SFZIP

Yes, yesterday (June 5) was the park's 43rd birthday, but the power problems really screwed up the day, there were underground problems that were worked on all night (the park is probably lucky it got any power to open yesterday).

At some point in the future (not likely for 2015) something will probably be done to The Boss to cut down on the upkeep (rehab) costs, there is no other ride at SFSL that gets more work done to it during the off season and even in-season than The Boss. The rumor is still out there that Scooby-Doo is done this season to be replaced by the Justice League dark ride (same rumor that was around last year), it's still a little early for the really good rumors on 2015.

There have been issues with sixflags.com for awhile now (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't), maybe it's actually working now (it's a corporate failure, that falls on the parks). Tsunami Soaker is bascially just a complementary ride, I don't think that it's really expected to build attendance (just keep attendance that the park already has), it's something that would be better added as a part of a package, because alone it's not very much, but it does add a family ride to the parks' lineup.

There are severe problems with sixflags.com, when it comes to tickets, passes, membership and a lot of other things with the website, so there are likely a lot of calls being made as to why things don't work, which is probably why you are getting no response.

Season passholder information for the Tsunami Soaker preview day May 23: and if you want to win 10 gold passes, enter the park's contest for Tsunami Soaker: Video

I believe so, the preview is usually just for a certain time and what that time will be I don't know.

Tsunami Soaker is basically done (there are some pictures on twitter from this past weekend), all of the wraps have been added to the ride to give it a barrel like theme, it still doesn't really look like it belongs in the area, but I wouldn't say it looks terrible, just odd. Employee's can ride it after the park closes this Saturday May 17, Media Day is May 22, season passholder preview day is May 23 and it opens on May 24 to everybody.

Tsunami Soaker will have graphics added (wraps for the tubs and all of the other brown parts of the ride), they may have already been added this week, since today was media/commercial shoot day, there will also be more themeing added surrounding the ride before it opens.

I'll add that SFSL's season pass attendance mix is usually higher than the corporate average, season pass holders make up somewhere around or a little more than half the park's attendance. I know that the park is not a destintion park (it was in it's early days), but because the majority of the parks attendance come from season pass holders how long do the locals continue to accept the average park that SFSL is.

The argument about SFSL attendance and profit is something that interests me, I know in the parks history there have been at least three times the park got over 2 million in attendance (there may be more, but I don't know of any others) - the three years were 1976 - Screamin' Eagle, 1995 - Batman: The Ride and 1999 - Hurricane Harbor. These are arguably the three largest and most important rides/investments that the park have ever had, I know that the prices for tickets, food, etc. were all a lot less during these years, but I find it hard to believe that the park didn't make more money during these years than it does today. The parks attendance over the last 10 seasons goes up or down a few % every year (some up, some down), but the trend (average) is basically a flat line, meaning that in my opinion from 2004-2013 nothing has really mattered on the parks attendance, I think that the highest during that time came when American Thunder opened or last year with Boomerang (which may sort of prove the point that more people show up when you add a roller coaster). The problem that I see is that even if the park got a really major investment, could the park sustain the attendance spike that would come with it, based on the park's history probably not and I don't think Six Flags would ever give the park two major investment years in a row. In some other news, Google Maps has added a new satellite image for the park, taken in November, 2013.

Tsunami Soaker opens on May 24 (Saturday of Memorial Day weekend), all of the media, season pass preview days happen during the week before that. It will very likely be operational long before that, since a couple of weeks ago it was just a concrete hole in the ground, a lot has changed in a short amount of time.

Final Tsunami Soaker update before opening day - the ride has went together extremely fast in the past couple of weeks, the ride is basically together (all the boats are on the platform), the que/operaters booth are both directly in front of Oupost and as I have mentioned before the exit will go through the back of Marquette's Market. Where exactly the guns for the bystanders outside the ride will go I don't know (likely on the que side based on the fact there is very little room surrounding the ride anywhere else), the area looks odd and very different than what it has in past.

With one week to go until opening day, Tsunami Soaker construction is moving at a quick pace, ride platform is in place and the boats are on site. As the ride starts to take shape the reality is that this ride is way to big for the area it's being put in at, it's extremely close to the railroad tracks (not much room for a path between), almost touches the food office building and blocks the old path that was between the Hannibarrels and the Sound Stage. How the area will look when it's done will be interesting, because right now the ride is looks extremely out of place, I know that it won't fit in with any of the themeing of the surrounding area, but this will be a now likely be a crowded/packed in area in the park (it was dead before).

With 10 days until opening day, here is another Tsunami Soaker update, the pool area of the ride (which the ride sits in/on) is a very deep (probably 8 or 10 feet deep), large diameter concrete pool, much larger than what you think it would be. The operators booth is right in front of Outpost on the side near Ninja, the perimeter around the ride is having telephone pole like (shorter) posts installed to probably give the ride a pier like look when it's done (what it will actually look like when it's done is still a mystery). I really doubt that the path heading over the railroad tracks just north of the Palace Arcade/Flash Pass office will be open until the ride opens, if you go over the railroad tracks there you will basically walk straight into the middle of the ride.

Yes, the airbrush shop was demolished, along with the Hannibarrels (the airbrush shop is moving next to the bathrooms by Panda Express, not very far away).

Tsunami Soaker update time - concrete pouring is likely done for the pad/pool area, probabaly in the curing phase right now, the ride is quite a bit larger than the Hannibarrels where (the area looks something like the picture I attached), the exit for the ride is going through the back (new door) of Marquette's Market. In some other news, the Turbo Bungy attraction (currently in front of Batman) is supposed to move to the former Rock Wall location (not far from Tsunami Soaker, up by Mooseburger).

