coasterbill

I'm still just waiting for them to open their other coasters and rides that have already existed in the park for years. Thankfully Alpengeist is officially open every weekend now. Progress I guess...

The fact that you thought that just because you were going to Six Flags New England this year and Goliath is located in that park meant that you were going to get to ride it is actually adorable.

I have a tough time getting to parks early when it’s Orlando or something where you have to be at Animal Kingdom at like 7:15 but when there’s a time change in your favor like with Great America and the park opens at 10:30 local time then I can be an early bird.

Their October calendar is also hilariously stupid with them being closed every Sunday so I'd imagine the calendar is also a work in progress.

For the record I don't understand why they would announce this in the morning when they know that the president is likely to relax guidelines later today anyway. From a PR perspective it would be so much easier to let the CDC announce this first and then say "In-line with new CDC guidance here is our new policy" rather than announce it first. Maybe they felt like playing a practical joke on their social media and PR people?

Here are the official guidelines from the website. Link I love all of this. Masks work, but when everyone who wants a vaccine can pretty much get one it makes sense to phase them out in areas (see: outdoors). It should be noted that you still need to wear them where social distancing is not possible. PS: It seems like the president is expected to make a statement on this today anyway and the park will probably just be falling in line with new guidance from the CDC.

Congrats on riding Maxx Force. Based on what they’ve done elsewhere on the chain this seems to be the methodology they use to determine what rides load all rows. - If a state recently let them open they run a lot of rides where they don’t load all rows so that they can pretend that they care for awhile. Sure, other rides in the chain with the same ride vehicles have been loading all rows for half-a-year but they’re assuming that the people running these the states and making these rules are unfathomably stupid. They assume this because the people running these states and making these rules are unfathomably stupid. Rides where riders are clearly really far apart like wing coasters and flying coasters will load all rows but not much else will. B&M hypers didn’t used to be in that category but they might be now. Nitro skipping rows lasted about 8 seconds. They probably realized that they had to load all rows for Holiday in the Park anyway or the train might not come back so they might as well start early. Raging Bull is probably in the same boat. That ride is also abused and will have the same issue so just rip that band-aid off now. PS: No clue if they announced it yet but Holiday in the Park is happening. They’re Six Flags, not Cedar Fair. Fright Fest is happening too but they might give it a stupid name. Note that they will cap capacity at just 99% of the normal Fright Fest crowd levels for safety. - A few weeks / months later they throw up dividers in the stations and declare that any ride that has dividers in the station can safely load all rows now. They usually start with rides where the ride vehicles kind of / sort of seem far apart so it’s not too egregious. They’ll ease people into it. - A few months later they put up dividers on everything and load all rows on every coaster that’s even moderately popular because nobody cares any more.

Luckily any day now Lightning Rod is probably due to launch a wheel into a mountain or spontaneously combust or something so we can stop talking about covid...

Great report! I'm glad you enjoyed Stringray so much. We only got one ride on it, I wish I had time to get a few more...

There's no way to really answer those questions. You're taking a gamble no matter what. If you lived in the US I would tell you to book immediately since we don't know how many they plan to sell (it's probably less than normal) but since you're also hoping for international travel restrictions to change knowing that you could be out hundreds of dollars if they don't that does complicate things. It's totally up to you.

I have no clue what kind of mental gymnastics people are doing to make a perfectly flat huge park with tons of space a "challenging location". They just really want this coaster at Cedar Point so they can get off it and immediately film a hype vlog where they declare it the 7th best coaster in the park.

Cedar Point is a great choice. A totally flat park with tons of land is notoriously difficult to build on, plus if they do a coaster like Smiler it can easily break the record for most wind closures in a single season.

Six Flags is going to open their park as much as possible to as many people as possible as soon as possible. That's been their playbook chain-wide throughout. Right now it looks like they're close-to-full and likely to end up totally booked every day for awhile so there's no harm in keeping the restriction as long as it doesn't impact them and makes it look like they're being careful but the second they feel like lifting it will make them more money, they will. I expect them to do it very soon.

No Six Flags park in America has made much effort to enforce their covid policies since they reopened. I don't know why you would expect otherwise after seeing this at park after park for the last ten months now. I'm not saying that it should be that way but you should have gone in expecting that as an educated consumer who frequents a theme park forum.

People are generally over it and even parks that did a great job with covid protocols last summer are struggling now. The data coming out now is highlighting just how insanely rare outdoor transmission is with even incredibly left-leaning publications calling for an end to outdoor mask mandates (and I'm someone who is generally very pro-mask but data is data) but if that doesn't put you at-ease then I would not recommend that you visit a park right now. Most parks don't have enough staff to enforce this and compliance is going to get worse every day from here-on-out.

You guys can have it back

Rules like this are why people are sick of all of these covid restrictions. Someone from Yuma who is fully vaccinated and got their second shot in February can go to SeaWorld because they have some whales and ride coasters or they can go to the San Diego Zoo and ride the Skyway but they can't go to Magic Mountain because they're more of a risk than someone who's not vaccinated who just flew to LA from Sacramento to go to the park and never got tested? ...k

"Select attractions" probably means "Whatever we can staff" and they might not even know until last minute.

I agree with that and agree that it would be stupid for Marineland to buy Silver Comet and I don't actually think that it will happen BUT Marineland is also run by insane people and nothing that they do would surprise me too much because the fact that something is an objectively terrible idea is not a deterrent to them.

You generally have to get wet to explore a beaver dam so that one checks out. Otherwise... not sure.

Great report!

If I ran a theme park I would not open a major new ride right now. Either you cap capacity and reduce potential returns or you have a huge crowd and when pictures of that crowd go viral you have a huge PR problem. It sucks, but I get it.

The park will probably not hit capacity on a Wednesday / September 1st. You'll have no problem getting a reservation / dated ticket, they just haven't released them yet because they're probably hoping they won't need them by September. If you were going to buy all of that food anyway then you'll save money. The food sucks but it is what it is.

This is great news.

Yeah, at the end of the day the coaster is 20 years old and has never worked reliably. The chain had two other ones that were also totally unreliable. The fact that 10 years ago after having 3 of these things run terribly for a decade they decided to ship it all the way across the country (literally pretty much all the way) and expect it to start working for some reason is really stupid. The fact that they put it next to another Boomerang and had it facing the same direction is also really stupid. The fact that they spent a ton of money and about 2 years of their time on a new train to make the ride worse and not make it any more reliable is also really stupid. Every single thing about this ride's history is really stupid and really weird. Sure, the ride used to be kind-of-good for awhile but it was never worth the aggravation even on it's best day. Now that (in addition to everything I mentioned above) the ride also aggressively sucks just makes me wonder why they didn't do this sooner.