YoshiFan

I'd call the park and ask since I haven't heard anything since then.

Kingda Ka got struck with lightning. It was supposed to be closed for 2 weeks as of last weekend. I hope they get it open soon since the park has been a lot busier this week than expected and KK being closed is making the other lines longer.

I think they need to add more to Animal Kingdom before adding another park. I know Everest is new but the park is so lacking in rides. You have a major coaster, a safari (which I never found that great compared to Great Adventure's safari but it seems to be popular), a dumbo clone, 2 spinning mice clones that can be found anywhere a dark ride that isn't family friendly (too scary for kids), a rapids ride and a train. They need another 2 - 3 rides.

As much as I hate a lot of the changes at Great Adventure, like the locker policy and removal of so many rides and I have always hated flashpass but the 1 thing that is better is operations. Last season and this season operations are the best they have been in years. Nitro is almost always running 3 trains, same with Medusa/Bizarro (as of last year), Scream Machine, Batman, Skull Mountain always are running 2 trains (Scream Machine sometimes runs 3). Superman usually runs 2 trains as well. With the exception of Rolling Thunder, dispatches are very fast. Nitro can have a line into the switchbacks and be under a 30 minute wait where the wait time sign says 90 minutes even though those signs are always an overestimate. Batman barely stacks for more than a few seconds, same with Scream Machine. Not to mention the employees are a lot nicer this year. At the entrances being told by them to enjoy the ride or at the unloading/exit area asking how the ride was or asking how my day has been, what rides I have been on etc.

Nitro at Great Adventure yesterday

I think Dorney gets a bad reputation because of its location. If it was somewhere else in the country it would be better received but since it is in between Hershey and Great Adventure, and isn't as good as either of those, a lot of people don't think the park is that great. The Wild Mouse is just Cedar Fair being over cautious. They added seatbelts and rarely run more than 4 cars plus the no more than 2 adults per car rule and a confusing loading station to most people make the line crawl. I have waited 10 minutes just with the line in the station. A lot of rides like Dorney are like that, even though the Camp Bus for example has a weight limit of 440 pounds per row and Morey's, Great Adventure and Gillian's all allow 2 people over 54" in the same row, Dorney doesn't even if it is under the weight limit.

My guess is something school related, regular trips or maybe some kind of event for schools since schools like to get to the parks either right at opening or early since they have to leave earlier than park closing most of the time to take the students back to school before it is too late at night.

I'm probably going tomorrow since that will be my first visit in the promotional period (I think it started May 15th). The rewards look cool, Bring a Friend Free is the best one after the 5th visit.

The park wasn't even that crowded that day compared to what the type of crowds it normally gets. It's just that bad operations like 1 train on Storm Runner and SDL made all the line longer than they should have been. And Fahrenheit having the single rider line closed and only 2 trains running. I was told Storm Runner had a 75 minute wait at one point, I went back later in the afternoon and waited around 45 minutes. The rapids had a 15 minute wait that day when it was usually 45+ minutes easily but that was probably because it looked like it was going to rain. If it had been sunny earlier in the day and the park was as crowded as it usually is, I'd have hated to see how bad the lines were. Rollersoaker wasn't running at full capacity either and the dispatches were slower than they should have been. The main reason we went that day was for the rapids (couldn't get there early enough to join the TPR trip for the day even though ERT would have been awesome since I think they said you had to be there by 8 or 8:15)

It was removed at the end of the 2005 season. So many rides have been removed in the past few seasons it is crazy.

That spider on the Chaos ride is known as the spider of doom. Whatever ride it is placed on usually means the ride is going to be removed. It was also on Chiller one year. Last year the management was having fun with everyone moving it around every week during Frightfest. One week it was on Medusa, the next week Skull Mountain, the next week it was next to the Northern Star Arena.

I don't know what is crazier the standing Falling Star or Pirate Ship. It's also amazing the type of rides you see at parks/fairs out of the US.

The ride looks amazing, I hope more Six Flags parks get this ride next year. I'd much rather see this at Great Adventure than yet another coaster.

If you want to ride Rollersoaker that should be the first ride you go to if you get to the park early. It is very popular and has a horrible capacity I estimated it to be around 360 riders an hour and that is figuring every seat is filled, the website says 725 an hour but that is impossible, that means a set of 3 trains has to dispatch every minute which never happens. I just hope when you go operations are good, on my last trip Storm Runner had 1 train with a 75 minute wait, Fahrenheit had 2 trains running with the single rider line closed, Sooperdooperlooper had 1 train running with a line to the lower levels (which is unusual) and this was a day the park wasn't that crowded. The park has really gone downhill in operations in the past few years.

I agree, I just think a lot of people are expecting the park to be open later. Even with the 6PM closing, I still managed to get 20 - 25 rides in 4 hours on average during those weekdays in June last year.

The only bad thing is the 6PM closing on early and some mid June weekdays. It should still be enough time to get enough rides in but I saw people arriving at 2 thinking the park was open later and not happy.

I went in early June during the week 3 times last year. The park was not crowded at all. The longest wait I had was Superman at 15 - 20 minutes 2 of those 3 visits (the other trip it was a walk on).

That's shocking, usually even on slow days it has a wait. When I went in 2007 every coaster in the park was a walk on except Superman. Last year in the spring on days when the park was empty, it would still have 15 - 20 minute waits. I guess you got lucky, it's a fun ride but too short and not worth the wait times it usually gets.

Runaway Mine Train got stuck, it was open after that and for the whole night, I rode it at around 6:30 and later after 8:00 Kingda Ka opened a little before 8:30 and they were working on getting it open as soon as the rain stopped, others said El Toro opened around 8:40 but I was at Kingda Ka at that time.

Nitro's ops were literally running tonight. Same with Superman ops on my last visit almost 2 weeks ago. with Nitro, 3 trains were running and the next train was on the lift hill before the train on the course got to the MCBR. I have really been impressed with the ops this season, a lot even ask how my day is going and they are now almost all saying "enjoy your ride" when you get in line.

Is it the car from the Joe Cool Sk8 (or something similar to that name) in Camp Snoopy?

That hasn't been the case last season or this season. I timed it and Nitro was dispatching trains around every 80 seconds. The line was into the switchbacks past the 90 minute sign 2 weeks ago. I know the signs overestimate the wait times but it was a 25 minute wait with all 3 trains running.

I think the news is blowing this out of proportion, they need something to report on and scare everyone. I was thinking yesterday if waterparks could close because of this but then I thought that the chlorine would help kill germs but will that be enough for people to not be scared?

They also charge $10 to mail you your season pass if you don't want to pay $5 to print the voucher and then still have to stand in line. I don't mind a small shipping fee but they should be charging $1 or $2 at most to mail the passes. I paid the $10 to ship the pass because for $5 more I didn't have to wait in line or pay for ink to print the voucher but it was still annoying.

$70 for a parking pass?! Wow, suddenly the $45 for a Great Adventure parking pass doesn't seem as bad.