theymitbgi

Hey prozach long time no see, hope all is going well for you and you're still in our little town. Is the juice worth the squeeze? , kinda unique expression a local radio host uses quite a bit. Are you a fan of his or just coincidence? Anyway looking at some of these pictures just presents a sad state of affairs SFSL is in. I haven't been in 4-5 years and have no intentions of going back soon. I now consider SDC my home park and only make that trip 3-4 times a year.

What was up with this? Did I miss something? Did you see SDC's response? Spent like 45 minutes catching up on the posts here. Haven't visited the park in like over two years and really have no desire to go back any time soon. Just got back from spending a week in Branson, 4 days of which we visited SDC and it is just a much nicer, much friendlier park. Not to dog on SFSTL anymore than usually occurs on this thread. ProZach we still need to meetup in the neighborhood someday, sorry to hear about your work related injury and hope all else is well, can't believe you're little one is already a toddler. They grow up so quick. Yes HWFan is really missed around here. I know someone here was in contact with his parents here. I hope they know how fondly he was thought of here. Also miss the old SFSTL.net those were good ole days. Anyway end of my 2:30 AM ramble. Carry on!

I apologize that may have been what I was thinking of.

Old news, the discount gift shop near Colossus sold Goliath-SFSL keychains until just a year or so ago.

The area you have covered in blue, includes first aid and a rest room, I don't see either of those being relocated.

I would think that there is really one main reason and that is that some parks have built in "guaranteed" attendance. I know this sounds kinda strange but let me try to explain this. Cedar Point has a huge attendance to start with, so any gain in attendance is just going to show up as a small blip on overall attendance. people are going to attend Cedar Point with its current lineup one way or another. They could add a 500 foot tall 37 loop coaster and still just see a small gain in attendance. I think the "destination" parks would fall into this category. Another reason is that some parks in a large metro areas such Six Flags Great America already have a built in attendance simply due to the population base in the area. I think a new large installation would benefit a "smaller" park such as the ones you mentioned more, simply because their attendance is lower to start with. Last point to consider is that while enthusiasts may be overly excited for a new installation, it may just fall flat for the GP. Since enthusiasts are just a small percentage of the overall population, once again, it doesn't affect overall attendance much.

I've lived in the St Louis area all my life, and it is very interesting reading a report from an outsider's perspective. We often take many of the sites you visited and reported on so far for granted. When my kids were younger we'd visit the zoo 3-4 times a year and had always heard it was one of the best in country/world, but like i said just take took it for granted, not to mention that is is free. Interesting that you visited during the St. Louis Blues Stanley Cup championship run. I believe it was Sunday (or could have been a few days before) night you said downtown was very busy, there was a watch party at Enterprise Center(hockey arena) and a large outdoor watch party located near the soldiers memorial in downtown. The outdoor watch party was planned on holding 30,000 people, estimates were that 75,000 people showed up. All to watch our hockey team play while they were out of town. One note on the Old Courthouse: Did you see the whispering spot? If I remember correctly there is a spot on the lower level where you can whisper towards the wall and it can be clearly heard on the other side of the room. I may be a little off on the description, but it's something like that. Another interesting thing about the old courthouse is when you get to the higher levels that it feels like the guard rails are at about knee level. I guess change in height of people over time and safety standards, lol. Anyway I am really enjoying your report and photos so far and look forward to reading your thoughts on SFSL.

Supergirl is having some standard new ride teething issues. It should begin to operate more consistently as the season goes on. Is it just me or is this just a glorified carnival ride? Why so many problems? Shouldn't kinks be worked out by manufacturer?

Yeah, it'll be fine. I hope it's a fun event, and I'm interested to see what kind of live music they end up doing. I could see Six Flags making this an annual event if it's successful. They had been requesting local bands to submit applications on FB a week or two ago, so I wouldn't expect much more than you low level bar/cover band. I'm sure they aren't paying them much.

All because I cancelled my mebership..

Well guys, I made a trip to Silver Dollar City the other day. I am now so impressed with what a theme park can be. Quick trip report posted in that thread if interested. My wife and I have finally decided that we will not be continuing our memberships into 2019. I honestly still feel it's a good value. We moved to Alton a couple years ago and what was a 40 minute drive is now almost an hour, our boys are 16 and 19 and really getting bored with the park, just disappointed with the overall lack of customer service and food quality. We just haven't gone enough to make it worth it. My boys will probably purchase their own passes/memberships but it will be on their $. Still look forward to following the park and hope we do get some much needed improvements for the golden anniversary.

