Sf-Dad

I could care less what some 17 year old ride OP thinks of me. Without me, he would be a taco technician. That said, I have not marathoned a coaster since I was 14, but if these old bones would let me I would.

Suspicious of what? You might be a coaster junkie and call the DEA?

^^^^ I agree whole heartedly. Just wear a bikini bottom. One of those scrunch back ones.

What hate? I don't see any hate. But it is not a coaster.

What are going to do. Make a mailbox post out of it?

I want too, But my family is worried about St. Louis in it's current condition (Ferguson) so it's a huge IF. OMG. Feguson is almost an hour drive time from Ferguson. That would be like saying that you are not going to SFGAm because there was a riot in Gary. Indiana. Feguson is almost an hour drive time from Ferguson....that makes no sense I'm sure it makes perfect sense to the Ignoramus from Gurnee.

I want too, But my family is worried about St. Louis in it's current condition (Ferguson) so it's a huge IF. That is the second most ignorant statement I have heard on this board. Please don't come. I gotta know whats the first, maybe its by me, I don't know. OK I'm busted, I made that up to give myself some wiggle room. It probably is the most ignorant comment on this board.

I want too, But my family is worried about St. Louis in it's current condition (Ferguson) so it's a huge IF. That is the second most ignorant statement I have heard on this board. Please don't come.

Camping with the Cubs just down the road at Beaumont.

That video was painful. Talk with your mouth not your hands.

Season Pass Sale Extended Until September 3 Noticed this morning the SP sale has been extend until today and the free sport bottle with meal pass extended as well. They also extended the processing date to 9/28 for the free sport bottle offer. I received a survey yesterday and one of my main complaints was the 9/1 processing deadline. So Kudos to them for fixing the problem albeit to late for me. On another note, a tip from my experience. I was about 16 months into my gold membership and saw the new offer was about $2 per month cheaper than I was currently paying so I decided to cancel and purchase a new one but it required a $20 deposit for the 4.15 price and I at wasn't sure if it included the free fright fest tickets so I just purchased the passes outright. Then I went to cancel my membership. It was like the Comcast calls that went viral a few weeks ago but in a good way. After canceling, it popped up a screen "Are you sure? We really want you as a customer, how about we lower your rate to 4.xx". No, I had already purchased the SP. "Are you sure? We looked at our records and you are one of our best customers. We really, really want you to stay. How about $3.30 per month?" That was after sales tax, so the total cost of a Gold SP would have been $39.60 per year tax included. Lesson learned. Cancel your membership first and see what they offer. Granted we have been to the park the past two summers more than most people do. HH is a lot more fun than the subdivision pool. We average about 2x a week and might have been more if the weather wasn't so flakey. Given the business model of get them to the park and then sell, sell, sell, they may not offer this to everyone. But all we have purchased this year is a $5 drink wristband each day and occasional mammoth waffle cones the boys can never finish, but you should see their eyes when you hand it to them. The local custard stand and DQ charge nearly $4 for a kiddie size so the price is not really that outrageous. The plus side of all of this is I have one more payment of $26.xx on my membership to make and it will deactivate around 10/23. So I have a total of six active meal plans until then (3 on membership and 3 on passes) as long as we scan in the park, "leave" and scan back in with the new passes. I had to do this Sunday to process my new passes and activate my tube rental SP on my old membership. I see nothing wrong with sharing my double lunches and dinners with my bring-a-friends. Have a Six Flags Day!

Haven't you noticed the how much better it is this year than last year? That's the kind of work a company should brag about on their website.

Do they ever let the line get that long? They only let enough people on the tower to get to the split. The line yesterday was out past the flash pass entrance and up towards the other queue line. I wonder if the line wouldn't seem so bad if people could wait on the stairs instead of watching the swampland that's created by the leaky slides. I know once I hit the tower it won't take long at all but winding around on the concrete takes entirely too long. Water torture isn't my thing so I have never waited in the swamp. From my experience this summer once you hit the split on the tower it is a half hour wait regardless if one or both sides are open. I am sure it can vary depending on how packed people choose to be and the policy of the OP that day on allowing half full rafts. A good OP could surely speed things along as well but the job does look tiring. That is one reason I refuse to but a flash pass. Spend all that money and still have to wait 1/2 hour on the tower.