Only one of the parks' kiddie rides came from Six Flags Astroworld - the space ship themed Zamperla Crazy Sub called Marvin The Martian Camp Invasion, all of the other kiddie rides the park has were either bought new in 2006 or the park already had them and moved them to their current locations in 2006. All of the parks' current collection of Antique Cars came from Six Flags Astroworld, they were initially mixed in with the SFSL original cars and then when the track was shortened all the original SFSL Moon Cars were sent elsewhere in the company I think. In one those useless facts about the park, Superman: Tower Of Power was to be named Acrophobia (it was painted and installed with a teal, orange and green paint scheme), it was changed to Superman after Mark Shapiro came to tour the park and forced the name change on the park.

The Thunder River island was nothing but trees, before Mr. Freeze was built. Mississippi Adventure was the Jungle Cruise style ride that was there before Thunder River, it's entrance was where JB' Smokehouse & Sports Bar is going (former Villian's Cafe) and the ride went counterclockwise around the island (opposite of what Thunder River does).

A little update on Tsunami Soaker - most if not all of the "pool" area has been poured for the ride (it looks to have a slightly larger footprint than the Hannibarrels did, so there will have to be walkway changes around the ride when it's done) and at least some of the ride is here now, so some more major construction should start soon. The only space left around the ride for a que area looks to be on the side by Marquette's/Outpost (where the Air Brush building that was demoslished stood), but I don't know what the plan for the surrounding area is. The ride is not scheduled to open until Memorial Day weekend (Saturday).

Tsunami Soaker is just having ground work done (really underground work), the acual ride is not at the park, it will not open until Memorial day weekend anyway.

The history of the Mine Trains/Rail Blazer is a bit difficult to figure out, as most know when the park opened there were two similar but different Mine Trains at the park. For the 1979 season the park closed the current side (Rail Blazer side) until 1984 when the change to the Rail Blazer was done. The current Mine Train que/station area became the River King Disco for a couple of years. There was a building over the transfer track area (matching the building that is right in front of Mooseburger) until the change to the Rail Blazer, that building was the Action Factory arcade area and contained the Rock 'N Reel (one of the first motion simulator rides ever built and one of Intamin's first rides), I believe that the simulator was identical to the Sensational Sense Machine at SFOT at the same time period. The Rail Blazer opened on June 17, the accident occurred on July 7, then the ride was closed until mid-August for modifications to the trains (I don't know which of the knee guards is the modified version) and then the ride operated as a stand-up for the remainder of the 1984 season, it was not changed back to the normal trains until 1985. Today the Slaughter House haunted house uses the original que area for both of the rides (the exit of the haunted house was the original entrance of the rides) and it also uses the removed tracks station building. The transfer building of the removed track is used for storage (mostly Fright Fest stuff), the station building and the transfer buildings of both sides were never connected. The removed track (now in Arkansas) operated from 1971 until the end of 1987, it sat partially dismantled in 1988, when Condor was added behind Panda Express (Ninja station area) and Ninja replaced in it 1989.

The Pet-A-Pet photo is a reverse image, the photo is looking north (with the Sky-Way in the background) and the feed sign on the building is backwards (I attached the corrected photo).

Six Flags corporate is who dictates what the all ride names will be now (the parks can recommend what they would like), but it's corporate's decision (along with basically everything else now a days). Most of the complaints that people have are not SFSL's fault or any of the other Six Flags parks fault, they are basically all because of something that SF corporate has done (over the years) to further damage whatever is left of Six Flags reputation. When Six Flags continually has non experienced (in running theme parks) corporate management running things, problems will eventually show up in the park's overall product (which it would appear started to show up more frequently in 2013 in a lot of different cases throughout the system).

It's a plain and simple fact that Six Flags is too cheap of a company today to actually do a quality theming job on a new ride and to do what's necessary to clean/update the look of their parks' to put them even remotely close to the level that they were at throughout the 90's. It's not just the current corporate management that is failing, it's a continual failure over several years, from Premier, to Shapiro, to today's management they are all responsible in some way for what Six Flags is today. I would almost guarantee that none of the Six Flags parks are anywhere near a record attendance level today (all of those records for the parks were probably set when the individual park opened or sometime during the 90's) and attendance is never going to get to the that level again unless there are drastic changes in a whole lot of things that Six Flags does. Getting together a concert list throughout the years is something that I would like to do, but I don't know enough of them to do more than a broken list, back in the 70's and 80's there were probably close to 20 concerts a year and close to a dozen or so a year throughout the 90's (there have been several hundred concerts in this parks history for sure). I know that the largest crowd the park ever had happened on August 15, 1977, whenever over 40,000 people were at the park and 28,000+ packed Old Glory way over capacity to see KC and The Sunshine Band. The other major crowd for a concert I know of happened July 22, 1989, when Tiffany and the New Kids On The Block were there, the park got around 36,000 and closed the park down to stop more people from coming in, traffic was backed up for miles and I mean miles. There have been other major concert crowds throughout the years but these two are probably the worst ever. I also, have been able to find that 40,000+ saw the Beach Boys perform (2 shows) in the parking lot on August 18, 1981, how that was even possible I don't know.

It would be nice if they made the medal detection area to look better than it does, but it ain't changing and neither is the actual ticket seller booths, the only thing changing with the front gate is the "turnstile" area.