JRice92

I visited Great Adventure, Great America, New England, & Over Georgia this year. A “trick” I do to tell if a park has overall good operations is look up at the rides for a few seconds. If you see a train or two running the course of any given they’re decent. If you see 3+ trains running on any given ride then they’re pretty good. If you look at the rides and most of the time you don’t see a train on the course then the park has bad operations. Strange, but it works for me. Great America & New England always had 1-2 trains on a course at any moment. I’d consider their operations “okay”. Superman & Mind Eraser were the only two rides going at a “good” pace. While at Great America all rides moved at an “okay” pace. At Over Georgia I almost never saw trains on the course. They were “slow” overall. Mindbender was the only crew that did a good job getting the trains out. Great Adventure I visited 4 times this year. January, April, June, & October. They were “great” across the board. I always saw 3+ trains running looking at the rides at any given moment. El Toro crew was a standout sometimes being ready before the ride was ready to send another train. Nitro at times would send a train the second the one in front of it dropped off the lift. At Superman we stacked for a whopping 5 seconds before advancing into the station. Green Lantern we never even stopped in the brakes, the train just rolled right in the station. Same with Skull Mountain. Great Adventure was on their game this season.

I’m loving all the coverage of IAAPA! Especially the Alan Schilke interview!

I've never visited Maui Sands but it's known to be "a dump" living around here and all the locals have known for years the place has bed bugs. Since Kalahari & Great Wolf Lodge indoor water parks are not only nearby, but on the same street within a 10-minute drive in either direction, everybody I know goes to one of those two places for their indoor waterpark needs. After watching the episode there's no way I'm stepping foot in the door after seeing how terrible it is. I drive pass Maui Sands whenever I go grocery shopping and the parking lot is still always basically empty.

The Amazement Shop is a maintenance shop outside of Cedar Point across the street from Quaker Steak & Lube. Seeing the maintenance shop inside CP that does the overhaul of the Millennium Force, Maverick, and Dragster trains has always been my favorite part of the Winter Chill Out, so you bet I put on my survey that I want to see The Amazement Shop too! Does Amazement do more the B&Ms? I seem to remember the one we saw this year did mainly Intamin. That was definitely one of the highlights of Chill-Out. Also seeing everyone go gaga over the little bits of SteVen we could see. I know for sure the Raptor, Rougarou, & Wicked Twister trains go to the amazement shop, I'm going to assume that the Gatekeeper trains go there as well. I know the Valravn trains actually stay at the ride and they just enclose the storage track to overhaul the trains in place over the winter.

CoasterMania 2018 is on Friday, June 1st. As far as I've seen the Winter Chill Out date hasn't been announced yet.

The Amazement Shop is a maintenance shop outside of Cedar Point across the street from Quaker Steak & Lube. Seeing the maintenance shop inside CP that does the overhaul of the Millennium Force, Maverick, and Dragster trains has always been my favorite part of the Winter Chill Out, so you bet I put on my survey that I want to see The Amazement Shop too!

Kings Dominion begins winterfest next year in 2018. Just Carowinds, Worlds of Fun, & Kings Island are the 3 parks that added Winterfest for this year.

That's wild Josh, sounds like the ride my mom and I had on green side last summer! It just kept flipping and flipping and flipping. Glad you finally got a good ride in - maybe ET Ryan brought you some extra good luck. I guess the jury's out on why you sometimes get lots of flippage on it and other times not so much. Completely unrelated, are you hoping to work Valravn again next year or something different? The only difference on Ryan & I's ride is we tried to swing our legs together as best we could, and that may have helped! We both got off excited saying to each other "I've never flipped that many times before!" Also on the side note, I'll be working a different ride next year!

In my experience the purple (lake) side of The Joker flips less than the green side. All purple rides have given us 1-3 flips whereas on the green side we always seem to get flipped into oblivion. YMMV, of course. I've been hearing that the green side flips more, in almost all my rides this year between GADV's, GAm's & SFNE's Jokers I rode green side and only ever got two flips max. Then one month ago El Toro Ryan & I rode purple side together and we got 5 flips! Maybe it's more of a balancing act to get the cars to flip more.

1. Voyage 2. Ravine Flyer II 3. Mine Blower 4. Hades 360

Here’s what I got.

Thanks! It surely was a busy day Saturday and I'll make sure to tell the crew that you and your friends told us we did a great job!

