batmanfan80

Went there the 2nd, the 10th, and yesterday. 2nd and 10th both had short lines with a lot of walk ups after like 5 PM. Yesterday was garbage. Lot was maybe 25% fuller but everything had long lines. Luckily the Peking show was easy to get good seats for and the concessions lines were real short. Not factoring Flash Passers: Whizzer 45 (queue about 75% full) Demon 45-60(queue about 80% full) Eagle 30-40(line down to the walkway below the blue stairs) Raging 60(queue overflowing but they weren't using the North section) Goliath 90-120(queue overflowing) Justice League 90-120(queue completely full) X Flight 60(queue about 100%) Viper 60(queue about 80%) The rest I didn't walk by. X Flight's line barely moved the several minutes we hung around the area. My guess is hundreds of flash passers and closer to a 120 min wait. They should really suspend or severely limit flash passes from mid-July til the end of the season. You get flash passers having a great time and everyone else stuck in these miserable waits. The single rider line at Justice League did not take long at all on the 10th. Goliath single rider line is a scam. Takes just as long as the regular line(60 min on the 10th). Pretzelman was running one train on the 10th toward 9 PM and was extremely slow dispatching. People started jumping in the single rider line at the stairs and the employees must've stopped grouping it because people behind us who jumped were all getting on together and the regular line just completely froze. Getting in line at 9:40, we had been there til like 10:15 and would've taken til 11 to get on the ride had we stayed bc hundreds behind us kept jumping into the single rider line. Batman's line on the 10th moved faster than ever. They were grouping. Liked the ride a lot better that time. Loved Viper on the 2nd and borderline hated it on the 10th bc it felt much more violent, hard slam on the first drop. Odd how rides vary so much. Raging Trimbrake's crew have been pretty efficient at dispatches too this year. Demon seems a bit smoother too. The loops weren't whiplashing me like usual. X-Flight's smoothness hasn't completely come back, just like the missing water effect. Hopefully there's some decent days left this year. I wasn't even gonna go til my wife bought the passes. At this point the dinner pass and the free refill bottles are just as much a reason to come here as the rides.

Went last Saturday. Hard to gauge the lines, but they seemed worse than last year at this time until around 5 PM. Passed by Pretzelman and the sign said 60 min, I think. Condor was no wait. Balloons had us waiting a couple cycles. Crawler was no wait and still in perfect order, more spins than ever, prob about 30. Batman's line was completely full. Roaring Rapids had a line all the way down its walkway before it broke for about 20 min. When it got back up, the flash pass line was probably about 50 people who showed up almost all at once. Ride was pretty fluid without as much start and stop as usual. Lots of people walking around with flash passes. Yankee Clipper took around 40-60 min. V2 line looked about 40% full, same with Goliath. Train took us around at about 5 and revealed there weren't really any big lines for Demon(25 min), X Flight(not even at the keyhole), and Whizzer didn't look bad either. Eagle red is becoming almost unrideable, it's that violent in the helix. Almost at Mean Streak level violent. The good parts of the ride are awesome. X Flight is about the same as last year. Still a tad rough and choppy in spots. About 50 flash passers who mostly showed up once we got inside the building. The worker directed them all to the right side and insisted every non-flash passer wait for all of them if you wanted to ride right. NRG was giving one ride flash passes if you signed up, so we did and used it on Justice League. Probably better than anything at Universal except Spiderman. Wish you could see some light coming from your gun. Raging Trimbrake's line was all the way to the back both times we waited for it, and they weren't using all the queue. About 20 some flash passers here. Ride is as good and consistent as ever. Single rider signs at Pretzelman, Goliath, and Justice League. They should do that at every ride bc Justice League's was a walk up. The regular line was at least 2 hours. Raging Trimbrake also has Cedar Point style locking bins now. With all the crazy over-crowding this place engages in, you'd think they could've afforded this years ago.

Was at Great America a couple weekends ago and Six Flags Over Texas last weekend. GA was pretty empty due to the weather. Rode Pretzelman, Batman twice, and the Crawler. Food lines were fine. Everything was basically a walk up. The cold weather makes the rides a lot less enjoyable/comfortable for whatever reason. SFOT is interesting. Saturday was a nightmare worse than any GA Fright Fest. Hordes of people just kept pouring in, wave after wave with no signs of stopping. Their parking lot is a lot bigger. The amount of people there seemed to be almost double whatever GA's record-breaking fright fest crowds have been. Lines to get a drink were 30 min minimum. Food lines were all long and barely moved. Never got to see the ride lines because all the coasters broke. Just about all of them, literally. No one was scanning passes or anything. Lines to get in are abysmal but at least they have a tram for their mammoth parking lot. SFOT is very sneaky. If you call to try and get info about crowds or rides, they refuse to say anything. Someone taught their employees to do a bait and switch so people will go under circumstances where they normally wouldn't. We gambled and while the place probably had a regular FF level crowd, lines were pretty short. Maybe about 15-20 minutes except Shockwave, which took forever because of the virtual reality headsets. The wife rode Mr Freeze and loved it. Skyscreamer was down due to wind and we didn't bother with Judge Roy Scream since the sign said 30 min. Batman was basically the same, but it's a lot better in warm weather. New Texas Giant is what Goliath should be, but we never really cared for it, so we weren't high on this one either. Wife compared it to riding one of those mechanical bulls and feeling like she's about to fly outta the ride. Shockwave was a real bust. The VR headsets are a stupid gimmick. They don't fit well and the graphics on the cell phones are hardly impressive. You can shoot lasers for seemingly no reason. Train dispatches were some of the slowest we've ever seen due to all the headset problems. At least 5 min per train minimum. Ride seems a tad rough, wife said it also felt like she was about to be tossed out. We didn't ride Titan since neither of us thought we'd enjoy it much. The Great America Raceway was ok, kinda dull scenery. Justice League was down. Wife liked Superman Tower of Power. Says it's like the one at Cedar Point. Park is much bigger than GA and does not go in a circle. Think this is why the lines are shorter. It takes a lot more effort to get from ride to ride than at GA. It'd be like if each thrill ride section at Great America was as far apart as Pretzelman and Eagle. The Dole fruit things we got were the best dining pass snacks ever. Lots of flat rides, but mainly all looked like little kid stuff. Overall the park reminds me more of Cedar Point than GA. Also seemed more family-oriented with a lot of people preferring not to go on the thrill rides. The raceway had as long a line as texas giant. HH is also not on the same physical property. Overall, I think GA is easily the better park.