Made a quick day trip to the park on Wednesday. It was my first time there in 20 years. Was so amazed and impressed after only going to SFSL in recent that I didn't keep too much track of stuff for a detailed trip report, but I will post some highlights and a few pictures. Our family had purchased season passes this year planning on attending several times throughout the year, but my wife has had major back problems and wouldn't be able to go. So she finally convinced me and my oldest son (19yo) to make the trip down there. We brought along his girlfriend as I'm a non-rider. We were going to drive there and back in one day from Alton, IL(approximately 4 hours drive time). Woke up at 6:30 AM hit the road, quick stop in St. James for some breakfast and arrived to the park just before 11. It had start drizzling the last 20-30 minutes of our drive in and we waited near Tram Stop #2 to be picked up. Seemed like they only had one tram and one small shuttle bus running at the time, so we decided to walk to the entrance. As we hadn't used our season passes at all, I stopped by guest relations to see if we could switch my wife's pass over to my son's gf and save us $60 to get in. The lady at guest relations looked up the account, saw it hadn't been used and got it taken care of very easily. Score! The drizzle begin to let off and my son wanted to head to Outlaw Run, one train wait for a front seat ride. Powder Keg and Wildfire were not open yet due to the rain so they re-rode OR and jumped on the Barn Swing. Also a quick ride on FITH. Just a few minutes Later Wildfire opened followed by Powder Keg. They got front seat rides on both then decided to head Time Traveler and Thunderation. Time Traveler had about 30-40 minute wait most the day when it was open. It closed intermittently due to weather. Thunderation seemed to be going down due to protein spills. We wanted to do the cave tour so they had to put those rides off for a bit. The Marvel Cave Tour was nice and my son had never been in a cave before really liked it. It is not for the claustrophobic or those in poor shape. After cave tour the we headed to the far right corner of the park and rode the teacup ride. We spun the heck out of those things. We were approaching dark at this point and I wanted a train ride, so the kids went their own way and finally got a ride in on TT, they then headed to OR, PK, and WF for more rides. Caught back up with them at WF after I stumbled into the Flooded mine entrance, very interesting ride. We then all rode FITH together. We watched the Christmas parade right near the main entrance and then headed back to Thunderation and TT. They finally got a ride on Thunderation and another ride on TT. Headed back to the tram around 8:30 as the rain had started up again. Arrive back home at 2:15 AM. Rides: Kids: OR 4x Barn Swing 1x Powder Keg 2x Wildfire 2x FITH 2x TT 2x Thunderation 2x Teacups 1x Me: Teacups 1x Flooded Mine 1x FITH 1x Foods Purchased/Consumed Sausage skillet 1x Chicken skillet 1x Southwest Chicken 1x Pretzel Brat 1x Cinnamon Bread 2x Cinnamon Roll 1x Giant Chocolate Chip cookie 1x Now some pictures: Kids! Super clean restrooms that smell good, not used to this. Front Seat Outlaw Run! MMMMMM!!! Lunch!! Christmas tree in cave! I'll take two please! Foggy Day, but we can see a coaster in the distance!

Yeah, but that is a bit of a misnomer. It is actually a day trip from St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Lexington, Paducah, Nashville and a few other places that I haven't thought of off the top of my head. All relatively small markets but together ....... In fact the whole discussion about "markets" is way more complicated than just the size of the city the park is located in. Dollywood's actual location doesn't have a huge population but obviously because of Smoky MT NP it is a big vacation draw, same with SDC. Unfortunately, St Louis isn't a huge vacation draw or quite the crossroads that Holiday World is. This argument of st. louis not being a destination city seems ridiculous. Overall the City has so much more to offer than Branson, Santa Claus, In, or Dollywood area. Look at Forest Park alone, world class zoo, great art museum, science center, history museum, the Muny, professional Sports(Blues and Cardinals), The Arch, Shaw's Garden, Brewery Tour, Grant's Farm, City Museum and so much more. Maybe it's just that SFSL doesn't come close to what other parks offer while people visit STL to warrant a 30 minute drive for a mediocre park.

Agree with many of the posts above, definitely just a wash replacing old ride with similar new ride. Name-doesn't fit the area at all, but since when did the Six Flags mean anything anyway. Queue-No shade or cover at all. Hopefully it has a cool lighting packaging that can be seen the dozen or so times a year that the park is open into dark.

