IronWolfman

Hopefully will be hitting the park tomorrow, first time in 10 years! How busy is the park for labor day weekend? I know Sunday of labor day is usually one of the busiest days at a many parks but hoping lines won't be too bad. Any tips or tricks? I'm hearing arive by 10:30 or earlier and book it to the water park to knock out some of the larger slides before they get crazy lines.

Any chance that Fast Lane will sell out early this Saturday (6/17)? I'm flying in and won't get to the park until 1-2pm. It'll be my first visit and I know I'm going to need it, but don't want to buy it ahead of time in case there's any flight issues.

I don't think so. Rumor is SFDK is also removing theirs.

Yeesh, really glad I postponed my first visit to this park that I was supposed to take this weekend. No Mr. Freeze would have sucked.

^That is the only downside to using the phone FP and not waiting in the FP line. SF still hadn't worked out how to apply any of you membership/pass benefits to the FP when you purchase it online, at least they hadn't when I visited SFMM in November. I know Diamond members automatically get like $10 off, and some parks run big discounts at certain times (SFFT in March last year had the Gold FP down to $40 with my membership), but as far as I've been able to figure out, you can only get these by buying in the actual FP office in-person. From there you have the option to either get the Qbot or the phone version. I really like the phone version over the Qbot, but if you want to use it without actually visiting the FP office (thus buying it online), then I believe there's no way to apply any discounts.

Gonna be at the park on Thursday & Friday, and per the Queue Times site I'm not thinking it'll be too busy. Glad everything other than JTA is open (well.. except for now Ice Breaker to those under 54" I guess ), and was able to get some discounted Quick Queue's a while back for Thursday that should allow for maximum marathon-ing of the big three B&Ms. I have a few questions if anyone might be able to answer them: Does the park start allowing people in prior to 10? We have bus option (Lynx 111) that gets us as ~10min walk from the park entrance, arriving at either 9:08 or 9:38. If they start letting guests in at 9:30, I'd rather take the earlier option to get there and set up QQ/lockers/dining plan before 10, so we can rope-drop Ice Breaker (not included in the QQ). Someone was saying that this park may open Manta at 10 but the rest of the park at 11, similar to how SWSA just opens Steel Eel for the first hour, making this above question moot. Is that their typical ride opening process? If I wanted to get wrist bands for the dining pass/QQ, do I just do so at Guest Services? It'd be a little bit of a nuisance carrying around the page print-outs all day, and since I have both QQ passes on my phone, it'd be a little bit of a hassle to swipe between them every time we use them (in comparison to a wristband). Heavily looking forward to this first time visit!

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Very excited, and very glad this will be open before my first SWO visit almost a week later!

I'm glad you found a cheap car rental, that's the best option really if you can get a good deal. I got one for my first visit in June, but the cheapest ones I could find were in the $250-300 range for my 3-day August & November trips.

I believe Viper & G.A.S.M were only designed to have 3 on the track at a time, after SF & Arrow saw that 4 wasn't working super well with Shockwave, and Viper only has 3 storage tracks. I'd bet the park has at least 4 trains for Viper after the prior two mega loopers closed, but usually 1-2 running with 1-2 on the storage track, and 4th somewhere else. I really like the ride in it's current state, and those Arrow trains look great & are so classic, but since my head clears the top of the restraint, I have zero headbanging issues compared to most people shorter than my 6'0". I think vest trains would be better for most riders and would improve/extended it's popularity, as well as preferably replacing track on some bad transitions & the bottom of the drop (the rapid jostling side-to-side there is actually the most uncomfortable part of the ride for me currently).

^Uber service is EXTREMELY spotty from the park. Getting there wasn't too long of a wait with Uber from BUR in August, but getting back.. I was unable to get one and had to walk almost two miles to my hotel in Valencia back on my August trip. Let alone trying to get back to Burbank. When I did the same DEN-BUR trip in November, I used Burbank Bus' Orange "Noho-Airport" route from BUR to the North Hollywood transit station, Santa Clarita Transit's 757 express bus route from there up to the McBean Regional Transit Center in Valencia, and Santa Clarita Transit's 3/7 local bus route between McBean and the park. Can use the 757 and Orange buses back down to Burbank & BUR too, which I did in both my August and November trips. Those bus schedules (somewhat easily found with a google search) don't really work for a all-in-one day trip, and don't give a great amount of park time for a one night trip either. But, I spent ~15 hours at the park between two nights/three days (one full and two partial days at the park) back over Oct 31-Nov 2 for about ~$400-450 total trip cost, though I have a SF membership covering park admission & a cheap hotel in Castaic, and only spent ~$15 on transportation with the bus systems. It honestly worked best with the earlier park close time of 6pm, as the last bus (that connected to my other local bus to my hotel) going out from the park was 6:30-6:45ish, and the park was pretty empty during the Nov weekdays. Would not trust Uber to get you around almost at all outside of Burbank, but the bus systems were extremely useful and reliable, no more than 2-3min late max in either my August or November trips.

^Those were always convenient when heading up to X2 & Viper, but definitely old. There's really no others that close by, as the bathrooms inside nearest to the front gate have been closed off on my visits (while the ones outside the gate but inside security are open), and from there in that direction it'd be all the way up to Tatsu. Would be great if they could replace those or put some new ones up the hill closer to Viper/Chop Six.

Hey everyone, I was just able to book a trip for pretty cheap to visit the park for February 24th+25th. Hoping that'll be after Ice Breaker opens (though I don't expect to ride it very much due to its New Hotness status), but also hope that I didn't just lock myself into a time when any of the major coasters are down for scheduled maintenance. I cannot seem to find their scheduled closures page on either desktop or phone app, even though their FAQs say it should be somewhere on the Park Hours page. Not worried about Kraken or Manta since they'll be through that before the end of the year, but unsure about Mako.

With that new picture, looks like maybe a Ghostrider-esque GCI redo?

Though it's nothing to that extent, my office is a 10min walk from Elitches' entrance, so over summer I did a similar activity in just getting lunch there every day. It was well worth the deal, but I can't imagine doing that twice daily for years as my main source of food I'm almost interested in seeing a before & after of this guy...