Six Flags Great Adventure 5-21-11

I was only there once, but I also thought well of the staff, particularly that of El Toro. They were really pumping people through.

I remember the Rolling Thunder people being slow and bored, and most of the others being at least average. The food service people seemed really nice, too.

For what it's worth, I felt the ride ops were unnecessarily slow when I visited last October (same weekend as Raven-Phile actually, although on Friday night). On some rides, they "moseyed" from seat to seat checking restraints. I couldn't believe it took as long to check a train with 6 people on it as it would for a full train. Sometimes they'd stop and chat with each other. Then there was the silly "visual scan" before launching.

The only coaster that *wasn't* like that was Nitro, where the crew was in gear and made a point to move speedily from row to row. Which I thought was funny since Nitro is such a fast loader anyway.

I will say though that SF Great America was a much different picture when I went over Memorial Day weekend. The park wasn't particularly crowded, yet they moved at a good pace on pretty much every ride. The biggest difference I noticed between Greats America and Adventure was on Superman -- at GrAd, we waited an excruciating 2 minutes on the brake run in the flying position (privates firmly planted on the ballbuster), whereas at GrAm it was only a few seconds before the station train was out and we were moving in.