toughmudder

1) Magnum 2) X2 3) Big Bad Wolf 4) Desperado 5) Ninja @ SFMM HM - Top Gun (Bat) KI/Gemini - CP

I've actually been very impressed with how much they've been able to get open and operating prior to Opening Day. There were rumors as recent as a couple of months ago that some of the major attractions would not be ready to go by mid-June opening... I think they've been able to prove that wrong. The one major attraction that hasn't soft opened yet is Roaring Rapids - any idea why? I would guess that raft rides don't have a lot of new technology to test... and this appears to follow a course very similar to Grizzly River Run. My guess is that the massive animatronic is not yet ready. Hopefully we're not in the throws of Yeti 2.0!

That's hilarious... There's also an instagram video of them running through Adventureland at opening - it can't be for Roaring Rapids...(yet), so it must be for POTC. What else did your friend say about the soft opening? I'd be curious to hear more details. I'm really excited about this park.

Agreed... I think it's a great little ride, and an awesome addition to the opening arsenal of rides for the park (esp. since they needed an all-ages coaster since TRON has a higher height limit). I think WDW was able to re-use the characters from SW's Scary Adventure for that final show scene - so perhaps the slight change for SDL was because they wanted to keep WDW's unique that way...?

The Roaring Rapids mountain actually looks pretty intimidating from the walkway they're approaching it from. Like how Everest looks at a distance. Speaking of which are Roaring Rapids and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train not part of the preview days cause I haven't seen any POV of either yet. Here is a (quite poor) POV of Seven Dwarves Mine Train - which now appears to be open. You'll see a difference in the final show scene (cottage in the distance... no animatronics/dancing/queen... pop up animals instead): I have not seen anything on Roaring Rapids yet. I see it testing in overhead videos/pictures... but no reported rides in previews yet. Hopefully the giant animatronic is working ok!

Here is a video that provides more of the Alice in Wonderland maze - and I like it better than I did initially. It especially looks good at night. I think, if well maintained, it will be a nice diversion from the fast pace of the rest of the park... and I love its placement right below the castle - makes for stunning shots!

Hopefully they utilize some of the same technology for the Avatar boat ride... but I'm not expecting anything near what we're currently seeing with Shanghai pirates. Have you seen the footprint for the boat ride? It is quite small... in fact - I'm wondering if they're really not pushing a lot of advance word on it as they don't want expectations to be too high. I'm expecting a Living with the Land type of experience but with the nighttime bio-luminescence and some animatronic animals... Something the whole family can ride in Pandora since there will be a height limit for the Banshee ride. Now... Star Wars Land's Battle Escape attraction is a different story. Have you seen how massive this show building is going to be? I can truly see a lot of the same technology implemented here, despite it not being a boat ride. You could still utilize similar effects and use trackless technology. It could be the perfect blend of POTC: Battle of Sunken Treasure and Pooh's Hunny Hunt!

And here's 90 minutes of unbelievable coverage that a family and their young son took at the park... This has pretty good video of Pirates, Voyage to the Crystal Grotto, Peter Pan, Soarin Over the World, the Snow White Castle Walk-Through and more. I think Disney hit this one out of the park... (and there is tons of room to expand - could you imagine this park in 10 years?) Pirates may be the best dark ride out there - it looks great in video... can you imagine how stunning it must look live? http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTU2NDM3MTA5Mg==.html

Thanks for all the great advice everybody! Very helpful!

Hey everyone - we are headed to SFMM in a few weeks. I haven't been there for a few years (since Full Throttle and Twisted Colossus opened) and wanted some advice. The last 2 times I went, we headed straight to X2, which worked out well. With the new additions is that still a strong strategy for an out-of-towner who doesn't make it to the park very often? Does X2 normally open with the park during the summer or does it take awhile to test it and get it up and running? Let me know if there's an alternative strategy out there, or if something else fills up quickly and has long waits the rest of the day that we should consider going on early. I know that New Revolution will probably have a long line because of VR... I don't think any in our group are interested in the VR but I'm extremely interested in riding it w/out OTSR's... so I guess I'll need to figure out when to ride that one. I wish they would have divided up the train so half is VR and half is w/out... but I understand why that might be more operationally difficult.

