aCoasterStory

In morning rush hour, you might hit a little bit of a slowdown heading south on 75 from WW to 285, but 285 around to 20W is normally completely clear. Going the other direction, 20E and 75N should present no trouble, but while 285 heading up from 20 to 75 is usually backed up from 7:30-9 or so, if you wait till after then, it should be fine. In the evening, 20E to 285N to 75 doesn't generally back up, but if you're trying to head north on 75 between 4 and 7 or so, you'll run into traffic. Going the other way, 285S to 20W can be a bit of a mess between 5 & 7, but other than that it's generally clear. Moral of the story: unless you're driving during rush hour (which is not generally advisable if it can at all be avoided), it shouldn't take more than 25 min to get between the parks.

Couple of thoughts: 1. White Water is a very good water park, but it is need of some upgrades and general capital investment. If this money had gone into investing into WW instead of building HH, that very well could have catapulted WW into being an excellent water park. 2. While Metro Atlanta could probably support 2 water parks, the reality of it is that they're hardly on opposite sides of the city from each other. They're in the same county (Cobb), and only about 25 min away from each other. This is a completely different conversation IMHO if White Water were up 85 instead of 75. 3. I don't see HH becoming a true water park destination. I think people will just head over there for a couple of hours while they're already at SFOG. I see the biggest impact being that the number of combo season passes go down as people no longer see the need to add on WW to get their water park fix. 4. I absolutely HATE when theme parks have a water park that you have to walk all the way through the entire park to get to. If I'm going to visit a water park that's tacked on to a theme park, I want to see an entrance that's either separately accessible (see CP, KI) or access from very near the front gate (see Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom). I like to ride some coasters, run out to my car & grab my swim trunks/towel/sunscreen, go do the water park thing, drop the swim stuff back in my car, and do more coastering; I don't want to have to haul that stuff around all day or leave it in a locker in the back of the park, and given how the parking lot is situated relative to the entrance at SFOG, I am certainly not going to go back to my car a couple of times. 5. This back section of the park has been known to flood every few years. I really hope they elevate this new expansion enough to avoid the flood waters. I'd hate to see that gunk up everything. 6. I think SFOG missed a big opportunity to put a really awesome new coaster in that space. SFOG hasn't put in a significant coaster since 2006, and with the "biggest expansion in park history" happening with HH for 2014, I highly doubt we'll be seeing a big new coaster investment in 2015.

My dad & I visited Cedar Point back in 2010. Our first ride of the day was TTD, and he had absolutely no idea what to expect. Somehow we had gotten throughout the whole queue and onto the ride without him ever really paying attention to what the ride was or did. Needless to say, he was quite shocked by the whole thing. I so very much wish I had purchased the on-ride photo--the expression on his face at the end was absolutely priceless.

Have you ridden the one at SFOG? The ones at SFGAm & SFGAdv have no real interaction with the terrain, but SFOG's does and is the better for it IMHO. Look up a POV of it on youtube. I'd post one, but it appears TPR doesn't have one & I don't feel right posting somebody else's POV on here. I see it's definitely closer to the ground, but Tatsu really just gives me that sensation of flying, since it's on a mountain and it has a few swooping drops that I like especially. But the SFOG S:UF does look better than the others I've been on. I guess it's just different strokes for different folks.

In my mind, the big thing that SFOG is missing is a launched coaster. Since DDD is so family friendly (aka forceless), I'd be interested in something more akin to Maverick than Cheetah Hunt. I mean, I'd love to see something better in the wooden coaster department (either a GCI or an Iron Horse hybrid), but I don't think GASM & Cyclone are going anywhere anytime soon, & SFOG isn't the type of park that would build a 3rd woodie (or hybrid), though it would certainly be interesting to see a park build a hybrid from scratch instead of remodeling an existing coaster. The only way I think I would like to see a wing coaster at SFOG is if it were a B&M 4D coaster--something to really take the park to the next level.