I write stuff here just as much for Six Flags corporate to supposedly read as for anyone else. And after attempting to go there yesterday, I can say I'm just about done with this place. People on here are correct, they just want to cram as many people in here as possible. The lot was the most full I had ever seen it, we didn't even go in. When I tried to call a couple weeks ago to ask about crowds, I get a labyrinth of options and the only one that leads to a person is the season pass line. And I was on hold for a while before I hung up. Great America does not have the resources to handle the mammoth crowds it attracts. Halloween was 20 min max wait for every ride according to someone we know that went. That suggests to me that a lot of the crowd is very local and makes decisions on when to go impulsively. If weather is good during FF, crowds will be insane. Last year the last weekend was not crowded. My trip reports are still on here. We have a 50 some mile drive which is a good investment of time and driving expenses just to have it wasted by Six Flags. I'm sure the reason they don't post ride times or crowd levels on their site or answer the phone is because they don't want to dissuade anyone from going. So we head over to Gurnee Mills instead. There are no parking spaces available aside from a few in front of Shopper's World. The mall lot was that packed. For whatever reason, people that live in the Gurnee area love crowds and lines. You'd think Gurnee Mills wouldn't be that crowded. And it actually didn't feel like there were a ton of people inside, not hundreds of cars worth. Maybe a bunch of Six Flags attendees used Gurnee Mills as a second parking lot? Six Flags really needs to rethink their branding and pricing. I would not be surprised if upwards of 70% of the people who go there aren't really all that profitable. They buy a season pass for $65 or whatever, get the upgrade Gold Pass for free with the parking, and then tailgate in the parking lot. After that they're probably just taking up space and not spending money. We saw a lot of people walking into the park from across the street. Lot of cars just dropping off the kids too. My guess is that the Six Flags business plan is to cram as many people as possible and not think much about how to make them want to come back. They know the only people who will have a good time are those that pay for Platinum Flash passes or who love lines. But there's always millions of new kids who will show up next year. Apparently word doesn't reach them that the lines and operations are horrible or they just don't care. Six Flags still lags far behind Disney and Universal in revenue, right? The lines I waited in at Universal weren't that short but they really know how to move them along. Given that their queues are about 5x the length of Eagle's, I'd say a lot of the lines were like a full Eagle queue. Those same lines at Six Flags would probably take 3x as long. The lines would have taken even less time if Universal didn't have employees giving literal 10 minute speeches about how we shouldn't take pics and videos on the ride. My experience with Cedar Point and the one long line for Maverick that took over an hour was that it was like a two hour Great America line. The long lines at Cedar Point were largely caused by wind ride closures and all the fast passers clogging up Corkscrew while we were waiting for it, for example. I'm frankly surprised the first two weeks of Fright Fest this year reported short lines. I guess if they have 20,000 people instead of 50,000, lines can be reasonable. But 20,000 just isn't enough attendance apparently. We spent over $400 on passes for the both of us including one gold and two dinner. They give enough on the meal pass that you could probably get away with sharing one between two people. Even though lines are pretty reasonable for most of May and June, the park closes early a lot. Wasn't it open daily 10-10 during the Marriott era? That's what the sign says in videos. I got the impression that Great America will close between 7-9 unless it's FF or peak season from mid July-end of August. Great America also loves to close earlier than advertised if they don't like the attendance. So why should I go when it's raining if they decide to close several hours early? I rarely see lines at any of the stores. They're usually pretty empty. Merchandise just isn't flying off the walls. Yeah, I can't recall any time out of my dozens of visits where there was ever a line at a store register anywhere in the park. That tells me most of the crowd isn't there to buy merchandise. We bought the shopping pass and would've used it more except for the fact that there wasn't time to waste a lot and that ride lockers cost money and eat up ride time. At least they included a sports bottle with each season pass. This way I'm not out the $14.99 if it gets stolen again because they're too cheap to buy Cedar Point style bins that lock. The non-locking bins they put in some of the rides are a joke. People just slide the doors open after a ride op closes them. Does Six Flags really not have a couple hundred bucks for a few locking bins? The rides are starting to feel more dated than classic to me. Whizzer I think holds up a lot better than Eagle and Demon, both of which can be somewhat rough/violent in spots. As much as I love Batman, I always feel like it's over too fast. Montu is just so much more creative even if it's badly paced in the second half. Think I got more rides in on that than I did on Batman in the last year. Pretzelman draws huge crowds here but is a joke compared to Manta and I imagine Tatsu too. Maybe we should take the $400 some we spent at Six Flags and use it towards Busch Gardens passes and airfare. I bet there's a good chance they let pass holders attend Sea World too. Great America really only makes sense as an option for people who live within 20, maybe 30 miles of it who either love lines or have nothing better to do. Outside of June and the first week or two in July, you're really just wasting your time and money on this place unless you splurge on flash passes. Even then, there's no flash pass for the restaurants and on a lot of rides the FP sticks you at points where you still have a 20 minute wait. I'm not sure why they don't just let them up the exit ramp like the EAP people. If I'm paying $110 for a pass, I don't want to wait at the stairs for 20 min. I still believe FP sales should be limited to maybe 100-200. They act like there's a limited supply but they never stop selling them. Six Flags needs to provide incentives for people who drive over 30 or 40 miles to attend. I'd say they need to limit usage of passes for people who live under 30-40 miles away if they're gonna charge next to nothing. Or raise season pass prices to $100-$150. Ban tailgating. Give any pass holder traveling over 40 miles two flash passes for free per year. Give flash pass discounts to anyone traveling 100 miles or more on top of that. The place is flooded because so many people don't have to invest any money in going nor do they have to drive very far. You could live down the street and buy the dining pass and have free meals and dessert almost every day during the summer and fright fest as long as you're sometimes willing to wait an hour at Aunt Martha's, JB's, Angelo's, etc. For a lot of parents Six Flags is an excellent babysitting service. They're attracting the lowest spending consumers possible. And the ones who spend $400 for their family to go one day feel disrespected and write bad reviews on Yelp. Maybe they feel they need 50,000 attendees to get 1000 who spend some money. So maybe next year we'll buy the cheapest tickets possible to go a couple times in June and 4th of July. But the parking is so expensive we might not bother at all. 4 visits would be $100 in parking. Maybe that's the big scam. Charge a bunch of people obscene parking fees before they know they won't be able to ride anything but flat rides. Not everyone is checking Yelp apparently. I'm curious how the company's debt levels are. If they're digging out of that bankruptcy hole well. This quantity over quality mentality is only going to take them so far with all the damage they're doing to their brand. Maybe they're just trying to ramp up as much short-term revenue as they can before going bankrupt again and selling the company's assets off. Bunch of geniuses running this company I tell ya.

