Mike240SX

Their three-station Sky Ride requires quite a bit of staff to operate. I'm sure that once the staffing issues go away, it'll re-open. EDIT: Thought I was in the BGW thread, thus the three-station comment. Either way, Sky Rides do take a bunch of people to run.

@ice1972 No, I don't support their decision to not offer Flash Pass on the phone for season Flash Pass customers. Yes, they should offer the same system to every paying customer, I'll agree with you there. I don't agree that it has "devalued" what you're paying for. The system operates exactly as it did when you purchased it. Now, if they removed rides from the Flash Pass program, then yes, I'd say you have a "devalued" argument. Mainly, what I don't agree with is the extreme to which you've taken your upset-ness. Your mild inconvenience from them not offering season Flash Pass on the phone app does not give you the right to berate, yell at, or otherwise harass a low-paid, young employee of the park, who has literally no control over the situation whatsoever. Write an e-mail to the GM of the park if it bothers you so much...front-line employees at theme parks don't have any say over how things are done. Was I highly annoyed when CF parks decided to keep their smoking zones to outside the park gates post-COVID? Yes, absolutely. Did I bitch and moan about it to the employees who scan the tickets/passes on entry? No, because they have no ability to change things that are corporate-wide or even park-level decisions. You also realize that this is Six Flags, and the "decision" to not offer what you're looking for is likely as simple as one of their tech guys forgetting to check a box to enable it, right? Again, not someone who works at the park and interacts with guests. Guest Relations might be your only real outlet at the park, since they can take notes that get forwarded on to the park management, but certainly you're a better human being than to "give them an earful." A casual, friendly, "Hey, it would be nice if..." will get you miles further. If the "1972" in your user name refers to your birth year, this is even worse, because a grown-ass adult should not get so bothered by trivial things like this. I hope you never have to face any actual hardship in your life.

@thisdougsforuBut really, was anything announced by Gerstlauer at all? All they said was "big project coming somewhere eventually," with no accompanying visuals or further information. I can't see any parks' marketing team being upset with that.

When you bought the season flash pass, presumably you knew how it operated, with picking up the watch. They then later enabled this phone option. You're continuing to receive what you knowingly paid for. Does it suck? Sure. Is it reason enough to go on a ranting, cursing tirade, threatening to berate some poor kid who has zero control over what the park chooses to offer it's customers, which may not even be at a local-park control level? No. If you don't like waiting 90 minutes to pick up the watch, get to the park earlier.

You've got some anger issues bro. Take a breath and get your stupid watch.

I can't speak to WoF, but Dorney hasn't been having anywhere near the staffing issues that other parks have been having this year, and typically have no problem staffing their Halloween events.

Queue Times still shows it closed, so there's that.

WoF has October hours posted for Friday/Saturdays/Sundays, with midnight closes on Fridays and Saturdays. Dorney has October hours posted for Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays, with 11 PM closes on Fridays and Saturdays. So, I'd say the chances are pretty good.

EDIT: CP's Calendar is showing midnight closings for Thursdays/Fridays/Saturdays in October! This bodes well for Kings Island's Halloween festivities, which I anticipate will be announced shortly. They haven't had half of the staffing problems this year that CP has had.

@Alex Sutcliff The current vibe is that travel to the US from anyone who's been in the UK in the past 14 days is prohibited, sadly. Vaccine or not. There are limited exceptions, namely if you have family that are US citizens. This page is long and convoluted, but explains it the best anyone can. In theory, if you were to first travel to a non-prohibited country, stayed there for 14 days, then flew to the US, you should be good....but that seems like quite a bit to just go to Cedar Point. If you booked everything through Breakers as a package, looking at their site, you should be able to get a full refund minus a $50 fee, which they may waive given the circumstances. Your best bet is to call them, the hotel, not Cedar Point general guest services.

I'm not crapping on them. I don't think they deserve to get 50-100% increases to their pay, just like no one ever does (the standard annual cost of living adjustment is approximately 2%). Yes, some do go above and beyond to provide an exceptional guest experience, but you can certainly not say that about some 14-17 year old (I would argue most) park employees, especially at major chains. And it doesn't take an economist to realize that such a drastic increase in labor costs in such a short amount of time will also cause drastic increase in prices (and/or increased automation/reduction of staff and/or reduction in operating hours as we saw with many CF parks). Slower, phased-in pay increases can be more naturally absorbed and result in less drastic increases for the end consumer. Try to take emotion out of it and think of it logically.

If you're going to list the death on Voyage (which you shouldn't, since it wasn't the parks fault), you need to list the flipped raft at Adventureland and the ensuing death. If you're going to list the fights at KI as a "major incident," you need to also list the turkey leg event at whatever SF park that happened at, and also every other minor issue that the news media blew out of proportion. You're definitely missing the pandemic-aftermath-related staffing shortages, causing many parks to substantially increase their wages to a level beyond what 90% of the employees are worth which lead to Cedar Fair cutting back hours so as to not terribly cut in to their (rightfully-deserved) profit, and the inevitable drastic increase in prices for everything that will probably come next year.

And jokes on you if you think it'll open in 2022. See: West Coast Racers.

Are you kidding me? Six Flags wouldn't have started construction for a 2022 ride this early. Cedar Fair, on the other hand, could wait until the nearly the off-season to break ground and still have it open for next year's opening day. Orion wasn't announced until mid-August. Cedar Fair also rarely teases new rides prior to the formal announcement.

