El Toro_Ryan

The best part about Goliath looks to be the hang time in the inversions anyway. It's airtime definitely isn't as long as Toro's. Toro gives a good 3 to 4 seconds of sustained ejector on the big camelhumps. The speed hill on Goliath looks to give about 2 seconds.

I'm glad to hear the good reviews about Goliath. How would you guys who have ridden it stack it up to other really good woodies like Voyage or El Toro? And was it running one or two trains for opening day?

So I guess that means still no word on opening? I heard there is a commercial shoot on the 25th, so my best guess would be media day the 26th and preview/opening the 27th/28th. Ryan, or anybody, have you heard if there will be a pass holder preview, or will it just open right up after media day? I'm not sure. I keep hearing rumors through coaster sites that it'll open June 26th but the park has yet to announce an opening day yet. We should all probably wait a little before we get our hopes too high. Hopefully it will open by then though. And check out this new testing video. jdc12192 over at GreatAdventureHistory.com just posted it. Funny, I'm a member on that site, I was just looking at the same video. It is odd that the far right (or left) gondola is delayed by so many feet by the base of the drop. It must a very slight delay in the release mechanism, unless the broken/bent screen creates enough wind resistancemto slow it down they much. To me, it just looks like the left gondola is being released last. Play it back slowly and you can see it. Does anyone know if the gondolas on Lex Luther not drop at the exact same time? Maybe something was dropped on it but I think it's been fixed. It looked normal in person today and I've heard someone saying they saw maintenance hammering away at it to fix the bend behind Bizarro.

So I guess that means still no word on opening? I heard there is a commercial shoot on the 25th, so my best guess would be media day the 26th and preview/opening the 27th/28th. Ryan, or anybody, have you heard if there will be a pass holder preview, or will it just open right up after media day? I'm not sure. I keep hearing rumors through coaster sites that it'll open June 26th but the park has yet to announce an opening day yet. We should all probably wait a little before we get our hopes too high. Hopefully it will open by then though. And check out this new testing video. jdc12192 over at GreatAdventureHistory.com just posted it.

Zumanjaro was testing all morning and into the afternoon pretty consistently. It's good news after seeing no activity at it for a few days. The gondolas were being lifted at full speed too. They get to the top of the tower really quickly.

I haven't heard about this from anyone at work yet. The Rolling Thunder Trains are still sitting in the parking lot. I could ask someone though.

I hope the attendants at Ka were better then they were on fri. On fri. They were training a bunch. And were slow as hell. They were only launching a train every 5 min that's how slow it was. On top of it. It wasn't open long due to the rain fri evening. No way will they ever be that bad. Not even Superman is usually that bad. Ka aims to dispatch a train every minute and it seemed like they were hitting that interval today while I was at work.

Old Country is the area Musik Express is in and GADV closed that down in 2008 after Chiler closed for good. The ride itself is gutted and only the building that housed it is still there. I wouldn't look to see it ever run again unfortunately.

I think they're people who would ride Ka but not Zumanjaro. A lot of people are just terrified of drop towers. Haha That's the vibe I've been getting from a lot of people but we'll see when the ride opens how many people actually ride it. It's still going to be a lot for sure.

I think at the beginning the line will be more then 3 hrs. it looks like its going to be a slow capacity ride and all. just my opinion. I've heard Lex Luthor's lines weren't unbearable its first year. And a lot of people are absolutely terrified of Zumanjaro and won't ride. So many people ask me about it and then tell me that there's no way they'll ever ride it. And I think it's capacity should be fairly decent.

Anyone know why wooden coasters run faster and smoother when the track is wet? I just rode Toro at 2 AM after a downpour and it was the fastest I've ever seen it run. Extremely smooth too.

Let's not start the nickname appropriateness debate again... It's Zumie or GTFO!! Jk haha I'm just used to calling it that from work.

Probably not 3 hours, but the line will still be long for sure. I think it's hourly capacity is around 700 or 800 which isn't too bad. Which rides do you think Mae sense to go to first on a Saturday or Sunday morning? Should I go for Ka and Zumanjaor, or get two rides on El Toro, then head over to Ka with hopefully little wait still before 11? Being the new ride, Zumanjaro will have the longest wait out of all those for sure. I'd say rush to Zumie first to try and beat the crowds and then Ka right after. Toro can wait til last because it has the best capacity out of the three rides and it still shouldn't have too bad of a line by the time you get to it. Plus it'll have some time to speed up a bit. Zumie might also have a shorter line at the end of the day as a lot of people are going to ride it first thing when they get to the park.