Was there last weekend. Good to see Condor back up and running. Lines for the flats were pretty normal, although Triple Play's was way out of the structure. Just ended up watching the shows along with Condor, East River, and the Balloons. I can't justify waiting in these lines anymore. Every coaster had a completely full or overflowing queue. Without extreme amounts of flash passers those are all at least 60 min waits. But the FP line was overflowing too. So I'm sure the shortest coaster wait was probably Demon at 90 minutes. Coulda been longer. Pretzelman was probably close to 3 hours. I could just about fly to Orlando and ride the much better Manta in that time span. Great America cannot handle crowds this size. Food lines were awful once you got past 6 pm. People were pouring in constantly when we left around 9 something. To both the regular car lines and the pick up/drop off spots. The whole back lot was full. Why people are so willing to get in these lines is beyond me. Makes me wonder if their power is out or something. You'd think with lines like these that we had a lineup of Millennium Force, Montu, Tatsu, El Toro, Kingda Ka, and every other majorly hyped coaster out there. One Yelp review talked about the misleading advertising for Goliath. It would not surprise me if 90% of the people at Great America really thought it was the "tallest, fastest, steepest" coaster in existence. Unfortunately, it is also one of the shortest too. Something like 29 seconds of ride time after reaching the top of the lift. If X-Flight had been hyped like this, it would have had a similar effect. I made another trip to Busch Gardens last month. This time Montu seemed to knock the life out of me on one try before lunch. Still an awesome ride. They've somehow managed to import half of Brazil here, so lines were a lot longer than last year at the same time. Montu and Kumba ended up being like 25 min waits with one train running. It doesn't feel like they dispatch trains any faster at BG. Liked Kumba a lot more this time. The second time I rode it I was able to avoid the ear touching by bracing a certain way. it was a lot easier than avoiding whiplash on Demon. First time I rode Kumba I didn't care for it at all, so it's always good for people to give coasters another try unless they really beat you up like Mean Streak or Magnum. Great America really needs a good 7 looper or at least a B&M floorless type coaster with a dive loop and cobra roll. Everything at our park is so short aside from Raging Trimbrake/Eagle/Viper. I just find it difficult to get a real satisfying ride experience off of individual coasters here. Great America only seems to really work for me if I can ride most everything in a reasonable time frame. Unfortunately it looks like June, the first two weeks of July, and the last week of Fright Fest are the only times that is gonna happen. Maybe sometimes in May if they have their act together. Looks like the first two weeks of Fright Fest were good this year after being horribly bad last year. If last year is any indication, the final weekend should be good. But last year we lucked out with almost every coaster breaking down, people leaving the lines, and then it re-opening about 10-15 min later. Maybe I'm off base here, but I think these theme parks should do everything to give a great guest experience every time. That means Great America should not try to flood itself with 50,000 people every chance they get while selling tons of flash passes and running substandard operations and BG should run two trains at least considering people travel hundreds or thousands of miles to go there. Come to think of it, people often drive hundreds of miles to our park as well. BG should fix their cruddy lockers too, the time spent messing with those cost me a ride on something. Great America at least has the locker thing down better. But nothing beats Universal's working and free lockers.

We were there on the 13th briefly. Did not know they were closing at 8 PM in the middle of August. Ridiculous. How many people are driving hundreds of miles to go there? They should be open til 10 pm minimum. I'd be absolutely shocked if Cedar Point closed anywhere near 8 PM. Line for Roaring Rapids was kinda short, near the bridge. Water was frigid. Log Jam was about 20 some minutes. Pretzelman's line was almost out the entrance, same with Batmans. Both seemed to shorten quite a bit by 6. Batman was then just about three rows full after the flash pass worker at 7. So about a 25 min wait. Never really got to see the other lines. Balloons and whirley gig were their usual volume(but the ride op seemed to set whirley gig's cycle to the shortest ride ever). I'm half thinking to not buy the season passes next year and just use the money for a Cedar Point Trip. With this place it seems like May has 2 or 3 weeks of short lines and employees who don't know what they're doing yet, June is awesome the whole time, as well as the first half of July. After that it's all downhill. Maybe the first weekend of Fright Fest will have normal short lines this year. I like the midnight closings on Saturdays. Kinda goes against the park's usual philosophy of being closed as much as possible.

Only had enough time for a couple rides Sunday. Whizzer's line looked a lot shorter, single file instead of wrapping around inside. Demon was a walk up. This time I leaned my head all the way forward during the loops. Not exactly comfortable but no real whiplash. We did X Flight on the left this time. Great ride, total opposite experience of what I dealt with on the right side before. Same row too and was in the outside seat both times. We'll see how the lines end up tomorrow.

Today the lines were pretty much the same as the last time. There was added wait time for all the EAP people, almost all of whom were able-bodied. Think I saw one wheelchair and no prosthetics or crutches. Maybe it's some mental disability like autism. Or maybe it's people faking it, I've gone to the park with people that have mental disorders that make them blow up because they can't cope with the often ridiculous wait times and/or crowds. Does that qualify for EAP? I've got legit learning disability diagnoses, would I qualify? It just looks kinda bad to see often more than one able-bodied adult skipping the line with EAP. But I understand that some people mentally can't handle it as I've had to deal with others having blow ups as soon as we get in the park and making us leave or blowing up after being in a line. Guess Six Flags got rid of it at one point http://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/200709/474/ Now I'm digging the coasters a lot more than before. Raging Trimbrake didn't trim as harshly today. Maybe that was because I was in row 2. Wait time was like 15 min at 2:20. Then we watched the wrestling for a bit. I liked it better today than anytime in the last couple years. Ricochet had a wait of a couple cycles. Giant drop was pretty much a cycle or two. Viper's line was a little longer than the last times I went and people kept leaving it. The EAPs were slowing it down a lot apparently. Found the ride choppy still but easier to deal with today. Don't go to JB's over there. They have this sit down option now and it's made the wait times over half an hour. Whizzer's line was a little longer than the last two times. A few flash passers and EAPs made the line stand still a few times. Was probably closer to 40 min of waiting. Earlier in the afternoon the line looked better. This was around 8 something. We didn't end up riding anything else. Parade seems longer than last year. I can't say how, but the last dozen or so trips we've gotten some great parking spots in early afternoon. Snickers 3 this time. Everyone plays follow the leader upon leaving. Some went out through the employee lot and some through the exit to Grand near where the buses usually park. It'll be interesting to see if the lines and flash passes get insane now that mid-July approaches. I'll probably go back tomorrow and/or next week. SFGA always gets better the more you go and the more you ride. For me it's just something about getting one good ride experience and building on it throughout the day that makes it work. David Otunga was escorted by a bunch of gray shirt workers hastily through Viper's exit when we left. The wife spotted him, they were too fast for me to spot. Looks like Jennifer Hudson was with him.

Wow, hardly any lines again? Someone who went about a week ago told me the same thing. It'll be interesting to see how lines are in 2-3 weeks. Demand was off the charts for this place last year after 4th of July and it looks like that's not carried over into this season. Maybe SFGA shot themselves in the foot with all the nonsense and bad service they've dished out since the Goliath hordes showed up.

If I didn't say so, Goliath was down all day Sunday. Flash Pass at Great America only gets you so far. A lot of the waiting takes place after the Flash Pass employee and Eagle doesn't even have a FP lane. Once you get to the FP person, you can still have 50 people and a lot of stairs in front of you. Operations seemed better to me this past week than most times I'd been there since 2011. The Ragin Cajun spot is now occupied by a Fright Fest display advertising for this fall.