The airtime on El Toro is the strongest sustained airtime I've experienced on any coaster, wood or steel. It's not Ka, Zum, or Nitro that keeps bringing me back to Great Adventure it's El Toro! It's a 7 1/2 hour drive from my house to SFGAdv yet in the past 12 months I've visited separate times. Speaking of visits, some Cedar Point co-workers and I will be visiting the park next Thursday, September 21st if anyone will be at the park. Half the group has never been to Great Adventure before so it's another visit I'm very excited for!

I'm sure going to miss the Dragons. I was lucky enough that in 2002 when I was 10 years old my parents planned a 4 day Disney Vacation for me and my (at the time) 8 year old sister. I was a small thrill seeker and somehow I convinced my parents to ditch our day at Animal Kingdom and buy tickets for Universal/Islands of Adventure instead because I wanted to ride Dueling Dragons. I got 1 ride on Fire & 1 ride on Ice and those two rides were honestly the highlight of my entire vacation. Fast forward to now I'm heading down to Florida on the September 25th this year. My friends & I had this trip planned since January so I was really looking forward to riding the dragons again after all these years and multiple trips to Florida since without visiting Islands of Adventure. For 10 year old me those were my favorite coasters at the time, and I still vividly remember the near misses in the vertical loops. I'm sad to see them go and wasn't able to get one more ride on them. We'll see what the future holds for expansion, but I think the dragons will be hard to top.

It's actually very rare for Valravn to go down for wind. Gatekeeper, Raptor and Dragster all close way before Valravn does. The ride rarely faces the bay headwind and it generally hauls up to the midcourse. Sorry to derail the thread a little more but I can confirm Valran has been open for at least a little bit every day of normal operation this season. Also Valran has very rarely gone down for wind. Only once this entire season. There's been multiple days Gatekeeper, Raptor, & Dragster were down for wind, While Valran keept on trucking all day long. The direction the wind usually pushes is the direction of travel through the 270 degree roll so there's nothing to worry about there. Back to Knott's. This was the most surprising of the Cedar Fair announcements and I think it's going to be a wonderful fit for the park! I've still never visited Knott's but this new ride is just one more awesome reason to go!

Last year I bought a 2017 Six Flags gold pass during the Labor Day Weekend flash sale and was able to use it at Great Adventure & Great America while the 2016 season was still going. The "catch" is you have to redeem your pass from the park you bought it from.

Hope you have a good day and crowds are manageable. On a busy day, it's hard to ride all the coasters and make time for the great flats. I'd recommend waiting for the front seat on Behemoth (best airtime over the parabolic hills) and back row on Leviathan (nice air when pulled over the lift hill). Don't miss a front row ride on Vortex (one of the few remaining suspended coasters). Keep in mind that traffic on a Friday is terrible around Toronto, especially the afternoon rush. If there's big crowds we'll be purchasing Fast Lane to help us out. We want to get on the coasters and the awesome flat ride collection. Thanks for the seat choice recommendations!

What I do for CW, is first head to Wonder Mountain's Guardian as it is the most crowded and does not have fast pass. Then I go straight to Leviathan, and ride a few of the rides in Medieval Fair. Then i make my way to Behemoth riding rides such as Vortex, Sledge Hammer, ect. After that, I would hit the rest of the rides in the Action Zone, such as Backlot and Minebuster. For the rest of the day, I just do whatever I feel is best. Thanks for the advice!

Hello everybody! I'm visiting Canada's Wonderland with a few of my CP friends on Friday. The 4 of us have never visited before. I had a few questions, I tried looking on the website but couldn't find a solid answer. Is there early entry every day? If so what time does it start? Also are there any good strategies to tackling the park in a specific order? Thanks!

Joker @ Six Flags Great America 12 days ago.

That play by play of Wicked Cyclone was awesome! SFNE really has two winning coasters on their hands. Glad to see you had a blast here ! And it's only the beginning of the report!

Awesome report so far! I've gotten a Mystic Timbers night ride and it's just that. Mystic Timbers in the dark, nothing special. The Beast is still THE coaster to ride at night there.

