SbSteveZ

Totally agree. Was just there today. I never complain about DL, but today was crazy. DL is what it is, but definitely needs a good coat of paint. Definitely need 2 trains on the coasters bottom line. The lines on Viper, Predator, ROS even ME and Morocoaster were out of the gatehouse and well on the path during peak time. Someone asked the ride attendant on the viper if there was a 2nd train. They said yes. Then asked why they were not running it. The attendant just shrugged and said don't know. The gatehouse is also in desperate need of paint. If they are going to do the whole fast pass thing fine, but 2 train op is a must. They had at one point 2 cars roped off on the viper just for fast pass with only. Unacceptable for 1 train op. This is DL, not Disney. Skyscreamer with 4 roped off double seats and fast pass, crazy since the ride is brand new. That's 8+ people in line unable to ride and it only holds 30 people; almost 1/3 of the ride can't be used each cycle. Doesn't it come with a warranty...lol. I would like to see the lights fixed on rides too. A lot of dead bulbs. Flat waits were not bad. As far as food goes, today it was slow as molasses. Long lines and only 1 person taking orders when there is 2-3 registers. Does anyone also know why they have all the parts for Sleigh Ride sitting outside the gatehouse verses in the maintenance area? That has kind of bothered me all season. Missing panel and lights like it was going to be set up, but looks like they ran out of time by opening day? Sabreeze is very well maintained in comparison, granted it is a smaller park. Like I said, it is what it is, I still like the park. Still had fun with the kiddos regardless. Just have to make sure I don't go on a concert day. I 100% agree on the whole Go Fast Pass issue. Blocking off two whole cars on Viper’s ONE AND ONLY train is absolutely unacceptable. Not to mention how long Viper’s ride cycle is. Bring back the second trains, then add Go Fast Pass. It’s totally unfair to everyone standing in line to essentially wait for one five-car train on Viper now. That capacity number is horrendous. Too cheap to pay for maintenance to the second train yet raking in profits from their fast pass sales. It wasn’t just viper, it was also ride of steel and Predator. I preferred it over the system Motocoaster was using where they just let fast pass people pick where they wanted to go. There was a group of 3 or 4 kids that just kept getting back into the fast pass line and riding the thing every other train because they had the wristbands and it made the line crawl. I don’t think that’s okay at all. But it happened!

When did SkyScreamer start breaking down and how bad are the waits now? I think I’ve seen one break down since its been open, but I’d assume it’s been down more than that with how many seats don’t work. Each time I’ve ridden the thing except maybe once it’s been via Go Fast Pass, from last month compared to this month the ride wait used to be pretty steady with 2-3 cycle wait, now it seems to be closer to 4-6 cycles with the line going outside of the queue pavilion thing. I feel like that may be due to the Canadian holiday and the concert this weekend but that’s all I’ve got

THIS JUST IN: - Corn Popper Works. - SkyScreamer now has FOUR sets of seats that don’t work - People are awful Thank you for coming to my SFDL news update

Just theorizing because he mentioned it could be a water ride and GR has been mentioned in the past as a removal candidate. : ( I always thought grizzly was a strong water ride, it would be a shame to see it removed...

^ Grizzly is fine, why would it need to be replaced?

Stopped by the park quick to see what was going on since I was nearby. I only managed to ride two rides as the park was packed and I didn't feel like waiting long for anything today since I'll be back tomorrow anyway with some family. Here's some updates / park info: - Parking was overflowing onto the lawn and overflow lot (directly next to the toll gate), the main lot did indeed have spots available but neither of the two regularly used paved lots were by any means empty. pretty nice to see the park busy and alive! - Motocoaster was down, as was Pirate (obviously), an employee was by the gate of Motocoaster (near the bridge) stating it would be down for at least another hour at 7pm, leading me to believe it would be down for the remainder of the evening. -SkyScreamer now has THREE sets of seats that are not currently available to riders. I know I'm one to consistently defend this park and get into unnecessary internet arguments for the place but come on... THREE seats? This ride has been open for only about three months... Welcome to the Darien Lake family, SkyScreamer, apparently things never change around here when it comes to ride maintenance... - Grande Wheel is back up and running, and had a 20 minute wait or so based on the amount of folks in the queue. - Speaking of queue times, the rides I checked on had queue times as follows: - Viper: 30-45 minutes - Mind Eraser: 20-30 minutes - Sky Screamer: 30-45 minutes - Ride of Steel: 60-75 minutes - Ride of Steel Go Fast Pass: 20-30 minutes - Predator: 30-45 minutes - Boomerang: 15-20 minutes - Scrambler: 20-30 minutes - Either I haven't noticed it yet or they have just recently installed them since my last visit, but there are completely new speakers on the RoS Midway and the Main Entrance Pathway leading up to the fountain. - Apparently they now have membership "exclusive ride time" in the morning? I Assume it runs from 10:00-10:30am. I'm not sure if they changed the time of Hotel/Campground Early Ride Time from 9:30, but if they didn't that would mean resort guests could get up to 1 hour of early entry which could be pretty nice for the young ones to run around and enjoy the open rides before the park opens to the public. There is a little truss-archway thing to the right of the main entry path by the Splahshtown gift shop and they now also have a sign advertising it. This perk is valid for Gold Plus up to Diamond Elite members. - A new feature that I finally saw pop up on my phone was in-park wifi. I couldn't get it to work right, but I was trying in the Boomerang queue and really only gave it about 5 minutes of thought. Maybe tomorrow, we shall see. - For what its worth, I didn't notice any signs of 2020 hubbub. But also honestly I didn't look too hard for anything. We didn't see much activity for SkyScreamer until just before the season kicked off, I'm not so sure 2020 construction will be much different... Unless "East Coast Racers" comes to SFDL instead of SFGAdv of course Only a couple pictures to support some points above. Three in a row too. Convenient for pictures, not for riders. It says it worked, but my apps and webpages failing to load says it did not. Maybe next time! New Speaker NERD SHOT! It's nice to see small touches continuing to roll out at the park as the season progresses.

