El Toro_Ryan

Hey I just saw on the SFNE website while me and my friends were buying tickets that Hurricane Harbor is closed tomorrow. I'm guessing that's not right but I wanted to know if any of you guys knew for sure. It was on the calendar where we were buying tickets so it may just be wrong. *Edit* Nevermind it's probably just a glitch.

I have to disagree about Nitro not having airtime on the turning hills. Even in the back, I always get a pop while the train banks and on the hill before the helix, there's definitely airtime. I used to think I wasn't getting airtime on those hills but after riding since 2006, I've definitely noticed there is airtime on those hills. Maybe you just have to try it again with a looser lap bar.

The Safari always has a really long line and the ride itself is over an hour so honestly, it's not worth the ride unless you have two days at the park because it does kill a lot of time.

What makes me mad is that riders probably have a higher chance of being hit by a loose article on the same train they're on than a rider on Zumanjaro getting hit by a loose article from Ka yet the state won't allow the two to run together. Maybe the state would allow both rides to run simultaneoulsy if Ka had netting around the bottom of the track like Goliath at SFOG

I think it does vecause I was at the park on friday night and around 9pm got the last ride on KK as it shut down for techincal difficulties. Then when I got off and walked over to Zumanjaro it had just closed down. A few minutes Zumanjaro reopened and I got my first ride on that and KK had just reopened when I got off. Zumanjaro only closes Ka down when its roof doesn't close since Ka isn't allowed to run unless the roof is down. Zumanjaro can have a break down where Ka continues to run as long as the roof is closed. I've seen it happen before.

SFNE runs pretty much everything in the rain though Goliath may close. They're not quite as crazy as you guys though. I've never seen a park less interested in what the weather is doing than Great Adventure... it's awesome. LOL yeah we're pretty good at that. We only watch out for thunder generally haha Plus we like to run our coasts in sub-freezing temperatures.

Thanks for the advice from earlier guys. Just one more question. Does the park close down rides in the rain like Cedar Point or does everything generally remain open? Me and my friends are supposed to go Wednesday and the forecast looks like rain.

Great comments, and yes, some of what was going on Ka was the particular operator -- early in the day they routinely got two trains out for every Zum cycle, but that later crew was really not hitting that with any regularity -- the operator in the afternoon was also allowing people to loiter in the exit and on the exit platform, and I'm sorry, even if they have a medical band and just got off, they can't stand there while the ride is loading and dispatching, especially when they are kids that have no parent and seem physically fine i.e. they walked up the exit and down the stairs. One kid was on his cell phone and when the op with the mic asked people to leave the exit, he walked further down the platform, to the closed area, and turned his back to her, so he could hear his phone better! There were two adults on the exit stairs with babies... seriously, I can't make this stuff up. No effort at all by the ops to encourage the platinum band guys to leave after a few rides... it was really bad in the afternoon. I'm not a huge drop tower guy. I love coasters but am afraid of heights. I'm fine if I keep moving though. Worst coaster experience of my life was being stuck at the top of the lift hill on Magnum XL 200 for about a half hour... lightly swaying in a moderate wind... I am absolutely well aware of the tendency of coasters in summer to run incredibly well as the day cools off... I would love to experience El Toro in those conditions or after a light rain... or even better, both... For a while my home park was Riverside (now SFNE) and I had a LOT of rides on the Cyclone there, which when well maintained and THE coaster in the park was a hell of a ride... and I had the opportunity to ride it many times after 95 degree days, and also after short afternoon thunderstorms, and it was a mind blowing ride in those conditions, the turn after the first drop was just crazy. (If not familiar, rather than a banked turn, it ran uphill, then took a *hard* right turn, and arc down i.e. there's a spot on that turn where the whole train jumps sideways and then launches back down. Unique.) Yeah, I'll be back. It'll have to be on a less crowded day. One time in 1992, I think it was, the crowds were so light on a weekday that I rode Great American Scream Machine forty times in a few hours. I'd love to do that with El Toro. Anyhow, Ryan, thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my comments. It's super cool and you do it well. I am sincerely impressed with SFGAdv and was expecting it to stack up poorly vs SFMM but your two signature rides, Kingda Ka and El Toro, match up very well with Tatsu and X2, and given the rest of the lineup, primarily on the strength of the maintenance, honestly, SFGAdv has to get the crown... I know, I know, I don't want to start a religious war in this SFGAdv thread about SFMM LOL but I was frankly not expecting that I'd feel this way. Too bad I live in Seattle now and not Boston! I always love hearing feedback about the park. A lot of the issues with people not listening to ride ops has a lot to deal with the general snobby personalities of a lot of the people who live around SFGA. Everyone thinks they're right around here and when you tell them otherwise, they get mad at you. It's to the point where I actually get very happy when I tell a guest to put their things in a locker and they listen to me obediently rather than get an attitude with me. And I know a lot of the employees at Ka so hopefully the situation was only because no one would listen to them but security should have been called to deal with something like that. Usually Ka's crew is on their A game. We try to never allow that to happen at Toro. Even if you have platinum flash pass, you have to leave the station after two rides. No ifs and no buts. Maybe having a small station at Toro is a good after all since there's no where for people to stand around and hold operations. haha

