Texascoaster89

Did you move from Texas? This weekend is normally the busiest weekend of the year. Ooof, I'm planning a crazy weekend road trip out this weekend. How bad is it? We'll be at the park all day Saturday, having arrived late Friday, and leaving early Sunday (before park open) We're shooting for 90 minute waits on Non-SteVe flagship coasters. As long as we can get on MF, TTD, Steel Vengeance, Maverick, and Magnum we'll be happy. Definitely get here Friday as early as possible. Saturday should be busy with the season winding down. It's going to be chilly (mid 50's as highs) so bring warm clothes as the humidity on the peninsula makes it feel colder! That also means the rides will run a big sluggish until they get warmed up, so save judgements until the evening Otherwise, have fun and hopefully you're able to get on everything you want to ride!

Did you move from Texas? This weekend is normally the busiest weekend of the year. I came here for the season and worked a management internship. Then I switched to doing a few other things for the park and that has wrapped up. I've been spending a little free time to play in the park before heading home! It's been an experience I'll never forget!

Was rain in the forecast? Negative, I live here currently and the forecast was beautiful for the whole weekend. I was pleasantly surprised as well at the crowd level!

It's too bad it couldn't have stayed open a little longer. Myself and the 500 or so people in the park were having a blast! But I understand why they did. It was awesome though to only have 1 train wait for SV! Even if it was only for a few hours!

Raptor is good, but I really enjoy Montu down at Busch Gardens in Florida. That was one great invert! Toss in Kumba in the same park...man...they don't build them like that anymore.

Now now, before you tear me to bits. Here me out on the logic. Intamin has the reputation of being in the parts business, they are great at charging a lot of money for replacement parts. (I can't divulge too much into that because of confidentiality...but believe me on that when I say CP builds up quite a tab every season). Take Six Flags now and look at their business model. What's their model? Being as cheap as possible and doing what they can to get away with it. The mentality was different in 2005 and 2006. Remember that this wasn't yesterday...it's been 12 years now. Having gone through another bankruptcy and restructure...I doubt they're happy they have Kingda Ka. Top Thrill Dragster is a drain on CP part funds, it runs in the red every year. It remains because of it's popularity and significance it has on the skyline and the allure of Cedar Point. Six Flags doesn't operate the same way Cedar Fair does. Dick Kinzel regretted Dragster even though it's become like it's own cult and we couldn't picture CP without it...you don't think Six Flags regrets it either? Just fun food for thought discussion

At this point, Six Flags regrets ever building Kingda Ka and are just looking to be as cheap as possible with operating it until it either falls down; or they feel the public won't care if they take it down.

Sounds like many of us were there today! I was taking use of my free FL+ for renewing my season pass. I was the guy in the red Cedar Point shirt. Bob is an awesome guy along with this older lady named Kris who rides MF in the front all the time. Both are wonderful people! Today was a great day! Even with how insanely busy the FL lines were.

Dragster is actually having one of it's best seasons in history by the amount of riders it's put through so far this year. It just had some rough time while you were there which is unfortunate.

I hate seeing the park taking a beating this season, it's been a rough year ever since SV played bumper cars opening day. What's going on with Millennium Force is the lift drive motor. It started having fits in June and then progressively got worse to where we are now where they are having trouble rigging it to run. It's my understanding it will take several weeks (beyond the end of the season) to manufacture a new one. Valravn had lift motor problem also that happened the day before opening day. They've been struggling with it since. I don't believe it's reached the point of needing replacement, but it's not acting right on top of the programming not being as good as it could be. It's been a rough year with SV and top rides having more than just a minor malfunction. 2 power outages, rain a lot of the weekends in May and most of summer. It just hasn't been the best year, but they happen. MF is going to limp to the finish line, hopefully the rest of the park holds up for Halloweekends.

I flew up from Texas for the weekend and had a great time! I went to King's Island Friday night first. It was quite busy, but me and my two buddies with me managed to ride every coaster and take in the haunt experience. We had a blast at KI and thoroughly enjoyed it. CP, we knew it would be busy. We were there at 930 and had Fast Lane Plus. We never had a wait longer than 30-40 minutes and we were there from 10 am and left around 11 pm. We rode MF x4 and everything else twice. We bought food from the fire truck food stand instead of bothering with the typical park food knowing they were struggling. As far as drinks, I would always stop off inside Panda as they typically have a register open while everyone else is getting food. They'll just wave me over when I say all I want to use is my drink pass. Was it busy? Of course, but we still spent our money, we still ate, I saw the ride ops doing their absolute best hauling load times like they always do. Keep in mind, the employees that were there likely worked Friday night, and they were there bright and early and there until likely at least 3 am. For those of you that know Josh on here, he was over at MF the whole day and that crew was pumping out the trains. Valravn, Raptor, and Gatekeeper were hauling loading also. I made sure to thank them because I know they were tired and they were doing their best. I'll happily wait 30-40 minutes when I know the ride ops are doing everything they can FOR ME! They were using temps and some charity organizations donating their time, those poor kids were doing everything they could and I made sure I was nice to them as I'm sure they were on the ass end of some bad comments all day. They didn't have to be there, but they were trying. One kid posted at the MF split off for Fast Lane and the regular line looked like he was about to pass out. I gave him a pat on the back and a "atta boy" as he was there longer than they had planned. Give them a break. The park has staffing issues for years this time of the year. I agree it's time to figure out a solution, but even a fully staffed park was not going to improve the experience if you had a bad time that much. We had a great time and I'm looking forward to going back!

