Six Flags Great Adventure 7-10-04 everything that can go wrong will other than the rides... very long

Well this day will definitely go down as one crazy day... day starts with the planned meeting time at a friend's house and one of the four is running late... woke up when we were gonna meet. so he says let me meet you all at the diner we planned on having breakfast at. breakfast was typical jersey diner breakfast meaning 1 hour to 1.5 hours to order eat and get your check. then the late individual had to take his gf breakfast since she wasn't gonna go with us but she didn't want diner food so he ran to burger king to get the food and was supposed to meet us at her house. we get to her house and surprise he locked his keys in the car with the motor running at burger king. take him to get second set of keys and deliver the food and we are finally on our way for the 1 hour drive to GAdv. get to GAdv and 1 of our four people didn't have a season pass. No prob we had a half price coupon from the season pass package. Well the lady at the ticket booth trys to tell me it not valid at any park only SFA where i got my season pass. I tell her to please read it again and she says nah i'll just put the code in and have it reject well as she says that she says oh it was the right coupon...go through the gate and get our qbot start walking for S:UF and it has a low battery,

the person who got the qbot went back to the qbot stand get another as the other three of us asked if he'd mind if we went to on the skycoaster. he said no and that he would even scan us in for S:UF while he waited for us. And we get all ready for skycoaster and we go up the 150 foot tower. the person says 3,2,1 fly and i pull the cord not too hard and it doesn't release us. so i pull a little harder still no release. ok now i know they didn't mean pull they mean yank so i yank it and down we go. OMG what a rush. well worth the money and if i go with people who never have done it I will pay and go so they can go cheaper. With a thought of what else could happen to us today(thinking of the stuck on lift hill thread) we move to S:UF but things actually went smooth for most of the day.

after 1/2 hour we get on superman front row and it was great for those of our groups who never rode it before, nice g's on the exit of the pretzel loop. quick stop at spongebob 3d since none of our group had done it yet(4 over 30 people walking in to see it).

next stop was medusa since we thought we'd run over do it then head to movietown for the bulk of the coaster riding except occasional trips back for superman and medusa, this being since rolling thunder and viper were closed for the day. we get over to medusa and it was a short 2 train wait with qbot gold. nice ride but is getting old with the many rides i have had on it now we always clown around on the lift and parts of the ride. nice cross park walk enjoying the sights.

get over to movie town and chow down on some good pizza from mamma something or another's cucina and then hit batman the ride for our one ride on it for the day. this is a surprise since 3 of our groups still rate this as one of the top 4 coasters in the park. but we kinda got sidetracked later... as you will see. Second to last row ride and it was a smooth nice ride with normal batman feel.

next up robin the chiller since batman the chiller was closed we could only ride the one side. glad on one side op it was robin since i like robin better than batman. my friends hadn't rode it since the OTSR's had been remove man were they shocked at the ride it gives now in the second to last car. notice to those who rode it before and said never again cause of the headbang on OTSR's get on it now you may love it.

then it was time to indoctrinate a friend on the meaning of airtime. we went over to nitro and it did not disappoint us. he got off saying that on 2 hills he felt as though he was coming out of the train. we make sure to get as far back as we can so this ride was second to last row. yes nitro has taken the number 1 ranking on all of our lists as best coaster in SFGAdv.

Congo rapids was next since it was hot and we all got wet since the boat happened to slide over towards the water hose cannons after the launch(will explain the workings of these later) and some nice big rapids that washed over about 4 people at two different parts.

On the way back to S:UF we walked past Chaos hoping that they would open it but to my dismay no the chaos would be closed all day. I had a bet i could have made one of two of my friends puke from chaos. with a stipulation on if we rode it was the bet valid.

second ride on S:UF. back seat this time and my friends who were now only on their second lap said they never felt g forces like the bottom of the pretzel loop on that ride. boy were we in for a surprise later.

Next up I made my big faux pas of the day and begged to try Great American Scream Machine again since I had refused to ride until this day due to the severe roughness and headbanging it used to do to me. New to me was the brake run at the bottom of loop one (BAD IDEA GAdv) you killed the best loop of the ride no force at all on exit now. When will they fix the roughness and headbanging? get off the ride and reach into the thigh pocket of my shorts where i have been storing my glasses and find that they have a lens popped out. go to first aid near there and ask about an eyeglass repair kit, they cheerfully got me one and the glasses were fixed and perfect for the rest of the day. ask yourself this how can i ride other rides and now have anything happen to my glasses in this pocket but they break on GASM? well needless to say GASM has now hit my never ever and I mean ever again list until they fix it somehow.

