Domm

Hey there! QQ- My friend bought a flash sale discovery kingdom season pass but can't make it to the park. We are planning to go to magic mountain in a week and after reading your post it sounds like I might be able to process it for him if I go to SFDK?

Awesome report!! Looking forward to my trip on Thursday afternoon now. Quick question: I am going down and staying at Knotts from Thursday afternoon to Sunday morning. We're considering going to Disney/CA Adventure on Friday 8/26 and then Knotts again on Saturday 8/27. I'm not sure how Disney Crowds will be on Friday and the price tag is steep, we have also never been to Soak City. Any recommendations whether it's worth a visit over Disney considering current crowds etc.? Thanks!

This is good news! I was planning on going either this Friday 8/26 or Saturday 8/27 and heading there first thing in the morning. You think Friday will be good like that too?

Leaving park in a few. Major ride operation issues today. Joker down for 30+ minutes at least 4 times. Same with V2 and Medusa. Poster above was right about the one moving quickly with 2 trains. Prob about 25 - 30 minutes. Ride was good but nowhere near TC or Goliath. Kids still at park btw

Hitting the park up on my way back from Tahoe tomorrow (did the new heavenly mountain coaster, highly recommended!). Hoping to finally get on Joker and with minimal waits! Haven't tried pacific rim yet either. Hope we get lucky with schools back in

we'll see what it looks like opening day, they're still working on it. I'm hoping the seats move better than the last ones!

I may have seen you there, what were you wearing? I was just wearing my work shirt saying,"Keep Mod Weird" Probably ran into eachother! I had a grey dos equis shirt black and orange volcom hat, friend had a grey element shirt. We rallied on GS for a while without getting off

Row 7! It was a good day there. Sad to see it go, but it will be back with more UMPH next season with that new ride. Can't wait

Doubtful. The days are a little busier than they used to be around this time with the addition of Spooky Farm during the day, but Sundays are still pretty calm. Thanks for the intel! I have a gold pass at CGA and was planning on trying to renew that to Platinum at Knotts and get the included fast lane promotion, but it looks like I can't do that and would have to buy a new platinum pass which would get me a single 2015 knotts day admission Making the pass only valid for 2016 Looking forward to finally getting down there for rides during the day and haunts at night. Hope to get some repeats on Xcellerator and get the first rides on the Voyage Do they clear out the day crowd before doing haunt (CGA does)? I also forgot does skeleton key get early entry, or is that only for boofet?

How are crowds gonna be Sunday day? Fast lane required?

no need to bother with pockets with one of these: http://www.spibelt.com/ I can't properly enjoy rides at all thinking about cards/phone/etc falling out of pockets. The SPIbelt is the slimmest and easiest thing to properly secure personal items I've found for rides

Quick question regarding an upcoming trip. Going to drive down Friday night 10/23 to go to SFMM Saturday morning, 10/24. We have a Discover card, how much earlier do we get in with that? Will we have time to process a season pass fast enough to still utilize the Discover line? Want to hit as many rides as possible in 3-4 hours wtihout getting flash pass (I would get one if we were staying the whole day). Also, going to drive to Queen Mary Saturday night then do Knotts Sunday. Are the Sundays at Knotts dead enough to get on everything in a timely manner?

Nice report Queef!! I had a pretty good trip there on Sunday as well

How complicated is putting a new train and station in? Did it take long at the other park that had the conversion? I really wish the SFDK coaster was coming to CGA instead!!!!!!

you couldn't pick a better day. the first couple of Sunday's usually have walk-on/in's for everything.

I got them back! Kinda surprised I only had to wait a half hour after the park closed. I highly recommend this money belt. i put my car key in it. It's like a very thin fanny pack that goes under your clothes so nobody knows you are wearing it... money belt image Just search for "money belt" on ebay a flip belt works pretty good as well. https://flipbelt.com/ i can't fit my iphone 6 plus comfortably in it anymore though. http://www.spibelt.com/products/specialty-spibelt/spibelt-performance-series iPhone6 plus problem solved. Use these every park visit. The one I have has two slots for things and they expand to the size of your phone/keys etc and contract when not used.

