SF StL - Opening Day 3/25

It was about 2:30 PM when I arrived to the parking gates. The park had opened at 10:00 AM but I can never spend more than 4 hours here anyways, so it didn't bother me since the park closed at 6:00 PM. The first thing I noticed was they increased parking prices from $8.00 to $10.00, boy was I excited. I shelled out the $10.00 and was curious how much it would be for a parking pass. I went up to the front gate to purchase my season pass. Thank god for Six Flags giving away the gate. It was only $80.00 for a season pass and parking pass.

I entered the park and got pumped for my first coaster ride of 2005. Batman: The Ride. It was a walk on; it bugged me that I had to walk through the central park because it takes to long, especially when it's a walk on. I don't mind so much when there is a line, but when you walk through that thing seeing empty front seat cars, you get a little aggravated. I opted for car 8 seat to feel the forces. 2 Trains running. Man I love this thing, the small tight loops never fail, and I think I like them more than larger B&M loops.

Since it was getting late in the afternoon I headed back to get my pass processed. After that I went up to the Boss and caught a ride near the back. Only one train running made it a 2 train wait. Not bad, but I always hate when you have to wait a full circuit for loading to start again. The Boss was running really well, not too rough. I noticed that Screamin' Eagle was E-Stopped on the lift and I heard a few people talking about how they rode it at the beginning of the day, so I figured it would be down the rest of the day knowing Six Flags, and I was right.

Next I headed over to Freeze. Another walk on and I rode near the rear. Great ride, fast, fun, and great top-hat hang time as always. The only thing I dislike about this ride is that the seats are so deep and the lap bars are so bulky and just heavy, it hurts. Oh well. As I was exciting Freeze I ran into a friend that was in line for Freeze. I told him I'd wait for him at the exit.

While I was waiting I talked to one of my friends who used to work where I work. He didn't really have anything interesting to say, he was slacking, as usual, he slacked when he worked with me @ my job. A lot of employees seemed to be doing that today. Lots of employees standing around doing absolutely nothing. Six Flags should really improve this.

After my friend came out of Freeze, we headed to Batman. Got about 3 re-rides on it. After that I took off from him to catch a ride on Ninja in the middle. Same old Vekoma looper. I opted out of the re-ride.

I headed up to the Mine Train and noticed about 8 employees in the station that were just standing around doing nothing, while only 2 employees were working the ride. There were only 2 people on the train also! Same ol' mine-train.

I was getting pretty bored, but didn't want my last ride to be the Mine Train so I headed over to The Boss for one last ride. Only a 1 train wait this time.

I took a look at the Tornado construction, and it seemed to be nearly complete. The lack of green in the park made it easy to see many parts of the park I haven't seen before, interesting, but made me depressed, especially with the weather today (no sun)

All in all an okay first visit because of the lack of the crowd. It was very gloomy outside, about 55 degrees. I don't know about the other Six Flags parks this year, but in my opinion, SF:StL is shaping up to be just like last season. They just lack variety of rides, they really do need a hyper/flyer/floorless to spruce the place up and get attendance rocking again, like it was when Batman/Boss/Freeze opened. I will definitely be going to SFMM again this year and hopefully SF:GADV for the first time to checkout Kingda Ka.

Great report, I'm excited to go to St. Louis this season, nothing like riding The Boss and Mr. Freeze, great fun! I need to get a couple of those season passes before I make my usual trips to Great America, man they sure got a deal for season passes!

The park defittely could use a new feature ride, but it still is a quality park, I've never had a bad experience there before.

Wait were you really complaining that there was TOO many employees.

OK so yesterday was a little funny in the since that every department pretty much had all of there employees working. In some cases such as RKMT there were simply to many. Funny thing is the company I work for decided to do a horrible thing and send people home on opening day. You dont send anybody home opening weekend. Its a training weekend.

Btw anyone know of any IT opening in the STL area, looks like i might be quiting SF soon.

I got a couple of defenses to put out about what you said about Screamin Eagle and Mine Train and employees. First just because Screamin Eagle was stopped on the lift does not mean it was e-stopped and what you said about typical Six Flags is completley false. Let me explain a couple of things about rides. They have computer systems, sensors, brakes, air switches, and many other mechanical and electrical parts. Things will go wrong at one time or another and I can confirm that they were working very hard to get that ride open and off that lift. It just couldnt be done until the next day and it was open Saturday. It is not "typical Six Flags".

Mine Train: Again too many employees!? Its called opening weekend and follow up training so that when you visit when it is busy everybody will be doing what they are supposed to. They need to do training when it is not so busy out so it is easier.

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't training usually take place before the park opens?

I know something on the Eagle went wrong, I'm positive it wasn't the e-brake, because all controls went dead on the coaster, they had a couple mechanics, and tons of peopel there once it broke down. They did everything they could.

I didn't mean it that way. I just meant it was stopped on the lift hill, and was there for a long time. I'm just saying what I've noticed about most Six Flags parks is that if a ride goes down, it's down for good that day. I don't call 7-8 people standing around in a group lounging around in the Mine Train station just chatting "training" sorry. I could only assume many of those people there were Eagle ops, but I'm not sure.

Acouple of things you need to consider is with park opening so early this year training before park opening is some what condensed, and those peeps just standing around may have been discussing the ride operation before taking the written test. Just a guess, as I was NOT there, but do work there.

As for the "typical Six Flags" comment, I can't totally defend SF, but at SFStL it is very rare that anything other than a major problem keeps a ride down for more than an hour. We have a very good maintainance staff at the park and I have nothing but good things to say about the response times and quality of repairs in my experience of 3 years at the park.

It was opening day, cut everyone some slack. Lets see you park your car outdoors in the elements for 5 months and expect to not have a low tire or dead battery! ;)

They could have just been standing there waiting for their lead to let them know what to do, as the lead also has many other crew members to manage as well as run a ride safely.

If i can chime in here, Im going to have to agree with Geewhzz here, because on several instances i saw employees just walking about doing nothing in particular.

Especially games employees near Screamin' Eagle. As for that ride, It appeared to me to have been evaced on the lift hill on Friday, and wasnt opperating until the next day, which i might add it ran flawlessly *** Edited 3/28/2005 10:50:08 PM UTC by Galvan316***