coasterbill

Absolutely not. Six Flags sucks at a lot of things but they do seem to take decent care (for a corporate chain) of their classic wood coasters. The wood coasters that have received the the Iron Horse treatment have all been mediocre to flat out awful rides that enthusiasts only pretended to like after it was announced that they were closing but before that the rides always had short lines and very few people liked them (though I can't speak for Medusa as I don't know much about it). I nearly spit out my coffee when I read this. Of all the nice things you can say about Six Flags, taking care of their woodies is absolutely not one of them, in this or any parallel reality. I stand by what I said. They take good care of their CLASSIC wood coasters. Thunderbolt at SFNE has been maintained incredibly well and has given very smooth rides ever since Six Flags took over. A few years ago they re-painted the entire thing and did a huge re-tracking project even though the ride experience was fine before they did it. Wild One also runs very well even though the coaster originally opened in 1917. Newer, larger wood coasters that probably require more maintenance due to their layouts, height and speed aren't maintained as well. I'm talking about anything from the 70's on... there are some exceptions but I actually think they take better care of their really old wood coasters than Cedar Fair does (Thunderhawk).

Okay, I'm glad to hear that then. I had to ask though since they've been doing that kind of crap chain-wide this year.

I'm very interested to see park attendance numbers this year as I wouldn't have expected the crowds to die down this quickly. It seems like by all accounts numbers are way down this year throughout the industry. While I of course expect Universal's attendance to jump I wonder if it's going to have the jump they expected given the magnitude of this investment (not that we'll ever know their projected numbers but we can probably guess). I know when they were building this new land people were concerned about the lines for the train and by all accounts the lines for that have been really minimal.

I love skip-the line systems including Gold Regular Flash Pass but Platinum Flash Passes are pretty terrible and I totally understand why people react the way they do. I like Flash Pass and i'm always happy to have that option when I'm visiting a park I haven't been to but the idea of letting people re-ride screws everything up. Most people go to parks in groups of more than 2, and when people re-ride in one of the rows a group is lining up for it either leads to a mad scramble to find 2 people who want to go ahead of them or in most cases rows going out empty and it kills capacity. This effect is amplified if a group of 2 is trying to ride with another group of 2 and let people go ahead of them to even it up (which happens all the time) and now the next few trains are equally screwed up. We got the Platinum Flash Pass once at Magic Mountain and on most rides we felt like complete jerks for screwing everyone up. Re-rides really shouldn't be allowed. As far as I know Six Flags is the only park that offers them. Is this another instance of Six Flags trying to cut costs? I've noticed they've started closing rides early at Great Adventure now too (the log flume and rapids usually which never happened before). They've also reduced capacity on the parachutes by not opening all of them and the skyride by only running half of it even when the other side has a 30 minute wait on a Saturday in the summer.

Absolutely not. Six Flags sucks at a lot of things but they do seem to take decent care (for a corporate chain) of their classic wood coasters. The wood coasters that have received the the Iron Horse treatment have all been mediocre to flat out awful rides that enthusiasts only pretended to like after it was announced that they were closing but before that the rides always had short lines and very few people liked them (though I can't speak for Medusa as I don't know much about it).

Batwing is newer but like Superman it's a clone. I believe Wild One is the only coaster they have that's not relocated or cloned but correct me if I'm wrong on that.

I'd love to get to this park one day but it's so far out-of-the-way. Great pictures!

Really? I thought Lakemont was a hell hole but actually thought Skyliner was a smooth, fun ride. Maybe they recently re-tracked it? As far as Roar I think it has a cool layout but it's like riding a shopping cart with square wheels down a rocky cliff while holding a jackhammer. If they re-tracked it it would probably be a lot of fun... and with 7 minute dispatches and one train operation I would expect wear and tear to be minimal.

Even if the dark ride is decent at first (nothing great but maybe a middle-of-the-road shooter) in 2 or 3 seasons the targets and guns will stop working and Six Flags will never fix them. If it's a regular dark ride then it will be even worse because most shooting dark rides use the element of competition to distract you from how mediocre the ride is. If it's a regular dark ride then when the animatronics (I use that term really loosely) break and are never fixed it will be even more noticeable. Six Flags should never build dark rides or anything with theming because they'll let it go to hell anyway. Our best bet may be something screen based like Wonder Mountain Guardian as I would expect that it would need less maintenance (and there would be great opportunities for product placement advertisements within the ride).

Roar is beyond terrible. I have this coaster at the very bottom of my wood coaster list even behind rides like Gwazi and Mean Streak. I think I'd have even ranked Hercules and Son of Beast higher. This ride is a complete waste of wood.

It's operating with riders so it couldn't have been that serious.

You must be new at this whole Six Flags thing.

