IronWolfman

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...

I'm definitely keeping my eyes open to expectations, a potential shutdown, visitor regulations, etc., and fortunately have trip insurance for my flights, which were already very cheap & bought with prior flight credits. Nothing else would be bought until I was already there, so no big loss in canceling if there's a shutdown. To be fair, SFMM hadn't had the greatest year either under their Covid regulations until those were loosened to what I believe is very similar to what SFGAm is currently operating at, and I managed to make my two trips out there work very well. Though I don't think they've had as bad of staffing issues as SFGAm. Even with the mask rules and occasional distancing I've had a blast at many parks this year, so if it's only mask requirements and many flats being closed by the time I'm going, I should have fun. Would love to visit BGT, but pretty much saving trips to all the SEAS parks until their delayed projects open (aside from SWSA which I visited in March).

Hey everyone, I just took an opportunity to plan a trip to Chicago/SFGAm for pretty cheap, looking at visiting a partial day Sept. 25 and all day Sept. 26. The last time I was at this park was 10 years ago, and I was a 13 (with that timeframe & higher pain tolerance, you can maybe guess where my username came from), so very much looking forward to getting back as an adult. X-Flight, Goliath, Joker, Maxx Force, and Little Dipper will all be new to me as well. I definitely understand the park has been a bit of a mess this year in terms of staffing & what smaller rides have been open, but I'll mainly be going for the coasters, and according to Queue-TImes it seems there hasn't been any major ones down for a long time. For my full day at the park on Sunday, I'm planning to get the Flash Pass. Does anyone know if the cordoned-off area before rope drop includes the Flash Pass office, or if usually rope occurs before actual 11am opening so that I may be able to get my FP before coasters start accepting guests? After I get it, I may try to wait out the normal queue that's accrued for Maxx Force already so that I can use my one-time (Platinum only) FP entrance later in the day, but I know the line can hit an hour+ pretty quickly. I know this year is, of course, going to be different than the past, but how/when do crowds usually arrive for these Fright Fest days? It seems for at lot of parks (my local Elitches for example), crowds start to build up later than usual as many guests don't like to show up too early before the Haunts & nighttime activities during FF. Along with that and it being a September Sunday, anyone think it may not be too packed for the first few hours at least? For the 25th, I'll probably just be there for the last 5 or so hours of the day, and definitely expecting Fright Fest Saturday night lines. Really just gonna try and get the non-FP coasters Dark Knight (just a maybe since I've been on it), Little Dipper, and American Eagle before possibly Demon and finishing with Raging Bull. Again, really anticipating this return, so any tips y'all can give would be super helpful!

After seeing that post in the Carowinds thread about how they're not going to run Fury for Scarowinds (Their website has since been updated to include Fury), it reminded me that I didn't post in here after the Scarywood website got posted. It appears that Stunt Pilot, in addition to the expected Aftershock, will not be open for this event. With arguably the two best coasters in the park closed, as well as no Sunday dates, i think I'm going to skip out on the park when I visit Spokane in October.