singemfrc

The old v2 belts were red, the new ones are black. The new belts on kong are black and I believe the old ones were also black.

I would equally welcome a tall SkyScreamer...that the tower might go away is still only rumor though. Nothing has been said, it's just been assumed because it's closed in a more forceful way than usual. Could be extensive rehab on the elevators or something.

Just daydreaming out loud, but a polar coaster for 2015 would be a nice replacement for the sky tower if it does end up getting removed.

SFMM is what it is, which is just a park full of coasters. They clearly aren't trying to be anything else. If you just love riding high thrill roller coasters, then it's a great place to do that. If you want to do anything else, then there are plenty of other parks to visit. With that in mind, the one thing that always jumps out at me is the lack of paint on highly visible rides. If Goldrusher hasn't been painted in 20 years it doesn't really matter cause its in the trees anyway..but when Tatsu and Scream are in desperate need of a paint job, you dont even need to be in the park, you can see it from the highway. It's an extremely visible blight. Unrelated, I hear unconfirmed rumors that the Sky Tower may be closing permanently. They have semi-permanent barriers up in front of the que area. Glad I was able to finally visit it last time I was there in August for the first time, every time I had visited before over the years there had been a slight breeze so it was closed for weather.

Maybe not visibly or during operating hours, but the dome's FB reported that inspections started on 12/20 and continue through next week.

I know thats not true about Maintenance having to be called when a car comes in upside down. I've been on upside down cars coming into the station and though it sometimes take a minute, the ops can right you. Besides, even loaded the way it is, right before the station is the one place it almost always flips. Its the drops before the last one where the balancing takes away the flips.

If you're by yourself don't forget to use the Single Rider lines on Lantern and Lex. Will save you loads of time of there's any kind of queue. You can just hit YOLO first and then use the SR lines, theoretically you could be done in less than an hour. Wow, wish I saw this. I waited an hour for YOLOcoaster, 45 for Green Lantern, and 30 for Lex. Had no idea single lines existed! I also rode Terminator and Tatsu before heading out. Oh yeah and got robbed by an ATM! YOLO has no SR line, and Lex's SR line can sometimes still be a 15-20 min wait, but you can almost always get on Green Lantern within 5 minutes through the single rider line no matter what kind of que there is. They are pretty hidden though, most people have no idea any of them exist. For future reference, for Lex, walk up the exit and on your left there will be a portable blue sign that says "Single Rider Line In Use Today" and you walk up to the chain in front of that sign and wait for the operator to assign you to a side. For GL, you walk up the exit and go up the stairway with the blue sign at the bottom, it should take you to directly behind the operator who is dispatching trains. Sometimes you have to get their attention to let them know you're there but try not to distract them from doing their job if possible. When they tell you, you walk right past them and onto the row they specify. Viper and Revolution never actually need a SR line, but you just walk straight up the exit for those. I'm a huge fan of single rider lines, I often visit parks solo and I like being able to get on faster obviously, but I also like seeing the trains go out full which means everyone gets on faster, everyone wins. The only other parks I know that use them are Disneyland and California's Great America.

Incidentally after Superman obviously got seat belts and noticing that V2 had it's seat belts replaced, I noticed yesterday that Kong also had brand new seat belts (to replace the existing ones, not in a new place). Looks like while the park was buying seat belts for S:UF they went ahead and got a volume discount

I would've thought that too, but I know they were doing it all day today and I was talking to other people that have gone in the last couple of weeks and they've said the same thing that they're doing this every time now. My guess knowing that is that someone in management probably saw how much longer dispatches were taking when they had to recheck the trains and instructed all of the operators to do all this spiel. I bet they scale it back some in a while when they see how much longer the dispatches are taking with all of this added in.

SFDK really needs to take a look at their S:UF operation. I guess they had a knee-jerk reaction to people not listening about not putting the lap bar down, so now for every dispatch the operator asks everyone in line to raise their hand if they can hear, and makes them repeat back to him/her that they wont pull the lap bar down and says you'll be ejected if you do..sounds good in spirit, but you could recheck the train twice in the amount of time it takes them to shame everyone. Would be much more efficient if they had the sorting operator remind guests as they were coming into the station. Saw one other thing today I didn't like. Waiting for Medusa the kids in the train in front of me all had their phones out (clearly to film a bad pov) and the dispatching operator saw that and actually talked to them about it saying things like "Are you sure you trust your hand? Don't drop it! Have fun!" and dispatched the train with all four kids filming on their phone. I don't personally care if they lose their phone but I'd hate for them to lose a grip on it and have it hit and injure someone else standing below the ride.

Couldn't agree with this more, really makes the pass worth it. Love every time I go through the toll booth without paying.

