xVicesAndVirtues

So we went back to the park on the 23rd and I will say we had a better experience than we did last week in terms of operations moving faster. So as @thrillseeker4552stated, maybe they really do reserve better staff/have more oversight/make more of an effort on the busier days. However, had we not needed one more visit to secure our entry to whatever the VIP Iron Gwazi party turns out to be, we would not have visited again until Iron Gwazi opened based on our last visit...so consistency is definitely needed. Kumba actually did have a grouper this time and they were doing a pretty decent job of keeping the station wait a maximum of two trains. Montu was kind of the same thing per usual, they let the station get absolutely mobbed before cutting off the regular line, so station waits were still 5-6 trains. Cheetah Hunt was still running two trains with one station, so the posted standby line was about 120-150 minutes all day. When we got there, the greeter suggested not even waiting for QQ because they filled the entire QQ line and they said we'd likely be waiting as long as the regular line...ok. We came back much later in the night and got on in about 20 minutes. The park was considerably more crowded and they seemed to do a bit of a better job managing it. On a side note unrelated to the park, I'll shoot myself before I ever drive from Tampa to Orlando again the night before Christmas eve. So many people hogging the left lane on I-4 going 10-20mph under the speed limit, random cars passing furiously on the right to get around the idiots holding everyone up. 0/10 would not recommend.

^^We went yesterday and if you want to ride Cheetah Hunt, then yes, you'll want Quick Queue. But how long you'll be waiting for it with QQ is a mystery. Operations at this park continue to be the worst in the industry, sadly. Cheetah Hunt just came back up from it's rehab and re-painting that the park put all over social media...to run one station and consistently stack two trains. Wait time was posted 155 minutes, we waited about 65 minutes the first time with QQ, about 20 minutes the second time with QQ due to operations and the inconsistent way they managed the QQ line. Despite having a station grouper, they randomly fill the station either completely or halfway so even with QQ you have to deal with that clusterf*ck. Sometimes they pulled about 20 from the QQ line, sometimes it was like 4 people. I'd definitely say it could be worse, as being platinum passholders we only paid $130 total for two of us for QQ for the day, which the website told us was 60% off. But if that's true and the non-passholder QQ price is really that much, you're better off just taking your money and buying a one-day ticket to Disney or something. There'd be more value in QQ if the lines were managed properly when the park is busy. Kumba had the best operations (and doesn't have a grouper) and you might save 10-20 minutes if the line is completely full, Montu has a grouper but they just let people run past them from the regular line while lazily checking your QQ and you basically wait the same as everybody else 90% of the time. SheiKra is a little bit better post-grouper but also people were just skipping under to the QQ side and nobody was even checking/scanning QQ there. Sometimes your station wait is like 10 minutes, sometimes more like 30 depending on how dispatches are going and it changes throughout the day. Also I have literally no idea how it is possible for 3 B&Ms to simultaneously go down, but we were waiting in line at SheiKra and they went down, and after about 15 minutes we went to Kumba. We were next in line and Kumba went down, but the only techs working that day were busy at SheiKra still so they didn't know how long it'd take them to finish there and come over and fix Kumba. So we were planning on just leaving anyway and decided to hit Montu on the way out. And we were in the station and it went down, too. I don't know, man. I used to love this park and I still really want to like it, but to quote my boyfriend as we were walking out of there yesterday, "I feel like there's always something, every time we come out here".

I'm so glad this is open until January since work is nuts for me this month up until the week of Christmas, not counting this weekend's short getaway to SDC. I also do the group method because I really can't decide the difference between my #26 coaster and #34 coaster and even my "top 10" has like 18 coasters in it usually. One thing my boyfriend and I wondered and absolutely decided for ourselves this summer is the superiority of Maverick over Velocicoaster. We live a mile from Universal and we go pretty often to show our appreciation, and while Velocicoaster is an absolutely amazing ride I never thought Universal would build post-Potter, I'd say it's more like Velocicoaster is top-10 and Maverick is top-5. We did some "scientific research" where we went to Islands the night before our Cedar Point trip in August and got like 8 rides, then the next afternoon we rode Maverick a few times when we first got to CP. When riding them back-to-back like that, there's just an intensity (insanity?) to Maverick that Velocicoaster doesn't quite touch. But would we trade Maverick's b*tch slap in the face to Velocicoaster's smooth re-rideability if we could somehow swap their places? I say yes, but boyfriend says no.

^Atlanta also has a really good food scene! One thing I might have missed or maybe they didn't mention is their planned timeline for construction and what time of year they're planning to open the new coaster. I'd love to plan a spring trip but that may be a little optimistic. I'm definitely not trying to be in Georgia in summer/after like late May because it gets deathly hot and humid up there.