Have you ridden the one at SFOG? The ones at SFGAm & SFGAdv have no real interaction with the terrain, but SFOG's does and is the better for it IMHO. Look up a POV of it on youtube. I'd post one, but it appears TPR doesn't have one & I don't feel right posting somebody else's POV on here.

So I was at CP about a month ago and played the Plinko game. I don't think I would have normally done it, but they pulled out the 4-pack prize & I ended up getting sucked in. They had 2 slots for front-of-line passes for Millennium and the one for the 4-pack. I saw 1 or 2 people (out of about 30 or so) who played before me get the MF passes, but I was the first to get a 4-pack. I didn't stick around afterwards to see if anyone else won one, but I can certainly understand why they do it. They had one guy emceeing/running the game and another guy handing out pucks & raking in cash. He had an absolutely massive stack of cash in his hand from people forking $5 over left and right to play. I saw several people buy $20 worth of chips, and several more play, lose, and then come back to play again. I don't think it's a bad thing, so long as they do it in moderation. The 4-pack needs to only be in play for very short periods of time, and they need to have a fixed number of prizes they give out per hour/day/ride to keep if from getting ridiculous. That being said, it's such a money-maker that they'll probably keep doing it as-is. At KI the next day, however, they had the spinning wheel in front of Diamondback with so many winning spots on it that you had a 1 in 4 chance of winning for only $3/spin. The one I saw at Knott's this past weekend only had 1 winning spot on the wheel. I did not notice one at Carowinds when I was there last month, but I wasn't there very long.

It wasn't that it was forceless. It was that I didn't get the same sort of pop from the positive G's to negative G's coming out of the pretzel loop that I was expecting. Maybe it's just because I was up near the front. I was planning on riding in the back later in the day when it went down & I had to bail. The other thing is that I wasn't the hugest fan of the layout compared to the S:UF we have at SFoG. The way that one interacts with the terrain just makes for a better ride experience, IMHO. Tatsu felt like a bunch of inline twisting way high up just for the sake of inline twisting & being high (I know they're not all inline twists, but they didn't feel like other distinct elements when riding).