Have they removed some of the trims from the ride, or is it pretty much identical to what it was - just with better trains? I love the layout of Revolution and would love to experience it as it was when it opened... but beggars can't be choosers - and I'm glad there are no OTSR's!

Looks pretty cool... The riders appear to be having a blast. One thing I'm wondering - will it be a bit jarring at times when you are unable to adjust your body to certain elements when you can't see what's ahead of you? I know it would be akin to riding in darkness, which we all love... but even then you have a sense of upcoming elements and know how to hold your body appropriately. For those that ride a certain coaster many times and know when to expect certain elements, it shouldn't be an issue... but for novices, you might get thrown around more than expected. Example is what happens at dispatch to the rider on the LH side of the screen at 0:44 (and that's with the train at a crawl...)

Can someone refresh my memory of the differences between MK's proposed Fire Mountain coaster and DAK's proposed Dragon Tower (?) coaster in Beastlie Kingdomme? It seemed like after Beastlie Kingdomme got the heave-ho that plans to build Fire Mountain heated up (no pun intended) in the late 90's/early 00's... which was about the time that Lance Hart started up Screamscape and it seemed like there were even rumors of survey markings in Adventureland. How close did we get to it being built, and what killed it? Was it an invert or a suspended? These were two projects that still hold a great deal of interest to me... As does MK's once-proposed Villain Mountain (rumors of which surfaced around the same time as Fire Mountain... I think...)

Wow - awesome update. She is really looking fine... So a couple of questions... I only make it to the park once every 5 years or so. I've been on Revolution a few times in my lifetime, so I apologize for not being an expert on it. As a poster mentioned a few posts back, one of my favorite parts of the coaster was the final helix that surrounded some sort of creek or falls. I'm assuming this is no more? I'm concluding that the water feature in the queue is not returning... but would that also include the water that occurs during the latter part of the ride? Is this portion of the ride tied to Valencia Falls, and is Valencia Falls no more, or is that still running? Lastly, when Revolution opened were there any trims on it? If not, what was the reason for adding them... and what is the reason they are keeping them? Old videos of the ride seem to indicate a "Mindbender" type extremely smooth, fast, fluid coaster. I guess I'm just wondering why trims were added when the layout was so great to begin with (if they indeed did not have trims at the beginning...)

OK, so I've been following this park since the get-go... I just looked at the attraction list and FastPass offerings. I didn't realize that they had both a Pooh Hunny Pot Tea-cup ride AND a Pooh dark ride. I knew the former was always on the attractions list, but not the latter. Did anyone else miss this, or just me? Also - interesting that all the major rides are on Fastpass except for the new Pirates ride. Wonder why? Pirates isn't on FP at DL or WDW, but this is an all-new ride with new boats, technology, etc. Even Little Mermaid, which is a high-capacity people-eater is on FP at WDW although it's not at DCA. Just curious more than anything...

Yep, my wife totally remembered you. That's freaking cool. Too bad we weren't able to connect - I would have loved to have ridden a couple coasters with you. I ran into some great people all day. There was a coaster enthusiast who rode the front row of Bizarro with me from Pennsylvania - he was there with his wife and kids, and saw the weather report and said, "I am there!" I ran into him quite a few times the 4 hours I was there. Glad you had an awesome day - if I was in your shoes, I would have done the same thing! Being from Utah, I don't get to a lot of parks outside of Lagoon, and the West Coast parks (DLR, KBF, SFMM...) so when I travel, esp. on the East Coast, I try and hit one every now and again. It just so happens that my wife joined me this time because she had some Southwest credit that was going to expire, and we have a niece who plays collegiate soccer in NJ and she had a home game... so it all worked out.

That was me!!! Where were you sitting? On my first ride (and her only ride), I was on the 3rd from the back... then re-rode that seat, then moved to 2nd to back and the very back (with another ride near the front). I've been wanting to ride this for years... and I'm sure you could tell It was my wife you chatted with, I'm sure.... dark hair, knit hat?

