SFStL - August 16 - Packed House

Next weekend is my wife's birthday, so I wanted to take her for a little trip. But, we have unavoidable stuff going on next Saturday, making a trip then kind of pointless. So, we decided on going to St. Louis over the 16th and 17th of August. Plans were set. Reservations were made. Then, I checked the website and schedule, and saw that one of my favorite bands, Third Day, was going to be playing in the Ampitheater on the night of the 16th. So, we managed to secure tickets for reserved seating. All was good.

The Dish (My wife) and I set off at 7:30 on Saturday morning from cool-weathered Kenosha, WI and drove down through Rockford. It was a pretty uneventful drive. We had season passes, so we weren't too worried about only having 7 hours in the park. We decided to stay at the KOA across the interstate, so when we finally pulled in the driveway, and saw how busy the park was... well... There were A LOT of people there.

When we got to the park at 3, it was 95 degrees in the shade, so we decided to head to Hurricane Harbor to cool off a little before going into the coaster side of the park. We waited 15 minutes just to get in to HH, and then when we got to the wave pool, there were so many people in there, we walked in, got wet, and walked out. We thought... Hey, let's try the lazy river. 10 minute wait, then they were only letting the comp (blue) tubes have one lap. OK. Let's head to the main park, and ride a few coasters.

Ride #1. The Boss. Back Row. Wait time: 55 minutes. The airtime was fabulous... until you caught... Then, the bashing commenced. Great layout. Great drops. WAY TOO ROUGH. Couldn't enjoy it. My wife got off the ride pretty dizzy from all the bashing.

By this time, it's 5:15, so we decided to go get a little dinner. Food was reasonable, and we got a 10% discount because we had a season pass. Very cool!

We walked around and checked out some shops, but kind of relaxed. We went in for the concert at 6:15, and it started around 7. Packed ampitheater. Awesome concert. We sat in the silver section to the right of the sound booth. At the beginning of the concert, it was hard to hear Mac's voice, but they straightened out the mix about 10 minutes into it.

The concert ended around 8:45, and we decided to take a lap on the Screamin' Eagle. Back row. About a 15 minute wait. This one had airtime to rival Viper at SFGAm. Best ride of the day. (Of course, we only took 3 laps total).

After SE, The Dish said she wanted to ride the River King Mine Ride. This was a great little ride. Plenty of air time and awesome laterals! A great little Arrow!

9:15. Time to head to the KOA. It'd been a long day. We went to the Arch the next day, and headed back to WI.

Highlights: Third Day, River King Mine Ride

Lowlights: The Boss

-d8

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"Welcome to Wisconsin... Illinois' Largest State Park."

What a lame trip. You missed the big and good rides like Mr Freeze and the clone of Batman.

my wife and i were also at sf:stl on saturday. we arrived at around 11am. after seeing the parking lot we went straight to get fast passes. after that it was 1pm. all day the staff was rude. the park was filthy and almost everything lacked fresh paint. aesthetically the only coaster that looked nice and maintained was the boss....but it's only 3 years old.

these statements that i'm making don't come out of some prejudice antisix flags sentiment...heck, i love worlds of adventure, america, and great adventure. my opinions are based purely on my experience last saturday.

we managed to ride mr. freeze, the boss, river king mine train, the swings, screamin eagle, and the ninja before 5pm.

mr. freeze is my new favorite premier launch; just an incredible ride. plus, i loved the loading station, very cool.

the boss is the worst cci i have experienced to date. it was rough and not an ounce of grease on the rails. it made SOB look like a walk in the park. the roughness reminded me of the horribly rough summers-dinn collaborations like hercules and mean streak. i will stick with the southern indiana CCI's instead! :-) it was so rough that my wife (who rides coasters with me ALL the time) got off crying.

the screamin eagle was a pleasant surprise. quite a fun coaster with some good airtime.

river king mine train and the ninja were pretty cool too.

overall we had a very hot and crowded trip. but ya know what? we also had a hot and crowded trip to IOA three weeks ago and still managed to walk away with a new favorite theme park. august 16th provided the exact opposite.

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seek first to understand
then to be understood

Yah I totally agree with Jthan, I don't know if wooden coasters get rougher when it's hot out but, i thought SE was kinda bad but the Boss made me hurt for about a week. Batman is up there with the raptor and Mr. freeze is jus wicked. I didn't ride the new ride cuz it was closed all day

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jrhodes07 said:
What a lame trip. You missed the big and good rides like Mr Freeze and the clone of Batman.

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Wow. Lame trip? No. My home park is SFGAm, so I've ridden the ORIGINAL B:TR several times this year. Didn't miss it much. Mr. Freeze... Wanted to ride it with the lap bars (last time I rode was 2 years ago), but decided to pass 'cause we were worn out. 7 hours of driving does that to you. Besides, it gives me something to look forward to next year. We're going to start to make an annual pilgrimidge to SFStL. (Season Passes are MUCH cheaper there!)

D8- who never looks at a trip to the park as "Lame"

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"Welcome to Wisconsin... Illinois' Largest State Park."

Looks like you had a good time there. My experence on The Boss was horrible. My legs where brused up after that ride.

On a lighter note, im also from Kenosha