My Buddy And I are not happy with SFA.

My buddy and I will never step foot in Six Flags America.. Because SFA don't know how to run thier park. One time my buddy and I were waiting in line to ride Two-Face. And they let a whole bunch of Flash Pass holders board and didn't bother to open the rest of the air gates. Another time my buddy an I were waiting in the 1st row to ride SROS. Those ride operator let a whole bunch of Flash Pass holders. And they took what ever seat they wanted So we waited and waited. Now we get to ride SROS. I told my buddy that this is my very last time going to SFA. If SFA changes I might come back. But I dought that SFA will ever change. So next year my buddies and I are going to KD for the whole season I aready brought my 2009 KD season passs. Because KD know how to run a park and they don't do Flash Pass at all.

Flash Pass is the devil.

I'd skip KD too just because they're in too close of a proximity to a park that uses Flash Pass. Can't be too safe when it comes to that sort of thing.

Your sarcasm is somewhat diluted by the pimp hat . . .

I really don't go to SFA either, but for different reasons. It's no secret that I truly believe that Lo-Q runs a pretty evil business, but I've had major problems with other aspects of how they run the park...

Take closed rides for example. For a "Six Flags" park, they really don't have a lot of coasters to offer. For even two coasters to be closed is a real proble to me.

Last time I was there, somewhere around 4 years ago, the employees couldn't give me a smile let alone decent service. If I am paying that much money for a drink and a slice of pizza, they better smile and say thank you.

And I've never rode the train. When I am there it is always closed. Last time I was there it was open but I wasn't allowed to ride it because I wasn't part of some special pic-nic group...whatever.

The first time I was there, I had the privilege of riding Typhoon Seacoaster, which was an incredibly enjoyable ride. Each time after, no such luck. They should either fix the ride or replace it with something that actuially runs half the time.

The park is small, but sometimes very busy. Add to that the dead ends, and you have a real mess.

When are they going to upgrade the joke of a waterpark that they have? long lines are the bigest problem there and if they would expand allready, this problem could be solved.

Flashpass ruins this park with the incredibly lackluster ride attendants. If they would hustle, maybe the "standby" lines would move a little faster.

Worst Six Flags park ever!

Let me end on a positive note. The Wild West show is fun. Roar rocks! Superman is decent. Wild Thing is incredible!

Flashpass is useless there anyway. I read a TR on another board that said they had to wait 45 minutes for Superman with Flashpass.

I have really heard nothing but bad things about SFA and even though it is about a 2 1/2 hour drive for me and I have been within 30 minutes of the park before, I have little to no interest in going. Maybe one day I'll go for a credit run but it sounds like it is a horrible place.

SFA has some superlative rides. Shame the park is run the way it is. Even without the Invertigo, you still have JJ, Supes, Roar, and Wild One. Oh, and the Vekoma flyer. A customer-service orientation might even make the place profitable enough for corporate to hang on to. Weird Shapiro hasn't recognized it - probably be sold off sooner or later, maybe when the real estate market rebounds.

YoshiFan said:
Flashpass is useless there anyway. I read a TR on another board that said they had to wait 45 minutes for Superman with Flashpass.

Yeah, but if Superman had a 45 minute wait and the user had a regular Q-bot, then it worked exactly like it's supposed to.

^I think he means someone had to wait in the flashpass line for 45 minutes AFTER the regular amount of "line time" they already waited. I've seen that happen with DejaVu at SFoG. That's not cool.

It sounds like they are letting people in through the exit or boarding the train from the fast pass line. If my park did that, I would probably be aggravated too. The ideal (or should I say less evil) way to do it is to let the flash pass people in the queue right at the station platform. From there they merge with everyone else, and choose whatever seat they want by standing in front of the appropriate queue gate line. They may have to wait a few trains, but at least everyone gets to choose which seat they want, and no one gets bumped right before they are ready to board.

My buddy and me, like to climb up a tree...

Sorry. ;)

Now I see why it took sp long it looks as though the park still uses the 5 tickets for a cost as flashpass. This is the worst possible way to do the system. If they still do this the way they did it on SROS when I last visited then yes the people line up on the exit ramp and wait until the ops let them board. It makes the area utter chaos.

http://www.sixflags.com/america/tickets/flashpass.aspx

Don't get me started on this park! I could go on all day about what a dump this place is. The worst experience I have ever had was at this so called amusement park. I only visited this place once and will never go back!!!

Jeffrey Seifert said:The ideal (or should I see less evil) way to do it is to let the flash pass people in the queue right at the station platform. From there they merge with everyone else, and choose whatever seat they want by standing in front of the appropriate queue gate line. They may have to wait a few trains, but at least everyone gets to choose which seat they want, and no one gets bumped right before they are ready to board.