Went yesterday around 3. Most everything was a walk up or close to it. Triple Play was a lot more fun than I remember. Whizzer was about 20 min with half the wait time occurring after we reached the stairs. Riding slightly better than last year and I probably had more fun on this than anything aside from Batman. Screams and Dreams 3 was a lot better than I thought it'd be. Demon had no line so we got on almost immediately upon reaching the gate. Tried to relax on the loops instead of my usual routine and thought my neck would snap. You really havta lean your neck forward some and move it a little at various points. So far this year we've just been on the yellow train. It's so choppy that I would not mind at all if they replaced this with a B&M floorless. X-Flight is getting rougher as people have noted. They could rename it X-Demon if it keeps it up. The line was just slightly outside the main building. Flash passers almost exclusively go to the right side, so go left if there are some. Yesterday there were about 20 instead of 200-300. Don't get it at all when people say X is not forceful. It pulls some pretty extreme Gs. The ride op pushed the harness down too far and the ride pushed it in further ala Batman so it was like torture riding. I don't recall X-Flight forces pushing the harness in during the ride before. Always seemed like the harness stayed where it was. Eagle red was doing double rides and this really makes the wait time bad even with barely a line. I swear that thing jumps the track before going up the first big hill. The speeds seem almost out of control so I see why they trim it. In this instance I think the trims help as I havta use a lot of arm strength to push or pull on the bar to keep my torso from slamming around. The portions given out now plus the snack make me think one dining pass is enough for two people. There's a lot better options for dining now too. Consuming everything they give out makes it a lot harder to ride a bunch of stuff. Those flatbread pizzas by Eagle are a foot long I swear. There's enough variety that I plan to go back to use my dining pass as much as to ride stuff. Batman ran top notch again. Seems that row 3 might have shorter belts than row 7 because I couldn't fit my wife in 3 at all but 7 wasn't too difficult. The lead thought we line jumped via the exit since no one informed him that we were waiting for the next train to go back to 7. Then he was cool when someone informed him. This was the first time they used a grouper. Batman was basically a walk up aside from 20 people waiting for the front. And they actually had people waiting for the front stay to the right with an op coming down the stairs to organize it all. Big improvement. We didn't end up riding anything else or staying for the ERT. Their were some great employees there. Horatio, Manuel, and I think the other guy with Horatio was named Eduardo and was from Ecuador. I have some pics of Sky Trek being stuck but they weren't very clear. Saw the blind guy with the walking stick again. He must go there everyday. Still amazed how he knew exactly when Giant Drop was going to go 3 years ago. Some people bought the flash pass even though Goliath was down. I'm not sure how it is nowadays, but when I did buy flash passes, I thought the regular one worked as well as Gold or Platinum. Didn't even notice the ride times being different. There's no way it can know the exact wait time. And so many times we'd get the green light to ride the next ride but we'd still be waiting to ride the current ride or walking, so we couldn't take advantage of the reduced times. People don't realize that there can be a lot of waiting once you get to the flash pass employee's spot.

Went there a week ago I think it was. This new meal pass is great! Now I can get a pretzel, funnel cake, ice cream, nachos, or another good option along with lunch and dinner. The two free red sports bottles is a great touch too. The Peking Acrobats are amazing. They do some really insane stuff. Ended up speaking with the manager there who had 16 years of service. Seemed like a really good person who puts in a lot of effort. We didn't start going on rides til around 7 I think. Viper didn't seem to be dispatching any slower than usual. Pretty much a walk up aside from there being 10-15 people in line for each row. Raging Trimbrake is not something I'd care to ride much more if not for my wife insisting we ride it. Wait was about 10-15 min. The trim is just not in a good spot and the ride is a bit choppy(as are most all the other coasters here). The constant up and down reminds me of those motion simulators at Universal. My distaste for helixes and 200+ foot drops is growing too. Demon was a walk up. Riding the same as last year. Goliath's line was looking to be about an hour not accounting for flash passers. X-Flight's line was just in front of the key hole. We ended up taking a break for a while and then going on Batman. Another 15 min line. I'm not sure if it's the new paint or what, but it seems to be running smoother than ever. Everything is feeling awesome on the ride. Just wish it was like ten seconds longer with another inversion or two or some cool non-inverting element. At least it doesn't waste any track. Then they closed the park at 9, which I'm not sure was the intended closing time. It was great to see the crowds were huge but the lines weren't. The back lot wasn't very full but the park didn't seem to be lacking visitors at all. Maybe I'll go back again next week. At least now I can get a worthwhile snack. It may end up that I don't care about riding much beyond Batman. The other coasters were starting to lose their luster with me and it's just increasing.

Haven't been back to the park yet but I've gotten a couple reports from someone who has and the crowds have been typical for May and June meaning that there's not a ton of waiting. From the recent Yelp reviews, all of which seem to be 1 star, it looks like the food lines are as bad as last year. Hour long waits and all. Doesn't seem like the employees anywhere in the park have a clue what they're doing. Great America is only worth visiting if you get light lines and competent employees. Still don't get the Goliath hype. We're talking about a ride that is significantly shorter than the already short Batman and X-Flight. There are way too many Great America ads out there now. Do not be surprised if wait times are completely obscene again once mid-July hits. It was just an absolute disgrace that this place sold so many flash passes last year that the only way to have a good experience on a lot of days was to fork out for Platinum passes for everyone(or you'll be counting 200-300 flash passers bypassing you on rides where you can see them, such as X-Flight). If you're coming from Florida, the experience here is going to be a huge disappointment compared to Busch or Sea World, even if SFGAM has the superior ride collection. Haven't been to Cedar in 3 years, but the lines were only really bad if they closed rides due to wind or rain(which they did). There was always a few things you could ride without waiting long, coasters or flats. At SFGAM a lot of the time you'll be lucky to ride any coaster without a 60+ min wait. The wait times could be much better if SF had operations up to par with the Florida parks. If they cut flash pass sales, it might be downright manageable most of the time. If you're going to King's and Cedar, there's probably even less incentive to come here. SFGAM has a good level of consistent quality where most everything is worth riding, but I don't think it has something akin to big, eccentric attractions like Manta, Maverick, Millennium Force, Kraken, Sheikra, Montu, Banshee, Dragster, Gatekeeper, etc. The rides here are more compact, straightforward, and humble. Collectively I'd take SFGAM's collection over Cedar or any of the Florida parks, but it's still a far inferior experience overall.