With the intention of coming back to the park at least once before the regular season ends (August 20 according to the park map) I’m curious, how are crowds this time of year? Especially weekends? Was yesterday’s packed parking lots and busy park with long lines an outlier or is that common for this park?

^ We also got those rain tickets, but they say 2020 on them. Am I correct in assuming they aren’t valid until next year? If that’s true it would be a total bummer because I’ll be moving down to Florida and likely won’t be able to use them if I can’t use them this season... Maybe it was just me but I was fine with the operations today. We took it slow and maybe that’s why I didn’t care as much but we got on the rides we did go on relatively quickly and/or efficiently considering the line. Steel Curtain’s line was almost consistently moving which I was very happy to see and was very glad to get a ride on that and phantom before the rain kicked in and shut the place down.

I love your ideas except for one part. The stupid god awful VR. I tried it at Wonderland a few years back. It’s not that great and it would just make the already horrendous darien operations even slower. Also I doubt any fire effects would ever happen. Even when it was superman last time the most it had was some mist after the drop, and apparently they were too cheap to keep some simple mist even running anymore. Synchronized fire effects are already in use at the park for their laser show, if they wanted to continue using similar tech for a Rollercoaster - especially with Six Flags being the one to pay for it (at least at first) then I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they had it somewhere for “dramatic effect” If Bizarro at SFGAdv can run with fire when it’s dead, then Darien can do it to (if that’s what ends up happening)

^ grizzly run is such a hidden gem with its location in the back corner and I’m a huge fan of that. The thing that strikes me as weird about them adding another water ride into the park is that the water park is free to enter from within SFDL making most water attractions within the park almost unnecessary. Maybe they replace hooks with that spinning “spray the riders and / or the onlookers” ride thing they added to Great Escape a couple years ago? Like a happy medium between water ride and theme park ride? Is it obvious that I’m not a big water park person? I’m not even sure if that’s where those types of rides belong!

^ Ever since they took out the bucket on top of the play area that section has really started to show its age. I'm sure kids and families would love to have some sort of revamp of that area now that the complex is close to 20 years old (I believe). Perhaps that plus some retheme / repaint of RoS / ME (ala Superman at Great Adventure and V2 at Discovery Kingdom this year - doesn't really need to be marketed but TOTALLY could be if they chose to go that route)

Thank you! I'll take this over the crazy processing fees Goldstar requires

New question! Has anyone here ever heard of Goldstar before? If so would you recommend getting tickets from them? Apparently they sell for only $32 each for 3 people as opposed to the Kennywood site offer of $49.99 each. https://www.goldstar.com/events/west-mifflin-pa/kennywood-amusement-park-tickets

Yep! Not sure for how long but at least since last week it’s been back up and running!

Let people enjoy discussing a park on its thread and please stop trying to shoot ideas and thoughts down because you find them unrealistic. It’s not just you but it’s happened enough here that it was worth saying something. Bill is right about one thing for sure, it’s not that serious. It’s just a hobby. And that’s my point. Just let people enjoy it. Darien Lake ain’t much but it’s a nice park that a lot of us are happy to have practically in our backyards. It’s a WNY tradition and people over here really like the place. Sorry if people can’t tolerate that... That’s it. Looking forward to 2020 regardless. I’m glad to see my home park getting attention and once again being a part of a large theme park company. And for the record - I’ve been on the side of “repaint and retheme a ride and call it new” since last year’s announcement. My actual expectations aren’t at all anything exciting. Trust me. That’s really all I’ve got, hopefully that helps.