In theory, scheduled for 2022. Don't believe it was ever scheduled for 2021. In reality, it's Darien Lake, so it'll probably never happen.

You mean one actor per haunt? This is Six Flags after all.

On the plus side, does this mean that Carowinds has had some pretty lax policies concerning their Flyers?

No idea; I didn't try.

@disownedpearIt looked like everything was running, including the lazer tag and tank-control bumper cars inside the arcade. The place was pretty packed for a FEC. Interesting about the Wildcat. I would totally believe that it doesn't have a functioning anything, given that the ride op needs to push the car in the station. When I rode it a few months back, I had never felt less safe on a ride; I constantly thought some bolts were going to rattle loose and it would collapse in on itself. That said, it was fun, and I would totally ride it again if there was no line. And yeah, that is stupid expensive for a wristband...I guess they need to make up for letting people on rides for free LOL. I can't speak for how much the other rides are, but yes the two coasters are $8 a piece.

So, on my way back from Lakemont Park today (report here), I stopped by Adventure Park USA to get the Zamperla Windstorm credit, Wild West Express, that I didn't get on my first trip here a few months ago, and maybe take another spin on the Wildcat. Well, first off, the Wildcat was still running just one 4-seater car. No others were anywhere in sight. Thus, it had a line, that I estimated at about a half hour. So yeah, let's skip that. I added $8 worth of points to my card, and headed over to Wild West Express, for a one-train wait. Amusingly enough, the card/wristband scanner was nonfunctional, so the lone ride op was just letting everyone on if they had something to show. $8 down the drain LOL. Anyway, WOW this surprised me. I'd never been on a Windstorm before (in fact, the only Zamperla coaster I had been on before this was a horrible Volare at Rye Playland), and this was a LOT more forceful than I expected. Particularly in the weird not-quite-an-upside-down-inclined-loop shown here, and yeah there were no trim brakes in use anywhere. The helicies were also quite forceful for what it is. After that, it was back on the road home. A worthwhile stop on a trip that was otherwise a waste of time (seriously, read the Lakemont report). Farewell, Adventure Park USA.

So, in the aftermath of my cancelled Western PA Trip (which would have encompassed Lakemont, Idlewild, and Kennywood), I decided today to take a ride out to Lakemont (about a 3.5 hour drive) to get their credits, namely Leap-the-Dips. Being able to say you've been on the world's oldest operating coaster carries are certain amount of coaster nerd cred, haha. Knowing that this place is kind of a shithole, and occasionally decides to not run rides even on perfect-weather Saturdays, I checked their website and social media for any news of closures. None found. Good news? Of course not... Underneath that little bit of red magnet in the bottom right corner of the park map, is in fact, Leap-the-Dips. God damnit. Upon closer inspection, there was a nice sign out front saying that it was "closed for maintenance," but notably in the hour I spent at the park, I saw no one working on it. I was both amazed and not surprised at all that anyone could very easily walk up and sit in one the car that's on the course. Anyway, made my way to the other end of the park, dropped the $6 and change for 6 tickets, and hopped on Skyliner for two solo rides - one in the front row and one in the 2nd to back (they weren't seating anyone in the very back row for some reason). Decent enough for a woodie of its vintage, especially in the back where I caught a couple of pops of air, but holy crap is that first valley at the bottom of the main drop a jarring jolt. As everyone knows, the only other rides they have beside the two coasters is a train ride, go-karts, a kiddie coaster, drive-'em cars, and a laughably sparsely decorated kiddie monster trucks ride. Oh, and a "water park" consisting of two kiddie splash ponds. So yeah, nothing else here for me. The mini-golf looked kinda cool, but who plays mini-golf by themselves? I did try a burger from the Lakeside Cafe, for $6.75, which was disgusting and barely edible - I finished about half of it. Which isn't saying much, since it was tiny (quarter included for size reference). After that, I took off and headed home (with a slight detour to Adventure Park USA for the Zamperla credit there). Kinda a waste of almost 500 miles worth of gas, but whatever. I'll try stopping by sometime on my way to or from Ohio parks in the future to get on Leap the Dips. At least the place is pretty? Aside from the rides...yeah, seriously, paint the coasters. Lots of pictures incoming.... So long, Lakemont. Please, can Knoebels save these coasters?

Sometimes, according to the website.

Talon is easily the best coaster there, by far. Sit in the back row. Steel Force is probably number 2 or 3. I kinda like the front for speed on those type of coasters, but you can get some good air in the back, especially if you leave some gap between your body and the bar. The "Magnum Trick" (slide forwards while they're checking the restraints, then slide back on the lift) kinda works here, but the tightness of the seatbelts doesn't matter as much since the hills aren't shaped like triangles. Oh, and don't waste time on Wild Mouse until you've done everything else you might want to do. It's the only ride in the park that gets a substantial line (showing 60 minutes right now LOL).

Meh, in my opinion prepare to be underwhelmed. It's not the worst floorless (looking at you here, Firebird), but its far from the best. I'd recommend doing one lap, doing the rest of the park, and then hitting it again if you have time, and have already done second laps on the better coasters (all of them except for Wild Mouse and the kiddie coaster) unless it has absolutely NO line. Seriously I'd rank any of their flats ahead of a *second* ride on Hydra.

Yeah, the log flume is awesome. You will get wet, especially if the boat is laden down. If you split into two groups (one adult, two kids per boat) you might be only slightly dampened and not completely drenched. As for Hyrdra, the back is the best for forces, but the front will probably give you a smoother ride. Either way, it's worth it for the jo-jo roll.