I was just at Sea World about a month ago and posted my thoughts in my home park's thread, SFGA. Universal really underwhelmed me and riding simulator after simulator got old real fast. The physical length of the queues are unbearably long, followed by dull 10 minute speeches reminding us not to take pics and videos before some of the rides. At least the lines moved continuously. Hulk was a real letdown. For me it was just somewhat uncomfortable G forces the whole time, for others it was that plus headbanging. The ice side of the duelling dragons was good, but not something I'd consider up to par with Batman, Montu, or Raptor. Almost though. Fire was kinda dull. Harry Potter's theming was awesome, much more appealing to me than the rides themselves. Spiderman was the only simulator I'd ride again. T-2 was our fav thing there. Universal seems more juvenile and aimed at kids under 10, Sea World has a lot more of a mature vibe. So I'm surprised Kracken does not get more hype. After going to SFGA, Cedar Point, Busch Gardens Tampa, and Universal I'd really say this was the best coaster out of everything I've gone on. Pretty much as close to whatever notions of a dream coaster I had before riding it. Other people have different tastes, of course, but I really thought every element meant something, speed was ideal, nothing uncomfortable, creative use of elements, great air, awesome transitions between elements, epic feel as opposed to a typical short SFGA ride, can't say there was anything I didn't like. For me, Kumba really pales in comparison. Manta is great too. If Superman typically has two hour waits here, I bet Manta would double that. The environment at Sea World is really relaxing. If I had to guess why their attendance is down I would chalk it up to Disney and Universal with their huge advertising budget. The shark encounter was cutting edge for its time, but it's really, really dated compared to places I've been like Ripley's in Myrtle Beach or even Mandalay Bay or the Interactive Aquarium in Cancun. Blue Horizons was amazing and I rarely think that of anything. I've seen Blackfish and haven't done my own research to see what validity their claims have. PETA is definitely an organization that does some very questionable things. At this point, I don't even know that keeping Orcas is worth the hassle. The Shamu show at 4:30 drew worse than Blue Horizons at 11:30. BH was pretty much at capacity. Shamu was kinda repetitive and paled in comparison to BH. If they can't come up with a better show that doesn't put the trainers at risk while also keeping the Orcas in ideal conditions, it might be time to switch to something else. But why pick on Sea World? How many activist dollars go to supporting horrible politicians and corporations that do far worse things than Sea World could ever dream of? Is it just me or do Florida residents not go to the parks during the offseason on weekdays? In September everyone at BG was from the UK. This time it was the whole country of Brazil everywhere in Orlando and Tampa. I wish IL residents were more like that. Last year SFGA had absolutely horrible crowds every day it was open after mid-July aside from Halloween. Horrible meaning every major ride had a 90 min+ wait time. I have little doubt people would have stopped attending in those numbers in the winter unless there was a blizzard. Whatever SF does in their marketing enables them to attract Walmart shoppers of all types in agonizingly huge numbers. Sea World probably seems too family friendly for a majority of the Yolo SF crowd. Was Sea World ever considered much of a theme park? When I went there in 88 and 92, I felt like the sharks and Shamu were the big draws. Nowadays there are shark infested aquariums everywhere so the competition is fierce. If they could build some mammoth shark exhibit, I think that would re-establish Sea World as the top aquarium brand. This is an area Disney and Universal can't/won't compete in. As for the other exhibits, Turtle Trek was really cool. The penguins were a lot like we have at Brookfield Zoo. I would say that it's mainly standard zoo and aquarium fare. A new cutting edge shark exhibit would generate tons of hype. If they were to do another coaster, it would have to be very cutting edge. At SFGA, Goliath eventually drew insane crowds bc of all the marketing hype. RMC generates lots of hype in the coaster enthusiast community. Goliath wasn't really too appealing to me. Guess it was cool for what it is, but at about 29 seconds long after reaching the top of the lift, it felt like half a ride to me. X-Flight was the first new coaster SFGA had received in over a decade but bc it wasn't hyped to death in advertising, it didn't seem to generate much of a buzz despite it being about as good as any other coaster in the park. Coasters are really the Six Flags and Cedar Fair brands. Disney and Universal are family friendly parks with beloved movie and tv characters. Sea World's brand is now viewed as home of mistreated orcas or exciting Shamu shows, depending on who you ask. Unless SF builds a park in Central FL and Sea World wants to catch all the inevitable guests SF disappoints with bad service, unruly guests, and long lines, I would say to stick with building their aquatic brand and not build more coasters. BG has plenty of top-rated coasters and it doesn't draw the type of people in Central FL who would be visiting SFGA if they lived here. Discovery Cove looks awesome, but it was closed when I went. I didn't even know what it was and I've seen many theme park shows on Destination America and Travel Channel.

I'm comparing them. If you've been paying attention to the discussions on here since Goliath opened, there's been a lot of talk about what SFGA has been doing wrong. People also mentioned that it'd be good if they had a dark ride like Harry Potter. And if Six Flags corporate reads this forum as has been mentioned in the past, they should get all the feedback about what their customer base does and does not like about SFGA and other parks. At the end of the day, I'm not sure I'd prefer to have all the Florida parks instead of SFGA. But, I would take Kracken and Manta with no lines over the whole SFGA lineup with long lines. Anyway, I forgot to mention that Universal has this habit of ten minute long introduction speeches before every ride in addition to the 10x the length of The Eagle queues. A lot of it is just "no cameras, no videos" over and over. It got real annoying. The barracudas in Sea World Shark Encounter were real creepy too. They literally stay still and stare at everyone.

