HWFan

Due to my family & friends' love of them, they've made me a Cardinals fan by proxy. While I don't mind going to a game every year or two, I'm by no means a very passionate fan. It will definitely be interesting come this Friday though, but I guess it's not like Evel..err..American Thunder hasn't changed names before. Fortunately, this one will only be there through November 8th. I think that's a pretty spot-on summary of The Boss. I would hate to see anything changed about it apart from maybe swapping the G-Trains for something else. If SFStL ever jumps on to the Six Flags RMC bandwagon, I'd much rather they build one from scratch- or even mess with Evel Knievel if it came to that, despite there being nothing wrong with it- before going for Boss. GCI along the lines of EK can be found all over the place; giant, out of control terrain wood coasters can not. I always try to ride the Boss one time per season, but it looks like I might miss it this year...darn.

Every Six Flags park has an employee shortage issue. It's their business model. Get by with the least amount of humans necessary. I've seen coasters with a 2-man crew recently. Disgusting. I'm sorry, but this is just not true; it's counterintuitive. While blatant over-staffing would be just as counterintuitive to almost any business model, a well staffed park runs better, which results in better business success. None of what I'm saying is inside information, because let's take any theme park out there: If you purposely understaff food locations, for example, it will result in longer lines. Line for coasters are one thing, as a theme park probably has a monopoly of that commodity in its immediate surroundings. However, within a five minute drive of most mid-to-large-sized parks, you may have 6-12 restaurants (e.g. McDonalds, Lions Choice, Taco Bell, Steak n' Shake, White Castle, Culvers, another McDonalds). If people can go out to eat and still even come back to the park if wanted, they very well might do that, and if people choose to eat elsewhere, the park would be missing that potential revenue. When you see Dave Roemer spending a lot of time working front line positions in the park, do you really think there is intentional understaffing? It just doesn't make sense. Feel free to go online to http://www.sixflagsjobs.com and apply. Note: While I was not present when you talked about just a couple team members running a coaster, I'm guessing that wasn't ideal in the minds of that park's management either. But similarly, thanks to the hard work of the SFSL ride operations department, I believe the Boss was running three trains most of the weekend, which requires a full staff of three-train-operation certified team members. Cheers to them.

First, I have gone through the proper channels multiple times. My post was very blunt but the criticisms were not unfounded. Second, I will clarify that when I say poor operations, I mean the ride's technical issues, not the staff operating it. Some of my favorite rides staff are assigned to it and always do an extremely professional job. EDIT: Also, JLBM still remains one of my favorite rides in the park, and my complaints were from the perspective of a Guest, enjoying the attraction.

When I had my last construction tour with Dave Roemer, he didn't know why they did it that way either (although he might now). One theory I have is that there are two outlets in the room. Of course you need outlets in case you had to use a shop vac or something sometime. Well, the queue just happens to end with the outlet just out of the reach of Guests. By the way, I had my 20th ride on Justice League tonight....it was terrible. Out of the twenty I've had, I've gotten stuck at some point 14 of the times. When you get stuck on dark rides at any major park, an announcement is made to let people know to just stay seated. Then another is made to warn Guests that the ride will be starting back up....what happens at Justice League? Nothing. You are closed in a black room with closed doors and a projector that is just showing gray. Sometimes you hear random sounds or your vehicle starts spinning. I've mentioned the importance of an announcement before, but I guess they didn't feel it was necessary. My friends had one chance to ride the ride. They had to miss all of the last three scenes. Were we offered a chance to ride again after the ride was rebooted & recycled? No. At any park like Universal or Disney, they make sure you get to experience the attraction if you get stuck. It's like they don't even care that you waited 100 minutes to ride. They can't make comparisons to Universal & Disney when their operations are poorer than Haiti.

^He heralds boomerang, ninja, and mine train as the best coasters in the park and Justice League as too much wasted space. Btw, it says at the bottom of his post that he was a Holiday World Halloween ride op in the past. If the Screaming Eagle is "AWFUL", then he should be criminally charged for inflicting people with worse-than-awful pain from the Legend.

