prozach626

My wife just asked me what I was laughing about. I told her "Six Flags." She didn't have to ask any further questions.

Great photos and TR's. I feel like we don't see enough attention to WoF. Judging from the pictures it still looks like a beautiful park. Beerman was definitely hard to find during our visit a few years ago. Phil, if you want to, hit me up when or if you make a trip to SFSTL and Emily and I will try to join you. Sorry again to hear about the bad news, but if sounds like you're really bouncing back into the good life. Welcome to the Midwest. KC seems to be a neat city. Sounds like there's no need to add anything new if the park is busy. Especially if people are already coming for the thrill seeking offerings.

Yeah. It's the #7 flange on the flex joint. They're tossing in a box and sending over the pond right now.

Yep. At least it won't suck as bad as KI's giga will.

Sounds like it was just intended to be a fun coaster to fill the void between the garbage coasters and their three great intense coasters. Seems like it did the trick, honestly.

I hate myself for watching those videos.

That and the weather was beautiful.

This was Indianapolis, which is a couple hours away. But, we do want to briefly explore Cincinnati on one of our many trips to KI sometime. I think we've been to KI over 10 times since 2013 and we've yet to hit the city aside from one night after the park where it was the nearest Hyatt that wasn't booked. Even then, we just went straight to bed and stopped for breakfast on the way out of town.

