coasterbill

Usually every coaster is a walk on all day every day all summer long (except the Mouse because it's capacity is awful), but since the water park is closed and it's the Haunt event I would expect some of the longest waits of the year for the coasters. Even then... if you wait more than 20 minutes for anything I'll be shocked (unless you wait for the front of Steel Force... then you might wait 30). Don't get Fast Lane. Even if they were charging 10 bucks for it it would be the biggest waste of money ever. Oh and if Stinger is open ride that at the end of the night. If you ride it first you may miss out on the other coasters while you're waiting for the fire department to show up and rescue you. Edit: I forgot to mention... they're completely whoring out their Screaming Swing. With a Platinum Pass I think it costs $1 to ride it so if you want to try it it won't cost you much of anything. I just thought of this because I went to see what they were charging for Fastlane and they include this ride for free as a desperate attempt to convince someone to buy it.

It depends on the coaster. If it's a smooth steel coaster with lap bars I almost always ride with my hands up (unless it's something like a mine train or wild mouse where I'd look ridiculous). If it's a wood coaster I rarely ride with my hands up unless I know the coaster and I know that it's smooth without aggressive laterals. Rides like Phoenix, Thunderbolt at SFNE and El Toro I always ride with my hands up on but on most wood coasters I don't. Rides like Twister at Knoebels I really enjoy, but it's not a "hands up" kind of ride for me because of the laterals. If it's a steel coaster with over the shoulder restraints I never ride with my hands up with the exception of Kingda Ka on the way down the drop because come on... how could anyone not? If the ride is rough I never ride with my hands up except for Magnum at Cedar Point because no amount of bracing or defensive riding is going to help anyway so I just give up and put my arms up. It's just as painful either way.

^^ Thunderhawk would be the best coaster in the park if they'd re-track it and take the trims off. It has the potential to be a relentless airtime machine. As it stands right now it's not that great. If you want airtime sit in the first car, second row but the airtime hurts like a b***h as the coaster needs some serious TLC. I want to love this coaster but they don't take care of it and it's a shame. I enjoy all of the other coasters in the park. This ride isn't THAT rough but it could be so much better. The flats you mentioned are the best in the park and are all worth a ride. I love the SeaDragon too... it's lightyears ahead of the crappy swinging ships most parks have as you get some great floater air if you get in the last row of either side. This is true of most SeaDragon ships. It's a shame Thunder Creek Mountain is closed for the year as it's one of the most unique rides in the park due to it's great use of terrain. If I were you I'd wait for the front of Steel Force. It won't blow you away but it makes the ride so much better because you can appreciate the speed which makes it pretty enjoyable. In the other seats it's nothing special. Most importantly though (I hope you're taking notes) they have a Chickie and Pete's walk up window over near the SeaDragon so get yourself some crab fries. You're welcome...

You'll have time to ride both sides... the ride never gets a line probably due to it's location and it's high capacity. I don't think anyone would ever be forced to choose.

This looks great.

It was new for Kings Dominion and it's one of the best rides in the park. 99.999% of people don't care if it was relocated, nor should they. Only enthusiasts make a big deal out of this kind of stuff.

Seat belts don't impact the actual ride experience in any way. Sure it slows down dispatches by a few seconds but it's not that big of a deal. Look at Banshee for example... Banshee has insanely fast dispatches and it has seat belts. The same goes for some of the other major Cedar Fair additions (like Gatekeeper). People only care about this ride because this type of train didn't have seat belts before but Cedar Fair has proven that they're fully capable of operating a ride with seat belts very efficiently. This is a complete non issue.

Idk....Sidewinder is a pretty damn good ride. It's sort of okay for a Boomerang but if you have a limited amount of time in the park it's the first ride you should skip. I think Wildcat may be worse but some people do like it so if you have time it's worth a ride (but if you don't have time then skip it)... at least it has a unique layout unlike Sidewinder or the Mouse.

I'll never understand why anyone cares about this. As others have said it's good marketing and if they fool anyone into going to the park because they think it's a coaster than good for them. We all know they're not coasters so it shouldn't matter what the park says.

Great Adventure hates lights. They want everything to be as dark as possible... both the rides and the paths. Lights involve a minimal amount of money and maintenance to operate which is way more effort than they're comfortable with so I wouldn't worry about that ever happening.

That's the problem though, you can't choose your seat... and the first few rows (the decent ones) always fill with Flash Pass riders so if you're in the regular line you're in for a beating.

I love LED lighting... I'm not a fan of some of the LED "white" colors like on that Carousel in the first post but since everyone is saying you can make the whites look just like incandescent lighting now I have no complaints about LED's.