Agreed, thanks for the information. I'm also flying up this weekend from Texas. Visiting King's Island Friday and CP on Saturday. No worries, I'm buying Fast Lane Plus on Saturday I do really hope they've gotten Top Thrill back up. I've been watching the progress and CP Rundown had a video of them testing the fins on Sunday. I have a feeling they'll get it up and going by Saturday!

I'm sticking to my original guess even with the new teaser just released. We're getting a new park bench!

Get in line first thing in the morning when it's about to open, that's your best shot. I fly up a few times a year from Texas (going next weekend!) and I got one last season! It was windy, I was honestly surprised that TTD was running. The 2 trains in front of me all got a rollback and the ride announcer couldn't help but laugh as he said the usual spill about how sometimes the train doesn't crest the hill. With a snicker he said "just so you all know...there's a chance"! They closed the ride after we rolled back for about 3 hours for the wind to die down.

Living in Dallas, I get to ride Texas Giant quite often. I visit CP 3-4 times a year (flights out of DFW are stupid cheap). I can't wait to see what they cook up for Mean Streak! Texas Giant was the experimental toy, now it's brother will get one great makeover!

Wait, we're still doing this? Haven't checked on the thread in over a week because of stuff like this and this is the first post I saw...oh boy... Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone! See you next year!

Indeed, it's always Batman and Mr. Freeze that are closed at this point until Spring Break. Everything else is typically open (assuming staffing isn't an issue).

I'm glad I traveled there last weekend. It was only terribly busy Saturday night, there was a reminder of what was going on around the country with bomb dogs around the entrance. My group went Friday night and all day Saturday, we had an absolute blast! I couldn't believe how dead it was during the day Saturday! We rode Fury over dozen times I believe, I never waited more than one train to get on...I was completely stunned at the lack of people in the park. The only bad part of the trip really was that driving from Texas meant I had 2 routes available. Driving the southern part of the country up through Atlanta, or taking a longer route across Tennessee. Alabama and Mississippi was the most boring drive ever! Georgia...including a side stop at SFoG was just awful! I'm driving the extra hour next year!

Whenever I visit I tend to try my luck at the buffet. It's not great, but there's something somewhere to like and it's cheaper to fill up on all I want while getting to sit down. It's also cheaper to eat in there than to get a full combo somewhere else. If all else fails on the buffet...the dessert is always good and can just fill up on pie and icecream!

I'm all for "Avid Attraction Enjoyers" being a thing. I call myself an "enthusiast"...but I love to ride rides, I don't really care what it is. If it's a park and I'm there and it's open...I'm down for a ride. I do really enjoy Gatekeeper, about the only ride I don't enjoy in CP is the mine train because it's such a squeeze.

Hey how's it going everyone!? I wanted to ask a few things about the park. I drove to Carowinds from Dallas this past weekend (17 hours if you're wondering). I decided to stop off at SFOG since it's next to the highway and it did look like fun. I didn't have much time so I headed straight for the coasters in the park to knock them out on Sunday. It was dead which was great; but I have to ask...do they always never check restraints? I was surprised to see that there's a park in the chain that exists that hasn't been required to put seat belts on the rides. What's up with them having to manually lock the restraints on Superman? That was almost unnerving as someone in my party had a restraint that wouldn't stay down, without a seat belt for a fail safe...he was legit scared to ride for the first time on a ride. On Goliath, Blue Hawk, and Mind Bender they didn't even check the restraints. On both Goliath and Blue Hawk after we all got in, they had to release all the restraints and told us all to pull them back down...then they sent us on our way without checking them! I watched them do this on trains before us and was just dumbfounded. The only ride that everything went "normal" so to speak was Georgia Scorcher, which we really enjoyed actually. I just wanna know what the deal is with this park on the lack of safety, I couldn't believe it and I'm just wondering if anyone else has noticed this with regularity? It was bad enough that we filled out a report and got the ride supervisors down there and told them; to their credit...they took it very seriously, so I do hope it's resolved.

I agree with this, my home park SFOT did the right thing I believe by bringing it to Shockwave. A ride that more and more people skip; but what VR has done is ensure I don't go for a ride now even when I would like to because the line is over 2 hours long. I'm all for upcharge this system. I've never been to SeaWorld Orlando, but it was on a trip I have planned next year to Florida to hit some Florida parks. I'm hoping to not have to wait forever to ride Kraken for the first time in my life just because of the VR system. I don't dislike the VR stuff, I just felt it was a "one and done" and I was happy to not use it anymore.

I think the reaction in this thread is a direct testament to our society that can't stand not knowing something and the insanity that it causes.

Slowly but surely they have. This was last Fall that I had this interaction, I jokingly said get rid of the Jamaican Banana as one of my first complaints if you ever want me to even think of playing a game I'm sorry, but the prizes until recently to play games have sucked...I would play on occasion if Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo, and so on were back to being prizes. The person I talked with did really seem to care and they were very pleasant to talk with. Hopefully in the next 2-3 years we really see some improvement. One of the biggest reasons I'm hoping for a major roller coaster is it does put you more on the map and it does make you try harder as far as employees and making them perform better. I'm driving out to Charlotte next weekend to give Fury 325 some spins, from my understanding the park has improved significantly because the ride brings the hype to the park and it puts it on the map as a destination. We have a good park of some classics and some new very good rides. If they ever ballsy up and really invest about $30 million into a new coaster and improve the park entrance and things like that in a season, the park will really blossom.

How on earth did SF know you were spending money @ CF parks? You know how they send you a survey almost every time you visit? I specifically compared them to Cedar Fair parks I had visited where they were being beaten so they would know where to improve. Then they took upon themselves to actually call me, I was quite surprised. I was driving home stuck in rush hour traffic one day when they called; so I proceeded to explain in fine detail my opinions on what the competition was doing compared to our park until I got home