So I was at the park all day Saturday & started by following the plan crazydude sent me in a PM. Here's how it went: I got there pretty early, and I was one of the first 5 people through the Gold Season Pass gate (no issues with my pass not being from SFMM directly). I went directly to Full Throttle and was on the first train out in the back row. I had done the front on Friday night and wanted to compare the experiences. I think the back has better forces when you go through the reverse launch & backwards up out of the tunnel, but certain anatomical regions did not enjoy how they hit the restraints coming over the top hat at the end. I much preferred the ending in the front for that reason, but up front doesn't have quite the same force going backwards up out of the tunnel. I didn't notice a significant difference in first chunk of the ride, including the loop itself. Overall, I think the front is preferable just because it's more comfortable at the end. It's a pretty good ride, but I don't think it's something I would really want to wait more than 30min to ride. It's not a mind-blowing ride, though I do think it is fairly re-rideable. I absolutely love the hangtime in that loop. I then hi-tailed it over to X2. They wouldn't let me ride in the front, but I was able to get in the 2nd row so it wasn't too rough. I was on the 2nd train out. I still think this ride is one of the cooler ride experiences out there, but I would hate to wait an hour or more for it and get stuck in the back--it just bounces way too much. I can't wait till B&M get around to making a 4D coaster--theirs might actually be pleasant in more than just the front. I don't know how really re-rideable this coaster is as I've only been able to ride it three times ever. (I was a bit bummed that it went down in the early afternoon & stayed down the rest of the day, so I wasn't able to re-ride.) By the time I got off, the main gates had opened and the queue was already beginning to stack up in a major way. I quickly headed over to Tatsu and was able to get on nearly immediately in the 2nd row. I'm a fan of Superman: Ultimate Flight at my home park (SFoG), and my favorite part is the pretzel loop & the way it goes from positive to negative G's. Tatsu really didn't do that for me. It just seemed like it was a bunch of inline twists & a forceless pretzel loop. I know a lot of people love it, but I think I prefer SFoG's S:UF. After Tatsu, I headed up the stairs to Ninja. It was a walk-on. I don't like much that Arrow has made, but I've always been a big fan of the Arrow suspended coasters. Ninja and Vortex at Canada's Wonderland are both in contention for my favorite suspended coaster. I think they're great rides, and quite re-rideable. Next was Superman: Escape From Krypton. Growing up, I remember seeing a bunch of things on TV that featured this ride (back before they flipped it backwards, of course), and I always really wanted to ride it. When I was at SFMM last year, it was closed because they were putting LL:DoD up, but Saturday I was finally able to ride it for the first time. I walked into the line and was going to be on the very next train out, but that side went down, so they walked us around to the other one & put us on that one. Having been on Top Thrill Dragster & Kingda Ka, I've experienced a more forceful launch, but Superman was just a super enjoyable ride. I really loved the hangtime. After Superman, I headed back towards Apocalypse. It had been closed Friday night & I had heard rumors that it had been down before then, but I thought I'd check anyways. Sure enough, it was still down. The most plausible answer I heard from anyone was that something happened to part of the track & they were having to re-track a section, but I have no idea if that's accurate or not. Since that was a no-go, I hit Goldrusher, which was a walk-on. I don't know that I can think of another old Arrow "mine train"-type coaster that has an all steel support structure. I then hit Riddler's revenge twice using the single-rider line, which basically let me walk straight on. The standby line was only 1-2 trains. I rode it once towards the front & once near the back. I think this may be one of my favorite stand-up coasters. I really enjoyed it. Next was Batman. If you've ridden one, you've basically ridden them all. It was still super fun & intense, though. I maybe waited one train. After that was Green Lantern. I did the single-rider line, and it took a few minutes for a group of 3 to come through. This is a ride that you ride once. It's just too insane for a re-ride IMHO. I headed out of the DC Universe and went for Scream!, which was only running 1 train. It had a posted wait time of 30min, but I was able to get on in ~15. In my opinion, this coaster was a waste of money & parking lot space. It did absolutely nothing for me. It was like SFMM just decided they needed their coaster count to be one higher, so they plunked this thing on top of their parking lot & called it a day. It was also rougher than I was expecting. Strangely enough, I really enjoyed Bizarro at SFGAdv...go figure. Colossus was next. I thought it was a nice old woodie. I didn't notice anything awful about it that would dictate the need for the rumored Iron Colossus treatment. It was a walk-on. Then I headed for Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom. The single-rider line let me get on in very short order. I really really enjoyed it. This is easily my favorite drop ride. Goliath was the first ride that I actually encountered a line for (it was about 1:30 or so). The posted wait was 2hrs, but the line didn't look that long. I decided to grab a bite for lunch and eat while waiting to pass the time. I think I ended up waiting a little over an hour. Afterwards, the line looked to be about 15min shorter, so I decided to go for a re-ride. Goliath is a good ride. It's different in that it's more about speed and turns and positive G's than bunny hills and floater air like most other hypercoasters. At this point, my plan was to head over to X2, wait however long (60-90min?) for it, then do the same for FT and Superman, with Viper & Revolution in there somewhere. After that, who knows? Maybe more Ninja or Riddler's or Batman or whatever. I didn't really have a plan. I decided to swing by the Flash Pass office to see how long the wait for X2 was, and they told me it was down, which was most unfortunate. I had originally planned on getting a Flash Pass, but decided against it when crazydude sent me the plan I used and had resigned myself to just having to wait for rides for the rest of the day. But I ended up getting a gold FP ($10 off w/ a season pass, plus 5% off w/ Discover). The FP supervisor hooked me up by letting me do FT without having to go platinum since X2 was down, and she also went ahead and gave me an instantly available reservation for Superman. So I ended up taking the Orient Express up to Superman, riding it (on the other side this time), and then reserving it agin. Since I had ~25min to kill, I took OE back down & rode Revolution 2x via the single-rider line. I didn't have any issues the first time, but on the 2nd ride I had a ton of headbanging. Revolution may be the first Schwarzkopf coaster I haven't really liked. I took the OE back up to Superman, rode it, and then reserved Tatsu. While waiting for my time to come for Tatsu, I headed down and (against my better judgement), rode Viper. It sucked about as bad as I thought it would. I really don't like most of these old Arrow loopers. I got in line for Tatsu & it went down for some unexplained reason. They were running both stations (but with only 2 trains) and made everyone get off both trains. Meanwhile, one of the ride ops donned an orange vest & went running down into the restricted area beneath the ride. She headed over towards Orient Express & looked like she was talking to someone there & then ran down the hill. No idea what happened there, but I waited for a few minutes and gave up when it was time for my next Superman reservation. When I was almost at Superman, I heard a loud cheer, so I think it came back up then, but I would have still had another 10-15min of waiting ahead of me, so I wasn't too broken up about it. Superman was again awesome. After that I hit Ninja and then took OE down to use my pass for Full Throttle. Then it was time to ride Goliath, so I did that. By the time I got off Goliath, it was after 8. I hit Drop of Doom twice back-to-back via the single-rider line (and would have continued if 7 people hadn't all come up to the SR line). I then hustled my way over to Batman & hit that before coming back and hitting Drop of Doom one last time with my FP (SR line had closed). [shout-out to the TPR-member ride op I met at DoD] After that final ride on DoD, I headed back over for one last go on FT before the park closed. In total, I was able to get 24 coaster rides in, plus 4 rides on Drop of Doom, all on a Saturday in August, and without getting a gold flash pass until something like 4:30. All told, it was a pretty fun day, and while SFMM has a long ways to go to get to the level that some other parks operate at, it wasn't disappointing like my visit last year was.