I visited the park last Thursday and had a wonderful time! I brought a friend who's maybe now a budding enthusiast. My friend grew going to Cedar Point but this year visited Kings Island, Carowinds and now Six Flags Great Adventure for the first time in the past two months. It was another one day trip, we were off work at 6 PM on Friday, took a pit stop at our homes and got on the road. We drove until about 12:30 then slept in the car on the PA Turnpike. Woke up at 5:30 and with a few stops in between we were walking through security at 10:15 AM. Perfect timing! With my friend having never visited before we headed straight to Kingda Ka for the first ride of the day. We were on the 5th train of the day in the front row. Fun ride, but I believe Dragster is the superior coaster. Since we were there we hopped on Zumanjaro and had a blast. The drop just keeps going and going. Now here's where the mistake was made. My friend didn't mind riding Mantis when it existed and we have a mutual friend who's from Kentucky always talks about how much he loved Chang back when it was at his home park. So we hopped on Green Lantern, when we got off we both agreed we won't be hopping on that anymore. After Green Lantern we did Superman which was their first B&M flyer and even with the simple layout we both think it's far superior to the Vekoma Flying Duchmans. Next we headed over to El Toro, which as usual gave us an amazing ride! What can be said that hasn't been said already. It's the most extreme ride in the park, and I'm seriously jealous of this awesome coaster you all get to ride regularly. We got 4 laps before moving onto Bizarro, which after one lap there we got 2 more laps on El Toro just because it's so good. After that we had Macho Nacho for lunch, with the crowds being so light we recevived out food in under 2 minutes! The day was going along great! After eating we still had the whole other side of the park to hit, so we started with Skull Mountain, great themeing, great music, great everything. My friend & I both love everything about Skull Mountian. Over to Nitro next it was running a little sluggish on Thursday, not bad, but my friend got off saying she liked Diamondback & Intimidator better. For me when Nitro is running fast I'll easily take it over those other two. We doubled back to Batman for another super smooth, super intense ride. I wonder how that thing runs so well for it's age, it still packs quite a punch! We hit up The Dark Knight Coaster since the crowds were so light and this was my first time I actually had to go through the pre-show! Nothing special but still fun. By this time it was 3:30pm and we decided to head to our car for a rest break. When we got back to the park we decided the only things we wanted to ride again were Ka, Zum, & El Toro. Ka had too long of a line so we still did Zumanjaro, and for the rest of the night we just parked ourselves on El Toro. Over and over again, that coaster will never get old. The crew was pumping out trains non-stop. The were racing to see who could check their side faster. They even dispatched a few trains too early causing us to set up on the lift! The crew was going so fast on the bull that there were times they dispatched a train when the one on the course was cresting the Rolling Thunder hill. Another time, they were done checking the train before we could even hear it coming back from the first turnaround. We even ran into Larry and one of the other TPR moderators during our marathon! The El Toro crew did such a wonderful job that when the park closed for the day I went to guest relations to give them all complimets. It was fantastic. We had a wonderful day at Great Adventure! Final Tally: Kingda Ka x1 Zumanjaro x2 Green Lantern x1 Superman x1 Bizarro x1 Skull Mountain x1 Nitro x1 Batman x2 The Dark Knight x1 El Toro x29 From last year to this year the ride operations in this park have VASTLY imporved. Ka always had two trains ready to launch, the Zumanjaro crew was so fast Ka could only get one launch off in between cycles. Green Lantern we never stopped on the break run and rolled right into the station, we also rolled right into the station on Skull Mountian & Batman. Superman we sat on the break run for maybe 10-15 seconds which is pretty darn fast. Now only if the Nitro & Bizarro crew could get the memo's that it's time to move fast now. Of course the best crew hands down was El Toro, the last two hours of park operating felt like our own ERT. Trains were leaving the station with 10-16 people filled in the 36 seats. Good job Six Flags. It was really great! Left after closing, drove for a few hours slept in a rest stop in th e PA turnpike again. Woke up drove the rest of the way getting home at 10AM, and was clocked in for my shift at Cedar Point at 11:15AM. Crazy trip and completley worth it!

They kinda grilled us a couple weeks back at Toro and Ka. There are new signs everywhere stating you have to remove everything from your pockets. We just got a fluffy, fluffy bunny filled with medicine and goo @ Toro - its $1 for two hours. We left everything there after a few laps, did Ka and Zum and then came back and got our stuff. Its really not as big a deal as people are making it out to be. I mean, its $1. lol They did let me in both queues and on the rides with my sunglasses, tho. Even on Ka. LOL So weird. Gotcha, I guess I was wondering if I could leave my wallet in my pocket, just in case I buy more time or run out of time.

It's official, I'm heading to Great Adventure on Thursday, I'm bringing a friend who's never visited a Six Flags park before! My question is, do they allow anything in your pockets to hop in line for El Toro or Ka? Or does everything in our pockets have to be placed in a locker?