El Toro_Ryan

The boarding passes are only issued on days where attendance is high enough. You can always depend on Ka to have a line (if it's open ) so they generally always give out boarding passes. The passes are assigned in order as you enter the line but don't have to be collected in the exact order since most people are in groups anyway. Like say if the person in front of you has #5 and you have #498, it's not going to work. But if you have number #8, you're fine.

I think the parks are only a little over an hour apart so it's totally possible. KK is always empty and HW doesn't usually get too busy from what I've seen, and both parks are pretty small as well. I would totally try out the water coasters at HW even if you're not a big water park person, they're something else!

I went to Holiwood Nights for the first time ever this year and it was fantastic! If you've never gone, I highly recommend it. I filmed this off-ride video of Voyage while I was there both around the park and on the backstage tour. The backstage tour didn't go to the spaghetti bowl this year but I seriously can't complain! The park catered the group to a nacho bar behind Thunderbird instead! (How do you embed videos? lol)

Flitzer at Jenkinson's Boardwalk in Point Pleasant, NJ comes to mind. And Raven at Holiday World features a pretty nasty brake run as well. If you're sitting on the train loading in the station, you can actually feel the ride shifting forward during the stop.

I'll be visiting the park this Friday and I was wondering what the best plan of action is to knock out as many rides as I can in one day. What's the best order to hit all the coasters in? I only have one day at the park and plan on either getting a gold or platinum flash pass to speed things along.

Awesome, that's great to know! Thanks everyone

My family and I will be in the LA area during the end of May and we have two days set aside for parks. One day at Magic Mountain and the next day at Knott's. We're looking at Friday May 26th and Saturday May 27th for either of the two and I am going to assume that Saturday will be the busier day at either of the parks. Would it be better to spend Friday, the less crowded day at Magic Mountain and then the more crowded Saturday at Knott's or vise versa?

You should be able to hit up the entire park in just one day if the lines aren't too bad. They usually aren't absurd around this time of year but if the weather is nice, expect to wait 45 minutes to an hour for some of the bigger rides. Since you guys are spending almost 2 days at the park, I highly recommend checking out the Safari! It's an awesome experience and I'm sure you would love it.

You have to realize that the rides at Disney are much less intense than the ones at GADV or your typical theme park. lol You also have to keep in mind the huge difference in guests who go to either park. The crowd at Disney is better behaved, there are a lot of families on vacations or etc. Most of the guests who go to GADV are inner city people from NYC or Philly who love to cause problems. Of all the parks I have been to, GADV easily takes the cake for the worst behaved guests I've seen. The amount of people who think they're thugs and gangsters is ridiculous. If we had cubbies like those, then prepare to have all of your values stolen. Trust me, you are much better off with a locker at our park.

I always noticed that the hill following the immelmann (where the train saddled again) was the tallest point on the ride. Maybe Premier should have made the first part of the cobra roll the tallest hill instead? So the train would just roll back into the launch if it didn't launch fast enough rather than saddle 80 feet in the air? lol

I can agree with this. Bins kill capacity, when Magnum had the bins taken away in 2014 the actual hourly numbers raised by 300-400 riders per hour. They can adopt a better bin system. The delay is because people have to squeeze by their seats, place their items, come back, squeeze again. If there was a way to place items in the bin before boarding, and have it outside the exit after leaving the ride, there would be zero delay. Hell, a bin on the ride that allows space for glasses, cells, and keys, and is locked along with the restraints would work even better. But that would be a cost for Six Flags. And heavens forbid incurring a cost. The issue with having pouches on the ride itself is that people can take their cell phones out once they leave the station. Then we are back to the same original issue with people taking their cell phones out mid ride. Additionally they would slow down operations as well since the attendants would have to check people's restraints and that the pouches are closed. And you might want to invent a teleportation system for that other idea of yours. lol

Come by the ride and if we have to, we'll staple you in lol It's always worth the shot.

Toro has actually been running extremely well this preseason, even in colder temperatures so hopefully we won't see any saddles this season (The first run of the season may or may not have occurred when it was 39 degrees out and the train may or may not have flown through the course haha I'll say that.) And yes it typically saddles on the last hill into the brake run. It's taller than the two small humps before it so it's the highest hill following the Rolling Thunder Hill. Intamin purposely made the last hill so tall so that the train would slow down naturally into the brakes. Can't wait to see everyone on Saturday!