Just went to Universal, Busch Gardens, and Sea World toward the end of last month. This time the whole country of Brazil was on vacation there instead of the UK. Don't think there were many native Floridians at all. Universal I would say should be called Underwhelming Studios. It's basically a bunch of 4-D motion simulators that all feel like the same ride over and over and are never really satisfying. Mummy was kinda cool I guess. Spider-man was prob the best of the bunch. The Harry Potter rides are way overhyped. The one in Islands of Adventure was slightly nauseating too. They could call Universal Harry Potter land since the HP stuff takes up so much real estate. I could be wrong, but riding these rides takes a cumulative toll on your body's ability to handle forces. The Rocket coaster looked like a combo of a straight vertical lift hill that would freak me out partnered with several block brakes. No thanks. Dragon Challenge fire was kinda lame. Ice was a lot better but seemed inconsistent in its pacing. The Sinbad show was really silly and not all that cool. Fear Factor live was alright. The posieden tour broke and we got stuck for a long time. Waited longer there than for either HP. Eventually they just had us all leave and gave everyone a flash pass card for one ride. One of the HP rides broke but we waited and it came back after like a 10-20 min delay. The worst thing about this place are the long queues. I would estimate some are ten times the length of Eagle's. At least Dragon Challenge has a reride line that cuts it more than in half. Oh, and this place has free lockers during rides. The IOA HP's suck though because they keep the area as dark as possible. Because they had these lockers, we felt fine buying stuff there. At Great America we rarely buying anything since we don't trust the bins and don't want to pay for lockers. Hulk looks like it'd be a really cool ride but it's kind of running with an uncomfortable level of G-force throughout the whole ride and has headbanging for some people apparently. I doubt I'd ride it again. We rode it first thing before anything else too. Lines in universal were long but they always move. They run this place with a very organized system. It only ever slows down when something breaks. At SFGA lines like these would take maybe 10x as long. There were some flash passers but they didn't result in the line slowing to a crawl to accomodate them. We intended to use our flash pass for T2 and went in that line. No one bothered to check so we gave it away to the couple who were picked at the horror make up show(which was kinda cool). The ending spectacle was pretty good at this place. I would say far and away the T2 was the best thing at either park. Back to BG. Rode Montu first and went 3 times. This ride has lost a lot of appeal for me for some reason. I feel like there's too much space between elements. The G forces were a lot less tolerable than last time I was there. The ride op asked us how many times we had been on after our 2nd even though no one was waiting. Sheikra felt a lot better this time but still a bit underwhelming. Saw a guy from theme park review with a worker at the exit ramp for Scorpion. The ride op told this worker to tell the TPR dude that he can't just "ride and ride and ride. that his body has to return to a natural rhythm". Scorpion felt insane this time. Like it just keeps speeding up and speeding up til it slams into the brakes and you feel like you've been in a non-violent car crash. They had Peter Noone's herman's hermits there. Unfortunately no one bothered to tell us you need to get a ticket for a free show. Plenty of other people had the same problem. Every 80 year old in Central Florida was there for this, making them stand out amongst all the Brazilians since again we didn't really see much of anyone who looked like a native Floridian. The white haired Sugar Bear, the goatee dude, and Zoltan or whatever his name was were not cool at all to people who didn't have tickets. We had spent like a whole hour waiting in line and these guys just do not care if anyone waited. They say stand off to the side and if there's space we'll let you in. That's worse than any treatment I've gotten at Six Flags. Ended up with good seats on the side and the place has great sound. Didn't have time to ride Kumba or Cheetah Hunt again. Wife still loves Falcon's Fury. Lines were basically non-existent except for the sky ride after the concert, where we waited like a half hour. Last day we went to Sea World. This was the best place. The theming is outstanding here just like at Universal. First thing we rode was Manta. Now this is what Pretzelman should be. Variety, good pacing, great theming. No real line either. At first I thought I might like it better than Montu when we rode in row 7. We rode it again later after riding Kracken, this time in row 3, and it wasn't working as well for me. The cumulative effect of all those motion simulators at universal made my tolerance for Gs so much lower. Kracken was the real surprise. I only got to ride it once, but my initial impression was that this was the coaster I had been waiting for. Just about perfect. Not one bit of wasted track. No uncomfortable forces but never feels slow. Epic ride with 7 loops. The way they chain the elements is brilliant too. They seemlessly flow right into each other and just feel wild without head-banging or anything else detrimental. The head chopper thing is cool too. Yeah, if I could have designed my perfect coaster before going here, this was about 99% similar. Everything in the ride means something. Extremely underrated. Wish we had gotten something like this last year. No line either to boot. These parks were as packed as SFGA is during peak season and lines were never an issue. The turtle movie is really unique and awesome. The shark encounter is underwhelming and just kinda sucks compared to Ripley's in Myrtle Beach or even the Tampa Aquarium. I thought it was really cool in 88 and 92 though. Blue Horizons was an amazing show. Did not expect it at all. The Shamu show should really be scrapped. There was a lot of empty seats and the show is very repetitive and underwhelming. Tilikum is a sight to behold but his dorsal fin is all flopped over. We watched black fish after we got back and with all the controversy and the probably true facts about Sea World separating Orcas that shouldn't be and that unfamiliar Orcas don't form real families, I don't see why they don't just release all the Orcas and put something else in there. Sea World and BG were also extremely organized in how they handled the ride lines even though there weren't any. They had several ride ops all there organizing everyone. Very different from SFGA most of the time where stuff overflows and gets all mangled. Raging Bull ran much more efficient when they had ride ops organizing it. Universal had workers talking about their dispatch goals. Like 40 seconds. There was never any of this SFGA 5 minutes nonsense. The one thing I can give SFGA again is the ride selection. And everything is very re-rideable, SFGA rides will not stir up indisgestion and nausea like Universal motion sims. I hope they do put in a Universal styled dark ride though. It would draw people and hopefully pull a thousand or so away from the other rides assuming they give it a Universal styled queue that can house 1000. The HP theming was like being on a movie set. It was far cooler than the ride. But it left you in almost total darkness at times. Same deal with DC and Poseiden. The queues can be extremely dark and claustrophobic.

Got to go again Sunday, arriving at 3:38. Lot was about half full again, in the back. Plenty of spaces in the front like Saturday, even in the 4th or 5th row. Think there was only one time where we had to park in the back lot this year. The crowd is like a mix of Wal-Mart shoppers from Countryside, Addison, and Gurnee rolled into one. Didn't really spot any rowdy or out of control behavior, it's a lot tamer than what I read about other Six Flags parks. Only 3 buses and a couple RVs, there was like 15 buses Sat. Definitely a lot more yolo and thug types Sunday, but still a small minority of the overall crowd. Pretzelman had an overflowing line around 4. Balloons had maybe 15 people. Batman's line was maybe 3-4 rows deep inside when we walked by it. No time to ride it unfortunately. Whirley gig was like 15 people ahead of us. Whizzer line was 3 or 4 rows deep under the station. We couldn't hit that bc we wanted to see Love at first fright. Better show than the last couple years. I think they use the same witch, little frankenstein, and dracula every year. The mini Frankenstein was the highlight in a lot of scenes and he highfived everyone leaving the side door we left out of. Lot of the food places were closed apparently and Aunt Martha's was out of pulled pork around 6 and out of everything like ten minutes later. Lines at the open food places were maybe 15-20 people deep. Bunch of security escorted some dude outta there for some reason. Their food was really cold. Had to walk down to County Fair food court. Primo's actually had some warm pizza. They have JB's there too and a couple other places that take the dining pass. Next we went to Susan Rosen. Was a pretty good show. Felt a lot shorter than it was even though we were in there 7:15-8:08. She brought up double the amount of people onstage. Guess she has a show around here on the 8th. Couldn't tell you much about Viper and Demon lines. They weren't overflowing. Giant Drop looked like a walk up. RB had one of their lines that's back to the test seat with the paper batman passes being handed out, but they weren't using the interior queue and the line kept moving so we waited maybe ten minutes. Some non-teen Asian lady seemed to be running the operations and they got those trains outta there like clockwork. For some reason on this one and Viper on Saturday they wouldn't let people board one of the middle rows. But the trains weren't going out with empty seats so I'm not sure who they were saving them for. Think I spotted one flash pass group on RB. We made X Flight before they closed, walk up. Rode Left row 4, which I think is the first time we'd done the left side in two years. Similar quality ride to the right but definitely different. Luckily the warmer temps enabled me to breathe on the rides and ride them pretty normally. Coulda been the headsock covering my mouth though too. Guess we coulda gone on Demon even though it was after 9, I didn't get the vibe that they were in a hurry to close. We ended up going through the stores, the one nearest hometown square was a mad house. Got some glasses, magnets, and key chains for next to nothing. Can't say for sure whether attending again the last week of Fright Fest would be good or not next year. Lines were probably an issue most of the day but weren't an issue when we were there. If crowds are similar next year, then we'd be buying a season pass for I'm not sure what. May and June could be ok, they could be horrible. It took a month of Goliath being open for the place to be worse than ever. The delay may have been due to kids making up snow days, I don't know. Let's say crowds are horrible all next season. You're essentially buying a pass for the ERT days and the last days of Fright Fest. Or the occasional day when rains scares everyone away.