Probably not 3 hours, but the line will still be long for sure. I think it's hourly capacity is around 700 or 800 which isn't too bad.

They're really not... on a Saturday in the summer the longest you'll wait for anything is 45 minutes except for Superman and SORA because of their capacity. We almost always go on Saturdays in the summer because we don't get too many days off from work and we always have a great time even without a Flash Pass. Fright Fest is a nightmare but that's the case in most parks. Yeah, more like 45 minutes minimum on any major coaster. It would seem our experiences have been exact opposites. How intriguing. I hope were talking about the same GADV because I've been going to the park since I was 5 and I've almost never encountered all lines being at least 45 min. I'll wait like 20 for Bizarro and 30 for Nitro. If you encountered the park with lines like that, then you must have went on a very crowded day. I think we've only had one or two days so far this whole season where that has occurred.

I said the park doesn't need CP level operations most of the time. I work at the park. There's a huge difference in attendance between Monday through Thursday verses Friday through Sunday. We receive extra staffing on super busy days but most of the time, the staffing we have is sufficient for the crowds we receive and wait times at all rides never go above an hour. I've seen lines at CP reach an hour and a half on a Monday in May where as rides like Bizarro have station waits during the week. its just not running a company correctly having 2 attendants checking a train, when it should have 4, whether the park has 20 min waits or a hr. its not being productive. and its making employees do way too much work. We all know Six Flags isn't in the best of shape finically but they're fixing things. Yeah there's only 2 people checking restraints on the roller coasters but I'd rather have a ride run at a slight reduced capacity than have the finances of the park jeopardized further. And I've rarely felt over worked and I work at El Toro which is the hardest roller coaster to run in the park because so many people do not fit on it but it's expected that we pull high numbers. Sure, I'd love to see 4 attendants on all the rides but I'd rather the company get it's act together financially first so that in the long run, we can have an even better Six Flags Inc. I wouldn't call it being unproductive, it's the opposite. We do the best with what we have and that's productive. From my very first day of training, it was made clear to me that high capacity is one of the main goals of the park when they showed a slideshow displaying all the rides that gave over one million rides that season. Six Flags awarded the rides department at GADV for being the best department out of all the Six Flags parks last year and possibly the years before that but I'm not 100% sure. Honestly, there are way better things to complain about GADV than rides not being staffed well enough, like all the shows and flat rides that disappeared during the 2000's.

I said the park doesn't need CP level operations most of the time. I work at the park. There's a huge difference in attendance between Monday through Thursday verses Friday through Sunday. We receive extra staffing on super busy days but most of the time, the staffing we have is sufficient for the crowds we receive and wait times at all rides never go above an hour. I've seen lines at CP reach an hour and a half on a Monday in May where as rides like Bizarro have station waits during the week.

I worked Dragster at CP and Dark Knight at Gadv. Dark Knight basically ran itself so there wasn't really anything you could do to improve dispatch times because the cars moved continuously in the station. Dragster was a lot more hands on and I loved it. Our Team Lead made sure all team members knew that after safety, speed was the top priority. There was a pretty big crew over there too. 4 on load, 2 on unload, 1 for unload spieling, 1 for control panel, and 1 for launch control panel. That's 9 people on platform alone not including entrance, Fastpass, merge, and crowd. I don't think Gadv has enough employees to staff the coasters like Cedar Point does. Also it's a lot harder to get cross trained at Gadv than Cedar Point. At Cedar Point I was trained on Matterhorn, Dragster, Scrambler, and Dodgem within my first month. At Gadv I was at Dark Knight the entire year. That's sick. Yeah I guess since Cedar Point has a surplus of workers, it's easier to get trained on other rides. The problem at GADV is that there isn't enough staff for you to go to train at another ride a lot of the time and you have to stay at your ride. I was lucky enough to get cross trained at Bizarro but that was only because Bizarro needed more people since they had less people than Toro did. That's weird. We usually have both sides of the SkyRide open more often than not, especially on weekends. And honestly, GADV doesn't need the operations Cedar Point does most of the time. We're generally only busy on weekends and when we are busy, we still aren't as busy as the Point gets. But when we do have long long lines, we are staffed to have 4 people checking restraints. We usually do this during Fright Fest and some of the more crowded days in the summer.

