Flash Pass - Six Flags Great Adventure

I'm planning a trip to Six Flags Great Adventure (among other parks) in late May, and I'm planning on being there on Sunday, May 31.

I have no problem with buying FastLane at Cedar Point and Kings Island when I go to those places, but I'm a little confused as to how Flash Pass works. I've also never been to this Six Flags, so I'm completely unfamiliar with general crowd levels at the park and how long I would expect to wait for these rides without Flash Pass.

Any insight or information would be great, because the Six Flags website itself doesn't have a very thorough explanation.

Thanks in advance!

You go stand in line at the Flashpass building for an hour or two. When you get to the counter, they offer three different tiers. Regular, gold and platinum, I think. The first one gets you on the rides with the same wait time as everyone else, but you don't have to stand in line. The second one cut's your wait time in half, I think. The third one cuts your wait time by 90%, if I recall correctly.

The Flashpass is a beeper like device. You choose your ride right on the device. It tells you when you can ride, then you go to the Flashpass line and touch your Flashpss device to the attendant's Fleshpass device. He lets you proceed and you ride.

I think you get to ride twice in a row with the platinum Flashpass.

There are no refunds for any reason. I think they need your credit card or debt card number for collateral just in case you lose or take the Flashpass.

Is there a limit to how many rides you can "be in line" for at one time?

Kind of. The Flashpass will only reserve one ride at a time, but you can physically stand in a second line. If you get the gold or platinum pass, standing in line physically will not really be necessary on a normal day.

LostKause said:

You go stand in line at the Flashpass building for an hour or two.

I've never bought Flashpass myself, but I've been treated to and contributed to several. In my experience, the longest the person who was physically buying was about 20 minutes, on a day that turned out to be mobbed.

Well, to be fair, I did stand in line for over an hour once for it at SFGAdv once, but that was about ten years ago. lol Last summer when I got one, there were only about three or four groups ahead of me.

LostKause said:

I think they need your credit card or debt card number for collateral just in case you lose or take the Flashpass.

When we got Flash Passes a couple years ago at SFMM, they made you leave a driver's license. Just leaving a credit/debit card number wasn't enough. Not sure if that is unique to California though.

And the "ride 2x" feature of the platinum was great but it wasn't fully understood/appreciated by all other park guests. We had a group of people on one of the rides who were gathering together to have us thrown out of the park. LOL Some ride ops did a lot better job explaining to other guests what was happening and why. Others just stood there and said nothing leaving people who did not know about the policy to question why we were not leaving our seats. Not sure how long the feature was available at the time but maybe another two years has helped to educate people (because some people back then seemed to understand the policy without having anything explained to them).

I've never waited in a long line to get flash pass. The longest part is watching the stupid video. They still make you leave a drivers license.

That's right. It was the drivers license.

For those of you familiar with the park, do you think that a Flash Pass would (historically) be necessary on Sunday, May 31 if I wanted to ride EVERYTHING in the park at least once?

I don't know about Memorial Day but I hit the park up on Labor Day a few years ago and it was dead. Toro and Ka had the longest waits at about 30 min each. I'd play by ear.

It's actually the Sunday AFTER Memorial Day. I picked it on purpose in hopes that it would be the "in-between" Memorial Day weekend and summer crowds.

You might get lucky. In any case, the passes don't usually sell out very quickly, so you can kind of gauge things throughout the day. Sometimes it's not bad at first and then gets much worse as the day goes on, and sometimes the crowds thin out as the day goes on. Unfortunately it is not very predictable. However, try and squeeze in a ride or two and see how it goes before spending the money.

Everything that was explained on this thread was true.

One other thing to consider is not so much the number of cars....but the number of busses in the lot.

Often times those "tanks" are loaded. You can have a near empty parking lot on weekdays during school hours where the parks would be closed. Or also..."Pysics Days."

The weather is also an important factor too.

It's just something to keep in mind.

Enjoy your trip and as always...please post a report!

My one and only visit to this park was during the week right after Memorial Day. Mr. Reflux is correct- I was pleased to see very few cars in the lot then dismayed to see hundreds of school busses. Turns out N.J. schools don't dismiss for the summer til early/mid June and the school trips were in full swing unlike what we have here in Ohio.
Lines were long for some and not for others. Kingda Ka and Toro were one or two train waits while Nitro and Green Lantern had long lines all day.
I did not do the pass.

I'm headed to Dorney, Knoebels, and Hershey on this trip as well, but this one is the one I'm most worried about crowd-wise, even though I'm hitting Dorney on Saturday.

My hope is there won't be many buses on a Sunday and since those kids still have school the next day, they won't be there late!

I'm finding it difficult to see the value in the Platinum Flash Pass for $110 a person, so I'll almost certainly wait until I'm there to make a decision.

Thanks for all the feedback!

And of COURSE I'll have 4 long trip reports to post when I get home!

If you need a Flashpass at all, I'd go for the middle tier. They say it cuts your wait time by 50%, but it seemed much shorter than that when I used it. Plus, it gives you time to walk around, use the restroom, and take your time before getting to the ride.

Agree with Travis that the middle tier is the one to go with. I too felt that the wait time was cut by much more than 50% when i bought FlashPasses. Haven't bought any at my home park of GAD in several years, as I can beat the lines if I get there early enough. (On my first visit to SFNE I happened to arrive at the same time as busloads of kids so that a gold FlashPass was the only way to get anything out of the trip.) You don't necessarily have to leave your driver's license at the FlashPass station; alternatively, you can leave your season pass if you have one. As to watching that stupid video, Six Flags was supposed to have instituted a system for keeping track of repeated FlashPass users so that those familiar with the device could bypass the video. Don't know what happened with that but I did buy a FlashPass at Six Flags Great America last July and didn't have to watch a video or receive any instruction. Last year I hit GAD on Labor Day and there were so few people in attendance that my companion and I got in 18 rides within a couple of hours. Anyway, I'm not buying a FlashPass unless it's a park I've never visited and will probably never visit again, and there's a huge crowd. May have to purchase FastLane at Carowinds in a couple of weeks, depending.

I've never bought a flashpass at any park and I've never had trouble hitting everything I wanted to in one day (assuming I wasn't toting kids). Of course, I've had to commit to going open to close and have had to wait in multiple hour long lines during the course of the day, but my general outlook is that smart planning and a little bit of commitment obviates the need to purchase a flashpass. Of course, the convenience might be worth the cost.

Convenience wins out for me (at least at some parks--first time and likely only visits mainly). My wife and daughter are not big ride fans. They don't go on park specific trips. But when we spend a day at a park on a longer non-park trip, they typically go with my son and me. Some type of front of the line access allows my son and me to hit the rides we want to hit in a lot less time. We can get to the park a couple hours after opening and/or leave early enough to do something else. Trips are also typically during crowded times for parks (summer, spring break, etc.).

I have also found that with a lot of rides, one lap isn't enough to get a good appreciation. Two rides is pretty standard. With 3 or 4 for rides I like. FoL access helps with that too.