Just got back after arriving at 5:30. It might be safe to attend now. I say might because almost every coaster we went on had been having operational issues before we got there. Make sure you wear clothes for weather significantly colder than 35 degrees and very high winds. All my rides were severely compromised by the fact that the wind slowed down muscles throughout my body, especially when it came to my face and throat. East River Crawler ran great with full rotation still. Batman was the first coaster. Unfortunately I wanted off as soon as I got on. Huge doses of cold wind going down my throat made it near impossible to breathe throughout the ride. It had been stuck on the lift with an almost full queue that lost about 50% of its occupants. Flash passers turned around too. Lined moved really fast once it was operational again. They put in bins that don't lock accompanied by signs warning about being arrested and prosecuted for theft. Stopped at moosejaw. About 50 people in the line, went pretty fast. A lot better than JB's. Eagle red was next, line was to where the stairs end right before the blue side, say maybe 25 min of waiting. Awesome ride. Not violent, great airtime, great speed. Trims didn't bug me since I needed a break from the wind. X Flight had a line that would normally be 40-45 min, but with flash passers could be 80. So we skipped onto Demon. Line was back to maybe the first loop, where you first turn the corner and see the ride. Operational issues caused lots of people to leave, just put us by the metal railings. Took about 15 min to resume operations. Ran great. Tucking your chin on the loops helps a lot. The corkscrews are some of my fav inversions on any coaster. Yellow train. Wind was less of an issue here but still causing a lot of discomfort. Went over to Southwest. RB had a full queue using up all the insides. With Flash passers that's a 90 min wait minimum. Skipped onto Viper. More operational issues. Lots of people left. Normally from where this line ended it'd be a 15-20 min wait. Started testing immediately once we got there. Crew took a long time to get trains moving and reserved middle rows for some reason. Not sure all the waiting was their fault. Ride ran great. Wife went on Giant Drop. Basically a walk up. Same with Richochet. The cold weather is really taking a toll on me and making me work harder and harder to breathe well. Headed over to Whizzer. More operational issues. Testing resumed after they transferred a train to a side track. Felt smoother than last time I rode it. Still much more intense than most of the Busch Gardens stuff. I think people underrate the intensity here. No line for Condor and they seemed to give us two ride cycles. Pretzelman had a line just to the Supergirl sign(at 5:30 it was overflowing). This was a little after 11. Wife rode it by herself as I didn't think that as much as I like the pretzel loop that I would have any fun gasping for breath the whole time. The cold was getting to her too so we left around 11:30 instead of going for X Flight or RB. Not much of a yolo crowd. There were a very small number of thug looking people, maybe saw 20 the whole time. A group of em was swearing out loud a lot and joking about dropping their phone on Pretzelman I heard. One Giant Drop ride op was telling people over the PA "watch the language please, this is a family park". Lot of guys who look like they're fans of wrestlers like CM Punk and Edge. Plenty of rural looking Wisconsin people. Middle aged hard living types who resembled those I saw at a Kiss concert. Seemed like every middle and high school had their entire student bodies there. Hard to say if I prefer Batman over Montu. Batman just kills it from beginning to end whereas Montu has way better theming and more variety. If we go back tomorrow maybe I will be able to tolerate the weather better. Shame I had to pass up front row Batman at 11:30.

Checked Great Adventure's recent Yelp reviews, same problems with overcrowding and all here. Is it considered line jumping when people save spots for a bunch of their friends? I see that a lot

I've looked at threads for other parks, namely Magic Mountain and BG Tampa, don't really see the same issues there. Someone I know flew to Magic Mountain last year during Fright Fest and had no issue with lines and overcrowding. I've read that Great Adventure has crowd issues. Another person I knew who went to Cedar in July said MF had a 2.5 hour wait while Gatekeeper's line was short. My July and Sept 2012 CP trip reports are on here. Lines could be bad, but, nothing like SFGA. I guess BG does not get huge lines bc it rains here and there most days in Tampa, people must not show in the first place bc I never saw anyone leave. They shut down Montu for an hour my second day there due to lightning(apparently it and FF had gotten hit recently). Rain seems to drive away SFGA customers who are already at the park, even if it's early in the day. The market here could support a second park, but it would take 100 million or more to build I'd imagine. They wouldn't need to build 300 and 400 footers to draw, but they probably would because that's what the general public wants most for some reason. When I've talked about star attractions here, I'm mainly referring to what the public perceives. Right now Goliath is the only star attraction at SFGA. Previously, as we all know, SFGA was the leader in coasters anywhere up until maybe 94. Unless RB was as big a deal as Shockwave, Iron Wolf, and Batman when it opened, Goliath is their biggest draw since Batman. But it took 3-4 weeks of being open to become a game changer. It made it so there were literally no open to the public days where SFGA didn't have atrocious crowds. I'd love to know SFGA's demographics. I bet a good portion, if not a majority of their customers come from areas within 20 miles of the park. I know I've read that 30-40% of the total attendees on average are season pass holders. As a business move, I'm not sure why they'd cater to people who live within 10-20 miles, buy passes, and then end up tailgating in the lot. People who aren't bringing in revenue beyond the initial pass purchase. Disney started restricting pass holders in CA to weekdays due to crowds, I think. I'm not necessarily in favor of that particular measure for all pass holders, but I'd be in favor of passes being more restrictive for people who live within a certain radius. I doubt my wife and myself are that profitable. We have to make a sizeable investment of time and some money to drive there, but outside of spending like $450 or whatever it was on passes with dining and one with parking, we don't spend a lot beyond a few drink refills each time. Every so often we'll get a shirt or some other souvenir thing. But we don't buy a lot because Six Flags refuses to put in locking bins ala Cedar Point. None of the employees cares to watch the non-locking sliding door bins they put in last year. Are locking bins really that big an expense, Six Flags? Maybe $200 per park? Even if it's $500 per park, that's chump change. Yes, I could pay for l*ckers, but why should we be forced into that when CP has shown a better alternative. They could be shooting themselves in the foot with this Goliath surge. Yeah it's drawing back people who haven't been there probably since 1999 or earlier, but, how many will be returning next season? There were long lines for Shockwave and Batman in their early years, but back then SFGA was an overall better experience from what I hear, and they also had a lot more leverage being that hardly anywhere else on the planet had an inverted coaster. Anyone know how profitable Cedar Fair is? Six Flags had one profitable year since 1998 and I'd be surprised if they have many more before they go out of business for good. A lot of people avoid SFA and some of the other parks due to the unruly clientele. Are smaller rides cheaper to build and maintain? Maybe a second park could have improved versions of Nemesis and Maverick. Throw in some non-coaster rides similar to Harry Potter or Transformers and some leisurely things like GA Raceway and they could have a winning formula. A new park could end up overcrowded too, just by taking disenchanted SF customers. Location-wise, I haven't a clue. There's still a lot of open land in Bolingbrook south of where most of the residents live. The mayor there seems to love adding things. Their jubilee has a stage and sound system that I like better than at places like House of Blues. The promenade was a game changer.A second park would fit with the branding of the town, and I don't think it'd suffer the same fate as Old Chicago. There's plenty of towns with open land and in need of jobs. Santa's Village isn't even up to par with Kiddieland. I don't think it's even on the same piece of land. As it is, it feels like someone salvaged some of the original rides and tossed them in a random place. It's an alternative for kids under 10 and that's about it.

