singemfrc

Yeah this is generally the correct strategy. The back of the park tends to be deserted in the morning since most people start with YOLOCoaster and X2 and work their way back, if you do the opposite, you'll move faster. Going on a weekday will help too. If you want to ride Ninja I would recommend riding that early too since it may not be on the flash pass since it is on one-train ops and the line just gets longer as they day goes on.

Thanks for the unnecessary visual. I've never had a problem parking, I always pay the $12 and park right across the street. Granted I don't try to hit all the flat rides, but I've never felt rushed at The Boardwalk. One of the things I love about it is it's a place I can come to to just get away and feel relaxed and laid back. I love to just wander up and down the beach. In fact parking, food, bathrooms, and queues are better managed at SCBB than at any other park on the west coast except maybe DLR. I've never had or witnessed a problem, though I don't wander underneath the boardwalk. If you have a problem with SCBB you should probably just stay home. On a lighter note, I just found these photos recently, I posted them to SCBB's memories page but I think some here might enjoy as well. My grandfather's brother Warren and his wife visited SCBB on their honeymoon in 1941. Newlyweds on the beach right in front of where the Haunted House is now. You can see the 'Dipper peeking in from the corner. Setting up on the beach with Casino building in the background.

This is one of those important details that is really good to know. Any idea which rides open when? Or where to find that info? Thanks! The last few times that I got to the park at opening , everything in the back of the park was opened at the same time as the front. I believe they stopped doing delayed openings last season. Except Grizzly. 100% of the time I go to CGA it's at park opening, and every time I've gone in the last year when I walk by Grizzly in the morning there's a sign outside saying that it's opening later, usually like 11:30 or 12. I seriously doubt however that anyone is rushing to Grizzly in the morning when the park opens, which is probably why they open it later. Yeah thats the thing about Gold Striker its hard to explain even with a POV how awesome it is, it just makes you smile from ear to ear. Easily my favorite GCI, and in contention for my favorite overall coaster, it's just pure fun. You should try row 6 (dead center), its my favorite. Usually with woodies either the front or back is best but I thought row 6 was better on Gold Striker.

You really can't blame the park because a few guests decide to act like complete assholes in public. It the ops fault for not taking care of the situation before it got out of hand, but not for doing their jobs and looking out for someone's safety. Do you know how often people try sneaking their kids the wrong colored wristbands just to get them on bigger rides? It actually does happen. Fortunately, in this case, it just so happened to work itself out, but I've seen situations where kids that were too short to ride still trying to sneak in, people hiding casts underneath sweaters to avoid being seen, people pulling out cameras/cell phones at the last minute as the train is being dispatched, and people trying to game disabled access/fastpasses and throwing fits when they can't get their own way. I wasnt there so Im not going to say the ride ops took pleasure in denying someone. It's also possible that their managers have been cracking down on them out of an overabundance of fear about an accident involving someone who was let onto the ride when they were just short and they're trying to be extra safe. They probably could have moved a little faster to keep things moving and maybe the other guests wouldnt have booed (which they shouldnt anyway, thats despicable whether they knew it was a kid or not) but beyond that I dont blame them on the first attempt. The wristband, though, is where I get angry. The entire point of the wristband is to have someone in the guest relations office to an official check and pre-verify the guest so the ride ops don't have to. I get that people are always going to try to game the system but if thats the case then either do something make the wristbands less fakeable or less removable or get rid of them completely. If the ride ops can just say "I dont care if you have a wristband I'm not letting you on" then the entire wristband system is bleeping pointless and does nothing more than to further aggravate the parent and traumatize the child and create a horrible experience for all involved. If the wristbands are on the arm tight enough to where they can't be removed or swapped then there should be no questioning it. The only way an operator should deny the guest is if they think the wristband has been tampered with or removed, otherwise they should have no authority to deny it and no responsibility for allowing the guest to ride. Guest Services has already verified the guest's height, isn't that the whole idea? I want to say "What kind of a mickey mouse operation is this" but it occurs to me that is a silly saying as a "mickey mouse" operation would never let something like this happen. (Where did that saying come from anyway?)

No it wasnt the ops that booed her Robb said it was the other guests in line who were apparently unhappy with waiting for them to measure KT's height. The worst part is Robb posted that after this he went to guest relations and got her a wristband declaring that she is officially 48" and when he went back to Viper the ops STILL denied letting her on the ride. What's the point of the wristband if the ops can just say "Meh I don't recognize that"? Obviously Robb wasn't about to give up though, he said he spoke with some supervisors and eventually got her on the ride.

^ But even when it's busiest, one ride each shouldnt be more than about 90-100min total. Busy by Boardwalk standards but still easy compared to Disney/SF/CP waits on equally busy days.