Nice report. Regarding Ka, Ka used to run 4 trains with 4 separate loading platforms. Two trains would load on one side while the two from the other side would run the course. When those two rains would return to load, the two trains on the other side of the station would dispatch. Now the park runs three trains at Ka with one load station similar to Nitro. And yes, Nitro's operations have been terrible this year with double stacking almost every cycle. I don't know the supervisors over in that end of the park but they are not doing their jobs properly if they continuously allow that to happen. I'm glad you enjoyed the park though. Just one more tip, if you go back to the park anytime soon, make sure you ride Zumanjaro and then Toro is a must ride at nighttime because it speeds up greatly during the day. Your ride in the morning was probably good but it's even faster later in the day.

Lmao will do. And Skull Mountain is actually one of the more popular rides in the park. It seems like it never has a line but that's because that ride is a people eater. It gets better numbers than we do at El Toro a lot of the times (which makes me very angry because we bust our asses at Toro haha) On crowded days, its line does fill the cave.

Thanks for the tips guys. I am going to the park with non coaster enthusiast friends so we probably won't be counting credits. I still want to get on Goliath though because I have never been on a Vekoma GIB. If it were up to me, I wouldn't even go to the water park and I would just ride Bizarro all day long. We do plan to ride it in the front and back regardless of how long the wait is. Just one more question. Does SFNE typically fill up at opening or does it take a while for the park to fill up with guests like how GADV does?

El Toro Ryan, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot, so I wanted to try and make amends by saying I think this is a very fair and balanced post. Those who are frustrated with the way the park looks now may tend to overstate their case, causing those who want to defend the park to overstate THEIR case, and you end up with a lot of people putting things more strongly than they mean. Of course the park has its good points and bad points, and I don't think anyone would argue that it hasn't made improvements over the years. But as for general upkeep, yeah, they often let stuff go longer than they should. That's just a fact, it's pretty much always been that way. The amount of decrepitude varies every year. And I think some people walk around the park noticing everything and it bothers them, and others just ride El Toro and forget about it. Either way, not that big a deal. The movie town thing is a much bigger deal though, and what's frustrating is that it's been that way for so long at this point. There isn't really any excuse for it. If this were a more typically run park, I bet they would've hung on to GASM a little longer and put the new coaster there instead, along with the sky screamer and possibly a couple other flats. Until that half of the park is fixed no one should be surprised to hear people complain about it occasionally, I mean it wouldn't really be Theme Park REVIEW if we never ever said anything negative about theme parks, right? Thanks Neil. I understand where your complaining comes from because I have similar complaints about the park. haha I just won't post them here so I will continue to praise the park. (Just not to much ) I did make a post last night where I basically called out past management teams for doing strange things with the park but I took it down because I didn't want to get in trouble with my job. Basically, I think the problems you might see with the park are because of changes in management that have had to deal with high debt created by past management teams. This results in the closed pathways, sections, and occasional area that needs TLC done to it that you see today. I think things will improve greatly though down the road.

Hey everyone. Me and some buddies are heading up to SFNE next Wednesday and I'm curious to what's a good plan to tackle the entire park and water park in one day. We should be getting there for opening and hopefully staying until closing. Like would it be a good idea to go to Bizarro first or Sky Screamer since it's new?

If you're going to the park soon, I'd expect Ka to have a longer line than normal because of Zumanjaro. With the new ride right next to Ka, most everyone will go ride Ka when they're finished with Zumanjaro. I was there today and the line just after opening was already almost full.

Management is aware of Movietown and that side of the park's fading image so I'd look for improvements in that area down the road. I do have complaints about the park (but I won't share them here because I could get in trouble haha) but the park has definitely come a long way since the early 2000's. Operations have improved (*cough* except at Nitro *cough*) and the park is definitely much more well rounded now with the additions of more flat rides over the last 3 years. I think with some TLC all around the park and the reopening of the path between Ka and Toro and Old Country with some new rides, GADV will be golden. Also I finally got the chance to ride Zumanjaro today and it was fantastic. The view at the top is gorgeous and the drop lasts for days. I was out of my seat the entire time until we hit the brakes. It was great. While the drop didn't have the same kick that the smaller Intamin's do like Dropzone at Carowinds, it's still my favorite drop tower due to its shear size.

You probably know this but El Toro's station was Viper's old station. For Viper, the station was setup with a load section and an unload section like Millennium Force. Riders entered and exited on the wider section of the station (current load side for Toro) and the thinner current exit side was only used by employees. To this day on Toro's load side near the ramp in the back are exit signs that point to the ramp that were there for Viper's old exit. Should the station have been widened a bit for Toro? Probably, but luckily it's still enough to work with. haha When we're rolling trains, everyone from the previous train will have just exited the station by the time we're finished. People waiting for the front row do block a lot of people from entering the station but a quick spiel on the mic always solves that problem. And I remember hearing rumors from when the ride was being built that riders would enter and exit on the same side which would have been a disaster if that actually came true. Probably not to bad. We only get crazy busy on Saturdays generally.

