is truly ERT?

Just in case there is any concern, I am a season pass holder and not looking for a way to "scam" the system. We were at the park on Sunday and got our little ticket book and found out about the "Coasters After Dark", and just was trying to understand how this was going to be accomplished, since it could be a great experience.

The way they have done things like this before is to have the special pass holders line up at a given point in a single file line and then they check each person. This isnt a hard concept to do, if they are going to have all coasters up and running, all they have to do is start with the one that empties first such as Eagle, Demon, or Iron Wolf and keep that area of the park open until the rest is clear. By making you be in the park by 830pm, it tells me that they will be coralling every passholder together in a designated area.

For those that werent there, at 9pm SFGAm had an employee at each entrance to the coasters checking passes. We were also stopped by a security guard between Iron Worl & Eagle asking for passes as well. Superman & Ragin Cajun had signs in front of them stating that those lines would close early to the general public due to a season pass members event tonight.

The park was still pretty crowded. I didnt realize how many season pass holders there are. There was pretty much no line for the coasters in the back, but the ones up front (Superman, Raging Bull, Viper, etc.) had about a 20 - 30 minute wait.

I thought it was a decent event and well worth the drive. The weather foreecast proved to be totally wrong which was great. Mosquitos were terrible though.

Deja Vu was closed all day as was Revolution. I heard unofficially they blew a power transformer on Revoltion but I don't have confirmation. No signs of activity on Deja Vu.

King Chaos still isn't running either. Waiting for parts I was told.

Viper had an e-stop and we were stuck on the lift hill for about 15-20 minutes while they reset everything. They sent a ride-op up the stairs right away to let everyone know what was going on. She said something about a train being dispatched at the wrong time but I didn't think that was even possible with Viper?

I guess I wasn't real surprised about how many people that were still in the park. They sell a ton of season passes anymore.

I was surprised they weren't running all three trains on Raging Bull but the wait time wasn't bad.

V2 is very strange in the dark since it had virtually no lighting except in the station.

They were rehearsing for their "Summer Spectacular" show which runs on the stage by the train station in Hometown Park. I think it starts this weekend.

I supppose I should have posted this as a trip report but I consider it more like random notes.

Once again, employees were friendly and trying to hurry to keep things moving. *** Edited 6/18/2004 12:20:27 AM UTC by Brad G***

Brad G said:

King Chaos still isn't running either. Waiting for parts I was told.

I was there last Sun and they said it will open this weekend- I asked because it was testing all day Sun. It was also testing Wed during the day and I asked again and they said this weekend also. I am most interested in King Chaos of all the new rides we got but man is that a short ride. Looks cool. Ive never ridden one though.

It terms of Wednesday overall, I think I got my best ride on Batman of the year, if not ever, mainly due to the crew. They had both trains on near the end of the night (I had read they were running 1 all day) and the ladies checking restraints were whipping through the train such that when the train hit the brakes, the next one was hitting the lift leaving 0 stacking!

So it doesn't matter where your season pass is from??

It can be a Six Flags Season Pass from any Six Flags Park and they will honor it.

Too bad I didn't get to go, oh well I guess I will just have to wait for another month or so...