coasterbill

I wish more parks had operations like that. Thanks so much for sharing these great images.

I agree 100%. I would think this is almost always a space issue. Having a straight station into a straight lift requires a lot of room in a perfectly straight line that a lot of parks don't have. They are transfer tracks, they allow Six Flags parks to do one train operation. I enjoyed this.

Nope... but it's still funny.

Okay... I was excited about this ride since it was announced but after looking at that last picture of the turnaround with that awesome banking I'm actually starting to take this ride a little more seriously. Before I was excited in an "Oh cool a big B&M, it won't be amazing but it should be a lot of fun" kind of way... not I feel like it has some real potential to be a stand-out ride. It's nice to see B&M try something unique.

Even though we all fully expect this ride to open around Memorial Day it's literally a carnival ride and we will make fun of them for it.

I love how small this ride is... every small pay-per-ride park should have one of these. No matter how tight on space they are they could definitely fit this thing somewhere and they could charge top dollar for it.

Of course everyone feels different but we've had season passes every year since 2000 and I couldn't disagree more. Superman is a good coaster and I'm not sick of it at all. The only reason I don't ride it much is because of the insane lines it gets (lines which kind of lead me to believe that nobody is sick of this ride). Kingda Ka is absolutely amazing and very smooth when you ride it in the front which we always do. I don't see how anyone can be sick of the tallest and fastest coaster in the country but again... to each his own. Personally I love Kingda Ka. Is it in my top 10? No. But it's an awesome experience. I don't care if it's rough / less interesting in every seat but the front because I don't ride in those seats. Generally with B&M the older the coasters are, the better they are. I could ride Batman all day and Nitro and Bizarro are both great rides too. I don't care how old they are. Is that a challenge? Yeah but they're awesome coasters. Everyone at Knoebels has been riding Phoenix for 30 years and so far nobody has gotten tired of it as it's still basically everyone's favorite coaster in the park. Enthusiast or otherwise... How? Do you remember how horribly run this park was from 1998 when you got your pass to about 2005? They added a ton of rides in 1999 as part of the "War on Lines" and they were ALWAYS, ALWAYS closed. Great Adventure was nothing but 2 good coasters, a ton of bad - mediocre coasters, and a TON of closed flat rides (and a few closed coasters). The rides that were open always had huge lines and there was no such thing as Fastlane so you were forced to wait in them while the park purposely avoided shade canopies so they could come by with those stupid popcorn buckets and icees to sell them to you for $4 a pop. On a typical visit to the park, Viper was closed, Chiller was probably closed because of some catastrophic failure (like the time it caught on fire) and in the first few years you had a pass it had over the shoulder restraints and was terrible anyway. Pretty much every flat ride with a few exceptions like the 3d theater and Twister were closed almost every day. They had Evolution sitting in the middle of the park as the largest lawn ornament ever... Season Pass processing was a 4 hour long process every year back by the (of course closed) Double Trouble ride... the place was awful back then... really awful and the only reason anyone put up with it was because of Medusa and Batman. Now they've removed the rides that were never open and you rarely see closed rides except the water rides when they're not scheduled to be open in the Spring or Fall or the Skyway or Parachutes when they have to close due to high winds (speaking of Skyway and Parachutes they NEVER used to be open between about 1999-2005... ever). Great Adventure used to have more closed rides than open rides and that's absolutely not an exaggeration. Even though the theming is basically non existent it's better now than it was then simply because of areas like Plaza De Carnival and Golden Kingdom. Plus since you got the pass they added a ton of amazing rides and attractions (as I mentioned before) including the tallest and fastest coaster in the world (when it opened), an 80 MPH hypercoaster and the #1 coaster in the world with El Toro. I guess you could argue that the park has gotten worse since about 2006 (you'd be wrong but you could argue it) but to say this park is a shell of what it used to be when you started going regularly in 1998 means you either forgot how much of a disaster this place was back then or you loved looking at 15 different versions of a scrambler that looked slightly different and having 14 of them be closed every visit (slight exaggeration but you get the point). EDIT: You visited SFNE and Dorney while you were waiting for Great Adventure to "get it's act together" because Great Adventure hasn't added enough new coasters lately? Dorney? When I think of coasters that "have their act together" when it comes to adding new coasters I immediately think of Dorney. I wonder how many people their relocated boomerang will send to the hospital next year. I wonder if it can make it through an entire day of operation this year before closing for the rest of the season (it didn't last year). I can't wait to find out. And what new coasters did SFNE add in that same time period Great Adventure hasn't had it's act together? A huge relocated boomerang that has a new train that beats everyone to a pulp despite being on a perfectly straight section of track through the station? That's about it unless you count the relocated wild mouse. There isn't a park out there that builds an awesome new coaster every few years. Even Cedar point doesn't do that. Enthusiasts are way too impatient... Great Adventure doesn't need a new coaster. Even if they removed everything except El Toro I'd still be perfectly happy to re-ride El Toro all day. Everything else is a bonus.

Great pictures, thanks for sharing. This park has really never been on my radar since they seem to be lacking in the steel coaster department. You can always count on a Batman clone to be awesome but since there are so many of them it would be nice if they had something unique to really draw people to the park. Of course this is coming from an enthusiast perspective but I'd love for them to eventually get a B&M hyper or something to give me an excuse to make a trip out there. Right now the only way I see this happening is if we decide to do a SFSTL, SDC and Worlds of Fun trip (with Silver Dollar City and visiting the city of St. Louis being the real reasons for the trip).