I know that Insanity Alley & Blind Fury were both improved in some ways and will be improved even more in the future. I worked giving/checking employee wristbands out front for most of the preview night, but I did have a chance to go through Blind Fury and Camp Killamore. Spoiler Alert: The below description talks about the route and general description of the Camp Killamore attraction. If you don't want to know details until you experience it for yourself, do not continue reading this post. Plainly stated, Camp Killamore is something unlike anything the park has ever done before. It's like a mashup of a traditional haunted house, a haunted hayride, and a flashlight-led hike through a shut down waterpark at night. The queue and exit are located in the regular HH entrance/exit pathways, except for the queue takes up the usual exit path and vice versa. The queue isn't too themed, as expected, but it had some fun stuff like a plethora of directional signs saying things like "Lemp Mansion 30mi", "'Gnawlins Hollow 0.25mi", and "Stanley Hotel 902mi" (for those who don't know, which included myself, the Stanley Hotel was the hotel from the horror classic, The Shining.) Before you get to the bridge that is part of the regular harbor entrance/exit, you go off of the concrete path. You'll encounter a few sand or mulch paths at Fright Fest, which are made usable for heavy traffic by putting gravel down first. Then you enter a tent for the pre-show/introduction (I had to take the ADA route so my route differed in the couple spots that included going off road). Next, you exit the back of the tent and hike up (and then down the backside of) a fairly steep hill on a mulch path before encountering the first building: The Showers. You are warned by a camper who franticly tells you to turn back before circling around the building (the HH shower building is set up with the showers, some with the curtains open and some closed, in the the center of the building. There is a really cool projection effect that you see while passing the back wall. As you leave the building, you see that the girl who warned you is now dead. Next you visit the camp's archery range, and it is immediately obvious that someone got bored using just the regular targets. The actress in this scene is one of my favorites. Moving on, you continue your hike through the waterpark where you pass through large, hornet nest-filled & buzzing arbors, and past the half-drained pool at the bottom of the tube slides. You can wave to a kayaking camper in the pool, but he probably won't wave back it seems like he's been dead for a while. While in the summer it is a nice, open bridge over the lazy river, at Camp Killamore, it is a disorienting maze of 5x5ft cages made with wood & chicken wire (those who went through Blind Fury sometime in the past couple years will recognize them, as they used to be in Blind Fury before Blind Fury got enhanced). Basically, all of the walls look the same, and your group is just stuck pressing on them until you find the one that is the door. Including the door you came in, there are eight candidates unless you are on the side of the bridge and obviously won't be exiting into the lazy river below. (My favorite cages are the ones who's entrance doors block/cover their exit doors, forcing your whole group into the cage before being able to get out.) Once free, you continue your hike through the dark and eventually pass the dark tug-boat-topped food service location that is used during the summer. However, at Camp Killamore, they have turned the big Hurricane Harbor gift shop into their 'Mess Hall'. Even though the store, Monsoon Marge's, is usually very open, it is boarded/fenced up besides a narrow entrance and exit passage. While inside, you first will notice the cannibalistic nature of the camp's chefs when you see the glass-doored fridge and other props, but don't stare too long because the dining staff comes out to greet you shortly after arriving. If you've made it past them with all of the limbs you had at the start of the tour, you get to finally enjoy what is a nice peaceful walk, headed back towards the park. You pass the wave pool, entrance to the Bonzai Pipelines (which I didn't even notice), and cross the bridge, around which point you bid farewell to your guide, as you walk up the concrete path towards the gates & park. (The guides/campers are dressed in all black with some cool face make-up suggesting they sustained some significant injuries recently.) Even with some tropical-themed items still barely visible in the dark (like the huge fake shark that is used as a spot to pose for pictures during the summer), I don't think any of it detracted from the experience. When I said one of the things it was a mashup of was the haunted hayride, I meant that things are really spread out. In a regular haunted house, the designs are fairly tight and use all of the available space. You also enter & exit the haunted houses from a bustling park midway. With Camp Killamore, you are removed from the regular park environment by the queue and three minute walk back to the park from the Mess Hall, which is the last scene. Hurricane Harbors lends itself perfectly as a haunted camp, and even the huge "Camp Killamore" sign above the gates really set the mood. I'm really excited to see what they do with this haunt in the coming years. Also, I want to note that the showers, archery range, and mess hall are not the only areas with scare actors. They startled me pretty good a few times along the way, which isn't normal for me. There are two cabins (like the one in the picture I posted a while back) along the route which do a great job of blocking wide pathways at turning points during your hike. Walking at a normal speed during the day, without any of the scare actors or cage mazes, I was told that the course is at least ten minutes, which leads to an experience that was probably about 15-20 minutes doing the ADA route (which may have some scenes in different orders compared to the regular path). Holy crap that was a lot of typing, but I hope there aren't too many typos, and I hope it gave you a good idea of the attraction's set up. Finally, I've included a pretty blurry picture of the sign out front in case you were interested:

