Six Flags Parks attendance this year?

Hey y'all

After travelling to a few SF's already this year (SFoG, SFA, SFGAd, SFNE, SFKK, SFWoA), I've noticed a really troubling trend...they're all DESERTED!

Each and every one of those parks has been very dead. Now I could chalk it up to early in the season, but that doesn't stand with me. I mean at SFA last Wed, they were running two trains on every coaster (minus Batwing) and there was literally no wait for anything. Hell, Keith and I stayed on the front row of SRoS three times!

At SFNE, while the weather was atrocious, all the rides were open and every ride thre was a walkon or a one cycle wait for the front row of a train (SRoS was walkon most of the day!).

Even on a Saturday, at SFKK, the Mouse had a line, and Chang and T2 had maybe 35min waits, but that is abnormal compared to years past in my experience.

Is the economy really this bad, the weather, or do people just not want to go to the local SF parks anymore? I mean all of them (SFNE, SFA, and SFWoA especially) have provided me with aweosme service and very good operations. Is it just too little too late?

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Top Thrill Dragster -- The most intense, unbelievable, and spectacular fifteen seconds on any coaster, anywhere, ever.

I noticed this too, My local park...SFGadv has been pretty empty this year too with the exception of a few days. I was there on thursday 2 weeks ago...I got to ride nitro 4 times (twice in the front) with walkons. They let us stay on one time because there was NOBODY in line. On medusa they basically let you stay on where as last year there was a considerable line. The line for superman was half empty which was really weird. Also, They offer $12 tickets to come back. Definalty trying to get more people to come.

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-Dennis
www.Drinkduff.com

The economy *is* really crap-tacular right now. It's not a myth.

I know several highly qualified people that can't find any work.
*** This post was edited by chris 6/19/2003 4:36:51 PM ***

CRAP=TACLAUR!!!!1 ur teh funnay!!!!!@1111

heh.

Maybe people are realizing that the little parks give you the best combo of thrills and fun. HW did have a record year last year.

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A day is a drop of water in the ocean of eternity. A week is seven drops.

SFDL too.... even weekends, and holidays... have yet to even see the first parking lot half-full....

It's probably weather related & the fact that despite being told it will improve it hardly ever does & I think the peeps are a bit tired of listening to local weather forecasts that promise the sun & only deliver rain.

It's probably gonna be a wet summer this year at this rate & it's really gonna have an impact on most,if not all of the parks on the eastern seaboard,I've pretty much lost all confidence in the local weather forecasters to ever get a nice weekend forecast right.

While I don't know about the other Six Flags parks outside Ohio. I do know that the local Cleveland papers have stated that this is Ohio's wetest spring/summer in decades. Along with the article it also mentioned Cedar Point's attendance being down because of it (not sure of the exact figure off hand, but I think it was around 30%...and that was before the Dragster problems). It didn't mention anything about SFWoA but did state that local waterparks are taking a beating also.

I can tell you there has been about 18 days so far that I have made plans to go to an amusement park and 8 times I have tried to hit Kennywood but haven't because of rain. :(

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"The Future of Roller Coasters"
-RollerCoasterGod
OhioThemeParks.com

From my experiences here @ SFGAm, it is almost the exact opposite. Granted, most of the times I have stopped to say hi to one of my steel or wooden amigos has been in the day durning school trips. However, when I was there last monday night, most of the rides were station waits, but the Bull & Superman were still running well after close. And the station looked PACKED when I passed by V2 about 30 minutes before the park closed.

I think it has a lot to do with the weather. I have been to SFGAm a few times this year w/ crappy weather and it has been dead (like normal). But the times I have been there in the evenings, it seemed there was more people than I remember there being last year.

Crap, we have been really busy this year compared to the past couple of seasons. Zonga, Roar, Medusa, Boomerang, and Kong have all had packed queues and there is no hope in sight. I waited 40 minutes for Medusa on a Tuesday. A TUESDAY! That really got to me, but I guess it just means the park isn't losing money anymore, and that's nice to know.

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www.CaliforniaCoasterNews.com
www.SFMWZone.com

Wow, really interesting that SFMW is doing well. Do they run all available trains when the lines are that long (or at least two)?

That's the thing that got me...SFA and SFWoA were basically running max trains and there was still no one in the park.

It's just such a huge change from previous years.