Ka did loose it's fastest title in 2010. For awhile the park was just saying tallest coaster in the world. I think what they're trying to say now is "The tallest and fastest coaster in the world at 45 stories" so I think they mean fastest in the world at 45 stories. It's a weird play on words so that's pretty sneaky of them. Watch the b-roll footage for Zumanjaro and that's what they say at 0:26. Also if you're planning to ride Zumanjaro soon, I'd get try and ride it before 9 PM because I've heard they have been closing it early (along with Kingda Ka) for maintenance. I believe you can but I'd call the park to make sure.

I meant a bystander got struck. By the way, does NJ have the most strict "safety" regulations of any state? Or does that "honor" go to California or some other state? I'm not sure about it having the most strict safety regulations, but I'd imagine they're pretty strict. As someone in Canada (i've heard we have some relatively strict regulations when it comes to rides), this seems like overkill. At my home park, they'll allow guests to walk pretty much under Leviathan, during parts of the ride where it's running from 60-90+ mph. I'm not blaming this on the state tho, IMO, it was the park's fault. It was pretty stupid on the park's part for not checking into things like this. I always thought parks had to check with local regulations and provincial/state governments before they even started building, but I guess SF's exempt from this Even worse, this isn't the first time SF's run into trouble with local regulations... Remember SFDK's V2? If you're referring to Ka's original quene line, it was built within state regulations. They would have never allowed the park to open Ka in the first place if it wasn't. You saw what they did with Zumanjaro. I don't know how SFDK got away with V2 but if someone knows, please tell me. Haha And a bystander was never hit by any metal on Ka but last year or the year before, I believe a bird struck a rider in the front row or somewhere on the train.

Hopefully by then, the state will allow both rides to run at the same time so Ka isn't affected by Zumanjaro anymore. GADV is still fighting the state about this.

My nerdy self was timing KK launches on my break. While Zumanjaro was loading, they'd launch a train every 55-60 seconds but when Zumanjaro was running, it could take 2 to 3 minutes for the next Ka train to launch while it waited for Zumanjaro. From working Zumanjaro yesterday, it seemed that it wasn't interrupted at all by Ka but Ka definitely takes the hit since it can load trains much more quickly.

That's not how physics works. The brakes on each tower are just a little different, or maybe it's the magnetic strips on the gondolas. You can see when the cars in this run hit the bottom: . Actually, it is how physics. A heavier gondola will take longer to stop with magnetic brakes. In fact all roller coasters take longer to stop with magnetic brakes. If you watch Kingda Ka hit the brake run with an empty train, it literally crawls to a stop before the end of the camel back while a full train clears the brake run with cruising speed to spare. The same principle applies to drop towers. I'm guessing that Ka will be running while they are loading riders so the roof is to protect them while they are being loaded. Yessir. When the roof is closed, Ka runs. When the roof is open, Zumanjaro runs.

I got trained at Zumanjaro today and it's pretty interesting. I think Ka and Zumie might be programmed together. Basically, when all three attendants press a ready button at their stations, the roofs retract automatically and the ride is ready to go. However, if Ka has a train on the tower, the roofs do not retract until the train has cleared the tower. I don't know if the two rides were necessarily programmed together but there's something syncing the two whether it be sensors or an actual program. And Ka launching 2 trains while we load isn't as bad as it sounds. As soon as the roofs go up after the gondolas park, Ka launches a train and then another quickly after that because they stack up their trains on the launch pad while we run our cycle. So after the second (occasionally third) Ka train clears the tower, we do our cycle and then it repeats. It seems to work pretty well but let me know what you thought if you waited in line for either rides today or yesterday. And Zumanjaro has been having lots of bugs but they're being worked out. I believe programmers were on site to help smooth things out. If you go to the park soon, expect to see the ride break down quite a few times but this should hopefully be resolved. Yeah the right gondola definitely drops later than the others. It's pretty weird haha It was kind of funny though because that gondola would still beat the others back to the ground because heavier people tended to be in that one by chance.

It turns out Zumanjaro has a retractable roof that shields the gondolas while Ka is running its cycle. The two rides are not allowed to run together at all. GADV is still going to fight against this though but for now, the two rides will not run together whatsoever. I heard Ka launches like 2 to 3 trains and then Zumanjaro sends out a cycle. Here's some pics of the roof provided by greatadventurehistory.com

Here I am. I never tried to imply you were wrong about the park but I do just try and state how things really are. Trust me, you learn much more about how a park operates when you work at one.

Here's a cool update from gadv.com showing a more in-depth look at the quene line and station area. http://www.gadv.com/forums/topic/19361-zumanjaro-drop-of-doom-coming-in-2014/page-22#entry450378