The Day the Lights Went Out In Eureka -SFStl 5/18
Associated parks:
None
My wife and I went to Six Flags St Louis to process our season passes this weekend. We made the seven hour drive from Milwaukee, got lost finding our hotel and then settled in the evening waiting for Saturday to arrive and hit a new park. We stayed at the Days Inn Six Flags. Very moderately priced, great service, good room, bad housekeeping. Stay away from their breakfast buffet too.
Anyways Saturday morning we got to the park in time for them to open the gates. We made the mistake of processing our passes first as we would later find out. The pass processing itself took 5 minutes in and out and we were off the the park.
First attempted ride was Mr Freeze. I waited 30 minutes and when I got to the front it broke.
Next ride, the Boss. Great ride. Cant recomeend it more. More on it later.
Next ride was Screaming Eagle which shut down after me waiting 30 minutes. Why you ask? The ENTIRE PARK LOST POWER!!!!
That is right, the entire park lost power for about 4 hours. Couple that with the fact that this was the first sunny day since the park opening, the fact that there was a gospel concert that day, and the fact that it was Saturday and you get one hour lines minimum the rest of the day. I ended up only riding three coasters on Saturday and missing another ride on Freeze after waiting for two hours only to get up to getting on and the ride breaking down again.
So, I decided to get home late today(Sunday) and hit as much as I could before 2pm. THe difference between yesterday and today was huge. No lines for ANYTHING today. Walk on Boss, walk on Batman, walk on Freeze. So here follows my Sunday trip report...
Boss: +4.3 This is a wonderful CCI wooden coaster that rocketed its way up to the number one woodie slot for me. Lots of awesome floater air. I got four laps on this including the one from the day before. The money seat is 1.2 right seat. The left seat actually gets less air than the right. Dont ask me why, it just does. Not alot of ejector unless you sit in the back but then you sacrifice the tons of floater.
Screaming Eagle + 2.9 A lot of entusiasts knock this as a coaster that is too rough and needs retracking. I rode this a total of two times. Once in the front and once in 1.2. Believe it or not the front seat on this coaster is the money seat. No roughness, lots of floater air, just a good time. Lots o fun.
Mr Freeze (with lapbars!!!) +3.9 This is the first Mr Freeze/Chiller ride that I have gone on. I was very intimidated watching it and I was not disappointed. Great launch, awesome visuals and going backwards through the tophat gave some awesome hang time. I sat towards the back and had a good ride on both of my laps.
Ninja +2.0 Good ride. Not great, but not bad for a Vekoma/Arrow style looper. Not as painful as I have been on in the past. Great headchopper with the chain on the lift hill. Very surreal. Least painful corkscrews on this type of coaster that I have ever experienced.
River King Mine Ride +0.5 Basic Arrow mine ride. Good suprise with the tunnel at the end, otherwise Cedar Creek is WAY better than this one.
NAMTAB or Batman the Ride + 3.5 Good batman ride. Better than the one at SFGAm IMHO. Dont know why but it was just better. Got three laps in today all in front. The helix towards the end seems much more powerful on this one. I could feel the blood rushing to my feet on this one.
Met one Acer by the name of Bob from Chicago and preached the word of Coasterbuzz to him. He was a really nice guy and we ended up taking a lap on Batman together. Met another enthusiast couple in line for Freeze on Saturday and they dont belong to any clubs and never heard of Coasterbuzz till now! Nice people from the Quad Cities.
Other observations. The park staff was VERY friendly and on top of most everything. They were stacking trains quite a bit on Saturday but at least they run them(they did today too when the park was virtually empty). Special kudos to the staff of the Boss expecially a ride op by the name of Ben who was motivating the crew today to keep Boss stack free with three trains. He was also real good with the guests. I went to Guest Relations just to say something about him as we left today. They handled the power outage like champs, closing shops and vendors that relied on power quickly and giving refunds/tix to people leaving early. Staff was also well informed throughout the crisis. Great job guys!!!
If you havent seen this park yet, get out here. It is a lot of fun and they have some excellent rides to check out. If for nothing else, come support them so they can warrant a new hyper next year!!
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Bob Hansen
A proud CoasterBuzz Member
"We are not responsible for anything the Demon takes or breaks"
Hope to make it out there this year....maybe. Glad you had fun.