Game time so we go win some games, total take (a stuffed shark, three stuffed dragons, a stuffed bulldog). Time for a trip to the car and drop stuff off and get some meds for the soreness from the abuse of GASM. come back in and it's almost dinner so we hit Best of the West. good food, too much cost. fun moment when the man infront of us got a chili dog and we were shocked when the lady got a torpedo roll to put it on. we then knew it was a foot long hot dog. friend had to ask if that's the normal dog how big was the childrens dog? (insert all the male jokes about size) But like the lady working there said the chili dog there has to be one of the best food buys in the park.

Leave the restaurant and I suggest a final medusa lap since we are there. All my buddys say you ate that chocolate pudding pretty fast do you expect to keep it in? (Should have bet them, DOH!) Nice lap on medusa in the front row with a few joking moments about getting sick by me even though i knew there was no chance of it happening as the ride went on.

Walking out of medusa one of our gang made a comment about not wanting to do the runaway train which met with 3 more no votes. (one from our 6' 5" friend saying you'd need a shoehorn to get him in and out of that ride. one from me since i knew he'd be beside me and i'd feel like i was gonna fly out. he's 6'5" 270+ lbs, me 5'8" 160. single lap bar across us?)

so we all agree time to rock and roll a mini marathon (gold qbot is wonderful) on nitro so we walk across the park (sky ride looked like a long wait now that it was open) I make a joke about credit whoring and riding the junior coaster in the back of the park. they all laugh and our tall friend says I would never fit in it. so we continue to nitro and set our qbot up (10 minutes) so we are wondering what to do. well we thought back and remembered the water cannons we were sprayed with on congo rapids and there were people standing near the fence behind them. Guess what, you can pay a quarter and shoot the cannon at one raft. We all grin evilly and decided that every time we get our reservation for nitro here is what we're gonna do come here and shoot the people on congo rapids with a fire hose type setup.

well the first raft comes to us and two people of our group wave to the people on the ride as 2 others spray the boat with the hoses. people get shocked looks when you act all friendly and have others squirt them with water. Another fun point is that there are 4 hoses three are right in plain sight (numbers 2-4) while number 1 is hidden behind the shack that the ride op sits in. when ever a boat was almost at the far side the people at guns 2-4 could maybe hit the raft and the people on the raft would get a safe feeling . too bad the hidden gun can hit any boat since it is right where the boat will bounce back down the channel but you normally don't see it til you pass the shack for the ride op. so if we were at 2-4 and missed the raft of didn't shoot since we knew we'd miss we'd act like they were safe. then Whamo! gun 1 soaks them :-).

then go ride nitro having it get faster and faster with each lap of our marathon, go reserve another lap and go back to squirting people.

after about lap 6 of our marathon our qbot battery died again. a short walk back to the qbot office got us not only a new qbot but a free pass to ride any ride without waiting after a quick mention of this being the second time it happened this day that the battery in our qbot went low. pass goes in pocket with a plan already in place to use it at about 9:30 for superman since none of our group ever did a night ride on it. back to nitro for two more laps and squirt congo rapids session also making sure to do a rediculous pose at the cameras on nitro on the first lap for a purchase by our group to show those who didn't go that we had a blast. The final lap we three of us do a see no evil speak no evil hear no evil pose. since the third person in the row has a slight hearing problem, we did it in the we did.

9:30 hits and we go return the qbot and head over to S:UF go up the exit and use our pass we got for the faulty qbot. we board the back row and away we go. we get to the pretzel loop and bam three of us get hit so hard we gray out. wow night rides on that sucker move and give awesome g's on the pretzel.

all in all a good day at GAdv and a fun day too.

Sounds like a good trip!

Those trims on the first loop of GASM have been there for years (although sometimes they are deactivated). They are VERY necessary to keep the ride from further ripping itself apart.

No offense or anything, but I honestly have no idea what your talking about. I can barely understand the TR.

Maybe if Kyle could read he would have some idea of what dragonoffrost was talking about, lol- the tr wasn't that bad.

One question- what the hell is a qbot? what does it do? thanks.

Qbot is a pager system where lines can be avoided. There are 2 varieties, standard and gold. With the standard qbot you scan it at the enterance of a ride queue and it gives you a time(equal wait to the normal queue at that moment) to go to the fast lane to walk up for your ride. with the gold variety it's the same principle but the wait is 1/4 the current wait time.

The cost at GAdv for standard is $20 for one person and $10 each additional person. The gold version is double the cost. The system at GAdv works for most if not all the coasters and some of the water rides.