Could our Six Flags ever get Holiday In The Park? I don't see why not, St.Louis has to be warmer than Great Adventure and they're getting one. It's not just about the temperature. In the coming years it will be interesting to see which parks might get Holiday in the Park. With SFGAdv, they're really the main park in that area and would pretty much dominate the theme park holiday market. However, it's interesting for Missouri as SDC throws a really popular & established Christmas event. Shows are a big part of it. Either way, let's just see how SFGAdv does first, and then see if we get lucky.

If Rush Street Flyer didn't have to be replaced, here's something I think would be cool: Replace the Ninja with a custom Eurofighter and retheme that area of the Ninja/Joke/Axis Games to an area called the Joker's Circus. You could put Fireball somewhere near the bottom of the first drop of the coaster (as long as it would fit), and you could theme it like a ring of fire that you, the stunt performer/coaster rider, were going to ride through.

That's pretty much the answer I got from HR in my response. On Labor Day though? Damn, sorry to most of the workers were kept in school even on Labor Day. I was pretty sure everyone is off on Labor Day. Bummer I got the copy and paste response. Good to know they are putting forth an extra effort to get more workers in. I'm sure they will be ready for October and on. I'll be keeping an eye on the thread. None of the schools were in session for labor day. It's a federal holiday and I can guarantee that none of those workers calling in were due to school. That is a terrible response. When I used to work out there I had employees every year try the "I can't work on labor day because of school" excuse. If that is what guest relations sent you I am going to be highly pissed off. I hope you mean SFSL "GR" rather than HR. I can't speak for Guest Relations, but I know a lot of people call Human Resources when they want to get through to someone immediately and keep questioning members of that department even though they can't usually answer the question for sure. While I don't want to make it sound like I'm trying to brush off your experience by making excuses, I will say that part of the answer you posted (a big part actually) has to to do with college students who are physically out of the city/area. Second, while I can't comment on that day's specific staffing details, just because you don't have school doesn't mean you can't call off work or not show up and claim school related or homework related issues. We actually had one girl miss all of her homecoming events because she didn't want to call off work. Needless to say, her department found a way to show their appreciation. And when they say (in PKI's quote) that the HR staff is hard at work, they're not kidding. Even though I am scheduled for two days off per week, I'm working seven days this week and supervisors from other departments are helping in HR during the week. One hard part is that we only have really between 3:00 and 5/6:00 to call people. That's why on my scheduled days off that I go in on, I just go in in the afternoon. EDIT: Let the record reflect that I am in no way asked/pressured to go in on my days off but do it partially because I love my job and sitting at home is boring when I could be helping to hire people for the park. 1) Just tell them that in your interview. Having someone who might possibly need to leave/call off is better than having nobody at all, especially if they are a good/hard worker. 2) I would take your identity with me to the grave and protect your anonymity. If you're pleasant in person, I'd love for you to come out to the park and work a bit (or interview at least). When it comes to security, we hire a lot of experienced police officers. I actually set one up with paperwork yesterday. If you work in that capacity (rather than something like the HR Reserves), you would get(have) to do the full 5 hour Discovery orientation training where the theme is fun, candy, and Six Flags. I think you'd probably get a kick out of it. I'll message you with some details in case you're interested. Things have changed a lot in the past five years, from what I understand. I'm sorry you had a bad experience, and I don't want to say it wasn't legitimate as I wasn't there. However, our restaurants are all given grade A ratings by random health inspections. Also, the fudgery, which includes the candy apples, are now strictly run by retail and isn't a bad place to work in the slightest. One of my best friends is actually the retail supervisor over that area a lot. So in conclusion, apply for the HR Reserve/Fundraising programs if you want. Don't apply if you don't want to. And the staffing is coming. HWFan out, yo. EDIT: That "HWFan out, yo" part sounded a lot cooler in my head. I'm sorry for any cringing it may have caused. But also, I forgot to ask something: Everyone else who is going to camp this coming Fright Fest, what all are you packing? I heard that at night, the only way to see is with flashlights pretty much, so I'm bringing some extra batteries.

YES! I saw that we got our first non-park-employee-spouse applicant today, and I was wondering if it was from TPR. Ignore the email to call and set up an interview I sent and message me a good time to call you tomorrow.