Supes' station is an absolute mad-house, people everywhere with no regard to gates or lines. Implemeting the policy as you stated WOULD work well if there was an attendant at the top of the stairs keeping a hundred or so people in the station. As it is currently, implementing your idea of letting them in at the station entrance would still result in a 45-minute wait (ironically, the same amount of time people were waiting with a FP anyway). This park is the poster-child of why KW never issued SPs before - on the bus line, too close to the urban center.

I do think SFA has a kickass collection of coasters, but I am not a huge fan of the park at all. The last time I was there there was a shooting in the parking lot (long after I left.....I was only there a few hours) and the overall attitudes of the employees sucked. I didn't encounter any issues but I didn't exactly feel "welcomed" either. I mean I am not a fussy person when it comes to customer service, but when so many employees give off so many bad vibes it makes you a little uncomfortable.

I will never forget the kid who was checking the restraints on Roar as he was blabbing on his cell phone. He was complaining how he "hates this f****** job" in front of kids no less. Actually he was more involved in his phone conversation than actually paying attention to his job.

Scary.

I really have no reason to go back unless I am "passing through" and have a SF pass.

-Tina

I actually visited SFA for the first time earlier this year in August. We arrived at the park around 4PM. We were credit whoring, so we went to get on their kiddie coaster, Great Chase. As we got in line, a little kid puked. Rather than calling someone they were supposed to and cleaning the mess, the ride op continued to operate the ride until the stench was so bad that she could not deal with it anymore, and called someone.

We ended up leaving the ride, and going over to Joker's Jinx. The wait was probably only 3 or 4 trains, but we ended up waiting over a half an hour. As I watched the ride ops, they were talking amongst one another almost each time, or just flat out sitting there not doing anything, rather than checking lapbars and getting the trains dispatched in a reasonable time. Unlike the Great Chase, we eventually had the displeasure of riding this.

We had a glimer of hope for Roar, but as we got into the train, we watched ride ops pull their phones out and text, and show other ride ops pictures on their phones, while the riders just sat there in the trains waiting to be checked. My buddy Mitch was sitting next to me, and his seat belt was all twisted and tangled in the latches of the belt, and I told him to just leave it and see if the ride op even checks. He ended up riding with a messed up lapbelt because the ride op didn't even care to check his belt.

Some more beef about the park is that we went to get in line for Batwing, until we realized that there was probably an hour wait. Now, how could that be considering everything else in the park was almost a walk on (or should have been if the ride operaters were doing a decent job)? We timed Batwing's interval, and it was 6.5minutes between dispatches. Pathetic. On top of all of this, Wild One was down. This is definitely the worst park I've ever been to in my life.

Personnally I dont understand why you would go to SFA in the first place when you have two of the best parks in the nation nearby (Hersheypark and Busch Gardens) but hey what can you do. When I lived in DC for the year I immediatly bought a Gold BGE/WCUSA pass and then when I realized I had enough money for one more pass choose Hershey over KD and SFA.

Not that there is anything wrong with KD but it suffers from being way to close to BGE, kind of like Baltimore suffers from being close to DC or Milwaukee being close to Chicago. All are good places, they are just too close to phenominal places.

Ah, with more and more stories like these I can't help but feel good about not setting foot in the park for the last 5 years. I've heard everything that everyone's described before and experienced it all for myself at SFA (well, except for the shooting), and are all collectively the reason I refuse to go back.

^A few years ago I lived closer to SFA than KD, Hershey, and BGE, and it was a nice way to kill a few hours without having to drive too far. I had a season pass from '99-'03 until I couldn't take the place anymore. I agree that the other three parks are leagues better (what parks aren't?), but I keep holding out hope that someday it may return to a decent place to go. It was definitely a better park (in every aspect but number of rides) as Adventure World and Wild World. And while Wild One is the park's shining star, it's still a shadow of what it was in '86 (although Six Flags can only take the blame most of that).

Could it be that BATWING FAN SFA has also stopped going? It would make sense as I haven't seen him around in a long while...there'd be nothing for him to discuss.

IMO, S:RoS SFNE has the perfect station setup. The fast-pass queue merges on the stairs into the station, the entrance to the station is in the middle and there are dedicated queue lines for front and back. The one thing I would change would be to make the dedicated queue for the front only for row 1-1 (it feeds 1-1 and 1-2 right now).

Compare that to B:DK (now B:TR, I understand) across the park where the fast-pass riders merge in the station and everyone piles in at the end of train in a very narrow space. I don't understand why parks can't design better stations...

^"I don't understand why parks can't design better stations...". LOL Andy, I recall going on one of my patented *rants* about poor station design once several years back. While I do love El Toro more than Paris loves politics, that station is immensely frustrating. SFA's Supes is poorly designed, but then the queue management (more to the point, lack of same) makes it *immensely* frustrating. My "ideal" station just might be Ghostrider...

Well since we are on bad stations. Magnum station has no room for the front of the train. Plenty of room for the rest though.