Until they allow the riders at the top to start going down the slide before the prior riders reach the bottom, it doesn't matter. The OP at the top of the ride is consistently waiting for the people at the bottom to clear the ride before sending them down. I understand being safe but this seems like overkill on this ride. I don't doubt your experience with to the ride and fast efficient OPs, but mine has been much different, it takes forever for the OP to pull the raft off the belt, get 3-6 people in the raft and balanced and holding onto straps and then their whole safety speech. By that time the previous raft is emptied and the riders are long gone. It doesn't take more than 30-40 seconds for the raft to go down the slide and it takes much longer than that to load a raft. I have been to HH at least 20 times this summer. If that line gets any shorter than the split on the tower the second OP is pulled very quickly.

^^^I would love to see pics of the demolition. That ride has history.

However, the compliments/complaints that go through Guest Relations actually go through a system where not only departmental supervisors see them, but park directors see them as well. Did you know that Dave Roemer actually personally goes through every single compliment given, as well as a lot of complaints. Yea Six Flags is a corporation, but there are still real, good people who would take your feedback seriously. As soon as I saw the complaints I figured the park had more people show up than expected. Then you weren't staffed accordingly and I can totally relate to how much that sucks. You try the best you can, but nothing goes right. I wish people would understand and recognize when it happens. I clearly understood that is what happened is that they got a much larger crowd than expected and weren't staffed properly. My thought was why not close the park off at some point if it isn't staffed to handle say 15,000 people for the day. If you were expeceting 8-10,000 and got 15,000 you should expect problems. Wouldn't it be better to give 10,000 people the best experience possible than just take the money from 15,000 people and leave them with a very bad taste in their mouth. HWFAN, do you know if Dave reads these boards? Just curious Because I really haven't seen him in the park much this year, probably just because we haven't been as often as in years past. I get your point and on one level it makes sense. Pools and other venues have maximum capacity limits and have to throttle attendance. Fire codes, Guard to patron ratios all play a role. As a parent I sure would be upset if I showed up with my kids and was told I had to go home. That would be a very unpleasant drive home with crying kids in the back seat. Now I only live 20 minutes away. How about those who are closer to an hour or two away. Sure they could check the web site before they leave, but what happens when the park fills up on the way there? Your suggestion also raised a question in my mind. Was the wave pool closed because of an bodily fluid accident or because there were to many people in it and it was unsafe especially with the huge number of rental tubes I saw? I am a Guard but not a Waterpark Guard so I have no clue what all the rules are and I am not trying to accuse the park of being deceitful. Just a thought for discussion. They can control the numbers they let into HH but it would be extremely difficult to control the numbers in the wave pool. Is there any other theme park that caps attendance?

I completely understand how this happened. The weather forecasts called for rain all weekend and by late Saturday things were looking up for Sunday, so everyone came. Not much management can do about that, they have only so many people they can call in at the last minute. Today was supposed to be crummy as well, but we hardly had any rain. You never know what is going to happen with St. Louis weather. As I write this all the storms are moving north when a few hours ago NOAA said they would be south of 44. I suspect the crowds today were light. That said they did have a major sale with the dinning pass offer requiring processing by Monday. One thing they could have done given the understaffing was extending that deadline. That would have gone a long way. It also begs the question of why do things like the dinning pass and sports cups need "processing" anyway? Once I waited for 30 minutes outside it took the clerk all of 10 seconds to scan my cards. What's the point? They were a part of my SP order and I had to enter the names online anyway. When I went to pick up my cups at First Cone they just handed me the cups and tossed the vouchers aside. One thing I will never understand is why they continually understaff Big Kahuna even during the peak summer months when they do not have staffing shortages. It seems as if they want their most popular family water park attraction to have at least a half hour wait if not longer at all times.

A tenth of that will not fit in the existing building.