I don't know about any of the other parks doing it besides SFSL (I also don't know of any other parks doing the HR Reserve program besides SFSL either), but it couldn't hurt to contact them.

First, I'd like to clarify my comments. It was nothing against 95% of the people on here. There have been a couple... less than cordial interactions with TPR members not on the forum. I'll leave it at that. I still care about the park and want everyone to have a good time, and my previous apology for the Labor Days craziness was sincere, but I've decided to just let the park handle it's stuff exclusively. Instead, I'll just be posting more things on a factual basis rather than opining on a lot of particular discussions. I overreacted just a bit and for that, I am sorry. Also, besides the new booster group "raise money for your school/club/charity group" program that has been introduced, there is a new program that I think some of you may either be interested in or know someone who is interested in. It's called the HR Reserve program. *queue TV infomercial salesman pitch* EDIT: I also wanted to mention that it was a pleasure to meet RKO as well as one of the "lurkers" during my temporary stint working in Colonades on Labor Day. I wish we could have spoken longer, but it was still great to meet you!

Has anyone gotten any response from this past weekend? I sent them an email Monday night and haven't heard squat. As it says on the website, please allow a week for a response. Especially if there's a time that they're jammed with web comments... ...however... ...once you get to that eighth day, go ahead and absolutely flood them. Flood their social media. Flood their phone lines. Flood their web comments. Flood the forums. Tell everyone you can. After today, I'm too burnt out to pretend to care anymore. I'm not going to apologize for any experience you have. I'm not going to help with any issue you experience. Absolutely hold them accountable. Be reasonable, but after they don't respond, call the media for all I care.

^ um, sir? Do you have the proper permits for this constructive conversation?

I have been to SFOG, SFGAdv, SFGAm, SFSL, SFOT, and SFFT and none of them have never shut rides down early when I was there...Hell, sometimes they'll be late shutting the lines down. Six Flags and Cedar Fair are really great about leaving the lines open until closing time. SFSL has always left the lines open until the park closes. However, this year there is a sign outside JLBM that says the line closed an hour before the park. This started after one Saturday where the line was over two hours long when the park closed, which postponed a lot of the maintenance/washdown schedule by 2.5-3 hours. However, they have been since keeping the line open as long as possible in an attempt to keep it at 60 minutes or less at closing time, which means that the line only has to close 15min early or less on most days. It makes sense in extreme cases, but I did always find it a bit odd when HW would close a ride an hour early that didn't have much of a wait at all. Either way, if you just read the signs and plan ahead, it has never been a big deal for me. Also, in terms of the minor labor laws, I doubt that plays a factor. While I am only versed in the laws of Missouri, unless Indiana is drastically different, this shouldn't really be an issue with ride operators, as 14-15 year olds (the age range that has the strict regulations) aren't allowed to operate rides anyway.

To confirm with your post, Mooseburger, JB's Smokehouse, and 1904 Hot Dog were all being served out of Collonades. As much as I would like to explain the staffing logistics, I am not at liberty to do so, and I don't think that would be constructive as it wouldn't change the experience people had yesterday. In terms of JLBM, I'm sorry that it was closed at the time you were in the area, but it fortunately was open most of the day. At this point, I am feeling insanely burnt out after yesterday and just getting home from work today. I will be working on my personal responses to Mizzoumatt, RKO, Sportsdude360, and PKI in a Google Doc to post when I get the chance in the next 24 hours. Thank you for your understanding.

I honestly am not sure where to start here, so I hope I can get my message across as best as possible for all of you who visited the park yesterday: I'm sorry. I know that a sincere apology can't and won't make up for your experience yesterday. If there is anything possible that I can do for you, please message me. I'm not sure if there is even much I can do, especially as I don't work in Guest Relations anymore, but I will do absolutely anything I can. However, if you would please let the park know about your experience, it would be very important. If you click on this link, you can submit an electronic correspondence to Guest Relations, who will respond to you by email. Also, if you are so inclined, that link has a mailing address to send a letter to Dave. For convenience sake, I'll put it below: Six Flags St. Louis Dave Roemer, Park President P.O. Box 60 Eureka, MO 63025 I know that typing or writing out your experience has the potential to resurrect feelings of anger or frustration, and you might just want to forget about the whole thing. I completely understand that after experiencing some of my own issues at Universal Orlando. When you contact the park, please remember that the people responding to you probably had absolutely nothing to do with your experience. However, make sure to be firm, provide as many details as possible, talk about what caused the most frustration, and include any good parts of your day as well (for example, if you thought the ride operations were good). Remember that while Guest Relations team members will be the first to review your correspondence, at some point it will also be read by park managers, directors, and Dave Roemer. The park's sole purpose is to create a place where people can have a lot of fun, and the park doesn't make money without the Guests who choose to visit it. Finally, I want to express again that I am truly sorry, and I want to give a sincere thank you to everyone who has visited our park this year and in past years. In a post below, I will quote and address about a half dozen posts regarding these issues.

