I call Thursday night to make sure X is running. Rep assures me it will be going. I call again Friday morning at 9:00 am to confirm X is running. Rep assures me it is. I get to the park to see a list of 6-10 rides that will NOT be running on this mid-season Friday! X, Scream, and Collosus are not on the list. Gate opens at 10:00 and I make my way to X! X is not even testing. One teenager is by the bridge with a rope! He can't provide any information. Wait 30 minutes with no action. Call guest services with the cell phone and she puts me on hold. She assures me it is a minor sensor problem and that X will start in 2 minutes. Ten minutes later a crew of happy teenagers come out to tell us that X is down. They have no other information to report.
We go to Goliath and get on after 20 minutes without too much difficulty. We head to Collosus to catch a ride and are told it is broken down. They have no clue when it will open. We walk to scream and wait 20 minutes until it too breaks down. Once again, they have no clue when it will open.
At this point, my frustrated companions and I leave the park and vow never to return! I, as an enthusisast, will of course return IF there is something BIG and NEW! But I will not be back to any SF's unless new attractions are added. Even then, it will only be for a particular ride. I pray this terrible chain of parks is forced into bancrupcy and other bidders can take over. It cannot get any worse than now!
Recap: 6-10 rides listed as down for the day (mid-season Friday)! In addition to the listed rides---X, Scream, and Collosus were also down! I never made it to the back of the park! My experience leads me to believe that other unlisted rides were probably down too!
Result: One PO'd customer that had finally felt the straw that broke the camel's back after years of pathetic SF's treatment. They have taken all the joy out of a trip to the amusement park. What good is it when you leave the park mad? I wonder why their stock keeps slipping?
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Give me wood! :-)
328 and counting!
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www.CaliforniaCoasterNews.com
www.SFMWZone.com
This happened to be once last year at SFEG. I showed up at ten to find not one single coaster running, and many flats down. It stayed this way till 12 o'clock and I gave up and left.
This type of management isn't going to help SF get out of the slump its in. Something needs to change.
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"Here's my ten cence, my two cence is free"-Eminem
I can see it right now..."The ride operator told me it would be up by 11:00am!!!!"
Also, you need to realize that rides are closed for a reason. Now if this particular park has alot of down rides, thats unfortunate. They are not however, doing it to tick people off. I guarantee that if the park had it their way, all rides would be up and running. The last thing they want is to hear about it from people like you. Have a little understanding next time, and enjoy the rides that were operational that day.
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Why is is not called terrorism when carried out by the United States?
Patrick K-Rides are closed for good reason sometimes, but not always. Believe it or not a lot of the time when you go to your local park, the reason a ride is closed is simply because the teenagers hired to run all those rides simply didn't show up.
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"Here's my ten cence, my two cence is free"-Eminem
If you can keep it in perspective, it's cheap fun.
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Without the chaindog, you'd never get up the lifthill...
I've been to SFWoA, SFKK, SFEg and yeah they're not great parks.
The closest park to me is SFKK, armpit of the SF chain. Yet somehow, I manage to have fun every single time I go. I must be mental.
--Ryan "Enjoy what you've got."
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"We went to a PARK in BOTSWANA." - Dubya
*** This post was edited by Legend_n_Raven 7/27/2003 11:45:29 PM ***
Jeffrey R Smith said:
At this point, my frustrated companions and I leave the park and vow never to return! I, as an enthusisast, will of course return IF there is something BIG and NEW! But I will not be back to any SF's unless new attractions are added. Even then, it will only be for a particular ride. I pray this terrible chain of parks is forced into bancrupcy and other bidders can take over. It cannot get any worse than now!
Well with that attitude, I don't think you need to be at any of the parks. Seriously though, I can understand your frustrations but don't rule out the whole chain. I know some of the SF parks run all of their rides if possible. In fact at SFOT, they even had a ride on the down list (the only one, mind you) that was actually running. ;)
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It IS as bad as you think, and they ARE out to get you.
RubberDucky said:
Patrick K-Rides are closed for good reason sometimes, but not always. Believe it or not a lot of the time when you go to your local park, the reason a ride is closed is simply because the teenagers hired to run all those rides simply didn't show up.------------------
Okay, so if you are running the park, and the teenagers you hired and trained all of a sudden don't show up. Well now you have no one qualified to run the ride. Train some people on the spot, get it running? Doubtfull. Lack of employee's is a unfortunate reason not to run a ride, but its still a reason. Thats my point, they are not doing it to make the guests mad. They do everything they can to get the rides running.