^Lol. I'm glad I clarified that it was a real comment. I roll my eyes every time I see someone joke about some obsene new addition. *******On another note**** Emily and I took kind of a last minute trip Saturday. We usually leave at 5am or so that morning and drive back the next day, but we hit Indianapolis the night before. We spent a couple hours eating dinner and walking around. I didn't realize how pretty the city was at night and how much active night life they had. City Circle: One of the 1,000 selfies we took this year: I'll put the rest into mostly into random cliff notes form: I know some of you have been hearing about me singing the coaster Blues this summer, but our trip hit the spot. It was a nice refresher. We love King's Island and even before the new giga I always end up feeling like it's my favorite park by the end of the night. We woke up the next day and did our usual hotel game plan strategy of a half asleep 20-30 minute quick workout, coffee chugging, breakfast eating, sun block applying, pre-game. Except this time we had to cover a two hour gap to the park. We got to the park after 11. We don't rush these things, anymore. Fast Lane Plus was necessary. The park was packed. We hit Banshee first and avoided a 30-45 minute wait immediately. We hadn't been digging it over the past couple visits, but our front seat ride kicked ass. The speed and 'feel' of the transitions on Banshee almost make it seem like a hyper, sometimes. It's hard to describe. I'm not complaining what-so-ever, but it seemed like the paint went from looking shiny and perfect last season to really starting to noticeably fade this season. We had a few rides on Mystic Timbers and our night ride was phenomenal. All of the props are still working great on the shed. FL+ makes this ride almost always walk-on. Beer Man is still killing it at this park and there are a lot of great patios to sit at. The one behind the hamburger/bar/whatever restaurant is great. It overlooks Diamondback's splashdown and it's almost directly under the lift. But, the restaurant really sucks at cleaning up the area and there was trash and leftover food everywhere. "Have a Six Flags day!" Racer was running great. Our side lost as usual. Seriously, we always lose on racers, not that it matters. It's just fitting. The Coney Mall refresh looks nice. The new antique cars look great and the course is long. Definitely better than average. The front midway refresh is beautiful. The German animated clock at Festhaus is great. All of the landscaping was well maintained. I noticed they had to plant new trees and the mature trees are gone. That sucks and I hope the new trees will grow quickly. Diamondback held a 10-15 minute minimum FL+ line all day. That's the first I've ever seen that. Even during the Haunt it eventually goes back down to a stairway wait. At one point it was almost completely full. I'll admit that Diamondback has developed a more noticeable rattle in the back seats. It's always been there, but it's more significant now. Just like on Behemoth, I was fine with it but it ruined it for Emily. Great. Seriously fffcking great. Now she's being picky about this and I know it's only a matter of time before she says she doesn't like B&M Hypers anymore, which have always been some of our favorite. She'll at least always be skeptical. How can you be OK with The Boss and and Beast, but not Diamondback??? For now, the back seat is off the table. The middle seats (yawn) are smooth. She loved the front still, but I'm legitimately concerned about this and slightly irritated. We already have to exclusively ride in the front on Inverts, which I'm OK with. But, I love back seat rides on hypers, even though we'll always try to squeeze in one front seat ride. Regardless of all that, every time I ride another good hyper I question if I like it better than Diamondback or not. I really liked Nitro and I thought it might be my new favorite. I try not to be over analytical about this stuff, but I'm always reassured that Diamondback is my clear favorite after not riding it for a while. It kicks major ass and I really hope the new Giga doesn't take away from that. Diamondback is so good and fast that the park could have almost indefinitely done without a giga. I never thought I'd say that, but I think it's true. That's not to be confused with me being incredibly excited about the new giga. If Emily ends up hating Diamondback, I'll end up hating her. The new giga construction site is massive and I got excited looking at it. Footers are still being poured, but a lot of them are finished. All of the footers around the station seemed ready for vertical construction. Land clearing looks finished. Snoopy/Charlie Brown/Race log flume whatever ride really took a crap on us. Are they always trying to completely fill logs, now? I love flumes. I thought only Great Adventure was trying to ruin them by filling the logs to max capacity? We avoided that flume for that reason. Usually we get a mild splash due to our light log (lol?), but we were grouped with a lady and her two kids instead of getting a log to ourselves. I knew we were screwed with the extra weight and we were in the back. I put my shoes up high on the inner ledge and hoped for the best. When we finally splashed down I tried to pull Emily back to try to sacrifice her in order to cover me. It didn't work. I saw the massive wave of water closing in on me in slow motion and I uncontrollably uttered an audible, "ffck..." I don't think the lady was pleased... It hit the worst case scenario and got my shoes wet, too. Eat sh*t Charlie Brown! The Beast is a little more rough this year than I remember, but it's still a great ride. We were going to cap off our night with it, but we got there right before the fireworks, which I forgot all about. The FL+ line looked about 15 minutes long and it was almost back to the exit merge. We were willing to wait. Then, some people came down from the FL+ station entrance and explained they were going to stop running trains because of the fireworks about to start. Expected. But, they also said the ride operators told them they were only going to run a few trains after the show??? This didn't seem right, but we were too far away from any employees and I didn't want to risk it. I regret that decision. We hit Diamondback instead, which totally delivers on night rides. But... Once again, we closed out another one of our coaster days on a sour note. We would have been on the lift hill JUST in time for the finale of the fireworks. All of the passengers rushed to their seats and we sacrificed a good spot on the train to sit in the middle in order to get on the ride. Almost everyone was on board with getting the hell on the train to see the fireworks from Diamondback! Except for the car in front of us. It would have worked out perfectly. The few people in front of us took their time and put their sh*t away in the bin. When one lady got back to her seat she spent a lot of time screwing around with her hair extensions to try to secure them for the ride or whatever the hell she was doing. She insisted on riding with her purse strapped around her and no one stopped it?? Right before the train was dispatched the fireworks stopped. Then, she ended up taking her sandals off and tucking them in her restraints. We sat in a lifeless middle seat, but at least I got to see her sandals fly off the train during the first airtime hill. I hope she enjoyed her walk back to her car. She sucks. All in all, it was our funnest park trip this summer since we went to Cedar Point early on. We even saw a ton of people our age without children, which is a nice reassurance. I will note that the music actually sucked, lol. Usually they play some current hits, but it was all like unknown artist pop-like music. I'm not really complaining, but it was weird. Everything else was great, except for our Uber driver taking 30 minutes to pick us up. "I thought you guys were at Soak City" despite our GPS location. Soak City? 10pm? She even drove right by us once and we were really fighting the clock to get to the Greaters ice cream shop next to our hotel so we could eat it in our room... We only got to Graeters with 2 minutes to spare. I understand why she said she used to live in a gated community with her husband, but when he passed he didn't leave her any money. King's Island rocks. I'm excited for next year. Of note, we also missed meeting up with Janae, which I didn't realize had messaged me on FB. That marks the 5th missed opportunity of meeting up with someone on TPR I would like have done, with most of them being my fault. Sorry. Peace.

It's a B&M Giga starting near where Firehawk was and running the length of Racer. Looks to be right around 300 feet from leaked blueprint calculations and about the same length of Leviathan. And this isn't just another one of those sarcastic exaggerated coaster jokes. It's going to be awesome. You can find a few renderings based on the blueprints online and there are some construction updates. I just saw the site on Saturday and they're still pouring footers at this point. All of the land clearing seems like it's done.

The driving in itself isn't an issue, but it's just a waste of time when your time is limited. Of course your trip across Pennsylvania isn't nuts. Last year we drove from STL to PA, hit everything, and then drove 13 hours back. It's just a road trip and I'm not sure why anyone would think that's nuts. Trust me, we spend plenty of time in the car during the summer (days), so my viewpoint is relevant. But, that's not the point I was making.

How were the lines? Copperhead Strike seems like something park guests would love, which is why I'm asking.