Jim Reid-Anderson inherited a bit of a mess. There were lots of investments needed in the parks for non-ride related things and lots of debt to manage. He has led the company to be at its highest point ever. He is growing the parks so that they can be successful, but he knows that theme park growth can be tricky I'm sure. Look at Holiday World: Before some of the capacity pains they have been having this year, their very calculated and slow growth has got them to a point where they could invest in a $22 million B&M. Large & unique coasters bring lots of people to a park. Lots of Guests can make a park successful. Jim Reid-Anderson is going to make the parks successful. I don't know any specifics at all about large coasters coming to any of the parks, but I know they will be coming at some point. As an employee who loves the park, his team members, and our Guests, it probably pains me the most when a year goes by without a *insert whatever type of RMC Boss or hyper coaster* being announced, so the fact that I can be so optimistic about the future of the park should really tell you something. I still consider conversions as being "new" big coasters, like the Joker at SFDK. You know...we're a lot like SFDK... Switching subjects, I was taking some stuff from HR down to cash control in the late evening, and I see Dave Roemer come out of the park via the main employee entrance/exit by First Aid. The ice house for the park is also right back there, and he walked over to one of the giant walk-in coolers, grabs a huge bag of ice, throws it on his shoulder, and starts headed back into the park. He was going to the food location attached to the Hall of Justice store, and I was talking to him during the short walk there. 90% of our conversation consisted of trying to think of ice-related puns. More importantly, it's cool to see the Park President who hears a stand needs more ice, is in the general area, and radios to say that he'll take care of it. He reminds me a lot of my close friend and inspiration, Pat Koch. Vonni - I'm not sure about pictures. It depends on a few things: 1) are there picture-worthy things, 2) do I have the opportunity to get a pic, and 3) am I allowed to take the pic. I'm hoping to get a drive around the back roads of the park in the next week or two, but we'll see. WoodieWarrior - I'm glad you seemed to have an overall good time at the park, especially about the ride ops. I do want to apologize for the food lines however. The good news is that beefed up culinary service infrastructure has been built. You will see things getting better on that front in the coming weeks. That is something I am personally helping to work on.

Just a friendly reminder that we don't technically know that Tidal Wave is going anywhere anytime soon. Also, talking about investments, Jim Reid-Anderson is an extremely intelligent and down to earth man. (We actually exchange emails about new movies and music we see. Out of 30,000 employees, he makes time for me. What a special dude.) He knows how important beautiful parks are. If you have a beautiful park, you will get better Guest ratings than even adding a new coaster this year. Just think: millions of dollars being invested into infrastructure, renovation, and theming. There are a lot of ideas in the pipeline that could make the park really shine, and they are going to try to get as many implemented as possible. For 2016, look forward to more shade, misters, and AC. With an 8:00-4:30 HR shift today, I was fine staying until 9:00 tonight just to get a chance to ride JLBM. Oddly enough, I ran into another TPR SFSL Forum regular in the queue and rode with her family. The good news: It was by far the best ride I've had in it. The only effect that wasn't working top notch was the Joker's cannon. With the doors and full effects working, the ride is a masterpiece. All 8 cars have been running with almost zero downtime. I want to apologize for those who were effected by issues earlier this season, but wow is it cool now.

"Sources"? Is she affiliated with Six Flags in any way? I'm not sure. She didn't tell details of her source. I will ask her next time I see her. Her source should probably tell Dave and the park directors that she has confirmed an RMC conversion for 2017. They'd probably like to know so that they can get ready with the planning. Oh, and someone had posted a screenshot from the Fright Fest teaser site with the words 'End of Boss'. Dave said that the people who just throw those sites together are over in Texas and have no idea what parks are adding each year. They just try to find something catchy to put.