A big thank you to the TPR board for all the help and advice they provided in advance of my first-ever (and hopefully not last) visit to SFGAdv on Saturday. It was an amazing day. We were only there a few hours but got multiple rides (and re-rides) on everything we wanted, and I never thought I'd say this... but thank goodness for the weather! Yes it was chilly, windy and a little bit rainy, but we came prepared, and it didn't deter from our day - and boy the park was empty. At times I felt like Clark Griswold at the end of Vacation... it was that quiet. I rode Bizarro with one other guy on the front row... and nobody else. I rode Skull Mountain and no one was in the queue, and I basically sat on the backseat by myself as they dispatched the train. Superman had a one train wait, so despite the slow loading times, the whole experience - from entering the queue to exiting the queue - took less than 10 minutes. It was unbelievable... I came to ride El Toro, and boy did it not disappoint - I expected it to deliver, and it exceeded my expectations. I had multiple rides in the last car (including back row, 3rd from the back, and the infamous 2nd from the back). I've never experienced negative G's quite like this. What a fantastic, fast, relentless layout. Re-ride policy was sweet! I actually had to take a break after 3 rides and get myself pulled together to do 2 more. I also got several rides in on Nitro, and I was very happy with my rides as well. Whereas El Toro just doesn't let up, Nitro had a gentler forcefulness, and provided nice floater air (I much preferred the back to the front... although with no wait for the front it was fun to experience that as well). I also loved the wind whipping my wind-breaker as I swooped over those massive hills. I've only been on two B&M hypers, and I think I prefer this over Apollo's Chariot. I have to say that the biggest surprise of the day was not how great the coasters were (which they were...) it was how great the safari was. I honestly didn't expect us to have time to do it... but my wife was with me, and she only went on a couple of coasters. El Toro didn't open at park opening, and I wanted to hang around that side of the park until it did.... so we decided to take a spin on the safari. I couldn't believe how expansive it was... it just kept going and going and going... and I was stunned by how many species of animals it had. I love DAK a ton... and feel like Kilimanjaro Safari's kills it in theming and creating a great natural habitat in which to view wildlife... but this was super impressive for a safari, and much better than I ever expected. My wife (who is a huge WDW fan) even loved it more than DAK. Well done, Six Flags! Also - thanks for the tip on Macho Nacho. Had a great lunch of pork nachos there - and tons of food! I was impressed with the park - a beautiful setting, and pretty well run and maintained for a SF park. Nicely themed for FF, and crews were strong for the most part. I hope to visit again! Here was my coaster count: El Toro - 5x Nitro - 3x Mine Train 1x Skull Mtn 1x The Dark Knight 1x Superman:UF 1x

Awesome... I'll just pray for no thunder and lightning, and should be good to go. I'll miss out on KK... but having it closed due to conditions will also take some of the "pressure" off of getting in line.. having it shut down... wondering if it's worth waiting, etc. when I could be re-riding El Toro over and over...

boldikus... (or anyone else for that matter...): Sounds like the park has a great rain policy... What about wind? I'm sure they close KK for both wind and rain... but what about the other coasters (for wind...) Looks like it is going to be a bit windy this weekend (along with the rain...)

Awesome... thanks for the info, boldikus

Looks like there's rain the forecast this weekend. Anything I should be aware of on a rainy day at SFGAdv? Are there any rides they shut down due to rain?

Thanks again... this is awesome advice. If I see KK testing, I'll probably head to that first. If not, I'll head to El Toro... and great advice on the re-ride policy which I was not aware of. I've been on GL when it was Chang years ago - so I may skip that, although if it's not a long line, I may jump on just for nostalgia's sake... (although I don't remember it being rough in the mid-90's - I guess it hasn't aged well, as most B&M stand-ups seem to do...) I've been on Batman: TR several times in other parks, and love it, so I'm hoping for at least one ride on that. So I guess it's confirmed that it will NOT be backwards for Fright Fest? I'd also like to get on Superman, although I've been on Tatsu, so I've experienced a massive pretzel loop - perhaps the most intense element I've experienced on any coaster. I'd love to ride it just for that... but I'll take all your advice on a slow-moving line and plan accordingly. Looking forward to a great day...

This is all terrific advice - thanks a ton everybody. I feel like I'm very well prepared for my visit!