Isn't it kind of a sad state of affairs when the highlight of the summer for our park is getting a scrambler up and running?

It's funny how so much mention about Dave in the last few posts. I was at the park on Sunday and I was having the same kind of thoughts. Just seemed like we saw Dave almost every other visit and would always have a 5-10 min conversation with him. I couldn't even pick the new guy out of a line up if he was sitting in front of me. Also new cars were on site for Shazam, they had NOT been installed yet. Single rider line-Why do groups of 3-4 get in the line and then get pissed off when getting split up or keep trying to arrange the line so they all get called at once. I hate this!

Does he like gladiator movies? No, but he did spend some time in a turkish prison...

Thanks for all the input, he's a 19 year old boy that knows everything, so sometimes he screws up and will get things wrong, just had to double check. Also used to the SF Flash Pass where everything pretty much becomes a walk on.

My son is at the park today with the FastLane+. He still is waiting 30-45 per ride. Is this normal? Is he doing something wrong?

That's what I was thinking, that it might open by 4th of July. Hopefully they haven't decided to just have it be the new attraction for 2019 instead. Does anyone know if they were able to get the tube slide complex operational yet? It was running last Friday.

Ever hear anymore about county fair days? Miss the 80's and 90's lol How bout Spring Breakout, still remember riding Thunder River with Tony Hawk..

Been awhile posting, so this could be a little long. Made our first visit of the year to the park last Thursday. Overall thought: 4 Flags out of six of course. Greeted by the closed rides list: Excalibur, Shazam, Justice League. Really Justice League? One of your newest multi-million dollar attractions is closed? Really Six Flags? Really? As far as Shazam goes, why not just but another Scrambler, those rides aren't that expensive. Seems like rehabbing a ride that old may not be cost-effective, but what do I know. Didn't realize all the school groups that would be there. The good news is they had 6 people working the turnstiles, one of which was working the "members only" entrance. We tried the "members only" entrance just to find out it is for Diamond? members only. Need better signage! Took almost 30 minutes to get in. For anyone that hasn't read my posts before I really don't ride much, i'm a bit of a scaredy cat, but I take my two teenage sons that ride everything. Line for Batman was about 20-25 minutes, disappointed they didn't still have backwards train. I ASS-U-ME-d they would extend beyond the originally announced date. Ninja even had a line down the stairs. Headed to mooseburger for lunch, typical wait of 30+ minutes. Food was "meh" as normal. Biggest complaint is why do they put people at registers that can't speak English. Not to bash or be political, but a front line position like that needs communication skills. Since my oldest son didn't get a food pass, I sent him to guest relations to purchase one while my other son and I were in line. I saw a deal online for $56 so i sent him to purchase that. Well turns out that is an "online only" offer. He came back with a $120 food pass. He didn't get back with us in time to use it and I went straight back to guest relations to figure out what could be done. There I was greeted by a very friendly young man with a very bad stutter. Once again, please put someone in this position that can communicate. He was unable to help but sent a supervisor named Adam over to help me. He explain the "online only" price and helped me purchase it on my phone and then refunded the $120 dining pass my son had purchased. Really appreciated his help and apologized to him after since I approached him with quite an attitude. Kids headed to Skyscreamer, which i believe was a one ride wait. It broke down while they were returning to the bottom. Had to a maintenance person come over and lower the ride. Luckily they were nearby as Boomerang was down also, it looked like the catch car hadn't pulled the train all the way up the lift hill. Skipped Superman and Screamin Eagle as the lines were too long. My boys are spoiled as we normally go on summer weekdays and anything over a station wait for them is too much. They did decide to ride the Boss which was at about 30 minutes also. I think during this time I decided to head to Miss Kitty's to catch the Red Garter Revue. I'm normally a big fan of the shows and that's how I'll spend my days, but this show disappointed. The singing was tolerable. It was pretty funny and the air conditioning was cold, so I'll take it. At this point I think we decided to head to JB's to try their Chicken Wings. Upcharge with dining pass of course, but figured we'd give them a try. I must say they were as good as any bar in the area and the sidewinder fries are great too. For the value probably one of the best "meals" in the park. As 5pm approached many of the school groups were departing and lines were becoming manageable. I decided to head to Thunder River on my own. NIce the band-aids they have put on it in recent years, but someone must realize it's spelled Bagnell not Bagnall. Still a good ride a nice too cool off on a hot day. Always enjoy the group experience on this. As our boat returned there was no line and they offered us another trip through but I passed. I headed off to get an ice cream cone finally meeting back with my boys as the park closed at 6pm. They had ridden 4 coasters in the last 20-30 minutes that park was open. So they left happy. As we were leaving we also noticed all the slide parts still sitting in the parking lot. At this point if it opens by July 4th, I would be impressed. Overall thoughts, early in the year, seem to be working out the kinks of ride maintenance/operations. As usual food service and getting drink refills were awfule, but pleasantly surprised by the wings. The number of food stalls open was disappointing. I welcome your comments/questions.