Any word on Xcelerator? Does anyone know if they've started any testing yet?

I was at the park for a couple of hours last night. Decided to hit X2 first since it only had a posted wait of 20min. As I got into line, I realized it was actually down. I was surprised they didn't have a ride op blocking the entrance to the queue like basically every other park does when a ride goes down. It was only down for ~10-15min or so & enough people left the line that it was moving forwards. Once it came back up, though, I was shocked at how slow the line moved. They were running two trains and dispatching a train every ~3min, but the line would stay stationary for 5 or more min at a time and then not move very far forward at all. When I got to the station, I was shocked to find that they wouldn't allow preferred seating. For me this is unheard of. Why would you take somebody who has been waiting in line for an hour or more and force them to ride somewhere they don't want to if they have a preference and are willing to wait an extra train or two? I managed to talk the ride op into letting me wait to ride in the front, but it shouldn't have needed to be a policy imho. The ride itself was pretty cool. Only problem was I got distracted by my phone trying to fall out of my pocket halfway through, so I didn't get to fully enjoy the ride experience. I don't normally have any issues with my phone on coasters, but I'll be sure to put it in a buttoned pocket next time. All in all, it was a good ride in the front (inside seat), and I didn't experience any roughness/bounciness. After that (which ended up taking a little over an hour), I headed back towards Apocalypse, hoping I could get a quick ride in before heading to Full Throttle right before close. Turns out Apocalypse was closed (not sure if it was a temporary thing or if it's down for a while), so I walked back to the front of the park to get in the line for FT. Thought about trying to ride something else beforehand, but it was like 7:30 and I didn't want to miss out on getting in line for FT before they closed at 8. The posted wait time for FT was an hour, and that turned out to be about accurate. They were actually running both trains. I thought it was sad that they had such a problem with line jumping that they had to hand out boarding passes, but they collected them only about halfway through the queue, and that did absolutely nothing to stop line jumpers after that point (had a number of people squeeze by). I thought it was a good ride. The ride op was having fun with it--messing with people as he hit the launch, which I thought added a lot to the experience. The launch was good, but the hang-time in that loop was INSANE. The rest of the ride was pretty nice as well. I was in the front, so I'll try to hit the back today. (Oddly enough, despite having a posted sign saying there was no preferred seating, they allowed you to get in whatever row you wanted...go figure.)