Grizzly often doesn't open until an hour or two after the park does. It will usually have a sign in front of it saying what time it opens. The rest of the coasters will normally open with the park, but I don't know about the flat rides. I think I've seen Delerium open late before. I always ride Flight Deck at least twice when I can. Once in the front for the view and once in the back for the whiplash.

Are they the newer intamin OTSR's? Because those didn't seem to be a problem for me at Busch Gardens a few months ago. I believe they are considered the newer ones. I've never seen anyone with a problem on it. Goliath should be no problem either. On X2 you're fine as long as the seat isnt broken, some of them dont go up and only fit small people, but even then you can just pick a different seat usually. If you're also really tall you may have trouble fitting into Gold Rusher's train, that's the only one I can think of. Now that you mention it I think SFMM's rides are pretty accommodating to larger guests. I cant really remember ever seeing someone get the walk of shame. Maybe Batman depending on how big you are, I've seen it on Flight Deck which has the same restraints.

This is mostly true, they do have great operations. Undertow is the longest line, usually no worse than an hour though. Dipper's line always looks worse than it is. If the line is out the door and fills the switchbacks its maybe 45 minutes. Line at the door is usually anywhere between 15-30.

Youll probably be done by an hour after the park opens at that rate.

Yeah V2 used to be bad until they put new (and longer) belts on it. Wicked Twister at Cedar Point still had short belts as of last year and was walk-of-shaming people left and right. These were not fat people and they walked away with a more bewildered than shameful look because it had clearly never happened to them before. The way the restraints come down on you its not so much your gut/stomach that gets in the way its if you have big legs or thighs, so people who were just big dudes were getting denied. I've never been walk-of-shamed on anything before including V2 but it took the combined strength of me and the ride-op to barely get the buckle clicked on Wicked Twister, so much so that I didnt want to ride again and chance not being successful. Another frequent offender is Grizzly at California's Great America. It has one of the worst restraint systems I've ever seen. There's the rider's seat belt, the lap bar, and then a seat belt that buckles the lap bar. There are actually extra warning signs in the station that the seats are less accommodating to larger guests and it's very common to see people taking a walk of shame on that one. Those over redundant restraints are the reason that Grizzly's dispatches are so slow that the ride op has to play "Jungle Cruise Skipper" and do standup comedy over the mic for the people stacking in the final brake run while they wait for the train in front of them. I have a theory too that Grizzly gets such a reputation as a "bad ride" not because it's actually that bad but because after people wait 30 minutes for what should be a walk-on station-wait theyre just angry and take it out on the ride.

No one said they werent successful, and the "bad rap" really is only among coaster enthusiasts. I'd bet they actually have a very good reputation among park owners. Before RMC and Premier and a couple others popped up recently they were on a very short list with B&M and Intamin as one of the most reputable coaster designers. Personally I love the SLC at my home park even if I'm the only one that does. The layout is awesome, so if you can learn to ride comfortably (which is possible contrary to popular belief) it's actually a lot of fun.

I think the 4D coasters are easily the most expensive. X was I think like $30M in 2002 and is only 3610ft long. It'd easily be over $40M today, and thats not considering the $10M they spent on redoing the trains and adding the silly effects in 2008. It's too bad we don't know the cost of Dinoconda since its virtually identical in design and was built only 2 years ago, that would be an interesting comparison.

Yeah it gets this way within 20 minutes of the park opening, you have to go straight to it when the gates open. 90 is a bit much, usually its only about 60 at that time. It's the ride envelope, which means if those shields werent there you could stick your arm out and and get it chopped off by the edge of the building. If you sit in the front row there's only 2 seats so there's no shield. Thats actually pretty funny, good of that ride op to keep it light like that. It's pretty fun for what it is. If you ever get a chance to ride it in the dark with no lights during Fright Fest DO IT - it was the highlight of Fright Fest for me last time I was there, surprisingly awesome! I always forget about that too. From now on I'm riding Viper in the morning before my shoulders are already sore. Glad the single rider lines made your day easier!

In my experience pretty much everything they do OTHER than SLCs and boomerangs are great. There's just so many of those that they get a reputation. GravityMax is a great Vekoma, the Flying Dutchman models like Sting Ray I hear are pretty great if also a little weird, and they also do some custom work for Disney like Expedition Everest which pretty much everyone loves. Everest I think is the best without much argument. The worst would probably be any one of a number of SLCs.

Echoing what a lot of people have said, I often go to parks and on trips by myself but also enjoy going with others when I get the chance. I usually only go in groups to my local park (SFDK) though or occasionally the 6 hr drive down to SFMM, it's hard to convince others to go farther than that. People always tell me they're down to go on a trip but when it comes time to buy tickets they always back out. I flew to Cedar Point by myself last year, and I'll probably be doing Kings Dominion/Busch Williamsburg or SFNE/SFGAdv either this summer or next also by myself.