Does anyone know when this would have been? photo:courtesy of kshe95.com

The pictures from Colossus are amazing! We were at the park also again tonight! Much larger crowd! Got to try the turkey dinner at Mooseburger, Amazing! Great smoked turkey, good dressing, okay instant mashed potatoes, stil not a fan of the mac and cheese, but well worth the use of the dining plan on this meal.

Hey guys just a quick report from our trip to the park on Wednesday. Arrived shortly after opening had to immediately leave and head to Wal-mart as our 15 year old didn't dress appropriately for the cold weather. Returned 45 minutes and the park was still empty. Greeted by Sylvester and Daffy in holiday attire. Wife and I headed to Johnny Rockets for lunch, worst meal ever at the park. Burger was awful. Went to ride Justice league waited about 2 cars to get on. Win! Spent the next hour or so just wandering the park looking at decorations and enjoying the various smoking areas. We decided to see the Tinseltones show at the Empire theater at 5pm. This was one of the best shows I have seen at the park in a long, long time. Don't get me wrong it is a little campy and cheesy, but for what it is, it was awesome. Look forward to seeing it again. As we exited the theater it was completely dark and all the lights could be seen. Just stood on the stairs of the theater for a few minutes taking it all in. Hard to believe less than a month ago FF was in full effect. Great job by maintenance and all who had a part in decorating. We did notice as walking by the amphitheater that on the stage there seemed to be shipping crates of unused decorations, not sure if they will continue to decorate or leave the park as is. Either way is great. While in the theater we met up with our boys(15yo and 18yo) and decided to Justice league again as a family. Once again no wait at all. The 15 yo scored in the top 1% of all time #humblebrag. We then figured we'd get dinner. We really wanted to go to Mooseburger as they had advertised a turkey dinner with all the fixings for one meal plan meal. Figured it was worth the try, but when we arrived found it was closed due to the low attendance. Very disappointing but understandable. Finally decided to try Jb's and had pull pork Mac and Cheese and Buffalo Chicken mac and cheese. Neither were very impressive. Still had time to kill while waiting on the 8pm showing of the Majesty of the Nativity? show. So we took the coldest train ride through the park ever. Kinda disappointed no extra decorations/lights along the tracks, hopefully that comes in future years. So one last smoke break and off to the Palace theater for the show. We had heard while leaving the other show this one was going to be complete with live animals and a camel. Yes a frickin CAMEL! That alone was going to be worth it for me. I was actually kinda worried how Six Flags would treat the religious/sacred nature of the nativity. Note;not really a religious person, but a corporate entity putting on a nativity show? Could be a trainwreck? So on to the show, my boys grabbed us seats in the very front row. Show open with a narrator type gentlemen guessing near 50 taking the stage. His voice actions and dedication to his part were amazing! He just had us glued to our seats throughout the show. Then appears a young boy of about 9 or 10 and he did a solo song, wow! Finally we have Baby Jesus Born, wisemen showing up, sheep, and wait for it... the CAMEL!! This show almost brought me to tears and did bring my wife to tears it was so well done. Only disappointment, is it was so short. Only about 25 minutes. This show was so good, I was convinced a local church group must have put it on. There was no way Six Flags could have done this after the train wreck of LAFF earlier this season. As we exited I asked one of the actresses what church they were from and she assured me it was a Six Flags production. Other random notes/observations: Walls at Screaming Eagle/Mine Train are very temporary only held in pace with sandbags, could easily be moved if park volume needed. All expected rides were operational, but I believe all coasters only had one train ops. The Christmas tree light show in front of the Palace not bad. Only real complaint were they had plenty of firepits, but most non-operational as they would have required an attendant, also the early closing of restaurants was kinda a peeve, but like I said understandable. Not one to gauge attendance but it it reached 1000-1500 through the day I would be surprised. Maybe four full rows of parking were used with no one in preferred. Anyway really enjoyed our visit and may be going back tomorrow just to see the shows again as they were that good.