CP always lets us know this early. Hiring for the season (note: this all applies to the rides department, I can't speak for the others.) begins in mid January. They start with hiring our Area Supervisors, then go to specific Ride Supervisors, Team Leaders, and Crew Members in that order. For everybody who worked the previous season and is returning, the rides managers call us and offer us a position on a specific ride, so you know what ride you're on before you even begin hiring paperwork. If we accept our Job offer then we go onto the hiring process. If you're brand new to Cedar Point you'll get a Skype Interview and if you're hired they'll tell you what ride you're placed on before the call is over. Me and the other employees get so hyped for what we call "Placement Time" to find out where everybody gets placed throughout the park, There's an employees only group we post our placement news and even a website for us to see who all is hired and where they're placed. There's already over 100 ride ops hired for the 2017 season so far. We're a big department though total there's going to be around 600 people hired for rides this season and lots more people to be placed! Wow that's a great way to do things. Definitely more organized than GADV. (Am I surprised? Not at all lol)

That's awesome man! Working at Cedar Point seems super fun and I hope to work there one day for fun. That's also cool Cedar Point lets you know so early in advance what ride you will be working. I'm a supervisor and I still have no idea what ride GADV wants to place me at and we open a whole month earlier. If you hire in as a team member, you don't find out your placement typically until a week or two before the season starts. Is this part of like a slightly different program CP offers or does CP always let you know this early in advance?

Does anyone here know why the park sits an employee up at the MCBR for Texas Giant? I've seen someone sitting there in several videos and I'm curious why that is.

Lol well GL always has a line but I think that's due to the terrible throughput at that ride. I don't think the crew broke 800,000 people this season. Superman for instance does much better than GL for throughput and ridership overall. Why did they replace GASM with GL, because Six Flags. Haha GL does have higher ridership than GASM did though so that's one thing. As for flooress trains on GL, no way haha (unless the park tears down Bizarro and they reuse the trains on GL.) I might be in the minority but I actually prefer GL over Bizarro. I like dem forces.

It was great meeting you too man! I remember seeing your Cedar Point beanie when your car rolled into the station and thinking "I definitely know this guy from somewhere." Glad you enjoyed your trip!

Awesome trip report!! I really hope to get to Japan one of these days. Was the park running their coasters with water dummies? Haha

Nitro was the most ridden ride in the whole Six Flags chain. They got 1.6 million riders. And yes opening day is April 1st.

Hey that orange car is mine! The place is a ghost town, so far I have 10 rides on Nitro, 10 rides on Batman, and 1 Skull Mountain. Thank you Great Adventure's re-ride policy! It was awesome to meet you man! Hope you weren't too disappointed with the park closing 5 hours early today. lol

Agreed. It's much more convenient to have 4 attendants to check restraints but running with two is still manageable. Especially with the shorter 24 passenger trains on GhostRider. I heard Dorney Park has a similar rule with running three trains on Steel Force where they need 6 attendants minimum. The reasoning for that though is because the third train absolutely slams to a stop on the final brake run if it stacks. GhostRider looks like it stops pretty comfortably. haha I guess Cedar Fair really just doesn't like stacking.

The park still purchased three trains even with the removal of the mid-course. This way there are always two trains available while one is still in rehab, just like before with the PTC trains. I believe the first two trains were shipped out and I'm not sure if they have received the third train yet but they definitely ordered three. I feel like the park could have pulled off three train operation if they really tried. Europa Park does it on Wodan and that thing has a way shorter cycle time. Would have been cool to see in my opinion, especially with the crowds the ride seems to draw.

This one right here. The hourly target is 30 trains or 1,080 people and with just two people checking the train, you have to HAUL. It's a super fun challenge. And with the ride essentially surrounding the station, the sound of the other train on track pushes you faster so you don't stack. ¡Olé!

This is going back to a discussion from a few weeks ago but I just found out Bizarro did one million riders this year. I just find it funny because Rougarou which has way better operations did not hit one million.