prozach626

I think this merger will be good for our park. If all else fails, at this point can it be any worse? Maybe it's because I'm almost 40 years old and my perspective has changed, but I only remember the park being as bad as it is now once or twice in the past. I can't give you an exact timeline. Things seemed to peak at the park right around the time Dave Roemer retired. Outside of HITP, it seemed to level out, and then go on a gradual decline from there. Regardless, I hope CF/SF bulldozes the carousel and has a bonfire with all of the horses. I can't wait until new management finds out how long it has been in the "restoration" process. It will probably be fun to see how many mechanical failures it's going to have when it runs after sitting for five years.

I look at it as losing a flavor. You had Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Now, you just poured both drinks into one glass. So what does that do for the people who love Coca-Cola, but didn't really like Pepsi? Now, you can't have Coca-Cola without tasting Pepsi.

Keep your fucking superheroes and hair gel advertisements away from Kings Island and Cedar Point. I'm putting all my money on this is going to suck for anyone over the age of 22.

The problem with our park is that it treats general maintenance as a substitution for new or additions. Sometimes this comes along with a budget addition. You shouldn't have to hit the brakes and take a breather every couple years to do the shit you should have been doing all along. If there isn't enough maintenance staff for this during the off season then contract it out. Landscapers, painters, carpenters, etc. Hire them yesterday. Rookie Racer wasn't a hand-me-down like Boomerang. It was a reallocation of resources, and a damned good one. There shouldn't be any grievance there. Joker will be a great addition. We're one RMC and a lot of TLC away from being a good park again. I'm not even going to mention the other thing.

Ok... I give up. Prior to Holliday in the Park, we hadn't been to Six Flags Saint Louis in five years. It had just gotten too bad, there were no new attractions, and it was a shitty teenage paradise. Josh convinced us to go back for HITP and we had a blast. Maintenance and upkeep was on the upswing. We were season pass holders up until they canceled HITP. The park just got a much needed addition and is getting a much needed great thrill ride next year. But, the place looks like an absolute shithole. So many landscaping areas were mostly bare, full of dirt, trash, and dying weeds. Everything looked dirty. New paint was needed throughout. It wasn't a pleasant place to be. Ride operators were switching between rides in the kids section. It hilariously left other parent's bewildered when they said, "I'll be back in a few minutes. I have to go run another ride." lolol. I wasn't taken off guard. The trick-or-treat section was hilariously bad. There were a few props and photo taking opportunities. They had one person handing out bags, and two stations for people giving out candy. It seriously looked like a back yard setup, or something you would see at a very small pumpkin patch. We saw the hay maze open one time, and none of the other kid friendly Halloween attractions were open. The funniest part was we sat in the haunted bar (name?) for a half hour with our other family members. We left and came back an hour later to grab a couple more beers. The bartender fucking asked us if we were eating and drinking plenty of water, being dead serious. lololol wtf. Thanks for making me feel like a degenerate for my second round. She was condescending as hell. We paid almost $200 to be there. I don't feel like we got our money's worth. It wasn't a shocker, so we didn't really sweat it. Luckily, the kids had fun, but they're too young to know any better. We stayed a few hours and left well before 6, when all of the weird 'too into Halloween' people started showing up. When you can't tell who is dressing up and who isn't, it's time to bounce. It's blatantly obvious things are not going well. SF Great America didn't look much better in the Summer. SF has no appeal for me anymore. We'll probably go again once next year in the summer, just because it's close. Hopefully Eve will be interested in Rookie Racer by then. (probably not) I tried to hold it in.

I've never seen more of a reason for a school monitored trunk-or-treat in my entire life.

Honestly, I just can't believe what an absolute shit show this park is. All parks and employers in general are struggling with staffing, and it can't be seen more than at SFSTL. There just aren't enough working people anymore to sustain this place. It's like people just vanished. There are countless better things to do around the area than this park, now.

Insane

So we went. I'm just going to go the route of, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

Thanks! Sounds fun.

What is all the crap we can do tomorrow afternoon with our kid, as far as Halloween goes?

