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Just found out not too long ago the parks in our area can reopen but Santa Clara county is forcing them to stay shut. In other news, scbb might be the first to open under newsoms new guidelines.

Lol

The Disney Skyliner pre-COVID could have some awkward silences when they forced groups together. Especially when your 9 year old says awkwarrrd out loud

Normally I would say Thursday because almost (or all?) schools in the area including PA and NJ would be closed for election day and only NJ schools would be closed on Thursday. I have gone on that Thursday I think 2 times in the last 4 years and lines are usually very short, especially the last 2 hours the park is open. I looked up one of my reports from a previous Thursday at the beginning of November, I got 24 rides in 5 hours to give an idea of how low crowds were. The good thing is even on a weekday in November, Great Adventure is really good about having most rides open. Last year I went on Veterans Day on a Monday and only 1 or 2 rides were closed besides the rides usually closed that time of year and it was probably the least crowded I had seen the park in a few years.

The rides where you are potentially facing random people up close can be awkward. Rides such as Invertigo, the Larson loopers, or the Meteor type rides.

I went the weekend before last and wasn't going to do any sort of report or review, but with this discussion, I'll throw my hat in the ring. I thought Orion was fantastic. Millennium Force is the only other giga I've been on. I hesitate to say Orion was better...but definitely different experiences. I would say if you're looking for excitement, Orion is definitely ahead in that category. The airtime is strong, and the elements are exciting. I would take it over Diamondback hands down, and I like Diamondback. While there are obviously less "airtime moments" on Orion, they are undoubtedly stronger. Yeah, you fly into the brakes way up in the air and there's definitely momentum left on the table, and of course at that point it would be great if there was more to it, but in my 3 rides I never felt like it was short like the feeling I got with SFGAm Goliath. I can't help but feel like the people that have complained about this thing love the smell of their own farts. The rest of the visit was great with fastlane, because of course it was. We got on everything except Adventure Express because it was down for part of the day. Some of the rides had waits (Orion 30 min, MT 20 mins, Beast 20-30 mins towards nighttime) because the park was pretty crowded, but can't complain about those waits knowing how the standby lines were. The atmosphere was still good with the decorations and everything was done well. The haunts aren't my interest at all, but I do enjoy the Halloween atmosphere. I was with a friend and his step daughter who never had a proper experience with the Beast. I believe they had only been to the park once before and weren't impressed with it. We went and rode too early and it was still fairly light out and just let the grouper put us in the middle of the train somewhere. We went and rode Diamondback and I insisted we go back to the Beast for our last ride, asked the grouper for the front, and had them ride up there. My buddy told me afterwards that he had told his step daughter not to say anything bad about it because I wanted to ride again and they were again unimpressed with our first ride. Obviously that opinion changed entirely with the front seat night ride; they loved it and he said something along the lines of "that's the only way I ever want to ride that again." I always enjoy sharing experiences like that with my friends. Still love Banshee as well, and don't understand some of the hate it gets...great speed, with sustained forces and decent intensity. I prefer this to Raptor...and think Banshee and the Batman clones are my favorite inverts. Had the back seat on Racer this time, and it beat the hell out of me...I don't mind some jostling, but it was not a good time. I had a better time with KI than CP a couple weeks earlier, at least this year. Hoping the forecast for this weekend trends a little warmer over the next couple days as if it's going to get up to about 60 I'd like to go again this coming weekend. I really do love this park.