josephcissell

Most parks have Projections of what guest numbers will be, and that's based on a wide range of Factors, including what attendance was on that date, day of the week, etc. going back 10 years or more. The only hard numbers are group sales for that day. A park never wants to be caught in a situation where they are off projection by 10,000 guests. It must have been a "perfect storm" that happened. Work in this industry long enough and you learn sometimes poo-poo happens, and if you are caught it it, just roll with it. I’m sure attendance projections are very fickle, but maybe they could provide a small incentive for guests to indicate when they plan to visit the park. For instance, at the online ticket purchasing checkout they could offer a voucher for a free frozen lemonade or something small to guests that voluntarily offer which day they plan to visit the park. It would non-binding to the guest of course, but the information would be useful to Dollywood and I would expect the cost of a couple thousand free lemonades to be pretty nominal.

I got a ride on Cyclone in a middle row. It was assigned seating or I would have gone for the penultimate row, but it was a surprisingly great ride! I noted some fresh wood in various places throughout the ride but didn’t see signs of any real track work beyond annual maintenance. The ride ran well though, certainly a lot better than it did the second half of last season, which I thought was horrendous.

At night. Afternoon too. Any time of the day, really. All of this x100. That’s the best seat on one of the best B&Ms ever made, and it never gets old.

^ It looks to me like they’re using the tagline “The New Revolution” as a marketing tagline for a specific film/ride experience with six of the VR coaster experiences. The other three will feature a Superman theme. It’s kind of confusing to us as enthusiasts because we know about The New Revolution at SFMM, but the GP won’t know anything about that.

My thoughts as well. It’s cool to see Six Flags experimenting with something unique and different here, but it does strike me as a capacity nightmare... DDD is already probably the lowest capacity coaster in the park, and having the additional confusion of the headsets probably won’t help that. Then again, more people stuck in the DDD line means fewer people I have to deal with at Mindbender. Hopefully it works out for them though and I do look forward to at least trying it once!

That looks incredible... Wow. That looks so much more interesting and fun than what I expected!

Hey guys, I’m planning to make my second trip out to this fabulous park next Sunday (3/6), which I noticed is the second day of the food and wine festival. I’m not personally interested in the festival, but do any of you regular visitors have an idea of how significantly it affects crowds this early in the season typically?

Ahh, that is totally what it is! Thanks for finding that! I didn’t know Zamperla made a tower like that. Looks pretty cool to me.

By the way, did anyone ever hear any more information on the “bouncing drop ride" going into the DC Super Friends area? Still wondering what exactly that is.

Everyone else has really covered most of what I would have said here. I always love to see the TPR community step up like that. I would agree with the general consensus that Uber is a far better option than MARTA in terms of getting to the park on time. It really is worth it to be there early because, as someone else noted, it is very common for them to open the front gate 30 minutes early or so and during that time you can go ahead and knock out Georgia Scorcher and Georgia Cyclone. If you do arrive during that early window before security opens the rest of the park, I would personally get a couple of rides on Scorcher while it’s relatively empty. If the park ends up crowded at all, it will likely have a pretty bad line later in the day due to typically horrendous ops. Speaking of ops, in my experience they are a complete crapshoot. Some days are fantastic, others are horrendous, and some are mixed with a few rides that are run really well and others run not so well. Usually Dare Devil Dive, Superman, and Scorcher have the worst ops, in that order from worst to less worse. No telling what you’ll get there. As others have mentioned, get there early and hit Scorcher and Cyclone, then make your way to Dare Devil Dive. You do want to hit it as early as possible because it’s a capacity nightmare and pretty popular. From there, you probably want to head to Gotham for Mindbender and Batman, or head to the back of the park for Superman. I love the way our Superman uses the terrain, and IMO it feels pretty different from the clone at GAdv. I know that last year Ninja wasn’t open during the first few weeks of park operation because they prioritized annual maintenance on all the other coasters instead and couldn’t get Ninja ready in time. They may do the same thing again this year, but that remains to be seen. If it is open, it’s worth a ride IMO because of the uniqueness of the butterfly loop if nothing else. If not, it’s not a big loss. As others have noted, Monster Mansion is a must do. It’s a great dark ride that was completely redone a few years back by Sally and part of classic charm this park has. Drop towers aren’t my thing, but Acrophobia is widely considered to be excellent. Even though it’s short, you also can’t miss the original Von Roll Skyride from 1968. It’s nice for avoiding the monster hill in the middle of the park back by Monster Mansion. Mindbender is also must do. It’s a ride that is just plain fun. I second checking out the carousel, it’s a beautiful piece of history. As others noted, if the weather is nice, it will probably be pretty crowded. This is definitely a park where you can still hit all the majors on a medium-crowded day without FP though. With FP if needed, I think you should have no trouble at all. Most lines remain open for entry right up until the official park closing time. I generally like to end my day with Goliath and try to plan things such that I enter the queue a minute or two before close. If it’s late enough to be dark, a night ride on Goliath is my overall favorite experience in the park and not to be missed. Though our park may lack in terms of record breaking headliners (El Toro ), I feel it makes up for it in spades with classic southern charm and a generally well cared-for appearance (the one glaring exception being Scorcher’s paint, which is awful...). I hope you enjoy your visit! I may be there around that weekend as well if you want to catch a ride together.

That is precisely what I was going to say, and I do really enjoy Nitro... I really like how this is turning out. Seems to be one of the more interesting B&M hyper layouts in a while. I love the curves on that over bank!

