SFGam website isn't updated nor are Season Pass $$

OK my turn now. My home park is SFGAm and I love the park. The only reason I am going to SFStl to get my pass is to save some bucks and see a new park in the process. All of you jumped all over me like I am some evil person just because I want to get my pass elsewhere. If I want to drive 5 1/2 hours and see a new park to get my pass that is my business and if supermandl doesnt like it he can take a flying you know what.

Now in response to Coaster Art Guy. I go to SFGAm quite a bit albeit not 50 times a year. Compared to SFWOA, SFGAm is wonderland. There is still some smoking in lines going on, but I guarantee you that I saw at least 20 odd people getting kicked out of the park this year for violating that rule. I also saw them cracking down on line jumpers as well. By Raging Bull, on busy days, they are issuing those numbered tickets which helps.

I will be the first to agree that capacity is a problem at that park, but it isnt the park's fault. Look at how many major theme parks there are in the greater Chicago area. One. A metro area of around 4 or 5 million people with another metro area of around a million all call that park their home. Look at other major metro areas. DC, tons of parks in VA and MD. New York - Jersey and surrounding areas. LA - parks galore.

The area is ripe for competition. These guys are dispatching coasters as bloody well fast as they can. They are always operating two or three trains on all of their multiple train coasters which is more than I can say for WOA where almost every coaster was running one train. They are very efficient at dispatching rides as well, so capacity there is not an issue. They have three B&M coasters which are notorious line eaters to help capacity as well.

As far as collection of flats, if my wife the non coaster rider can entertain herself that means that the park has a good collection of flats IMHO. There are only two parks that she says this for. SFGAm and CP. They have a good mix of flats that are more family oriented.

Lets face it. SFGAm raised it's season pass prices because A. They are the best park overall in the chain(or they think they are and I would agree myself) B. They have absolutely NO competition to price war against C. Because people will pay that price.

Bottom line is that the park is out to get as many people in to the park as they can and give them a good experience so they come again and bring their friends. They arent out to screw anyone.

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Bob Hansen

"Excuse me while I kick the sky!"
kickthesky@hotmail.com

Grow up bob no one was putting you down for doing it. I just pointed out how its not cheaper as you say, I have nothing personal against you but I guess you do against me for stating my opinion.
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Army Rangers lead the way

Maybe I'll make intelligent posts if you get your facts straight!  V2 usually with a 2 hour wait?!  Are you nuts?  5-7 minutes load times?  I highly doubt you sat there and watched them.  I'm sure I've been there a lot more than you this summer and can guarantee that you are flat out wrong.
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Ride the New England Bush!

Well CAG, my profile says DC because that's where I am. But that says nothing as to where I've been. Had you been playing along at home for more than just the last 3 months you'd know that I was born and raised in Chi and only moved out here shortly after Bull opened. And in 2000 ALONE I went to the parks 3 times. Not shabby for someone who lives 600 miles away. By the by, I've been to the park quite a few times over my life, but that make my opinion neither more nor less valid.

I have seen on NUMEROUS occasions a staffer up on the platform of Iron Wolf shout down to jumpers/smokers in the queue to cease and desist.

And on the flat rides, I know Richoct was merely moved, but River Rocker, Chubasco, and Conestoga were all new AFAIK. And as for removed rides, what did they take out? Haybaler, okay. Sky Whril (which i dont consider a flat ride) and Cajun Cliffhanger (only because of the incident). At the very least, they are par for the course.

Yes, the two coasters could be considered low capacity, but there are two good things about them:
A) There are two of them. Once everyone is up to snuff on the loading (especially on Delay Ja Vu) their combined PPH would be comparable to other coasters
B) And I got this from Guide To The Point, you are missing the fact that ANY addition adds to the park's TOTAL capacity! Therefore it's reasonable to assume that lines at other attractions would decrease.

Why do you say that they are lacking in flat rides? How many other parks can boast: scrambler, troika, enterprise, swinging ship, tea cups, rainbow, swing-around (a rare find, ask ProgRay), calypso, flying swings, polyp, looping starship, and condor. That does not include car rides, water rides, kiddie rides, tower rides or motion sims. Only Cedar Point and Great Adventure have more (and when you go to GAdv, see how many are closed...you wanna talk staffing issues!).

Again, unless something was really off about 2001 I just have had the mirror opposite experience you had. After going to Cedar Point in 1989, I HATED Great America. I thought it was garbage, then 1992 came along and I thought Batman was tight, but still didnt like the park. It wasnt until 1995 when I went and saw Viper that I started liking the park. IMO, it's gotten better ever since (starting with B:TR).