I cannot with this thread. I know it does suck that LR continues to be a problem for them but hopefully the steel re-tracking of the rest of the coaster will do the trick. IMO it's the best RMC creation by far (I'm only missing Hakugei and Wildfire) and I think it's pretty cynical to wish they'd just give up and rip it out. I'd literally rather have a LR that only operates 3 days out of the year in that spot than another soul-less B&M hyper I could fall asleep on. Luckily for the optimists, the park doesn't care what the cynics think and they continue to work on it. It may require some more iteration because that's just how the design process can be sometimes. Also somehow we've been lucky 7 out of 8 visits to the park since LR opened and been able to get pretty much as many rides as we've wanted. Last spring we were there for two days and got at least 30 rides on it. It was running great, didn't break down at all the two days we were there, and downtime according to Queue Times doesn't look to be *that* bad as some people make it out to be. I mean yeah, it sucks when you visit the park and it's down. i305 was down when we went to KD this year and that was a bummer. But I think it's really weird to be one of the people who are like "I'm not planning a visit until LR works all day, every day" because most of the time it does. Also, Dollywood is still awesome if LR is down. I've had better luck with LR's uptime than Millennium Force the past 5 years.

For a park with so many "don't smoke marijuana" signs, they sure do seem to like green. But in all reality this coaster looked terrible this year so I'm glad it's getting repainted and I don't really care about DC comics or the fact that it's far away from the other DC comic themed stuff. If I had to choose I'd rather it be called Medusa again because it makes me feel old when I mention Medusa East and Medusa West and these damn kids don't know what that means. Can they just call it The Riddler and avoid any awkward lack of possessive noun grammar and leave the possessing to Dorney?

I wonder if they're just doing something to get rid of all the little squeaks, metallic noise, etc you hear/feel throughout the ride. There seems to be a little less of that on Jersey Devil but not by much. At the same time, I feel like the janki-ness of it all kind of makes it more terrifying since it all the noise and vibrations make it feel as though you're riding something slapped together in someone's backyard using their Home Depot gift card for parts.

I don't know if it was a fluke or if I had too many of the aforementioned beers prozach626 mentioned that the park sells on my last visit, but I remember Eagle hauling ass, being really awesome/smooth and having great airtime in the back car. This was honestly one of the reasons I was hoping to add this park to our trip.

Thanks for the info, guys! Honestly, I think we may actually skip this park and just spend another day down in the Ozarks/maybe tour another one of the area caverns. If operations are an issue and we're already down 2/3 wood coasters, I don't think we really want to drive 3 hours each way for a Batman clone, Mr. Freeze, and the GCI. Maybe one day I'll make it back.

Hey all, I'm thinking about visiting the park in December for the first time in quite a few years as an aside to our Silver Dollar City trip. I know this will be during the "Holiday in the Park Lights" event and the park's website is pretty vague about what is and isn't open during the event. Does the park typically try to keep the entire park open during this event or do they block off certain rides/areas of the park during this time of year? I know this can vary wildly between Six Flags parks and the Northeast parks block off huge swaths of their parks whereas with the Texas parks it's pretty much business as usual. I think as long as we can generally count on Mr. Freeze, Batman, and the wood coasters being open, we're down to do a half day or so. Info would be much appreciated!

^Thanks for the report! Ouch about Time Traveler only being able to run one train, hope they're able to get it back up to two later in the year. We just booked flights to SGF yesterday to go during An Old Time Christmas. I agree about Outlaw Run. We went last year for the first time in several years and it was running sooo well. We got there after dark on our first day and I forgot how big OR's drop was, it was terrifying falling through seemingly endless darkness. OR is better than like 90% of the steel RMCs in my opinion.

^Back row gives you nuts airtime going into the drop off the top hat and is generally better for directional changes. Front car gives you more small pops of airtime in the first half as the rest of the train pushes you into the little high sections. But there really isn't a bad seat on the ride.

I honestly think the raptor trains could be way better, too. I'm 5'10 and slim build, so I think it depends on your torso/leg length. I also had to kind of angle my knees oddly outward to get the restraint to go down to my lap. I don't like either version but I guess I'd prefer the JDC ones over the Wonder Woman ones. I had these weird random bruises from the restraints the day after. I think restraints/trains are RMC's weakest point just in general. I wish they'd just buy from Gerstlauer because the TX Giant/Iron Rattler ones are the best/most comfortable trains of them all. I feel like I'm screaming into the void asking about El Toro in this topic and I feel like I shouldn't be so committed since I live like 1,000 miles away...but so like are they re-tracking the entire coaster? If they are I honestly love that because I remember riding it in 2006/2007 and it was seriously as smooth as any Intamin steel coaster. And if they need until the beginning of next season to do that and get it done right I'm all for that too.

I have seen a few instagram posts and in one of them there was a large crane on site behind the lift on the drop side. Have any of you NJ locals been to the park and taken any photos/seen any progress on track replacement work or anything? I'd honestly love to see it if there has been.

^I wouldn't count out Steamin' Demon being the park entrance coaster in 2031. They actually did a ton of steel track work in the off season of 2008 into 2009 on it that included a lot of cutting, welding, and steel replacing and things I don't entirely understand but definitely only get done every 20 or so years. They also did a major refurbishment of one of Great American Scream Machine's trains from Great Adventure and that's the train that runs on the coaster still today. Steamin Demon has been on this earth since 1978 when it debuted in Louisiana.