My wife and I went to KI on Saturday. In general, I just can't believe the stark contrast between how well KI is maintained compared to our trip to SFGam in August. Outside of trick or treating and Oktoberfest at our local STStl this weekend, I really have no desire to go to any other SF parks for a while. We stayed during the day from 12-2. We got FL. We did one lap on (non JR) coaster except The Beast, because we wanted a night ride, and The Bat, because we don't really like it. We also skipped Back Lot, because Back Lot. Our only non coaster was the antique cars. They're so well done, but I feel like a complete child when we FL in front of all the families. The park was very clean, the themeing is just right, and the new themeing around Adventure Express was really high quality for an old ride. KI really takes care of all of their attractions, not just the newest, biggest, or fastest. Our seat on Adventure Express were more jerky then rides in the past, so I didn't really have fun on it. By contrast, the non-wheel middle seat on Racer was very smooth with floater air. The new area in general was well done. I like how you can get a good view of Banshee from where the bungee ride was located. It's nice to watch from the patio, while having a beer. It looks like KI spared no expense with the large planters surrounded by massive stones. We left and came back around 5, drinking a couple beers and people watching, after one of three rides on Mystic Timbers, our only repeat coaster of the trip. After 6, we used our Fright Lane passes, doing every haunt once. We virtue signaled and gave away our last Haunt of of choice option to a dude and his 'just barely old enough for the Haunt' daughter. All of the Haunts were well done, except the corn field one. Whatever it was called. The line looked at least an hour long and it was total hilarious trash composed of wooden fence and cornstalks. Slaughterhouse upped its game, so did the science one by Orion. Killmart is still awesomely hilarious, because of the cheesy nostalgic theme. Some of the mazes were a little confusing. Us, and other groups, kept walking into the scare actor areas. One even looked like some kind of a break area with a table and chair. lol. It was kind of fun to get chased out, since the actors could tell it was purely accidental. I'm glad we weren't the only ones. Fast Lane was useless for us until about 10 PM. Prior to that, we tried to wait in line for The Beast. We were about 20 feet outside of the station building. After about 5 minutes, the line did not move, but the standby line was cooking. I'm convinced the Fast Lane line was a longer wait. I was bummed we weren't going to get our Beast night ride, but we bounced from the queue. I wouldn't have been surprised if the Fast Lane line was over an hour. Similarly, we knew we were screwed when we got into Diamondback and saw the FL line about half full. People were sitting on the first set of steps comfortably like they had been there a while. Again, after a few minutes of not moving, we left the queue. The standby line had a healthy amount of movement, and I believe the FL wait would have been over an hour there as well. This dampened the mood a bit. Long waits are way less fun when you find yourself actually not moving. I even heard one dude in the regular queue saying FL looked like it had a longer wait. I can't remember what we did. We probably had a couple more beers... for $27 for two. Things are going so well. By about 10 PM, we shared a Pizza/Breadstick Larosa combo. It was OK. By that time there were plenty of unattended teens taking advantage of the chaos and not bothering to pay. Cool. Finally, FL queues cleared out, and before 11 we took our third and final ride on Mystic Timbers and another ride Diamondback. Both are probably my favorite rides in the park. They offer phenomenal night rides, tailing The Beast. Speaking of which, The Beast queue was similar to what it was earlier, which we checked one last time in between Mystic Timbers and Diamondback. Bummer. We looked around and saw mostly teens, which was one of the reasons to leave. We were out of the parking lot by 11. Things were getting a little obnoxious and we didn't want to feel like total trash on our five hour ride home in the morning. We had a decent trip, even if the FL waits dampened the mood for a portion of the night. That, and no matter how much I keep trying to kid myself, we're just not into it like we used to be since we had our daughter. We kind of talked about that before Mystic Timbers and Diamondback pepped us up. It was a much needed trip to spend time together alone, but it's just as fun for us to watch Eve ride all of the bullshit kids rides. We'll probably skip The Haunt next year. If we go back to the park, we'll go on a Friday in mid-summer, possibly with our daughter. On another note, I really tried to like Orion more, but I finally admitted that it just doesn't thrill me compared to Diamondback and Mystic Timbers. It might even be behind (front seat) Banshee. We should have asked for the front, because it's the only place on the train that really does much for me. Cheers.

They were one fireball away from Six Flags.

^It's really smart. The designs are all finished, which has to reduce costs. Literally almost no one, myself included, will ever travel to other countries to ride their clones. Although... enthusiasts still complained American Thunder (SFSTL) was a clone from Finland.

How many family coasters added in the US does this make, between this year and next? Back to the bread and butter.

Hooooooly shit. That line for one train opps on a family coaster? There's no way I would wait in that if I didn't have a kid, or maybe at all. I wonder if the audio track will already be toast by the start of 2024? It's awesome that even with the loud audio, you can still hear Freeze roaring and kicking ass after over 20 years. How's the trick or treat and October Fest been going? I think we're going to check it out in a couple weeks.

I guess we can expect Joker sometime around 2025.

It seems like there is a lot of family focus on roller coaster additions lately. Just in time for my daughter to be scared shitless of every roller coaster, and any ride with a tunnel. (because "bears"...)

yep

I would have never guessed.

There's nothing I like more than making myself feel better than other people who are trying to have a leisurely care-free time at a theme park. I personally try to take it as serious as possible. Since I have less stressors in my life, I wish those who worked hard all week caring for families would be way more diligent. Keeping kids in line and having multiple different things going on at once isn't an excuse for making an occasional mistake. People are fucking dumb. If everyone went to theme parks all the time, instead of begrudgingly doing it every couple years to avoid the huge pain in the ass with kids, life would be better for me.

We were planning on going to the park next year. Eve will hit the 39" marker easily by then. But, she now has a fear of roller coasters, log flumes, and anything too exciting. It all went to shit when I coaxed her into going on two roller skaters. Looks like we're going to the beach next year...

That looks amazing. Lou Malnatis in Chicagoland does this great. It goes well with their cornmeal based crust, which gets really crispy. It almost has like a glazed over butter crust on the bottom. Even better, they layer the bottom with sausage on their most popular classic style. I look forward to that more than I do dealing with the shit bums at SFGam, when head up that way.

Looks pretty cool. Thanks for sharing.

Let's be honest though. They're going to find a way to at least partially screw this up by over complicating it and making it significantly less reliable than a standard lift.