Certainly possible. I think most would agree that a HH expansion is needed in the near term future, and it’s always packed when I’m at the park. It will also be the park’s 50th anniversary, so I can only imagine we’ll see a fairly large addition. I’d love to see a Premier launcher added to the back of the park where Deja Vu used to be. Though I would be surprised if our next coaster isn’t a 4D free spin or RMC rework of Cyclone rather than something from Premier. Either way, with the addition of HH a lot of fresh life has been added to the back half of the park, and it would be nice to have more capacity back there to handle those crowds.

Just for what it’s worth, Six Flags has special partnerships with the financial trusts that technically own SFOG and SFOT. Those agreements force SF corporate to make an undisclosed minimum amount of capital investments within a rolling five year cycle. That may or may not directly be in play here, but it’s something to keep in mind when examining corporate’s investment strategy.

I really like what I see here. Seems like a very well thought out kids/family expansion with some great rides. Does anyone see any more specific information on Superman Tower of Power? It looks like a sized down S&S space shot to me, which would be awesome!

Looking at the new prices for 2016 season passes, I noticed it seems they’ve gone up considerably this year. For example, the regular non-sale price of a 2016 combo gold pass is listed as $184.99. If I’m not mistaken, the same level of 2015 pass was under $150 last year... Similarly, the 2016 single park gold pass is now $134.99 regularly and I believe it was around $115 last year. Unless I’m way off base on my numbers here, those are fairly substantial hikes. Perhaps we’re getting both dry and wet investments this year? Can anyone else recall what last year’s prices were?

Just noticed tomorrow is a BAFF day for passholders. Anyone know how busy the last BAFF day was last Friday?

IMO, go as follows: 1) Kingda Ka, 2) Zuma, 3) El Toro, 4) Bizarro.....then boogie over to 5) Batman, 6) Nitro, 7) Skull Mountain. At that point- you've got your money's worth....have at it as you see fit! Keeping in mind that bashing my head on a stand-up, along with the Superman ain't my cup of tea! Have fun! To add to this, I'd go in the same order, but assuming you've reached El Toro by around 11-11:15, I'd recommend taking multiple back row rides on the bull while it's still a walk on. Bizarro often opens late (around noon) and El Toro holds a steady 30 minute wait most of the day. Don't leave the ride just because you've had one ride--El Toro gets better with more rides as you learn the ins and outs of the course and can fully appreciate the first drop and RT hill. It's incredible and there's nothing like it. From then on you can basically do whatever you want as the three B&Ms mentioned are people eaters. Thanks for the advice everyone! I really appreciate it and hope to have a solid day at the park this week. I will definitely say hi if I can El Toro Ryan.

Hey guys, I've been regularly reading in this thread for quite a while now, well at least since last year when Nitro's train C had all kinds of rattle. Anyway, I've never been to GAdv before and I am thrilled that next week I'll finally have the opportunity to visit. I'll be at the park next Friday (8/7), so feel free to drop me a line and say hi if you're in the park as well. I'm hoping to catch an off day in terms of crowds of course, but I plan to stay open to close anyway. I know the general wisdom here is to budget for a flash pass, and I can do that if need be, but where should I head first upon entry? Ka or Toro perhaps? Also, does any portion of the park frequently open prior to the official posted opening time? If so, what section/rides would be included in that? Looking to hit all the major stuff, except for Superman and Namtab, several times. Just looking to strategize as effectively as possible and I appreciate the feedback from you guys!

Not sure when you visited SFOG, but sadly things are often that bad. SFOG operations can be excellent or horrendous, I've seen both on the same ride at different times in the same day before. There is absolutely no consistency, which is maddening. I haven't had a chance to make it to the west coast yet, but from frequently reading this thread it would seem that SFMM has similar consistency issues.

I though the only thing that went from park to park with Mantab was the chaisait (sp) I though each parked used the trains they already had. I don't recall if the restraints were yellow before or not, I'll have to look at their condition when I'm at the park next week. In other thoughts, between the RMC hiring details that Screamscape reported on about a month ago and the confirmation that Roar at SFDK is closing this year, it doesn't look like this is going to be our year for any kind of Ibox Cyclone transformation. Kind of a shame, but I'm guessing they'll expand the water park instead for 2016. I'm hoping for that over a JLBFM installation anyway.

I read that as well. Personally, it seems a bit silly to me that we would get a dark ride when we're one of the few Six Flags parks that actually has a high quality dark ride already. That said, JLBFM has been well received and seems to be a top notch ride. Even though I don't prefer to mix my water and theme park experiences usually, I would much rather see them spend the kind of coin it would take to bring in JLBFM on expansions to Hurricane Harbor. Given how little it really is in its current state (a wave pool, three slides, and a kids playstructure), I think near term expansion is warranted. HH has looked packed pretty much every time I've been at the park the last two seasons.

Thanks for mentioning that. I just watched it and I could not be more happy that it is SFOG! It actually looked like a surprisingly strong trailer to me...

As was mentioned by dstephe9, Cyclone received some RMC topper track to the first couple of drops over the last few years. Those sections are still marvelous. It's the rest of the ride that beats you, though in my experience ride quality can be highly dependent on seating location. I have to say that I don't believe I've ever heard such a positive opinion of Ninja, but I agree that it is pretty rideable with smart riding posture. I really wish there were more examples of the butterfly loop. I would love to see B&M or Premier take a stab at that inversion in a smooth multilooper.

Yeah, I saw that. Unfortunately this trip is just tacked on to other plans, so that is when I can go, but I'll be there open to close to make the most of it. Thanks for the reply.

Looking forward to finally visiting this park for the first time and checking out Fury on Friday! Anyone know what weekday crowds have been like recently? It seems like in past years this park has usually been pretty quiet until later in the season, but I wouldn't be surprised if Fury has changed that some.