Platinum will get you into both parks + CGA haunt. Knotts Scary Farm is extra

No need to freak out... I can't go into details, but expect it to be back up and running asap. Remember this ride is a trailer model so it's meant to be fully disassembled if need be. Hey SkaUnit! Any details on the new maze coming this year or any good haunt/park stuff coming up? Stoked to have an awesome park resource right here on TPR, and an OpIvy (guessing) fan as well

They obviously want to make the line for gold striker longer! Haven't heard a thing about it. Bummer though... Wonder where they're gonna put the new maze this year? In this spot? When I was at the Knotts Scary Farm museum a few months back the girl working there circled 3 mazes on the Knotts map and said, "it's one of those 3 going to CGA." Her tone was all in good fun trying to make me guess while creating excitement. Totally forgot the 3 now, but hey... we should be looking forward to something. I'd like to chime in on that Cedar Fair dude's rant- read a couple of pages back where I went to SF's Great America to get a little perspective on our beautiful and absolutely empty park (even emptier now that the swings are gone). Six Flags keeps their Great America just as beautiful while adding tons of awesome attractions, it's a freaking theme park dude!!! Rides and themes. WTF are you talking about? Nice landscaping and cleanliness should be a given and it is at that Six Flags park as well. Who the hell wants to wait 10 years? Ridiculous.

still want to get a gold flash pass for the WCB day, yea? how are lines?

I went there last Friday and it was busy. We got platinum flash pass and I HIGHLY recommend it as lines looked as long as 2 hours for some rides. Also make sure to get your tickets/season passes before heading over because since they destroyed the ticket booths outside there is only ONE makeshift ticket counter and the line was off the hook. The double rides were great, the employees helped out in telling people why we were staying on so there was no awkwardness (opposite from SFMM), and it included 2x on Goliath. The single rider option was available on Goliath, however they only had something like 8 single rider passes at a time. If they were out, you were out. Ya the park model was in the gift shop right before the pictorium entrance if you head to the right when you walk in. I heard that CGA has a model of tidal wave in one of their offices which is cool, but the whole park model is incredible (BEAT AGAIN!!). All I gotta say is middle finger to Paramount for tearing us a new one. Also where our employee/backstaging area between vortex and firefall all the way back to scrambler is HUGE! Tons of space. SFGAm used all that space up for rides... CGA please take a hint and throw some money into new rides, there's plenty of room.

California's Great America is my home park. I just got back from a trip to SF Great America and was blown away. It was both exhilarating and depressing being able to see what kind of potential this park layout can provide. The classic charm and theming is all still present in Gurnee while it seems like everything has been stripped from Santa Clara. It felt like taking a time machine back to the 80's being able to see all of the classic rides, buildings and walkways all still intact. I loved comparing and contrasting everything and got a whole new perspective on what **could** be possible at our park. The way they fit in X-Flight, Goliath, Batman, Superman, V2 etc. shows that anything is possible if the $$ is there. We could easily have that same goliath in the same exact spot, who the hell rides those go-carts anyway!?!?! Bottom line is there's plenty of room, TOO MUCH ROOM!!! I encourage checking out that park if only for nostalgia reasons... it was awesome!! curving around looking back at the carousel (from our goldstriker exit) hanging a right out of the goldstriker exit/giftshop towards town sqaure looking at the still intact train station from our subway/theater spot looking right down the walkway going toward madame marie's (from train station) Hey look! Rue Le Dodge! Only its un-neutered without the center divide and you can drive wherever the hell you want! Their scrambler is still called fiddlers fling and has the fun canopy's on top!! there's even a park model on display in that same shop where our goldstriker exit is I will say that we have the superior entrance with the fountains and palm trees

I'm heading there for the first time next Friday, but does anyone know how much more land Six Flags Great America sits on? Looking through greatamericaparks.com it appears as if they both had the same or very similar original footprints. Figure they could carve out some land from the redwood amphitheatre? Maybe the whitewater falls and upcharge swing spot?? Invertigarden? Part of the employee parking lot/staging area? And please don't get me wrong- I am EXTREMELY grateful for Gold Striker. That ride is a godsend for us over here

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you there. Flight Deck's forcefulness tips the scale in its favor for me when compared to Medusa. Everything else you said it pretty spot on. Flight deck is well, half a ride lol It is extremely short compared to other inverted coasters. Vortex is also short. If you can go through the whole park in 1.5 hours, something's wrong, they gotta step it up soon

FD is wide open! Just planned a trip to Chicago on 8/7 to check out the other Great America to see how it could have been for us in Northern California. Looking forward to checking out some of the classics that are still there like the Scenic Railway and Whizzer... haven't been on those (well the California ones) in forever.