How is SFGAM not among the top attendance parks?
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This place gets more people than any other park I have been to, other than Disney and Universal.
Does anyone else agree?
Well, it is seasonal, which contributes to the low attendance rates. In fact, being up here, it is only open from May through October. Many other seasonal parks are open longer.
Also, unlike Cedar Point, which has hotels on property, and parks like Busch Tampa or Williamsburg, which are in tourist-y areas in the first place, Gurnee, Illinois is not a tourist metropolis. In fact, aside from the park, and the Mills, it is not in a great location for staying overnight.
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Track Record: 110 and counting.....
That is an excellent question. I have personally never been to a park outside Disney that was as crowded as SFGAM (at least the last time I was there.) The wait for Batman was nearly 4 hours long! Yikes!
Shaggy
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Shaggy
A.K.A. John K.
A lot of that has to do with the park's tiny size (125 acres or so) for a city the size of Chicago.
Of course, another factor is non-CP ride capacity (for instance, only two trains on their B&M coasters).
Frankly, a park that small in a metro area that large with no competition (worth mentioning) doesn't need to run up attendance records...only profits. They are perhaps the only Six Flags park that really doesn't need you to show up. They'll draw 3 million guests if they set half the park on fire. What a gold mine.
-'Playa
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Shaggy - Never, ever, ever, ever, ever go on the Memorial Day Sunday... I made that mistake, and I deeply regret it.
First off, a 4-hr. wait for Batman is not really out of the ordinary on a crowded weekend, because of the queue problems. When you get to the top tunnel (that empties to the right into the station), the line splits into two, right for front seat, left for the other 7 rows. Most of the park guests don't really understand this, and on crowded days, a bottleneck is nearly always created there by people waiting in the front-seat line, not aware that there are 7 other decent rows. Maybe you've noticed those constant messages played in the queue ("if you're waiting for the front...")
They also, now, have a bunch of rides with bad capacity for one reason or another. V2, Deja Vu being the shuttles, Iron Wolf (terrible loading procedure), Viper (with two trains and a relatively long course, one always sits in the station for a while), and Whizzer (look at the seating config, and get back to me.)
Geographically, it is near Chicago, which is a huge city (duh.) Lots of locals visit the park, as well as kids bussed in by their parents. If you think it is bad halfway through the day, you should try the park at 10:00 A.M. Short of the run for MF at CP, I have never seen more uncontrolled madness at a park in my life. Everyone and their mother runs for V2 (Deja Vu this year, but they usually run the entire park when they realize it's not open.)
CoastaPlaya said:
A lot of that has to do with the park's tiny size (125 acres or so) for a city the size of Chicago.
Not to mention Milwaukee, Madison, Rockford, etc. Hell, we stopped in Springfield, Il on the way to SFStL this weekend, and they had SFGAm Coke cans in the gas stations.
It really blows my mind sometimes that there isn't any real competition around. I think someone could make some serious cash if they wanted to, but there must be something I'm not aware of that's preventing it.
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"He's blazin' away like the stars in the universe.." A. Vega + M. Rev "Ghostrider"
Someday there will be something here.
Ragingusmc No reason to insult the whole area!!!!
I think the park could be more popular if it was more kid/family friendly, and until it is it wont put up numbers like wdw or universal(but to be fair only being a seasonal park it has no chance to come close to reaching those numbers).
The park needs family attractions like Haunted Mansion/Pirates at wdw, with that type of quality. But instead they give their customers old simulator rides and Imax films!!! The parks knows they will get good business without improving much so they dont . They take their guests for granted, escpecially their season passholders!!
Bob O
I'm not trying to insult the area, after all I lived here my whole life. I was merly trying to make light of the topic of tourism. But apparently the "MODS" think diffrently.
I agree with you as far as attractions. And as it's been said many times before without competition SFGAM can do what ever they want and still bring in people.
Is SFGAM really only 125 acres??? To me it seems much larger than that. Also I have to agree with spacemountain 551, our park does need something like that. However, the inner-city people from Chicago can be quite nasty there sometimes.
Example: I was standing in the V2 line last year and two inner-city people were messing around. The ride ops (being as nice as they can be which was quite a surprise) tried to get them to stop. However, these two people just started screaming obscenities and throwing objects at the ride ops. Pretty bad behavior from what it seems...
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X Looks Awesome! Oh Yea!!
Never go to the park on the weekend, your just asking for trouble. Tues, Wed, Thur. You'll be fine. Going on the weekend is crazy.
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BMCOASTER
bmcoaster@wi.rr.com
On a completely aside note, I've found that more little snotty nosed white children act up EVEN when their parents/guardians are there. Perhaps if they knew that an ass whuppin would be their punishment instead of an ineffective "Time-Out" they'd be more likely to chill.
lata,
jeremy
--who was born, raised, currently lives and hopefully will die in the "Inner City"
Hostyl (Sounding a bit like R. Kelly at the end) beat me to it.
I'm an "inner-city" white dude, but I'm sure you're not worried about me when you see me in an amusement park, walking down the street, or at the mall. Well, you'd never see me at the mall, but that's a different story...
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"He's blazin' away like the stars in the universe.." A. Vega + M. Rev "Ghostrider"
Someday there will be something here.
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