Its not the gut, its the size of your thighs, because of the shape and direction of the OTSRs its where they come down vertically not horizontally, but yeah previously the belts were not all the same size, some were easier than others.

No this is definitely a good thing. There was no good reason to have the seatbelts as short as they were previously, especially as not all of them were the same length. Just making them (literally) a couple inches longer makes it easier for a much bigger group of guests without compromising safety, so it's great.

Not meant to be a joke. Belts on V2 were tough for people of average size, mathematically speaking. They were unreasonably short. Wicked Twister is even worse. V2 belts are now as they always should have been.

In POSITIVE seat belt news, it appears sfdk has replaced the belts on V2 with slightly longer new belts, they're no longer difficult to buckle for average size guests!

From Adventuredome's FB

^ Welcome to the SFMM thread, you must be new here. I don't think most of us "hate" the park as much as it seems. We love SFMM, we just have a funny way of showing it. As for the roof, if it was JUST the roof, that might be different, but it's not just the roof. It's the everything about the new coaster other than the coaster itself. It's not going to stop me from riding and enjoying YOLOCoaster, but it does look very cheap. One thing I always keep in mind with SFMM is their target demographic, which is not us. The mass of mindless teenagers that seems to make up the majority of their crowd is very much the "Yolo" crowd, and they eat this stuff up. For as much crap as we give SFMM, they were still the most profitable park in the chain last year, so financially they must be doing something right at least in the short term, in other words it doesn't look like their recent strategies and decisions are negatively affecting attendance.

Desperado was definitely the first thing that popped into my head, especially as I plan on riding it in a couple months when El Loco opens. Speaking of El Loco, although it isn't *really* in the middle of nowhere, every time I watch a Steel Hawg pov it strikes me as bizarre as it looks like it's in a residential neighborhood (just from the point of view when going to the lift).

You can purchase the flash pass online and take the voucher to the park or buy it at the center, either way you go to the flash pass office where you will watch a video and upon completion they will give you a small pager-like device with an lcd display. You carry it around with you and can select which ride you want to go on next. The display will tell you which rides are available and at what time your ride will be ready. When your ride is ready the pager will vibrate and flash and you can take it to the flash pass entrance where an operator will scan it and merge you with the line. As soon as the operator scans your device (ie while you're still in line), you can select a new ride. Officially, the regular pass gives you the same wait time as the normal que, the gold offers up to 50% wait reduction, and platinum offers 90% reduction. In my experience, most of the time the gold gives you most rides within only a few minutes. The only real advantages to platinum are double rides on some rides, and access to purchase YOLOCoaster Flash Pass rides, which are $15 each and must be reserved at the Flash Pass office. If X2 were open, a gold level pass would allow access to reserve rides on it. Normally everything else is free. If you're going on a busy day, get gold. If not, regular should work fine.

No definitely don't mean to take away from the obviously good work that they do, just saying it helps a bit that they aren't exposed to the elements, like rust from rain, dirt and dust from the wind, or the hot Nevada sun baking the rides in the summer.

I think Medusa is one of the best coasters out there for people in that situation, people who've only ridden Disney and perhaps a woodie or two. It's a great one to break someone in on "real" coasters as it's smooth and not real shocking.

It's been said before but it also helps that these rides are indoors in a climate controlled building.

Ridiculous. They would have never spent the time and money replacing the chain if they didn't plan on reopening it. Replacing it would be far more expensive than repairing it, especially considering the replacement would presumably need to be of a similar draw. Stuff happens, I'm sure that regardless of the crap we give them, they don't want their biggest drawing coaster down any longer than necessary. If they could open it now, they would. Some of us love X2 and some of us hate it, but it's still one of the most popular rides in the park, and people do travel to SFMM to ride it (at least for the first time ) It costs a lot to run and maintain, to be sure, but it also brings a lot of people to the park. It also earns upcharge $ from flash pass ride sales it looks like it does pretty good comparatively on the on-ride photo sales. I don't think they're losing any money on it when it's running. The original X suffered from far more downtime, which is why they spent $10M to renovate it as X2. Deja Vu I have specifically heard was a maintenance burden, I think it's common knowledge that they removed it for that reason, and while it wasnt "Viper" dead, it wasnt exactly "X2" popular either. I agree with both those decisions purely from a financial opinion. (For the record I really liked Deja Vu, I wish there was a GIB close)

Sky Tower will definitely be closed.

If you're by yourself don't forget to use the Single Rider lines on Lantern and Lex. Will save you loads of time of there's any kind of queue. You can just hit YOLO first and then use the SR lines, theoretically you could be done in less than an hour.