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So many coasters, so little vacation time....
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X-Flight World's Only flying coaster!
Batwing World's only flying coaster!
S:UF World's only flying coaster! Don't you love SF ?
Todd, actually we were there for about an hour and then we went back to our hotel. The power was out all along Fifth Street to our hotel. The hotel was the first thing along the street to have power. We hung out for a three or four hours and then went back to the park and saw they were testing rides so we went in.
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Bob Hansen
A proud CoasterBuzz Member
"So you think your'e really brave, gonna see the DEMONS cave.
You silly dude, your'e only food, for the DEMON"
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Bob Hansen
A proud CoasterBuzz Member
"So you think your'e really brave, gonna see the DEMONS cave.
You silly dude, your'e only food, for the DEMON"
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Bob Hansen
A proud CoasterBuzz Member
"So you think your'e really brave, gonna see the DEMONS cave.
You silly dude, your'e only food, for the DEMON"
*** This post was edited by Kick The Sky on 5/20/2002. ***
Beast_rocks said:
when the power went out were trains left in brake runs and on lift hills?
Yes, I saw them unloading people off of Ninja on the brake right by the station. I also saw the same thing happening over at Batman. I didnt see what happened on the two woods or what happened if anything on Freeze. I hate to think what would have happened if the power cut during the launch! If it made the tophat they would probably be dealing with a valley somewhere in the ride right now. I think the biggest problem for them was getting people down off the ferris wheel. I think they had some kind of manual crank of something to move the wheel because they got the last people off about an hour after the outage occured. I just have to say it was one of the most surreal park experiences I have ever had.
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Bob Hansen
A proud CoasterBuzz Member
"We are not responsible for anything the Demon takes or breaks"
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Jeff-Jeff
Wood - Raven
Steel - Millenium Force
Generic, isn't it?
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X Looks Awesome! Oh Yea!!
I ran into a lady with a blue Hypersonic shirt in line for Mr Freeze on Saturday. She was there with some guy who I think was her boyfriend, husband, whatever. I didnt really catch their names but they said they did a lot of riding. They said they dont belong to any clubs or anything and I told them about coasterbuzz. I believe they said they rode around 130 coasters.
I myself wore a Hulk T-shirt on Saturday and a Kraken shirt on Sunday
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Bob Hansen
A proud CoasterBuzz Member
"We are not responsible for anything the Demon takes or breaks"
Scooby Doo isnt that bad of a ride. I mean look at the theming its very well done for any park let alone a SF park. And as far as the long lines are concerned and the slowness of the line. The ride had a good chance of not even opening that day do too the high humity and problems with the guns themselves. By the time I got on the last ride of the night (11:40 after an hour and a half wait plus I had been at the park since 8 A.M. :) ) one out of very three boats was working properly.
Also in case Kick the Sky would like too know, some 22,000+ people visited the park on Saturday.
Kick The Sky said:
I ran into a lady with a blue Hypersonic shirt in line for Mr Freeze on Saturday. She was there with some guy who I think was her boyfriend, husband, whatever. I didnt really catch their names but they said they did a lot of riding. They said they dont belong to any clubs or anything and I told them about coasterbuzz. I believe they said they rode around 130 coasters.
I myself wore a Hulk T-shirt on Saturday and a Kraken shirt on Sunday
The guy in the Hypersonic shirt was probably around 14, so he's not the sme guy. Also, I *think* my friend Amy said she saw a Kraken shirt, but I didn't bother to look.
Hey all,
I want to say thanks to the original poster. I work in Guest Relations and I was the Day Guest Relations Supervisor for that day. I like to mention that the park is on two power grids. It just happened that the side with all the rides on it went down. Guest Relations had power throughout the whole ordeal. Funny huh?
The day for me was really slammed with people at my outside windows getting group tickets, season pass issues, etc. I had to call additional help, my full time supervisor, and they helped me. When I heard that the power went out I wanted to cry. Lets just say that we didn't get to have a full break. My supervisor thanked us by getting us a free meal brought down to Guest Relations.
I am glad to hear that we did do a good job. But what was better is to see the top man in Guest Relations next to me handling the situation as well. Dave Reomer is a great guy. Not only was he there, our Public Relations Manager and our Promotions Manager was down there as well. It maked me feel better. :-)
Mark
mrkstr80@hotmail.com
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