That's amazing news! I've been waiting for Gadv to improve operations to this degree. I've had the pleasure of working at both Cedar Point and Gadv and the difference in operations is noticeable to say the least. It's exciting to hear Gadv now times their dispatches like Cedar Point does. SFGadv operations are not even close to cedar points on the major roller coasters. SF better hire a ton more people if they want to be close to comparable. We try our best though! haha We're on track for one million rides by the first week of August at Toro. I know Nitro usually hits one million in July. Skull Mountain, Batman, the Sky Ride, and Bizarro should hit one million as well. Ka probably won't since it's been closed so much for Zumanjaro.

We now have a Johnny Rockets though.

That's amazing news! I've been waiting for Gadv to improve operations to this degree. I've had the pleasure of working at both Cedar Point and Gadv and the difference in operations is noticeable to say the least. It's exciting to hear Gadv now times their dispatches like Cedar Point does. What rides did you work at Cedar Point? And as good as we can improve our operations, I don't think our operations will ever be as good as Cedar Point's until GADV staffs more than 2 people to check restraints at all major coasters. Only Ka and Green Lantern have 4 people on the train at all times. Having 2 people works most of the time but you really have to hustle. The downside is that if a guest has an issue that you have to address, you have to hold off from the loading procedure until the issue is addressed. Was there a rule that attendants had to check restraints together at Cedar Point? When I was there, it didn't seem like it.

The CEO at the time who almost cancelled El Toro later said that El Toro was his favorite ride out of the whole Six Flags chain. What were the other attractions? They were never publicly announced, only that there was a five-year plan to rejuvenize the park. The world may never know. I'll see what I can find out from work.

Hey guys, just a little update. I heard employees were being trained at Zumanjaro this week so it should be opening soon. An official opening day has not been announced but I've heard it could possibly open this weekend from several people. Someone over at Greatadventurehistory.com said that a season pass preview day would occur the day after media day. Hopefully that's true. haha And for the people who complain about stacking at Bizarro, after working there a lot, I've noticed some interesting things about it. In order for the third train to not stack on the brake run, you have to dispatch the train in the station as the train on the circuit is dropping out of the mcbr or it stacks. Most B&M's are not like that. I've seen Raptor dispatch a train as the train on the circuit was in the final helix and not double stack. Bizarro is different because the floors take forever to drop. The floors on newer floorless coasters are much quicker. Most of the time, we dispatch trains as one is in the corkscrews which is around a 1:45 dispatch interval which still results in over 1,000 pph. However, when we do that, the third train will stack for a few seconds because it takes longer than the average B&M for the trains in the station and waiting to advance forward. (By the time the next train is parked in the station with the floors up, the train ahead is already more than half way up the lift hill) And my area supervisor is really cracking down on capacity this year and she made it a big deal to us yesterday not to double stack. She even had us practice checking the restraints where we had to lower each harness and buckle each seatbelt in under 45 seconds. That's with only 2 people on the train too. After that, we had trains dispatching while the the train on the circuit was in the cobra roll. So if you were concerned about Bizarro's operations, they're not as bad as you thought and look for them to improve. haha

This is true, but the floorless trains have a higher heartline compared to the standard sitdown trains. I bet if you compare the heartline between the standup to a floorless, they are probably really close. If you look at Mantis, the platform you stand on is really close to the frame of the train and the track. On a floorless train, the seats are mounted higher on the chassis to get you high enough so your feet won't hit anything. I think the main reason CP does not do the retrofit is simply because the ride is still popular, converting would be expensive (mostly new station) and it may not pay off over time for them. While I think most of us would like it, it probably does not make much sense... New trains, station and overhaul would probably cost nearly 5 million, as a quick guess. Maybe one of Hydra's trains could be tested on Mantis over the offseason. I know it's not that simple though since Mantis doesn't have the floor for a floorless coaster but it would give a good idea at how floorless trains would track the ride.

This makes sense, I always wondered how Gradv was able to spend so much on Ka and then turn right around and put in Toro the next year. Well there is that mini-zoo behind MF with the goats, turkeys, ducks etc; and there are no shortage of seagulls Six Flags actually had a 5 year plan ready that would have seen GADV transformed into a resort. (This was when Premier owned Six Flags and they were absolutely pouring money into the parks.) Toro and Ka were just the first two projects in a line of major projects that would have seen almost every major area of the park redone. If you notice, Plaza Del Carnival and what's left of the Golden Kingdom are much nicer than the rest of the park. However, when Redzone took over Six Flags in 2005, they bailed on the rest of the plan because it would have cost too much. They almost canceled El Toro but continued with it because construction had already began. And I know Ka cost $25 million and I've heard Toro cost $12 million from websites but all the maintenance guys at Toro say it cost $28 million which is insane if it really did. I'd say $28 million well spent though. haha