Six Flags Great Adventure and Knoebels 6-1-14

Six Flags Great Adventure has always been a park on my "to do" list since at least they put Kingda Ka in just to see how it compares to Dragster. So I broke down and bought tickets online, parking, and flashpass over a period of a few weeks and left on Saturday the 31st.

Pennsylvania has a lot of construction going on via the turnpike, which is also quite expensive. I see toll money hard at work, but also vastly higher than most states. We stayed in Cherry Hill which is basically crossing the Ben Franklin Bridge from outside Philly. Got a room at a DaysInn which was vastly better than I expected.

Anyhow onto Six Flags....or maybe not so fast. Our GPS unit wanted to take us to employee parking and the maintenance area. After turning around and getting in the real entrance we made it into the park.

After rope drop at 1030 we were directed to the Flashpass center, which they que you in. You watch a video which provides little info and then you wait again to process it.

Once I got the Q-bot, I toyed around with it for a bit and tried it for El Toro. Which told me it was riding time.

El-Toro-(Two rides) one in back and one towards the front. Its literally like riding two coasters in one. With an out an back type start with hills and twister ending. Very good with a few bumpy spots after the first turnaround. My mom in the second ride got her back hurt on the first drop as it vallied out. Sans that she kept going strong.

Runaway Mine Train- Ok the station house for this and the Skyway ride are awesome. The ride itself is ok nothing special, but the drop into the lake area was just brutal.

Bizarro- Ok many floorless coasters fall short on thrills. Namely knocking on Batman at SFNE and Hydra at Dorney come to mind as just being meh rides. Bizarro as being the first has seen many come after it. This ride was more in the Domintor level, which was awesome. The corkscrew over the added scenery was nice.

Venturing over to the other side of the park we hit Batman and Nitro which was testing after it broke down.

Batman- Q-bot took us up the bat cave entrance and we got a backseat ride. A great experience because the ride itself was disorienting. Really intense, which had my feet tingling like the back half of Banshee.

Nitro- The Q-bot said it hadn't opened up yet, even though the line had opened. So we waited in the line for about 20 minutes. I thought it was laughable that in the station they were playing a horrible version of the Mortal Kombat theme. The ride itself was actually very good as well. Closely following my favorite B&M mega which is Intimidator.

Skull Mountain- Ok we got on this in one train and glad we didn't have to wait. This ride was completely in the dark which didn't help because it tosses you all over. Completely just not fun in my book.

Batman the Dark Knight- I have ridden the one at Six Flags Great America, about the same. Its very bumpy and not good.

Lastly was Superman Ultimate Flight- I have ridden once again at Great America. I find this to be mind melting going through the pretzel loop other than that. The layout kills the ride. I much prefer the Vekoma fliers.

Kinda Ka was included on the Flashpass and did not run although it does look like Zumanjaro is getting closer to opening as they were testing it.

Onto Knoebels after a few hour drive and making it with an hour to spare.

Purchased tickets and headed to Phoenix.

Phoenix was still great. Loaded with airtime and a smooth ride. It keeps its reputation up even after I haven't rode it in 8 years.

The real reason for going was to hit the Flying Turns got in line just before they shut the line down and waited about 25 minutes. Its not going to blow most peoples socks off, but its a really unique ride and it does get some nice snaps up and out of the curves. Glad they finished the ride and made a modern version of a ride that had not been attempted since the 1920s.

Lastly, Knoebels takes the cake for awesome food. As a Czech and growing up near a very ethnic neighborhood in Cleveland I got pierogies. They were very good and didn't break the bank.

All in all a good time at both parks. The employees were friendly at both parks, even Six Flags with them being very helpful. Anyway thanks for reading.