SFGADV June 10th. Park 2

Well after flying in from Sydney and spending a few hours at the Mountain i jumped on a plane and headed to Phily overnight. I was a bit buggered when i reached SFDADV, but the thought of coasters got me going. It was an absolutely steaming day and the park was only moderately busy.

Got to the park at 1030 and with the q for superman being 2 hours i jumped onto:-

Chiller:- Robin ( i think, its the one with the cobra roll not the top hat) I love launched coasters but sometimes feel shortchanged when they are over so quickly like TOT, Superman the escape and Dragster. I have been on speed in Vegas before so i had high expectations. It did not dissapoint. A great launch, fun elements and smooth. I have to give great kudos to Premiere for getting rid of the over the should restraints, the inline twist with just a lap bar is totally awesome. 1 ride back row 8/10

Batman:- Only my second Batman, and i do really love these inverts. Great intensity, no let up, perfection- but could do with themeing- i grew up on Nemesis. I love the new paint job, much better than boring grey. Unlike SFMM they were running 2 trains, which made the q nice and short. 1 ride front row. 10 mins q 8/10

Nitro:- Now i have to say i did not know what to expect from this coaster. It seems to get forgotton about, what with everyone raving about Superman and Millenium, also after hearing about Silver star not being great, i was a little concerned. I should not have been. This is now my favourite hyper coaster out there. Better than Goliath, Millenium, Magnum. I loved it. Great speed and first drop, great changes of directions, and awesome airtime. Nice and long as well. 2 rides, front and back, 2 trains running, 10 mins q. 9/10

Medussa:- My second floorless, after Scream. Now i do like these coasters, but they do not really have rerideability (is that a word??). Yes they are fun, and definately a lot better in the front, but i think they could do with some more intensity and a different layout. 2 rides, front and back, 2 trains running, 7/10.

Runaway mine. Average family coaster, cant remember much about it to be honest. 1 ride 2 trains running, 5/10

Viper:- Now i love a good inline twist so this coaster did actually appeal to me. What a mistake. Oh my god it hurts. The ride op says that it is one of kind- no ****, it stinks. Get rid of it. The first inline tiwst hurts like hell, as do the turnarounds. Horrible. Nice idea, would work now with new technology but not then. YUCK. 1 ride, 1 train, no wait (i wonder why) 1/10

Rolling thunder:- Now is it me or do Six flags hate wood. They certainly dont keep the wooden coasters that they have well, and they dont seem to build any new ones???? This is an ok ride and i am growing to like wooden coasters. Nice to have a change from steel. 1 ride, no wait, 1 train. 6/10.

GASM:- Now is this coaster a clone of Viper at SFMM, it lookks like it. I like this ride, its like viper but less rough, yes the OTSR are still too bulky but its a fun coaster with some impressive inversions especially the 3 loops. 1 ride 2 trains, no wait 6/10.

Superman:- This had a big Q- over 2 hours, so i got a q bot just for this ride- extravagant yes, but i wont be back here in a while so why not. Having ridden AIR i sort of knew what to expect. I actually felt a bit let down. Yes its fun, and yes the Pretzel loop is great but the rest is not exciting. I think the rest of Air is better, you get a greater sense of flying. Thats not to say that B&M are not going in the right direction, add the best bits of these 2 coasters, and some new elements and a longer ride and i think we will be there. 1 ride, 2 trains, no wait (Q bot) 7/10

Now onto my thoughts. Its a nice park. Pretty surroundings, better, quicker, nicer staff than at MM. They ran the coaster efficiently. There were a couple of gripes that i had though. The big wheel, top spin and inverted ship were closed. Now if magic mountain can have its flats open then great adventure can as well.

Major grip here. It was a really hot day, 100 ish and yet they only had one water ride open. Just the rapids, the 2 flumes and the shoot the chutes were closed. This caused major 2hr plus q's for the rapids. Really very stupid. They eventually opened the shoot the chutes at 3.30 but it was too late.

Never mind, i had to leave early as i did not want to fall asleep at the wheel as i had to drive to Darien ct, before hitting SFNE for 2 hours the next day. I will write that trip report tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

James

Glad that you hit all the open coasters.

A few things though, Medusa was the first flooless, so Scream copied it's layout, and Scream Machine came before Viper at SFMM. (It was a series of 3 coasters, their's a shorter one at another park, can;t remember.)

Hope you have fun at SFNE, I'm headed there in a few weeks. :)

If you like launchers of a decent length then you should've headed south to largo Maryland & hit up SFA while you were in the general vicinity.

Unlike SFGRADV SFA does have a full circuit LIM coaster-Jokers jinx,which does provide a rather decent ride now that the lap bars have taken the place of the OTSR's,but I guess you can save that for another time.

Enjoy the rest of your trip in the northeast.

The wait for the rapids is always at least 2hrs on any moderately busy day. It probably didn't really matter that the flumes were down. You didn't miss anything. I love rapids rides but don't even bother with the one here anymore. They really need to reclaim the space and rebuild a better and twisted rapids layout with more excitement and newer smaller rafts. I think they may even be able to get better capacity with the smaller rafts.

Nice TR

Well Great American Scream Machine is a clone of Shockwave at SFGAm. Viper at SFMM is basically the same but it's configured a little bit differently.

It just seemed a bit silly that on such a hot day with everyone wanting to get wet, taht they only had 1 water ride open. Never mind.

SFA is definately a park i want to do sometime, next american trip maybe.

I totally agree with you that Nitro is a great coaster, but I like MF better.

Oh well, we all have different opinions.

I was incredibly dissapointed with the raft ride, the wait is insane, and you barely even get wet.

Thats the joy of coasters- people all have different favourites- I just really enjoyed trying some new coasters that i had not been on before like X, Nitro, Chiller, Medussa etc. They are all great.

You Americans are really lucky having so many nearby, They just closed the only Sydney theme park down, so i am coasterless. It sucks let me tell you.