It may actually help you because a lot of people who were in the park earlier will be headed to the concert. It's also nice that the Giant Center is an indoor venue so you won't be subjected to any of her horrible music while enjoying your night in the park. Leaving the parking lot (which is kind of shared between the park and the Giant Center) after you leave might be horrendous though depending on when the concert ends so be prepared for that.

It's a little faster than the others as the brakes don't come on quite as hard but the difference is minimal... there's no problem with skipping the mouse. Personally I think Wildcat is awful too so if it has a line it's worth skipping. Lightning Racer is great and is almost always a walk on so that one needs to be ridden, maybe even on each side. Comet is a very good ride but it can get some long waits.

This. It's a very underrated coaster. It won't blow your mind but it's a lot of fun.

Parks don't make decisions based on how rides perform in the Mitch Hawker poll... they make decisions based on what coasters are most popular with their guests and what they think will give them the best return on their investment. Wingriders seem to be very popular with the majority of guests.

Another day... more enthusiasts questioning the experts working on Rougarou who actually do this for a living.

The turn into the mid course on Vortex is just hilariously bad. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 has smoother transitions than that. I rode it with my girlfriend earlier this year who's pretty soft spoken but as we were coming up to that awful coat hanger turn that's so tight it would make a wild mouse proud I just heard her yell "Oh F**K that". I think she spoke for everyone on the train.

I've noticed that there are a few seats that aren't so bad. The further you are from the catch car the better and even sitting on the inside versus the outside can make a difference. Unfortunately there's no choice of seat (obviously... it's SFNE) so it's basically just the luck of the draw. Most seats seem to be terrible though.

They could have been lazy like they are with everything else and just left the ride alone and done nothing and it would have been great. The one time Six Flags decides that they should spend a ton of money on new trains for a coaster just because they want to improve the guest experience (not because they want to market it as something "new") it absolutely ruined the ride AND caused the newest coaster in the park to be closed for half of last season. But isn't this whole "crappy new train problem" more Vekoma's fault than SFNE's? Or am I wrong? I'm not sure since I don't know who approached who with the idea but I'll never understand why SFNE wanted to change them in the first place. By the way, before someone point this out I do realize the irony in the fact that in the Cedar Point thread I just posted that nobody should worry about the new trains being rough because the park and coaster designers know what they're doing. This seems to be exactly the opposite of what I'm saying here but there's a big difference between Cedar Point working with B&M on a B&M coaster and Six Flags New England working with Premier on a Vekoma ride. Six Flags New England has a history of horrendous decisions and cutting costs whenever possible.

I would modify it by dumping it in the river and putting the old one back on. There isn't one thing about the new train that I like better than the old train. The ride's just as unreliable and the capacity is the same but the ride went from very smooth to arguably the roughest coaster in the park. The thing that absolutely kills me is how much extra effort they put into this new train. They could have been lazy like they are with everything else and just left the ride alone and done nothing and it would have been great. The one time Six Flags decides that they should spend a ton of money on new trains for a coaster just because they want to improve the guest experience (not because they want to market it as something "new") it absolutely ruined the ride AND caused the newest coaster in the park to be closed for half of last season. This may be the dumbest thing Six Flags New England ever did and that's saying something. Let's hope they do the right thing in the offseason and abandon this awful idea. Sure they sunk a lot of money into them but going forward the much better option is to put the old train back on. That being said I have zero confidence that this will happen. It makes way too much sense for Six Flags New England to even consider it. EDIT: This park has 2 coasters (Mind Eraser and Flashback) that could actually benefit from newer trains that already exist for each type of ride. Only Six Flags would completely ignore both of those problems and instead invest in terrible new trains for one of the best rides in the park. And they didn't just do this once... they did it with Bizarro too.

I don't know if they would invest a lot of money in the ride if they thought it wasn't going to smooth with floorless trains. Thank you. The people working on this are some of the best coaster designers and engineers in the world. Cedar Point wouldn't throw (presumably) millions of dollars at a coaster if those designers weren't confident that this would make it a better ride experience and those designers wouldn't take on a project that they felt would jeopardize their relationship with a company that's been one of their biggest customers for the last few years. These people know what they're doing... it's their job and they have an excellent reputation.

Wood: El Toro in the back car. Steel: People love to hate this ride but this is an easy one for me... Gatekeeper on the left wing in the front. How can anyone not love that inverting drop?

This is great news... the lack of light in the Golden Kingdom is ridiculous at this point. They were setting themselves up for a lawsuit because someone was bound to fall and hurt themselves because you can't see anything.

I feel the same way. The ride looks amazing even though it's pretty painful (an airtime hill on an Arrow Looper with over the shoulder restraints? WTF?). We usually ride it a few times on each visit because it never has a line and I figure we're doing our small part to keep the awful thing around by helping the ridership numbers. lol That being said kids do like this ride, 10-15 years ago before I was so tall I actually really liked it and didn't find the restraints so terrible.