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Top Thrill Dragster -- The most intense, unbelievable, and spectacular fifteen seconds on any coaster, anywhere, ever.

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Legendary said:
Wow, really interesting that SFMW is doing well. Do they run all available trains when the lines are that long (or at least two)?

That's the thing that got me...SFA and SFWoA were basically running max trains and there was still no one in the park.

It's just such a huge change from previous years.

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Top Thrill Dragster -- The most intense, unbelievable, and spectacular fifteen seconds on any coaster, anywhere, ever.

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Schools in the Washington, D.C. area didn't let out until this week because of all the bad winter weather we had, even a lot of high school graduations seemed to be occuring later this year. Not to mention we have three -four days of really good weather, followed by maybe a half of day of sunshine, followed by another 3-4 days of bad weather. I suspect if you were to go to PKD and HP last week you would have found the same thing.

We are running at "full" capacity, I say that in a loose term. Medusa, Kong, and Roar all run 2 trains, Zonga has two trains but because of a design flaw can only run one. What close are the flats to compensate for capacity of the coasters. Weird concept, I know.
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www.CaliforniaCoasterNews.com
www.SFMWZone.com

Coasterguts...

Actually I went to PKD 1.5hrs before I went to SFA on that day (Last Wed) and while they were definitely not crowded, they already had more people in the park at 1030am than SFA had all day. I waited 10mins for Volcano, 15 for Drop Zone (full queue) and 40mins for Hypersonic. Granted the capacity on those coasters basically sucks (but Volcano was hitting interval every time!) it was still more crowded there. But I didn't realize the DC school hadn't gotten out yet.

GoliathKills,

I thought Medusa had three trains? They don't run three even with a 40min wait? And will Zonga's design flaw be remedied soon or this year? I thought that thing could run five trains lol.

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Top Thrill Dragster -- The most intense, unbelievable, and spectacular fifteen seconds on any coaster, anywhere, ever.

When I went to SFOG earlier this year nothing except S:UF was over a twenty minute wait.

SFGAm has had smaller than average crowds during the day, but after 7 the place is absolutely deserted. It used to stay busy until the final minutes before closing.

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Check out this awesome park!http://games.coasterbuzz.com/filedetail.aspx?GameFileID=3001

Bad economy is not really a good excuse for the SF chain. Their whole M.O. and target market is the local region for the induvidual park. I would chaulk it up to weather. And for some parks declining product in recent years. But like in the early 90's, you see strong numbers in most local/regional parks last year (even is they aren't record breaking). If the weather comes around attendance will rebound in the parks providing the goods.

I still think that some parks haven't proved anything until the big crowds come back. It's always easy to provide great service when there aren't too many people in the park.

They have run three trains, to my knowlage, Medusa has run three trains during Fright Fest (VERY rare) and on the 4th of July (didn't last year.) The third train isn't completely put back together and usually doesn't run until Fright Fest where they take off train #1 and bring out train #3. What happened with Zonga is they really messed it up. There are not only structal problems causing them to not want to have more than one train traveling the course, there are also reduced clearances between some of the blocks where the clearances are a tad *too* tight after the modifications. So they basically don't want two trains passing at those points... I'll get pictures soon so you can see what I mean.

Yay, I finally get to talk about my park a little. :)

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www.CaliforniaCoasterNews.com
www.SFMWZone.com

On the weekends it seems like SFA is doing very good business. Also, I was as SFMM on Monday and Tuesday and the place was packed, with many lines reaching near or out of the entrances.

It's times like this that people stop and think about their past experience and if it really justifies the $40 tickets.

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Please visit the small parks. We don't know what's happening behind the scenes
Woodencoaster.com

They truly can blame bad business on the weather this year, at least at SFA. It just keeps raining, and raining, and well you get the point. In fact, they've issued another flood warning tonight, and it's raining right now. It also hasn't been all that warm, meaning that people probably aren't thinking about Paradise Island waterpark yet, although I did see quite a line last weekend for the tall white slides. Please make it stop!
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If you have a problem with clones, the solution is real simple—Stop traveling.

I-fan were you there on the 14th? I was & actually it was quite packed until the rains came in the afternoon.

It also was rather hot all day & the water park along with PBR & Renegade rapids were doing quite a bit of business because they both had lines which were nearly outside the queues.

Out of the last 24 weekends the DC area has seen 18 of them as total washouts & this weekend looks to be more of the same I'm afraid.