Great Adventure 6/17/09--CROWDED

Ivory and I went for the first time together this season to Great Adventure, and man, was it packed. When I saw six or seven buses parked even before we got our parking spot, I knew to be concerned about how much we would get to do, but I didn't think it would be THAT bad. It was the absolute worst I've ever seen GAdv. Also, Kingda Ka was closed, so that didn't help anything. The line for El Toro was through all switchbacks, through the entrance, through the SIGN for Toro, and heading towards the shortcut to Bizarro. 2 plus hours. Nitro was filled nearly to the entrance as well. Bizarro was even all the way to the lockers. The only things that DIDN'T have lines were Skull Mountain and The Dark Knight, and Nitro had no line at the beginning of the day. We gave up after seeing the Toro and Bizarro lines and bought a gold flashpass since we drove two hours to get to GAdv and didn't have a whole lot of time before we left. There were DOZENS of class trips there, and the kids were so damn rude, asking if they could go ahead of you to fill an empty seat and then calling all their friends over to join them in the queue (which I refused to let them do after the first two). Everyone was running, shoving, pushing, yelling, line jumping, spitting, littering, etc. I found myself praying for rain so they would all vacate, but no such luck.

Toro was running fabulously, and I think that I like the third from the back seat almost BETTER than the very back seat. It actually felt a little MORE forceful to me. Nitro was paying me back for my perfect ride on Sunday by being extremely rough, slow-feeling, and vibrate-y. One of our two rides on Skull Mountain was still slower than usual, but the next one was fantastic. Dark Knight still bit compared to last season, but there was NO line waiting for our car, so just as we were getting out, they told us we could ride again. Alas, we had already exited the vehicle and didn't feel like chasing another one down for that ride. Batman was fun as usual. Bizarro was intensely rough for some reason...I got so much headbanging that even though Ivory wanted to do it again cuz we could with Flashpass, I was feeling a little pukey and said no thank you. Superman was ALSO very vibrate-y. I don't know what was going on with Wednesday's rides, but Toro was practically the only one that felt like it was running properly. I don't get it.

Anyway, I got to introduce Ivory to a food she never had before: funnel cake. How one can be in her 30's and never tried funnel cake is beyond me, but as she poked at my funnel cake and said it looked NASTY, I made her try some. Her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as she chewed, and she proceeded to eat 3/4 of my serving. She said it was lucky you can't just get funnel cake anywhere because she'd weigh 300 pounds. :)

Well, I guess that's about it:

Nitro 2

TDK 1

Skull Mountain 2

Batman 1

El Toro 2

Superman 1

Bizarro 1

Sound horrible. I almost went and reading this I am really glad I didn't go. I am also surprised there were so many class trips. Isn't school done in most districts and even if it is the last week or two of classes I would think it would been the end of trips with finals going on.

I would have gone crazy. The day of Coasters After Dark the park was open earlier in the day just for schools for physics and music day and just in the 1 hour that overlapped (5 - 6 p.m.) with CAD and the school events, it was horrible with all the kids. 1 or 2 kids would be ahead of me in line and suddenly they had 10+ kids try to join them. I couldn't have dealt with that all day. Plus the way they run past you down the exit ramp to go to the next ride.

So was the park crowded solely because of the amount of school-groups, or would it have been really busy, regardless?

Never heard of lines like that on a WEDNESDAY in mid-June...

When I wold frequent the park, I always tried to predict when crowds would be light, with no luck. This was a typical day at SFGAdv for me. I quit going, instead choosing the other awesome parks in the area.

I bet Q-Bot didn't help the "stand-by" lines move any faster either... (I want a smiley with it's tongue sticking out.)

LK, I'm not even going there. LOL Actually, the flashpassers were to a minimum. I'd say MAYBE four seats per train on the rides. What actually irked me was that the stations were so crowded with people waiting for specific seats that the lines weren't moving in that way. For instance, the Toro queue always appears like the station is full, but they were sending out every train with a few seats empty because no one would walk to the back of the station. Then the line attendants wouldn't let more people in the station because it appeared full. Some people yelled at me a few times for attempting to "cut", at which point, I'd say, "Well, move down to the end of the station then. It's pretty empty." People had nothing to say to this and would typically stay at their spots near the front, allowing me to bypass a multi-train wait for walk-on rides or one to two train rides. This was also the case on Nitro and Bizarro.

DantheCoasterMan, I was shocked that this early in the season on a Wednesday that it was that crowded as well. Sunday the park was dead for most of the day, and there was no need for a flashpass. One would think a Sunday would be much worse.

I DON'T know if it was because of all the school trips or not, but I know that the one school trip must have had over a hundred kids in it. Just ONE group was that big, so it very well could have been because of the kids. In any case, it was horrendous, and I hate to think of what the rest of the season is going to be like if the lines were this bad this early. I'm hoping it was a fluke thing....although it signifies good things for Six Flags maybe keeping this park open. If these amazing coasters go extinct or get re-located, I'll cry. A lot. LOL

I've found the best week to go is the first week of June. Over the last few years we've done Hershey Park, Six Flags Great Adventure and Kings Dominion during that week. That week happens to contain my birthday and it is one of the final weeks school is in session, so there are lots of kids wrapped up in finals. These last three years we've only had lines at the park for the first few hours and any school trips left for the day - giving us repeat rides on all the best ones in each park. I'm talking riding Nitro 6 times in a row, Medusa 4 times, Volcano 3 times, etc. It's just a great week to go.