Great Adventure, 4/12/12

After a not so great trip to the park last week, I was hoping the trip to the park today would be better.

This week there was no line of cars and I walked into the park around 10:15. Rope drop was strange, they had the usual rope up on the right side of the park before the Big Wheel and on the other side, there was a rope to the right of the carousel. If you went towards the Boardwalk, you could go right up to the entrance of any ride there and wait and the entrance to the Golden Kingdom near Twister had a rope there as well.

I went to get my coupon book and then got in line for Green Lantern around 5 minutes before opening. Both Green Lantern and Superman had to have 100+ people in line waiting for the rides to open. I got on the 4th Green Lantern train but didn't get off the ride until 10:50. I noticed that every time a train was loaded, they reminded everyone to stand up and it was not a sitdown coaster. I guess they have been having trouble with people not standing? I also noticed there were 4 ride ops checking restraints. I wonder if there will be 6 ride ops checking restraints again like last year after May or having 6 ride ops checking restraints was just for last year.

Superman looked to be around 20 minutes and I didn't want to spend that much time knowing it would be getting more crowded soon so I went towards Kingda Ka only to find it closed and not testing. I was going to go to Bizarro but Frontier Adventures wasn't open until 11:00 so I stopped at Rolling Thunder. Only the right side was open with 2 trains running. The dispatches were slow as usual but the ride wasn't too bad in a non wheel seat.

I went to Bizarro to find an empty station, if some others had not gone for a re-ride, I would have gotten a solo ride. I ended up getting 3 rides only having to walk around once. The train did not have the audio working.

Runaway Mine Train was next, 2 train wait and thankfully I was actually able to ride the coaster this time after trying 3 times last week and having it break down every time. The Log Flume was still closed and didn't look like it would be opening so I took the Skyway over to Dream Street. It was only a few minute wait but the Dream Street side had at least a 20 minute wait.

I saw Nitro had a line almost out to the entrance but no switchbacks were being used. I decided to go to Skull Mountain instead waiting a little less than 10 minutes. The crew at Skull Mountain was awesome, running to check the lap bars and the dispatches were the fastest I have ever seen at the ride with full trains. I was very impressed. The black light was turned on at the bottom of the first drop which was good to see. I walked around 2 more times for more rides.

The Dark Knight also was running better than last week. It only took a few minutes to get into the pre-show room and the wait after that was short because the line was moving fast like it usually does (last week it took almost 20 minutes to board a car from after the pre-show). I went back for a 2nd ride and checked out Batman's line. It was into the garden area so I skipped it again and went to check Nitro's line.

The line was a little shorter than before but I decided to wait. With 2 trains running, it was a little over 35 minutes. I hope the 3rd train gets put together and is running soon since they could really use it.

By now, everything had a long line. Skull Mountain had a line well into the cave, the Skyway had almost a full queue, even Jolly Roger had at least a 1 cycle wait. I walked over to Blackbeard's, saw it was at least 15 minutes and skipped it and went to Frontier Adventures.

Runaway Mine Train was a little less than 15 minutes so I stopped there and saw the Skyway had gotten a long wait on that side of the park as well. I decided to go to Tango which had no wait and leave after that.

Kingda Ka was running later in the day but I didn't even walk over to see how long the line was since I was sure it was longer than I was willing to wait.

Overall it was a better trip than last week, with better operations and less breakdowns so I was able to get more rides in.

When I saw on Easter that there was no rope drop by Boardwalk, I just assumed they had eliminated it completely. Shows what I know. I got on the first Supe train that day.

I think it was reasonable to think they got rid of rope drop, since if I hadn't looked closely at the other side of the park or the right side of the carousel and just went right to Green Lantern, I would have thought the same thing that they got rid of rope drop.

Maybe it is only temporary and they had the area open because of season pass processing open as well and in a few weeks they will go back to the old rope drop system or they want the games area open before the park opens since I did see people playing games so the park sees it as a way to make money and will just have the Boardwalk open early.

I actually like the new metal detectors in the outer mall. Way more crowd control can be handled at the ticket windows and takers. I do see bottle necking on the way out at the new set up though.