SFGAdv 7/17

I hate doing full blown play-by-play trip reports, so this will mostly be my observations and problems.

First, this is my FIRST trip to this park, as I move to the land of Philly last summer. Let me say that my expectations were low to begin with, as this is a Six Flags park, right?

The Golden Contenent and Spanish sections are AMAZING, while they don't hold a candle to BGW, Disney, or IoA, this is by far the best lands I've seen at local amusement parks (aka, Cedar Point, Paramount Parks, etc). While not well laid out (more about that latter) the lands look great, sound great, and fit well with the rides. The places are well decorated, but not well "themed", as a giant strata coaster in Asia seems to be bordering on insane.

Kingda Ka was on-and-off, and broke down on the third train of the day (which, just happened to be us.) Not a bad ride at all, just I wouldn't wait more than 30 minutes for it, just like TTD.

El Toro..... what else can be said? This is by far the best coaster I've been on, including best Woodie (so far, and I'm still not as well traveled as many people here). My friend and I agree it is better than The Beast. If you want a treat, ride on the last row, and ride with the hands up!

Nitro, air time heaven, I love this ride.

Batman & Robbin was down today.

Batman was a huge disappointment. It seems that a lack of good ride staff, letting FlashPass users get free reign of the ride, and bad customers made the dispatch times approach 5-7 minutes PER TRAIN. FlashPass is my new hatred, as older rides you just walk up the exit, making it a crap shoot to find out if you'll be able to ride next train or not. One group, in the back row, complained rightfully so that they waited 3 trains for a ride, and allways had the FlashPass people walk all over them. This is AFTER Six Flags closed down one full row for FlashPass people.

Superman. Wow.

Food was good, but very pricy, lots of entertainment, which was nice, and parking was crazy (the price that is). The park seems to be an ADD trip, as there is no rhyme or reason to it, and it's hard to find ANY ride there. While I love trees, it seems like some places had too many (and prevent us from finding things) yet other places had way to little and roasted us alive. The employees were great, many fun, and most of the ride dispatchers were having way too much fun.

Overall, a great day. Personally, if they can get dispatch working better, work on the kids rides (which many were closed), and fix the layout problems, Cedar Fair is going to be in trouble in my eyes. I like the coaster selection better at this park than Cedar Point, and allows for more expansion. But of course, we're talking about a distant point in the future.

Glad you liked El Toro.

The operators seemed much more animated this year for some reason. If they can improve their dispatch times then they're on their way. Soon I may be able to dust off my great adventure pom poms :) *** Edited 7/18/2006 2:44:00 AM UTC by Antuan***

If they used three train operation that would help as well.

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Antuan said:Soon I may be able to dust off my great adventure pom poms

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Take an antihistamine, those things are COVERED in dust... ;)

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The Mole said:

FlashPass is my new hatred, as older rides you just walk up the exit, making it a crap shoot to find out if you'll be able to ride next train or not. One group, in the back row, complained rightfully so that they waited 3 trains for a ride, and allways had the FlashPass people walk all over them.

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Oh, I'm on your side here. I definitely do not like Flash Pass. I remember when I was at the Mountain waiting for X. It was annoying enough that the dispatch cycles were taking around 8 minutes, but when they let the Flash Pass users get ahead, that just added insult to injury. I smeared Six Flags' and Mark Shapiro's names that day!

I wish, I wish, I wish Six Flags would do away with this crap. If not, then they should run it like Disney and also not charge others for it. It's just ridiculous and seemingly unfair to the average guest.

The only coasters at GAdv that can do 3 or more train ops are Medusa, Nitro, Great American Scream Machine, and Kingda Ka. Technically Rolling Thunder also. Medusa I haven't seen train 3 in years. Nitro's third train was AWOL early this season I don't know if it's back on track or not. Scream Machine was running three during my three visits this season. As for Ka, well we all know that story, I won't beat the dead horse.

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The Mole said:
dispatch times approach 5-7 minutes PER TRAIN.

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It's amazing how much extra workers will help. CP always has 6 people checking restraints on Raptor and the dispatch times are no more than 30 seconds, if not less. *** Edited 7/18/2006 2:32:53 PM UTC by Ride of Steel***

One thing to add, Kingda Ka is only running two trains and only one side of the train station, possibly due to problems with the other side, but not sure.