Guest Services said they thought it would be back up by the weekend (pending some kind of safety inspection). Not sure how accurate that is, but I'd like to think that they'll be doing test runs tomorrow and maybe open it to riders Saturday. If it re-opens, I may try to work some magic with my schedule Sunday morning before I fly back to Atlanta so I can swing by the park and try to get a couple of rides in during early admission & then hurry to the airport to catch my flight. Here are the pictures I took:

This. I think I paid over $17 for a 6" club, chips, and a drink. Completely ridiculous. But I didn't want to eat something heavy, and I didn't want to keep walking around the park to try to find a better option, so it was what it was.

So I'm hoping to head for the park for a couple of hours tomorrow (Friday) evening after I get off work. How busy should I expect it to be? Are there any specific coasters that are better at night or that I would be wise to hit due to lower lines than I can expect to see Saturday? Also, what's the recommended riding location for X2? (front/back/middle?, inside/outside?) How about Full Throttle? Any other coasters with highly recommended riding positions (or positions to strongly avoid)? Thanks!

At the park now. Looks like Xcelerator's cable has been swapped out. The spools in the station either have rope on them or are empty. I took some pictures that I'll upload when I get back to my hotel. Also, is Monte's ride cycle always a full 3min?

So I was at the park last night. I got there around 7:30 and was there till close at 10. The park was basically dead. The longest I waited was 20min for Ghost Rider. I was able to hit all 8 of the operating coasters (plus a 2nd ride on Monte & a go on the log ride). My general impression from the park is that most of the coasters are fairly mild and good for families, but they could stand to add some more intense rides. It looked like they were getting all geared up to swap out the cable on Xcelerator, but I didn't see anyone actively working when I went by (~9PM). I took a bunch of pictures: I also went by & looked at Windseeker. Not sure what I was supposed to be looking for, but here are some photos: I'm hoping to make it back to the park tonight. I'll update if I notice any changes.

Bugs. Lots of bugs. (and FYI- bugs hurt at 120mph)

Going to be at the park tomorrow and Thursday nights. I'm hoping it'll be back up, but I'm not holding my breath.

I've always experienced some headbanging during corkscrew elements on B&M coasters (except the wing coasters), but that's about it.

So I was at the park on 7/20 & 21, and I was wondering if any of y'all could explain to me the reason why Maverick runs with 6 trains instead of 4. From what I can see, having those extra two trains does nothing for the hourly capacity of the ride, but it unnecessarily inflates the length of time the riders are on the ride. Any thoughts on this?

I'm a skinny guy and that restraint kept clamping down more and more during the ride. It became uncomfortable towards the end for me. Gatekeeper's restraints puts the squeeze on me, too, yet Wild Eagle's didn't. Go figure. Same here. No problems w/ Wild Eagle (or X-Flight for that matter), but Gatekeeper was painfully over-tight by the end of the ride. It was also a lot bouncier than I thought it should have been in the back for a brand-new ride.

But my guess is we'll see the lines for Flight Deck get much longer with all the new traffic to that section of the park.

That's actually brilliant. I hadn't thought about it till now, but with SFGAm running Batman Backwards this year, it's at least conceivable that this ride could be designed to run entirely backwards... I think if I were designing a backwards invert, I would keep the row at the front of the train facing forward, because the experience in the front row of an invert is really awesome. Or you could do it like an Invertigo, where half face forwards & half backwards...

That's actually brilliant. I hadn't thought about it till now, but with SFGAm running Batman Backwards this year, it's at least conceivable that this ride could be designed to run entirely backwards...

Do they have a way to tell if my gold season pass is from SFMM instead of SFOG (or do they even care)? My pass doesn't have a park name printed on it. Do you think I would be able to hit FT w/ the early admission & then make a beeline to X2 before the line gets too bad?