Bottom line, I just dont see the staffing issues you have. They weren't there on my last four visits (1 thursday july 1999, 1 monday july 2000, 2 saturday and sunday august 2000) nor any of my previous visits.

To me, it seems like you are complaining about no ERT well let me be the first to say so what! Perhaps they *could* go an extra step there, but who knows if any of the other SF parks are going to have any type of 'preview' time again this season. Like FASTLANE, I think the mornings was an experiment. I dont know if it will be continued.

By the way, let me add here that up until right when I moved, I almost exclusively went to the park on Saturdays and Sundays in July/August when crowds were @ full blast. You know then that EVERYTHING was going to be at least an hour. I *still* didnt see the park having difficulties. It was just a lot of folks. Cedar Point's the same way.
lata,
jeremy (mad as hell at himself for bringing Cedar Point into a Six Flags thread *kick*)
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Besides, if we were really shutting down people we disagreed with, would Jeremy (2Hostyl) still be around? :) I think not. - Jeff 1/24/02

On a quick side note, you gotta love these people that think they know EXACTLY how a park should be run.  Like it's just so easy.  Very quick to criticize things and blow things out of proportion out of a few visits, but in reality they have no idea how to run a park.
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Ride the New England Bush!

Sorry, I didn’t mean not load times Dispatch Times is what I meant. Lets say they average a 5 Minute Dispatch time (being generous) that’s 336pph. Now this coaster is rated for approximately 900pph. Lets give them the benefit of the doubt and get 600pph threw the coaster. That’s one dispatch every three minutes( 28 people * 21 dispatches=588) here is NO WAY that they came even close to dispatching trains every three minutes. And yes I did watch load and unload times, while waiting hours for the log flume with my kids.

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Coaster Art of your Favorite Coasters
Coming Soon.....

Well...sorry, you are wrong once again. Oh and HOURS for Logger's Run?  As in, 2, 3, 4 hours?  This is just starting to get ridiculous.  You just seem to have some bias against the park because everything you're saying is nonsense.
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Ride the New England Bush!

*** This post was edited by Spacecase8310 on 1/24/2002. ***

 
Spacecase, if you really did read my previous posts you would have seen this…

 

…however Great America has always been a wonderful park from day one (Back in Marriott time). I have seen the good and the bad happen at the park for the last fifteen years. There have been a lot of good things go into this park don’t get me wrong. We have a world class park here, and the Management doesn’t treat there season pass holders with any additional respect due, plus all of the other issues that have been mentioned.

 

I don’t have a personal vendetta against Great America. I see problem that need to be addressed. Yes I did forget about the numbers that were being given out. But the only time I have seen them was on a Saturday afternoon, and only on Bull. I have never received these on any other coaster at the park.

 

Opinions are like A**holes, everyone has one. Maybe mines right, maybe mines wrong, but that’s what I think. I have become more and more disappointed with the park over the last 5 years, and I don’t see things getting better, just worse. Maybe I’ve set my standards to high, maybe we all should expect a little more. But Kick in the Sky got it right when he said that Great America has no competition. Because of this, the can do pretty much anything they want, and most of the general public will be back. There’s over 7 million people just in metro Chicago, not to mention Milwaukee. There’s really nothing else (please don’t start about Santa’s Village or Kiddyland) within a 5 hour drive.

 

I will not start a comparison to Cedar Point and Great America, there in different leagues.

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Coaster Art of your Favorite Coasters
Coming Soon.....

actually Logger's run has had a several hour wait in the heat of the summer. Often when Ice Mountain Splash or Yankee Clipper (or whatever they are going to call it this year) is closed, logger's run gets all the people.  So yes, it can be several hours, I think the longest I waited was about 2 hours.
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Rob

"The doctor said I wouldn't have as many nose bleeds if I could just keep my finger out of there!" -Ralph

I rode V2 six times, all on busy days, and the longest I waited was an hour and a half.  Loading time on Deja Vu was longer than V2 -- about 5-6 minutes.  Also, I can't complain about the staff.  The only thing I was upset about was V2 breaking down constantly-- but that's not the park's fault.  Actually, I thought they did a commendable job keeping the people moving through V2 when it was actually working.

V2 has one of, if not the best OP Crews in the park. Loading and dispatch times all summer were on par with Raging Bull. The line is long for 2 reasons - It's a new ride, and it is low capacity by nature. But it is run well, and load/dispatch times are about as good as they can get. If you think the line is too slow, you have several choices...wait until next year, or the year after that, when it is not as popular, buy a Fastlane pass, or go ride Shockwave instead. But you can't say that the Ride Ops for V2 are slow, because that is just flat out incorrect.