1) Everyone can park in that lot. Stay to the left when entering the tollbooths and tell them you're going to the Soak City lot. There will be an OMFG massive line at that gate but don't worry, Cedar Point moves the line so fast that once the gate opens the line moves at a walking pace and you'll be in in 5 minutes tops. I know you won't believe me when you see the line but trust me on this. Dragster is not usually open for Early Entry so don't go there first, I'd suggest Maverick or Millennium Force. Normally I'd say avoid the front of the park until later in the day but you'll have Fastlane Plus so you can really do whatever you want. The only advantage to going to Dragster first is that if you go there as soon as the park opens for early entry you won't have a long wait for the front row. You seriously need to ride Dragster in the front row but it will add an hour to your wait if you don't go there first thing. This could totally backfire if the ride doesn't open until 10 anyway though as you'd have already spent an hour in line. Random tip: Raptor is best in the front row too and it only adds an extra 1-2 train wait. There's no reason to go to any other row. 2) Cedar Point has large crowds every day so Fastlane Plus is always a good idea, especially if you're only going for one day. Generally Millennium Force, Maverick and TTD will have waits between 1 and 2 hours. Gatekeeper and Raptor will have 2 hour waits in the morning but only an idiot would ride them in the morning without Fastlane Plus anyway. 3) Yes, anyone is welcome to use any entrance at Cedar Point.

This country sucks.

I'm just going to leave this here. Thanks to Boldikus for the first picture. Keep in mind that once again... Great Adventure has the best operations in the entire chain. I use the Skyride because it's one of the only rides where a picture can illustrate the throughput of a ride. Six Flags Great Adventure's double Skyride with over twice as many cabins as Cedar Point's single Skyride. Cedar Point

I was disgusted reading that but don't have a twitter account so I didn't have a way to respond until now. First of all, If you're at an amusement park booing a kid for ANY REASON then you are a terrible person. Period. End of story. Is this (maybe) isolated incident even relevant to this thread? I don't know... some people would feel that it's a microcosm of the company as a whole and I won't necessarily disagree. I feel like the Six Flags business model is to have terrible employees, terrible park atmosphere and terrible operations and add or remove things for no reason with no regard for themes, convenience or logic. In addition to that, they whore themselves out to anyone that is willing to plaster an ad on something in the park while they cut corners wherever possible knowing that as long as they have amazing coasters they can get away with it. Six Flags as a whole is a frustrating company. Luckily Great Adventure is one of my home parks and while they're guilty of almost everything I mentioned they do have a good staff and try to run the rides efficiently for the most part. Some of that may be a result of the staff going above and beyond despite being horribly understaffed though. They have also adopted some new cost cutting measures like closing the water rides early for no reason (and not posting signs) and not filling the courtesy cups of water up more than 2/3 of the way which probably save them very little money and manage to piss a ton of people off (not the courtesy cup thing, that's a minor annoyance but they were turning people away from the log flume in droves because it was a hot, humid night when the line was an hour long when they cut it off). Keep in mind those complaints were about (arguably) the best run park in the chain. Parks like Six Flags New England are exponentially worse. Cedar Fair vs Six Flags is like night and day... I won't even mention Herschend, Disney or Universal. I'll reiterate that I don't think this kind of service is the reason for their major attendance drop because it's been like this for a long time. It may be getting worse but it's always been pretty bad. That being said it can't be helping their image.

Leap the Dips! - 1902 What a fun little coaster.

If it's not a complete red herring I'm thinking it's making reference to Intimidator... suggesting that this will be a bigger and better version of that.

The rain was clearly the cause of this accident. From now on I think Cedar Point needs to close every flat ride when it rains even though pretty much everyone would agree that it had nothing to do with the actual accident. It worked for them once before.

At this point you're just screwing with us right?

X / X2... I expected one of the best coasters in the country and I got one of the worst. I rode it first in 2002 and it was awful, last year we went back and after hearing about how great it was for over a decade and hearing about the brand new, smoother X2 trains we rode it again. It's still a ridiculously rough piece of crap that you couldn't pay me to ride ever again. I absolutely hate that coaster.

Am I the only one that's always skeptical of things like this thanks to the culture we live in? If she really did suffer a concussion and if anyone was seriously injured then the park or manufacturer is clearly at fault. What happened on Skyhawk should never happen. That being said from looking at that injury I don't think waiting 20 minutes to call an ambulance (even if that's true) is all that bad, especially since they're probably counting the time it took them to stop the ride and get everyone out of it. It looks like all she got was a very small cut on the head. Sure she could have sustained a concussion but it probably wasn't the kind of thing that would make you call for an ambulance immediately. They probably sat her down, cleaned up her cut, gave her some water and then after she was still feeling dizzy (or showing any other concussion symptoms) realized there might be a problem. Again, I wasn't there... I don't know what happened and I don't know anything about her. It's just a shame that this sue happy culture we live in makes you so skeptical of this type of thing.

I selfishly love El Toro's station. Minimal waits for the best seat on the train (one from the back). At least you guys fill the rows, Kingda Ka routinely sends the second row out empty because nobody can get to that line thanks to the insane bottleneck in the station. I agree... this has to be the worst setup ever.

Great photos, it looks like everyone had a great time.

My vote is also for Kings Dominion's version of Flight Of Fear. I agree, Kings Dominion's Flight of Fear is much better. Both are good but the one at KD is very smooth and the one at KI is a bit jerky. I actually consider Flight of Fear at KD to be the 3rd or 4th best coaster in the park. It's a great coaster.