Boomerangs and GIBs scramble my brains. I think it must be the backwards cobra roll. When I get off those I'm walking like a drunkard for a minute

I saw a Theme Park website other than this one (so I won't name it - but it's not "that" one) that said that they've been told about the plans for Colossus, but there's an embargo on the information. According to this seemingly pretty reputable site there's to be a formal announcement on the plans for Colossus on Thurs 8/28. That comment above pretty much gives it away though, it all but confirms an RMC overhaul. The question is which type will it be?

^ ^^ Yeah I mean theoretically you could have 3 trains on the track...if SFMM really wanted to and they used the old unloading platform, you can have one train in circuit, one unloading, and one unloading...but it would require a lot more staffing and more efficient ops for a negligible difference in capacity..its not worth it.

Right which would have made sense... running one train when you have 3 never makes sense no matter what time of year it is. Does the ride ever run 3 trains or do they never run more than 2 even in October and the middle of the summer? I've never seen anything other than Green Lantern run more than 2 trains at one time, which really makes sense because most of the ride ops at SFMM aren't efficient enough to handle a 3+ train operation. The ones that are usually are working on X2 which itself cant handle more than 2 trains. I have actually seen SFMM stacking a one train operation on two different coasters before - Gold Rusher and Riddlers. If you're wondering how you can stack one train, its when theres only one train in operation but it sits in the brake run unnecessarily because the ride op just isnt paying attention and fails to even notice that the train is waiting to be dispatched into the station. SFMM does seem to for the most part put its fastest operators on the most popular attractions. X2 almost always seems to have the best ops (which is part of the reason the line dies in the afternoon), followed by Goliath, YOLO (I was impressed at how fast they were working when it was on one train ops earlier this season), and sometimes Tatsu. Tatsu is weird, sometimes their ops are really good and sometimes really horrible. They don't seem to use the second station when they should, but thats not the ops' decision, Im sure that decision comes from management. Riddler typically has the worst ops, along with Gold Rusher and Scream. Green Lantern is pretty slow, but I believe a lot of that is just due to the ride configuration.

^ I touched on that a little on the previous page. At a seasonal park like SFGAdv it would be inexcusable to rehab coasters in the summer, but if you're a year-round park with as many coasters as SFMM, it's inevitable that some will need to rehab in spring or summer. With that said I think they should have picked a better time to rehab YOLOCoaster than spring break. Also although Scream may "posess" 3 trains, it's likely that the third one was not in usable condition. It is common at many six flags parks that coasters with 3 trains will at any given time only have 2 available for use. Sometimes like Ninja the third one is parting out, sometimes like Medusa (SFDK) or Scream the third train just seems to be in perpetual rehab and when it is finally made available one of the other two goes into perpetual rehab. This is what I always tell people..If youre there for atmosphere or quality food options or a selection of family rides then there are at least 3 other major parks in southern california which would be better for your time and money. If you're just looking for as many roller coasters in one place as possible and thats all you care about, then SFMM is the place to go.

Oh I'm certainly going to go there with the proper mindset. I've never been out West so it will all be new to me, and I always have fun on roller coasters, even crappy ones. I'm sure many of these complaints are part conjecture anyway. No park can be that bad, right? It's really nowhere bad as it would seem from reading this thread. We like to poke fun by taking it too far sometimes. It is likely that you will encounter things that will make you shake your head, but if you're there to ride coasters you'll get what you came for. If you get the gold flash pass lines should not be much of an issue. Ninja is currently on one train due to the accident, so it probably wont be on the flash pass, and X2 and YOLOCoaster (FT) normally arent on it, so I would do Ninja and one of the other two first thing.

This is the park that runs 1-train operations on every single coaster there just because they're lazy. Yes, they ARE that bad. Their operations are often subpar but to say they run one train operations "on every single coaster" is just completely false and to say its "because theyre lazy"? If you had said something like "SFMM will sometimes run one train operations on a coaster because they're cheap" or even complaining that there are one train ops due to annual rehab in the summer (Although to a point some of that is excusable being that it's a year round park), that would at least be a little funnier as its probably a lot closer to the truth. If you're going to jab, at least do it right. I agree with SFMMGeek, their operations are bad relative to other parks, but nowhere near the level you're suggesting.

Irrelevant because S&S still manufactures Arrow parts.

^ But in all seriousness I'm sure that's what theyre going to do. I think at some point they're going to also have to either buy a used train from another park or get some parts from S&S because after the second train is done they will probably be pretty low on parts.