Welcome back, boldikus I’m glad you can take enjoyment out of people discussing things on a discussion thread. Are people not allowed to talk about what they think would be nice to see at the park? None of us are demanding anything of the park, and most of us have pretty realistic expectations for the place too. However looking at the past two years alone it’s safe to say that the Darien Lake additions we’ve come to expect, and what we’ve gotten aren’t exactly lining up. I would’ve never thought we’d have a new Rollercoaster and then a 245’ tall swing ride installed back to back yet here we are. People discussing the possibility of an RMC conversion that has been rumored for years is not ridiculous, it’s just drawn out. Can you blame people though? Especially knowing Six Flags’ history with the company? People discussing the idea of the 4D Freespin rides coming to a park like Darien Lake isn’t ridiculous either. Since coming into production in 2015, Six Flags has built 7 of those things. One every year with the exception of 2017 when they built 3 of them. It’s safe to assume they’re going to likely continue to add these to parks since they’re small, pack a punch and are easily marketable. I don’t see the issue with discussions relating to something like that in any way. People discussing things like a giant discovery is also not ridiculous or non-sensible as again, Six Flags has been adding those in fairly large quantities for a few years now. The only thing that we already have that would’ve also likely been added by Six Flags is our Larson Looper. We already have it, so no need to discuss it - however when the transition happened, it came up almost immediately. Folks on here are NOT demanding RMC Predator, Joker Coaster, Giant Discovery, Ground Up Steel Record Breaker, etc. they are DISCUSSING the possibility of those additions in some point at the park, and that’s pretty much the whole point of this thread. Discuss Darien Lake, or more effectively - Discuss SIX FLAGS Darien Lake. I will not apologize and I assume others won’t either for discussing things that have characteristically shown up at multiple Six Flags parks over time. If you think that’s crazy, I’m sure there are plenty of other threads that you can enjoy on here. I can’t believe how quick people are to pick on this park or people who enjoy it. If you don’t like the park or you don’t like what we have to say about it, you can just as easily leave us alone and go on with your day so we can go on with ours. /end rant

I think my favorite thing about this is that they have the park based in Pennsylvania yet instead of using one of the many amazing parks in the state, they chose Canada’s Wonderland instead. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just love that concept since it’s almost ironic that they didn’t use a PA Park (is this a Canadian production? I know they have some strict rules about locations for filming, I wonder if that’s why they chose Wonderland?) Regardless it’s always awesome to see parks like this! But come on, they expect me to believe the exit for the park is between drop tower and leviathan (or PennsylMania if I remember correctly)? Nice try, Hollywood. Nice try.

Completely ignoring CoasterBill here and responding to a productive message Yes, Predator has re-opened. As of last Wednesday it was up and running. I’m not sure how much track work was actually done to it but it seems like it was back up and running pretty quickly so I can’t imagine it was anything major.

^ Dang thats a bit of a bummer, though I’d of course rather have Steel Curtain, I am quite the fan of laser shows as well.

^ On our last trip to SFGAm this was our experience with the Joker, and a photo that I think perfectly summarized how that ride went for us. Legs straight in the air having a blast. If this thing were to ever end up at Darien Lake I’d be an incredibly happy camper

Out of curiosity - I've been seeing around that Kennywood used to have a laser show at least up until 2017. is this still the case?

^ I’m really not one to want to push a rumor at all, but speaking specifically of Freespins, this summer I’ve been on two of them (with the hope of riding a third one next month) and they are fantastic as far as I’m concerned. I’ve had some tamer rides on them and a couple that were over the top insane. Something like that at my home park would be so exciting that I wish the teeny tiny rumor that there was even a possibility for one to come to Darien Lake was true. And who knows, maybe it will be. Total Mayhem at SFDL in 2020? 2021? Who knows! That’s the fun part

^ I can promise it’s not just you Team Freespin 2020 (or whenever, it would just be nice to have one closer to home)

New for 2020: SuperMoose Ultimately on the Loose in the new DC Superfriends land

From what I understand they were waiting to see if attendance this year (2019) would change with the new passes / memberships before investing in licensing for the park. If this is the case, based on how I’ve seen the park this summer compared to the last 5 years, I’d say this is on track to be one of the best attendance years for the park in quite some time. You simply can not beat the cost. A friend of mine pays about $40 a month for her entire family and they have as a result been visiting almost every weekend and sometimes during the week too and they never had passes to any park before because of the cost. Something tells me they are far from the only ones, and I’d assume that means good news for Darien Lake