I'm not sure how this could be any different from any other SF park I've ever been to. Actually, even my experience with CF ride ops/food service within the last year has been garbage. The economy is coming back and the money is there for larger capital investments, so why care about the little things like customer service anymore, eh? From our observations it's easier to count the good experiences with large chain park staff as opposed to keeping track of the bad experiences. Front gate staff is always the best, but it just goes downhill from there. Maybe it's because I'm familiar with SFSTL's layout, but we found SFoG's layout to be a little odd. If I recall correctly, Superman is just tucked in the back kind of awkwardly. SFoG is an OK park, but it's not the high and mighty you seem to be making it out to be. BTR clones aside, the only memorable rides for me were Goliath and Mind Bender. I actually just had to look at the list to even remember what was there and that was only four years ago. Dare Devil? Meh. Would I rather have SFOG as my home park over SFSTL? Well they have a B&M hyper... so yeah. However, there's a reason why we haven't even thought about going back. It's just not that memorable. From my experience the employees at SFStL were much worse than those at SFOG. Every time I have to raise an issue to an employee at SFOG it gets resolved and every time that happened at SFStL the employees (and security) were not in any way interested in doing their jobs, did not know what to do, and just wanted to do anything but fulfill their role. It was actually very concerning. Like I said maybe that is just bad luck since I have only been to the park a handful of times. SFOG isn't the world's best amusement park but I would put its layout, aesthetics, and coaster line up in terms of quality above pretty much any park in the chain. They do have their issues with poor employees and shady clientele though (although it has drastically improved from years ago when the clientele was scary at times). OHHHHH LAWWDDDYYY MISSS SCARLETT! STORMS'A BRUIN AND THERE AIN'T NO GOOD WAY TO GET OUT NO WAY NO HOW! Sorry, I felt that my above response fit the ridiculousness of your post. First, you don't visit often and it isn't your home park. I highly suggest not putting much stock in what an individual might say about a park's employees. I wish I had the statistics in front of me right now (but I guess posting them would get me fired anyway). However, SFSL consistently ranks in the top two or three parks for the vast majority of the areas that are graded. The ones where SFSL isn't at the top are obvious due to different park demographics and circumstances. I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, but please don't post acting like you know the entire park. I apologize if I sound rude, but I am in the park six days a week. I notice every little corner and thing that can be replaced. We have a fantastic looking park. Yes, some areas could be and are being cleaned up a bit more, but damn does it look good overall. While I know that not every employee interaction a Guest might have may not be 100% pleasant, the one area that our park kicks major butt in is employees going out of their way to help Guests. I've worked three years in Admissions management, Guest Relations (operations management), and now I work in Human Resources. I've seen it all. I seriously, personally hate when someone doesn't have the best day that they could have. It is my and the rest of the park employees' jobs to make sure you have the best day possible. If we fail at that, we don't take it lightly. Especially with the security team, it is made up of some of the best and nicest people you will meet at the park. But at the end of the day, I actually do want to apologize for your lackluster experience. I hope that you will be able to visit again soon and give us another chance. Now, in terms of the park's layout...Six Flags Over Mid-America was designed to be the crown jewel of the chain at that time. While some find it confusing, it was designed by the top designer at that point it time. Many, including myself, prefer the smaller, cozier midways rather than some of the sprawling midways of parks like SFGAm (not that I don't love that park too). I just think that you're used to SFOG, because our park really is laid out pretty well.