^^^I doubt security will eject you from the park if she won't or can't wear the glasses. It will probably be like a 3D movie without the glasses, just a tad bit fuzzy. She might just be a little young for that kind of thing though. Injun Joe and Mississippi adventure scared the crap out of me when I was 4-5. I heard the line for Scooby was an hour today. Just got back from hell day at the park. Lines were backed up past the ticket windows, at 10:40 and of course I got the line with a very nice but very slow Wal-mart greeter. Used my old passes to get in so I could get my tube season passes activated for the day. Went for lunch at 12:30 and the lines to get in were still huge, but were more reasonable after lunch so we exited and activated our new passes. So we were scanned into the park twice. I just bought a drink wristband because I didn't want to wait in SP Processing line to activate the meal plans. We did that later right before we left it still took about a half hour. HH was the busiest I have ever seen it. Of course they still only had one OP on Big Kahuna so it was running at half capacity as usual. We just stayed in lazy river all day, the lines were really bad for the slides. The curtesy tube line at the east creek eventually wound out of the beach onto the main walkway. The wave pool was shut down and someone told me that some kid barfed in it. Hooks was apparently closed down because some kid apparently dropped trow and relieved himself, but it was open later. Who needs the bumper cars back when they can accomplish the same thing with 3 thousand people in Gully Washer Creek. SF must have made fortunes selling tube rentals after the wave pool closed. It rained some yesterday and rain is forecast for Monday so I suppose it is three days compressed into one. I remember a post stating it was really tame last Labor Day weekend.

It will be interesting to see if this is really is a flash sale with the best prices. At least in STL they do this every fall through the end of October, but allegedly the deal after 9/1 will not be as good. Here they are kicking in an extra bring a friend free ticket for Fright Fest. The season dinning pass has been a spectacular deal for me. I covered the cost of it back in early June and between two boys and myself I have saved hundreds of dollars on food. There are actually a few decent healthy (somewhat) places to eat.

Take it from a somewhat experienced Boy Scout leader. Use moleskin or in a pinch duct tape. Wear wool socks, they cannot hold as much moisture and cotton. Band aids as a very last resort as the non adhesive part will still shift and rub. If a blister has already formed cut a doughnut hole in the moleskin and top with a solid piece. Always do this at the very first sign of discomfort. I have hiked for 7 mikes in the rain with blisters and been fine once I put duct tape over them. Wrap your water bottle with a few turns of duct tape and it will always be handy. (Moleskin is not the actual skin of a mole. It is a synthetic fabric with adhesive on one side. Available at any drug store.)

I will be the contrarian here. I was really hoping for a water park expansion. Sure a big steel coaster or Iron Boss would be awesome, but generally STL is so hot and humid I would rather spend most of my day in the water. This year was a real fluke and I was hoping for one last lazy day on the river but the forecast is not looking great. I sure hope the new dark ride lives up to its promise as a break from the heat and it will give my 9YO low key rider something to do. A couple of weeks ago I couldn't get him to even ride the Ferris wheel even though he has been on it for the last 4 years. Ug. My big question. So WHEN in 2015 does it open? Are we going to have to wait until Memorial Day? A big thumbs up to HWfan for being the our in house GR rep and giving great PM help. Your the best!

They couldn't figure out how to include an up-charge without appearing haughty.

Proper clothing is the key and of course water. Cotton kills is the outdoorsman's mantra. Synthetic moisture wicking shirts, pants/shorts and underwear are critical. Wool socks cannot hold as much moisture as cotton and will dry much faster and keep your feet cool. Add a synthetic or silk sock liner to further protect against blisters. Wrap your water bottle with a couple of turns of duct tape. If you feel any kind of hotspot on your feet STOP and cover it immediately. Don't be afraid to stop by first aid have have them help you out anytime you are uncomfortable, it's free and you paid for it with your admission. Wide brimmed synthetic floppy hat that can fold up and stuff in your pocket on rides. Trail runner shoes that drain water are the best. I saw some at Kohls the other day on sale for about $30. REI can set you up with proper hiking clothing but it does get pricey. Your local Boy Scout shop has uniform cargo shorts/swim trunks for $20 that include a tethered waterproof pouch. They stopped adding the mesh liner recently because of chaffing issures but some are still lurking around, I just cut mine out. I wear those and synthetic REI boxer briefs and switch nicely from water to dry park at SFSTL. Start investing in proper clothing and all your outdoor adventures will be much more pleasant and safe.

Yes I do. $$$$$$