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Current favorite coasters:
Wooden: 1) Beast 2) Raven 3) Son of Beast 4) The Boss 5) Timber Wolf
Steel: 1) Raging Bull 2) Millennium Force 3) V2 4) Wild Thing 5) Mr. Freeze
Visit: http://www.dynamicgroove.com

*** This post was edited by Joe Carroll on 1/25/2002. ***

Yeah, tell em Joe ., V2 ops rock the world.  Demon crew though, my goodness, I've never seen a crew push through so many people so fast!  I mean, they were so fast, there was never a line! (take that Nick, you East sider!  :-p)

Anyhoot, when I op'd V2, interval was between 1min (absolute minimum -- controlled by computer) and like 1:30.  Most times, however, we'd have to wait until the computer clock reached 60 seconds between trains...

7min intervals, ha. I laugh at you.  See?  Ha!

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"That's BS you MF! They're WT!" -- CP's R&D team

The key thing is that other SF parks nearby offer extras like bonus admissions for friends when buying a pass early, admission to special events and concerts and areas and even ERT to their season pass holders. Plus they are one of the few SF parks that don't do anything for ACE members, such as ERT like other SF parks offer. The most i have gotten from SFGam is a coupon book that forces you to loose your money there and barely save any money. There are barely any good deals in the coupon book, it only has savings for things that are allready overpriced. Plus i never even got one last year and couldn't find out why. When i try to call SFGam's season passholders hotline i have to go through hundreds of prompts and then be transfered many times to get 1 question answered. I wanted to see if pass holders could get into media days last summer and that took over an hour just to be told no.

I like SFGam as a park but their treatment to pass holders and patrons has fallen apart these past few years. I remeber when security would be all over the line jumpers and smokers and lately i have seen nothing done. it use to be no questions you are kicked out to the rule breakers and now the most i saw was operators telling them to put out their ciggerette but people just ignore them and continue on. I like SFGam as a park but it does need to have a management overhull to corect many problems.

And please don't get me started on parking too. That is a nightmare on busy days. Plus when was the last time they expanded parking and added more security to watch the lots? Answer is back during the Time Warner and Marriot years. They own the vacant land that is across the tollway and that would be perfet to put in a parking garage an alsoi would leave plenty of room to expand the park even more or add on the water park that has been talked about for years.

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I may be from IL, but i sure can't get enough of the FORCE. MF!!!

80$! Why are the big parks so expensive. When they dont get a big additon in a year they should have 80$ prices.
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Actually i have seen line jumpers ousted with their whole families in 2001 on numerous occasions.

5 min load times for v 2. i once went on it 10 times in one day. i know how lucky i am. and every time it was launched right after i crossed under where you go under the station and it doesnt take me 5 min to walk there.

i have also had the boarding pass for v2.

about the flat rides if we get a new huss or a bigger drop ride we will have the best in the country.

also for customer service, every time i called about deja vu opening the people were very poilte even though they had gotten 10000 calls about it that day, and i once was there this sumer and it had rained and i couldn't use my fastlane up b/c of it and they gave me a full refund for the unpunched holes. i call that customer service

*** This post was edited by Drop208 on 1/26/2002. ***

*** This post was edited by Drop208 on 1/26/2002. ***

Drop208 do you work for SixFlags or something? Plus how many times did u go to SFGam this past year and for 2000? because i don't believe one word you are saying. I go to SFGam ALOT and have yet once to see any smokers and/or line jumpers get kicked out since 1999. And they don't give out refunds for Fastlane, i have had friends and people i know that have tried over and over again to get a refund. i have also ran into alot of people that have also tried to get Fast lane passes refunded. i ran into 7 people or families the last day of Fright Fest that were desperatly trying to use up the passes for fastlane because they were told no refunds by customer service.
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Eveything i said was true i got a refund and linejumpers were kicked out, all this year.

i went 12 times in 2001 and 5 in 2000

Sounds to me like you damn ACErs are just upset because SFGAm doesn't treat you like royalty by offering your precious ERT.  Surprise!  they treat you just like a normal guest! (which is pretty damn good!)
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Ride the New England Bush!

SFGAm owns damn ACErs ERT!! THEY OWE IT TO US!

I am never going to the park again until I get ERT.  That is settled.

BTW, IL MforceJunkie whatever -- you are hilarious.  :)

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"That's BS you MF! They're WT!" -- CP's R&D team

I'm not trying to knock ACE itself, it just blows my mind that somebody can pay 90 bucks to get in a park as much as they want that normally costs 40 bucks or so (after tax and all) to get in for ONE DAY and STILL think they deserve more.  Oy, people these days, I tell ya...
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Ride the New England Bush!