Let's start with the bad and work up to the good. I have cut bits and pieces out of some posts to curtail them while not changing the message. 1. JLBM is a fantastic win for the park. Zach's negativity (or apathy and best) really shows what he cares about. He cares about coasters that he likes. He talks about how he used to just absolutely love Mr. Freeze. Now that they turned the trains backwards, he claims the ride has been ruined for him. Seriously? He hasn't even been to the park in years, and I feel as if his memory of the park gets more negative as the years progress like the opposite of rose colored glasses. 2. It isn't just Zach being negative. When I used the strong word 'cancer', I used it because his negatively has been spreading to other users. There is absolutely no reason for this forum to be that negative. None. 3. The curse of 2015 is real, rather than the park just not doing a good job with maintenance and operations. Whether the rides were at Six Flags or Holiday World, you would've seen similar downtime. The park just got really, really unlucky. 4. Six Flags isn't dropping money into the parks as much under this new management? Really? First, the last management bankrupted the entire company, so let's not harken back to those days. Second, this new management is dropping at least as much into the parks, but they are doing it so much more wisely. So much more. It's crazy. All of the parks need millions and millions of dollars to be invested in things that aren't rides. The old management was crazy about putting all of their investments into rides. That is why Fright Fest sucked, and that is why the park got run down a little. Most of what has been being fixed are things that you don't see but still cost insane amounts of cash. Cedar Fair is dumping cash into a few of their larger parks, but a lot of the parks really aren't getting much. He has said several times that he values your input to this forum. As for prozach, I personally agree most of the time with what he says. Zach's multiple posts on so called negativity (truth) is no different than constantly reading about the we need a hyper or iron boss coaster posts. He has said that several times, and I appreciated those posts. I have also posted several times about how I appreciated him. I try to be fair, and I used to see a lot of truth in the things he did post. However, it's just gotten to the point where he's gone off the rails to be negative for the sake of negativity. 1. I think Georgia actually got one of the best additions of the chain! Two new kiddie areas and the first themed to DC Superheroes that includes a custom roller skater-type coaster? That would be really cool! 2. The Larson super loops have actually been one of the best rated rides in the chain according to Guest scores. There are some real statistics to go by rather than just "well my young nephew and I didn't like it so it won't be good." 3. Remember that Hurricane Harbor is closed for three and a half months of the park's operating season. Especially with Fright Fest becoming the park's busiest time of the year, HH additions will come eventually but aren't the main focus. My condolences to you who feel the need to give your condolences to the St. Louis area fans as if our park is dying. Guests submitted suggestions and the park listened. It should really be fantastic. I do remember him saying that several pages back. I believe the words were "I can guarantee you'll be able to ride it next year." But some articles have stated Fireball is going where it currently is. Perhaps they're moving it? Okay. This is my turn to apologize. It is absolutely amazing how fast plans can change so close to announcement time. Even just a few days ago when I said that, there were plans to relocate it to another park. It may be headed to the scrap heap now. Holiday World had to get rid of their falling star in the early 2000's due to the amount of maintenance it took. They shipped it to a park with a less strenuous operating schedule. Rush Street Flyer was going to have to go sometime, and I can't think of a better ride to take its place. (Those who were wanting a S&S Screamin' Swing in that spot have absolutely no idea how small that spot is compared to how much room those swings take.) I'm really looking forward to the stellar lighting package that will be on Fireball. Those LEDs look really sharp at night and will hopefully be seen a bit from the highway. I showed Dave the video of the Screamin Eagles old chaser lights that someone posted recently (even though the filmographer did the very stupid and dangerous thing of bringing a camera on the ride). It would be really cool to have, and we'll see I guess. The Clues I could go back towards all of the "clues" that I may or may not have posted in the past. However, there was one that I felt was like a smoking gun. In the clue I believe I apologized to someone as I was not trying to "drain their brain" or something. Brain Drain at Elitch Gardens (Denver, CO)

Prozach.....I am going to work on a much larger response to your long post. However, for the time being, I will say that you have become a cancer to this forum. I was actually going to offer you two complementary tickets out of my own personal supply so that you would at least be able to experience the park and know what you're complaining about. Yea, we get it, being a cop means you deal with crappy people who hate you...but guess what...I don't care anymore because you seem to get off by being one of the most frequent posters here who hasn't even been to the park in years. You proclaim the same tired rhetoric and only change phrasing. I used to enjoy this forum and posting pictures, behind the scenes information, and other fun conversation regarding the park. Now it feels like a chore that I just want to put off because reading this forum is the best way to kill my mood. Any guarded-fondness and goodwill I had for you is gone. After I have some time to respond to a few of the posts point by point, I am taking a break from this forum. (I wonder if that's why TNT hasn't been posting much recently either.)

After a conversation today, I am looking forward to FF even more! Even with a lot of the mazes returning, they are going to be even better. In terms of maze design, this is going to be the best year ever. From what I understand, this year is also a bit of a transition year. While the mazes are going to be really cool, the should be even better next fall. One important part is that each scene of each maze is being designed with the mindset of "even if there was no actor, the scene would still leave Guests thinking that it was really cool." While there are no plans to get rid of any scare actors, this mindset is definitely good to see. In the next couple years, we'll continue to see technology plan a bigger role, which is an important step to their goal of increased/possible interactivity between Guests and the mazes themselves (in the coming years, you may not even have to be inside the maze to enjoy and interact with it). I'm looking forward to employee preview night!

Believe whatever you want, but I guarantee that you will be able to ride the Rush Street Flyer next year.