To each his own but I would think very few people would agree with you on this. Hershey is a better park overall but Great Adventure is way ahead of almost every other park in the country in the coaster department. The idea that Great Adventure needs a new coaster is insane. I'd love one but they don't need one. They've made some great improvements in the rides department in the last few years. What I'd love to see now is for them to take some time off from adding rides and just improve what they already have. Updated landscaping, new paint, stop closing rides early and get Kingda Ka and Zumanjaro to run together. I'd rather they spend a few years doing things like this with small additions like the Super Loop. Sure we'd be deprived (lol) in the coaster department but I guess I can make due with the tallest coaster in the world (and the fastest in North America), The #1 coaster in the world, a 7 looping B&M floorless, a super intense, snappy and awesome invert, an 80 MPH hypercoaster with floater air on every hill, 2 fun indoor coasters, a B&M flyer, a few other supporting coasters, a huge Safari, a great log flume, a 200+ foot sky screamer, the tallest drop tower in the world, the world's only operating double von roll skyride, the only parachute drop in America, a new looping flat ride and a ton of other supporting rides. Of all the things this park needs new rides (especially thrill rides) are at the bottom of the list. *I left Green Lantern out because it's a terrible coaster, but it's really the only bad coaster in the park.

Don't sell this ride short... while many of it's records will just be regional records I expect it to hold the WORLD record for the ugliest coaster ever built for years to come. EDIT: It can probably claim to have the tallest inversion for awhile too until the Poler Coaster opens.

I was very surprised with how well Viper was running when we visited last year. I hope this ride sticks around for a long time. As far as Ninja goes... we consider it one of the best coasters in the park. I think the only coasters we liked better were Tatsu, Batman and Apocalypse. If they ever get rid of Ninja it would be a real shame. I think the only reason it doesn't have higher ridership is because you have to walk all the way up the hill to get to it and after walking around a theme park for hours that's the last thing anyone wants to do.

Mean Streak is much smoother than Blue Streak if you ride in the front of any car and keep your back off of the seat back. It's a stupid way to ride a coaster though and it's a pretty boring ride. I'd love for them to Iron Horse it but I'd be okay with it if they leave it alone too. It's a little dull but I still enjoy it and the ride itself is beautiful to look at. It's probably the most visually appealing coaster I've ever seen.

Very nice report!

We just got the tallest drop tower in the world... like 6 months ago. People who know nothing about coasters have been sharing pictures of it on social media ever since. Great Adventure doesn't need anything except small improvements to what they already have (like small aesthetic improvements, new paint and making sure Zumanjaro and Kingda Ka can run together).

^^^ I highly doubt they'll be allowed to remove that many trees. Plus that seems like it would be a more expensive coaster than the current management team would generally purchase. They seem to be shying away from the types of huge investments Cedar Fair has been making lately and instead building cheaper coasters and rides.

The 2 times I rode X (once as X and once as X2 just last year) I ended up in the back row in an outside seat and thought it was one of the worst coasters ever but I've heard it's a lot better in other seats. I'd give the ride another shot... I just wish you could choose your seat.

What a great update... it seems like you managed to hit a ton of the great destinations in New York. The Empire State Building at night is amazing... first of all the lines are usually much shorter than they are during the day and second of all the views are awesome. I agree that the "new Yankee Stadium" is generic and dull. They screwed up royally when they got rid of the old one and their attendance is a reflection of that. I think they seriously underestimated the value of the old stadium as tourist destination. Their dwindling attendance isn't just a reflection of their play on the field because a few years ago they couldn't even sell out the ALCS even though tickets were going for far less on the resale market than they were 10 years ago when they had more seats than they do now. We paid 50 bucks for 2 tickets in the upper deck. In 2004 we paid 125 each for worse seats in game one of the division series. As far as Coney island goes I'd like to get back there. I haven't been out there in about 10 years even though it's only an hour and a half away. Back then it was a complete dump and I'd like to see how the new additions have helped revitalize the area. I've heard Cyclone was running better too which is good because it used to be a horrible ride.

I'd love to get out to this park one day... especially for that flume.

I never understood why more year round parks didn't invest in more trains than they actually need. At Knott's for example you would think that since the park is open every day they would have a spare train for Silver Bullet as running one train for months at a time on an invert is a little insane. Still... I don't get upset when I visit a park in the offseason and they're not running at full capacity. It's the offseason and I expect that going in.

Thanks for the report. I still don't get why people think Scream is rough... ugly? Yes. Out of place? Yes. But not rough. I guess it's just me...

Nitro's station is a flat out disaster on busy days. Last year during Fright Fest we waited 3 hours and the line was only as few hundred people beyond the entrance sign (near Batman's drop). We had a Flash Pass but we had reserved El Toro so we figured we'd go ride Nitro since it's a people eater but that station is horrible and the line didn't move at all. The Flash Pass line was all the way down the stairs, the amount of exit passes on that ride is insane so the exit path had a huge line too which was blocking people from walking down the stairs when they got off the ride and the stand by line wasn't moving. On busy days they need to do a better job managing that line because it's insanely crowded with people trying to force their way by the Flash Pass people. This is never a real issue except during Fright Fest though but with the boatloads of money they make on Fright Fest Saturdays I agree that they can pay someone a few bucks an hour to make that line flow a little better.

I never knew the difference between a barrel roll, zero g roll, heartline roll, in-line-twist or any of those things... I usually just call them all barrel rolls.

Anyone who thinks B&M wing coasters are rough in any way, shape or form is insane. Those rides couldn't be any smoother.

YES on Kohr Bros... but orange is better. And if you're in Rehoboth to ride the haunted mansion and eat Kohr Bros try a slice of Grotto pizza too... ignore the locals who are about to show up in this thread and tell you that Nicola is better. It's not... they're wrong.

At least from the pictures this ride really doesn't look ugly at all. Is it just me? I kind of like it.