That would be a lot of wasted time traveling back and forth to SFSTL twice. I would do SFSTL getting in the gates for rope drop. Do the coasters first and work your way clockwise around the park, starting at Mr. Freeze and ending back at American Thunder. Freeze Pandemonium Boss Screamin' Eagle Boomerang (or skip) Mine Train Ninja Batman American Thunder, which by that time will be the longest wait. Cover whatever flats you missed. If you've been on a Justice League there's no reason to go on ours. If you haven't, then hit it prior to my aforementioned coaster order. SFStl isn't much of an all day park. On a Saturday you could be done with everything and a few re-rides by 5pm. Unless you want a night ride on Screamin' Eagle or a pitch black ride on Batman, you're not missing much after dark. Go get dinner and be at City Museum by 7. It's open until midnight. Go to our Zoo on Sunday. Or, as Bert suggested, go to Grant's Farm Sunday morning before your flight, BUT GET THERE 30 MINUTES BEFORE OPENING. Seriously, I've yet to even visit because even when we arrived on time it would have taken over an hour to get into the park.

Yeah, good guess...

I bet it's going to be a giga coaster... Has anyone used Uber to get to and from the park? Our hotel is about ten minutes away, but I don't know if they usually drive up to the drop off/pick up area and their availability on a Saturday night at closing.

The real definition of worse than normal:

I think it was actually Delta that screwed us over and they got us on a later flight with Air Canada, so that worked out. You're preaching to the choir on the night shift thing, so no problem. It's pretty easy to not interpret that as a joke.

Great. A Cheetah Hunt knockoff.

I suggested it. You are welcome. Not often that you hear people complaining that it only took half an hour to get through US customs. I wonder how it could have been so short? Nothing to do with arriving early! Just be aware that US preborder clearance at YYZ is notorious for long lines and delay (US customs is known for that worldwide) so my suggestion was based on what Toronto Pearson itself recommends, what my colleagues who work at the airport recommend and what I have experienced myself travelling out of YYZ (it is my home airport and I work there so I have "some" idea). Saying I can "eat s***" because you had to get up early and didn't get screwed over at customs....don't really know what to say. Would you say the same to someone who suggested getting to a park for rope drop so that you can ride stuff without having to wait in line? I am sorry your flight was delayed though...that is something I sympathise with. I wouldn't normally respond to stuff like your comment, but it sounded like you would much rather get stuck in an hour and a half long line up at US preborder clearance. Glad you didn't this time...…..who knows next time. I suggest you experiment afew times with flying back into the US from various locations before giving abuse to someone who has actually done it. Anyway......Glad that you had a good visit to the park...great pictures. Nah, it was just a joke. I also researched and everything you guys said, what I read from various sites online, and what I saw on Toronto Pearson's online source said to get to the airport three hours early. It was just a WTF moment since it didn't take very long and we got up so early. It worked out really well. We were able to relax in the diner right inside the terminal, drink coffee, and have a nice breakfast. Little did we know we had more time to kill... I think we were early enough to beat the US Customs morning rush. I think we were there at 5am. That's me in a nutshell. My TPR snapchat friends can attest to that.

No use GCI'ing Timber Wolf if it sounds like WoF can't even maintain their current GCI.

No offense but going on the last weekend of daily operation wasn't your best choice. HW goes to weekend operation this week and reduced their hours last week, which tells me a lot of their seasonal staff is done for the year. HW also isn't gonna cap crowds when they have people driving 3+ hours to visit their park. I will say this. (and I'm not defending HW's wait times on food as that's something they still need to drastically improve, especially in the waterpark) having worked in food service for a lot of years, anytime there is a boil water order, it slows all food operations down. Anything that requires water has to be boiled before it can be used. There's no way to prepare for that nor could you staff enough people keep up when there is probably 20,000+ people in the park. Sounds like it was just an all around crapy day for guests and workers too. I remember consistently waiting in hour plus lines on rides like Mine Train at SFSTL when I was very young. Parks used to be a lot more packed. But now it's 2019, so #capthenumbers. That's all great in theory until you arrive right when the attendance is capped. Maybe we can cap the numbers and then complain about the park not having enough money to add attractions? I think if people can go to events like Cedar Point's Haunt and still have fun despite the massive crowds and three hour waits then coaster enthusiasts can deal with a few packed days. It probably wouldn't have felt so bad if the boil order hadn't happened.

Someone's cell phone flew out of their hand and into the lake on Behemoth a couple weekends ago. Funny and satisfying.

Weird. Usually when a Six Flags park makes the news it's because of a massive teen brawl.

You might as well. There are a lot of Americans on here who've adopted Canadian spelling for whatever reason. Reverse assimilation? I suppose I don't pretend to be that cultured.

Damn. Not sure what kind of accident you had, but I'm glad you're getting back to the park. Have a fun trip.