I just experienced a problem where a post I made in the WDW thread took forever to post, saying "saving", so I clicked on the main page in another tab and it posted my reply twice, but still was caught in the "saving" loop in the primary tab. Some topics load super fast while others (including main page) take like 15-20 seconds. Not a big deal, but not quick either. Edit: this post was caught in the "saving" loop, too. But it only posted once. Does the same thing when editing.

I'm pretty sure I like this. Yeah it's complicated and I don't even 100% understand how it works but Disney World is also complicated and obviously felt the need to do something with more steps than "buy an express pass, get in the express line". I think my favorite problem that this solves is the fact that you have to make your reservations for all rides, including big-ticket rides, the day of. As a Central Floridian, one of the biggest annoyances has always been, for example, when Avatar Flight of Passage opened, Fast Passes were booked like 2 months out and nearly impossible to get unless you refreshed your phone 100x at 3:00 in the morning like a crackhead (I literally did that once and it worked! -no crack was involved). And people were doing shady sh*t like booking a hotel reservations in order to reserve it on Fast Pass, then canceling the reservation later to "game" the system. Yeah, it was great if you were going on vacation in October and wanted to book your Fast Pass times in advance, but it was a real PITA if my boyfriend and I decided to go, say, on Friday. I'm going to Cedar Point next week and I have no idea what time I'll ride Steel Vengeance at but I'm pretty cool with that. I just made the mistake of getting sucked into a few dozen freak-out comments on a post about it on Facebook and Claire from Illinois was moaning about how this is going to ruin her entire December vacation and how "not everyone can afford to pay for these things". Relax, Claire from Illinois. It's $15 and I literally just shelled out over $900 for 3 days of Fast Lane for 2 people at a less-busy park in Ohio. And honestly, I'd rather spend $15 at Cedar Point and ride my heart out on Iron Dragon and Blue Streak and then pay an extra $12 to ride Dragster the one time it's open. Although I'm pretty sure this visit, it won't be.

^^I honestly really appreciate this advice because we're going the last week of the month also and I didn't know they limited the number of FL+ now. I've always taken a wait-and-see approach since they used to be unlimited (or seemingly unlimited, I've never been unable to purchase in-park before 2020 when they weren't an option). Now we're definitely going to get them in advance. Question- usually in-park, there's a discount for Platinum passholders where you pay for FL and get a free upgrade to FL+ and this doesn't seem to be an option anywhere online. Is this still a thing? I might just try and give guest services a call and see if they can do it by phone or something like that. Also, I clicked that CP webcam link posted (thanks Bert!) and watched for a few minutes and Millennium Force doesn't seem to be running. Does anybody know what's going on with it?

^How much are FL+ prices going for with Platinum pass discount? We're going at the end of the month and it sounds like things are going pretty good this year!

^Yeah, it looks like BAD in person. Some spots are better than others but you can tell how horribly the rust bubbles the exterior of the track in a number of places and you have to wonder how deep in the rust goes.

^The park is never busy. We went for about 2 hours the week before last and it was *so* busy that we had to park in the overflow lot, yet the Comet was about a 2-3 train wait (although takes about 25 minutes still because operations at this park are dismal), Steamin Demon was only filling 2/3 of the train, and Canyon Blaster and a few of the newer, but a few years old, flats such as the Extreme Supernova up by the Comet were closed. The main thing you'll have to wait for is, as it's a Six Flags park, if someone has an exit pass, is too large to ride, or the smallest slightly unusual inconvenience appears, all operators at that given ride will take several minutes to figure out what is going on, call a superviosr, halt all operations etc until they figure out what is going on. Alpine Bobsled was open all day and we genuinely wanted to ride it, but the park was only running 2 trains and only loading the first 2 rows of them...meaning the total max capacity of the ride at any given time was 8 people. The park owns a total of 6 trains and I didn't see any in the transfer track area (in the past there's always been 1-2 sitting there), so I have to genuinely wonder about the state of the ride's maintenance. There has to be a maintenance/weight-related reason why they'd only load 2 rows out of 4. The track is also very rusty and the back of it is bubbling horribly in a number of places. I know that rumors of it's demise have been around for years but I can't help but think that it's being run into the ground and they just haven't received the funds to remove it yet.

Instead of a new coaster in this area, what I'd really like to see Cedar Point do is move some of the other rides in that spot around, if possible, open up that waterfront area and build some kind of multi-use space with a more modern hotel, a restaurant/bar or two, some retail space, maybe have the hotel/building have some kind of pass-through below so the beach area is visible from inside the park, with some comfortable outdoor seating etc. I think something like this would enhance the resort feel of the park and give park and resort guests more after-hours options than TGI Fridays. Something like this should also bring in tons of cash to build that new coaster everybody wants to speculate about.

Thanks for your help, I'll give them a call! I can't help but wonder if maybe there's some kind of setting on their website preventing sales based on location.

I haven't seen anything but I'd love to see the photos of re-tracking.

^Sorry for the late reply and thank you for checking! I can choose the date 9/26 on the calendar too, but then when I go to the next step (where it should let you pick a ticket category), I get a blank page with no ticket options to choose. Are you seeing the same?