Not sure what a problem with banking would entail. I have no real complaints about the ride. Just wish it was twice as long, especially with the horrendous waits caused by hundreds of flash passers each time. The dispatch is similar to everything else there, but it can take longer because they measure people here more often than at other rides. Don't expect the train to get moving in under 3 minutes. Just finished the Yelp reviews. There's this idea developing that Great America is a useless trip without a flash pass, and that "it's for the rich" or the "elite". The flash passers I see are hardly what I would picture as rich or elite. They look like regular people who are probably spending money that they shouldn't. SFGA must not be advertising the single rider lines at all, haven't seen one mention of them in these reviews. A few people with safety concerns since SFGA doesn't seem to have enough staff to manage any of this. People were waiting forever for food and drinks only to find out stuff was out. I may try Thurs night instead of the weekend.

I feel like I liked Whizzer better last year or in 2012, and I went on it a lot. But I never really feel used to most of the coasters unless I get a few good trips in. I always ride Whizzer in the very back, same with Demon. Eagle red is back up running, I think. Blue being trimmed to death this year is pretty lame. But it was a bit too violent last year without em. Most of the time when I've been on Whizzer the line has been maybe 2-4 rows deep underneath the station. Takes about 30-40 minutes. If it's gotten worse, I'd probably blame it on flash passers. I also remember the "visit another day" signs being posted in 2012 a couple times, even in August, I think. Should have noted it in my reports from back then. There is such a ridiculous level of demand for this place now that they could keep drawing huge crowds as long as the weather stays above freezing and the park doesn't get hit by rain or snow. But a lot of that demand is "ohh, I haven't been there in over a decade, I need to see the shiny new record breaking ride". Then people go and see how horrible the park experience is and write lots of one and two star reviews on yelp http://www.yelp.com/biz/six-flags-great-america-gurnee?sort_by=date_desc I've hated the trims on Bull at times when I've been on it a lot. It loses its luster some if you ride it a lot within a short period of time. This year it's felt more intense to me than in the past. It still gets a lot of speed and force with the trim and mid brake. The airtime is good. Float a lot. I wish the location of the trim was elsewhere, it kinda ruins the hill. My feelings on non-inverted and non-wing coasters change a lot either way. I'd like to go this weekend, but, I'm afraid I'd be wasting hours of my time along with gas, tolls, and wear and tear. It'll probably be likely that I don't get season passes for next year if this is the new trend. Why bother spending on a place where you can't really enjoy anything? I've read that Montu only has 20-30 minute lines even during Busch Gardens's biggest crowds. I could get more rides in on Montu in one day, or maybe even one hour, than I could in a whole season of Batman here at this rate. People from this area could drive to Cedar Point in the time it takes to park, enter, and wait for Goliath. Maybe May and June will have reasonable crowds next year. I've got the feeling that Six Flags is going for broke trying to raise as much revenue as possible. They havta know that this strategy of building expensive coasters and luring as many people as possible is not sound. It's not sustainable at all. To keep demand this high for the next 15 years we'd need RMC Eagle, Batman with 10 inversions, Demon 3000, Giant Drop extended to 400 feet with Falcon's Fury seats, Condor turned into a skyscreamer, Pretzelman replaced by Tatsu 2.0, and a coaster that zips through the parking lot. And that's assuming new technologies and inventions don't entice people away from theme parks. We'll see how it goes next year. They're banking on the idea that they can ruin their brand with people today in hopes of luring higher numbers of new, fresh customers tomorrow.

has anyone been there on a Saturday after 9? I haven't been able to get anyone to stick around. They'd rather have dinner and drive 50 miles home than wait in the lines. I at least was able to walk around the park a couple weeks ago on Saturday around 7. X Flight was full and probably about a two hour wait. Most everything had a full or slightly overflowing queue except the flat rides if I remember. Wasn't much of a yolo crowd, just a lot of hyperactive kids running around at full speed at full volume, I'd guess probably 10-12 year olds. JB's had a line of 30 people which took a little over a half hour to clear. Aunt Martha's had the longest line I've ever seen there which was maybe 25-35% longer than JB's. Someone else I knew went the next day, said lines were horrendous too. Think she said Goliath was listed at 210 minutes. Is Whizzer running that much worse than in previous years? To me it feels very jerky and kinda rough at times, mainly on the transitions. I've always heard from people 45+ how much better Whizzer, Eagle, Shockwave, Iron Wolf, Demon, etc ran in their primes.

Looks like they are reserving lanes for season parking pass holders before 12:30 PM. If you do a search for Six Flags and revenue, it brings up some interesting articles. They still have something like a billion in debt. Said their problems started from buying parks and going into debt to put new rides everywhere. Then I read something else that praises the strategy of using new attractions to drive park attendance. So they're hot shotting some parks at the moment, but how long can they keep that up? Disney and Comcast earn far more than Six Flags, with stuff like Harry Potter and Transformers driving the traffic. I think there was some talk about how a lot of people don't return to Six Flags after an initial visit. The season passes seem more profitable than I thought, one article said the average pass holder spends $18.38 per visit. Read-Anderson also said they are working on raising prices more. My taste in coasters is definitely far from what the average coaster fan is into or even the general public. MF and TTD are perceived as the star attractions of Cedar Point. Those are the most popular and still draw strongly a decade plus later. A lot of the public has this idea that faster+taller=best. Maverick isn't perfect, but it's very underrated compared to all the hype those two rides get. Height, speed, and to a lesser extent air time don't appeal to me a ton. I was real into Viper last year but it hasn't done much of anything for me this year for some reason. I've gotten pretty good at figuring out what I'll like and what I won't. Height is even something that makes me dislike a ride. The idea of being dropped at high speeds from 300-400 feet doesn't really appeal to me, I don't even like Goliath's drop. On an inverted coaster I may be able to tolerate the heights, but not in anything that will make me feel an ejector type feeling. A lot of people like that sorta thing, lots of people rave over individual elements on Goliath. Yeah, my interests in coasters is pretty limited. When I go back to Busch Gardens, I'd be surprised if I made it a priority to ride any of the coasters again aside from Montu and Scorpion. There's only some objectivity in saying this or that ride is better. No one should mistake me for being representative of a usual coaster fan. People in the Busch Gardens thread have said over and over how that lineup of coasters is one of the best and I ride Kumba and wish I was back on Demon instead. Winged coasters and inverted coasters appeal to me most, followed by Intamin Maverick style rides and B&M floorless, with arrow looping coasters, B&M Standup, and B&M Flyers at the bottom of the major styles I've experienced. I'd probably be happier at a park with a lot of great non-coaster rides and a couple top-notch looping coasters. We'll see when I attend Universal in a couple months.

Magic Mountain might have the best coaster lineup, although I keep hearing how horrible Viper/Shockwave is nowadays. For my tastes, Cedar Point is just alright. Mean Streak and Magnum are very painful and I hear Gemini is bad now too. Mantis wasn't exactly comfortable before, going floorless may improve it. Blue Streak is a lot like our Viper. Didn't ride MF or Dragster and don't really find them appealing. Maverick has some awesome moments, but I'd like it better with a few more inversions. Still a top coaster. Raptor is good but pales in comparison to Batman and Montu. Corkscrew is decent and less forceful than Demon. I'm a big fan of Iron Dragon, but I hear Ninja does this type of thing better. Haven't been on Gatekeeper. Where CP excels is as an overall experience. SFGA does have a coaster lineup that while lacking any obvious star attractions, is difficult to beat.