I think having the lack of staff is a reason not to open a ride, its just not a fair one. People pay their money to ride certain rides. Now we will never know the true reason why X was not open that day when he was there, but if it was a short staff problem you would think they would be smart enough to send the staff they do have to the most popular ride...
He called when he was at the entrance to the ride and was told it would be opening momentarily....it didn't. Maybe there was something wrong with it, but he was told it was going to open.
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"Here's my ten cence, my two cence is free"-Eminem
*** This post was edited by RubberDucky 7/28/2003 12:15:16 AM ***
My WHOLE point is this. They were trying to get the ride up, they want the ride up. They cross their fingers just as much as we do. Its unfortunate they didnt get it up by the time he left the park that day, but as it is said..."%*#@ Happens". Honestly, if he never goes to another six flags park again, thats great with me. One less person I have to wait behind.
I'm not dissing the park I'm just saying it's not that great. It's alright, I still had fun.
Rubber Ducky- let me correct myself. Let me just refer to SFWoA. They had pretty poor managemnet, but forget it. I understand why he's upset and I really didn't care if he said, "I hate SFMM and blah blah," but it irks me when he says he'll never visit another Six Flags. If you got my main point it wasn't to compare how good each park is, but my point is just plain and simple, don't put down the whole chain just cause you had one bad experience.
And Patrick K I agree with u on what u said.
If I called the park and was told that the rides would be open, especially *from* the park, and then found that I was lied to, I'd be upset -- no matter what I paid to be there. It's not about the money, or the minimum wage kids who don't know any better, or being "used to it." It's about how I am treated as a guest. Businesses that lie to me, no matter the circumstances, do not get my business again.
If he doesn't want to visit another Six Flags again, that's his prerogative. Six Flags, Inc. may operate many, many parks, and each park may have management with differing philosophies and varying levels of good people skills, but none of that, where I'm concerned, excuses the corporate entity from enforcing some consistency between its parks. If they are enforcing such consistency and lying is the order of the day, they don't deserve the business they receive.
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--Maddie--
What do I Listen-To?
May the Schwarz be with you.
crazy kal-I did get the main point, I was just pointing out that the parks management is what made this person mad.
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"Here's my ten cence, my two cence is free"-Eminem
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Formerly PittDesigner (graduating soon!)
Lifelong fan of all Impulses!
--Brett
I no longer have the threshhold tolerance with Six Flags to wait around for their rides to open. I can hardly tolerate another manufactured line with rides running at less than optimal capacity. I can't stomach another untrained and lazy employee walking at the pace of a snail to check retraints. I'm sick and tired of maintenance breakdowns and late openings. It is more than frustrating to get to a park at opening and then find that certain sections will not open until later in the day. I could rant for hours.
Somehow, Six Flags has taken the fun out of it for me! It has been a long and gradual process as I do enjoy almost all rollercoasters I ride. However, the poor management and seemingly overall indifference to guest treatment that I have experienced time and time again at the behalf of Six Flags has worned me down. I have had certain good days and good experiences at parks at different times. I wrote a message about SFFT a couple weeks ago. In general, most days at a Six Flags park are a crap shoot. You never know what you are going to get. The thought of another visit to any Six Flags park at this time gives me an angry feeling in the gut. They have replaced any good feelings I could get from their thrill rides with a burning anger.
We should pray that this chain goes belly-up! Other operators would surly come into most markets and take over. The current status of this chain overall.......is pathetic. There is nothing a new operator could do for most of the parks in this chain that would not improve the overall guest experience. How can it get any worse in terms of reliability and guest treatment?
P.S. For the responder who said 3 of 16 coasters were down. The truth is that at least 6 of 16 were down last Friday am! They may have run at some time, but 6 were down at or around about 11:00 am! That is 37% of their coasters during a mid-season visit. I don't recall them offering guests a 37% discount at the door due to an incomplete product.? I can only confirm that Goliath, Revolution and Superman were running! The others may or may not have run. I didn't go to the back of the park. Given the fact that 3 rides that were advertised as running when patrons paid their admission ended up not running! I think it is safe to assume that some of the rides at the back of the park were probably having unknown mechanical problems also! I'll never know or care! They do not deserve my money or patronage when they treat the paying customer with such disdain and disrespect!
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Give me wood! :-)
328 and counting!
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