VegasBaby

If you go on a weekday, the park will be dead and everything should be a walk-on. Knott's is open 364 days a year, the only day they close is Christmas. I love visiting the park on weekdays in the offseason, it's like having ERT on every single ride. You can't ride solo on the Log Ride, but they will pair you up with other riders, so you should be fine. Knott's does a lot of their annual ride maintenance in Jan-Mar, so I would expect at least one major ride to be down when you visit. They do a good job of listing the closures on their website though, so just check the site before you go. When I visited the park this past January, the log ride was down and then Montezuma was down when I visited in February.

Ride Laff Track and Fahrenheit first, they tend to have the longest line. After that just use your own judgement. I wouldn't ride Skyrush until later in the day due to the fact that its usually empty around 5-6 o'clock. This is a good strategy, hit Laff Track-Fahrenheit-Storm Runner and then you should be fine the rest of the day. Skyrush gets a flood of people early in the day because it is near the front and then dies down later in the day.

Looks like MZ's Revenge is closed through Oct 14th. I wonder if something went wrong and they had to fix it? I don't think they usually have scheduled maintenance during Haunt season. I am headed down at the end of the month, so hopefully everything is fully open then.

Agreed, with LR and SC, this is a park that I definitely need to check out. My wife's sister just moved to Louisville, so I will hopefully be paying KK a visit next year!

If Wave Breaker is a big hit, hopefully it will make it's way out to Orlando. SWO can be tough for families with small children as all three of the major coasters have 54" height requirements.

My biggest issue with VR is that until the processing power increases, it really doesn't improve the experience. It makes it different, but not better when you are looking at N64 graphics *cough* Six Flags *cough* To me, a far bigger issue is that VR totally kills the loading times and turns a 15-20 min wait into an hour wait. I really hope the whole VR-on-coasters trend burns out quickly and doesn't spread to more parks. Kraken is an excellent old school B&M and doesn't need a gimmick like VR for people to ride it.

Even though Ghostrider runs more cycles than any woodie in the country, I'm sure that Knott's will continue to maintain it. They didn't spend all that money on new trains and re-tracking just to have it deteriorate in a few years. The switch to MF trains, along with the re-profiling of certain areas and the use of Brazilian Hardwood, should keep GhostRider running smooth for many years to come.

Yea, a Maverick-type coaster would be a disaster at SFMM. The wait times would be horrendous due to poor operations and running a minimal number of trains. Besides, the park already has a multiple-launch coaster in Fu11 Throttle and it always has at least a 45-60 min wait. Note that I'm not saying that FT is anywhere as good as Maverick, but I would like to see the park get something it doesn't already have. A dive coaster or a giga would be unique for the park and the only one of its kind in the Western U.S.

I'm also a big fan of Dive Coasters and think it would be a great addition to the park. The GP would eat it up for sure as most of SFMM's patrons probably haven't ridden one. I thought Valravn was a great ride and when I was visited CP in July, it had the longest wait in the park. I'm sure part of that was due to it being the new hotness. But in a park like CP with a ton of great coaster options, people were opting to ride Valravn in large numbers. The bottom line is that a Dive Coaster or a Giga like Fury would be an enormous hit for SFMM and I hope we see one in 2018 or 2019.

I too have a lot of fond memories riding Viper, it was the premier coaster during my childhood until Batman showed up. But if it gets replaced by a record breaking Dive coaster or a Giga, you won't hear any complaints from me!

SFGAm - I would add a few airtime hills at the end of Goliath. I realize the space just wasn't there to do this, but since we're talking hypotheticals here, that's what I'd do. SFMM - I would add a few hundred feet of track to the end of Fu11 Throttle so you don't start braking halfway down the top hat.

My biggest issue with Pony Express is the height restriction. If it was 42" it would make PERFECT sense. But at 48" the ride is claiming it's a bit more extreme than your true "family" coaster which it is not. Same issue I have with Jaguar (which used to be 42" then it was later raised to 48") I couldn't agree more Robb, it drives me nuts that PE and Jaguar have the same height requirement as Ghostrider, Boomerang, and Montezuma. Jaguar is one of the tamest coasters ever, it makes no sense whatsoever for it to have a 48" height requirement. At the very least, it should be like Sierra Sidewinder and be 42" with an adult. Sorry for the Knott's sidebar, you may now go back to complaining about SFStl

Pony Express is a fun ride and I always think that more coasters is better than fewer coasters. I just wish it was a little longer but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the ride. (That's what she said!) Plus the seating position makes for some great Superman poses!

Agreed, I'm a big fan of the Disk'O rides. There's one here at the Adventuredome and I ride it at least 1-2 times every visit. I think the GP will love the Disk'O and it will have great ridership numbers. I'm glad that SF is finally adding quality flats to their parks like the Disk'O, Giant Discovery, Endeavor, etc.

I was actually surprised that Roar didn't get the same RMC treatment for 2017 as its counterpart out West. It's more than a little disappointing that SF is taking a year off from RMC and that we haven't heard of any RMC projects for 2017. (Although I am betting that Mean Streak at CP gets RMC'd.) Still, I have to think that a RMC conversion of SFA's Roar is going to happen in the next few years. There should be a lot of cost savings since all of the design work is already done, so it's just labor and materials costs. RMC Roar would really give SFA another signature attraction, plus it would be only the 2nd RMC on the East Coast.

There is an early entry line for Gold pass holders, it's all the way on the right. When I was there in June, they let us in at 10:15 and I was on the first Goliath train at 10:20. I got 4 rides in before 11:00, and then I went and grabbed my Flash Pass. Goliath is a fantastic coaster, the drop is nuts and it has some incredible RMC elements. Yes, it's too short, but that doesn't take away from how good of a ride it is.

As long as they are running two trains, I'd say about an hour.

Have to agree, SF has really done a solid job with this park's additions the last few years. IMO, they've really distanced themselves from CGA and made SFDK the premier amusement park in NorCal. The addition of a FreeFly coaster in a year or two will just make the divide between the parks even larger. I've read that CF has ambitious plans to grow CGA, but they've got a lot of ground to cover to compete with SFDK.

Agreed, if the park eventually gets one of the 4D coasters, that's probably the best spot for it.

Judging by a video of the Joker at SFGAdv, the next car begins going up the lift hill as soon as the previous car crests the hill. So you have 2 cars going at once, with 3 cars waiting on the bottom. Based on the times in the video, it looks like the cars are dispatched every 40-45 seconds. Using the 40 second dispatch time, that gives the coaster an hourly capacity of 720 riders, which is the capacity listed on the S&S website.

I think this is a great addition to the park, especially since it's the 40 seat version, which should really help with capacity. I do find it odd that SFGAm got yet another coaster, which will be their 3rd new coaster in the last 5 years. I really thought that SFStl would be getting one of the 4D coasters in 2017. I wonder if the park just doesn't generate enough revenue to justify a new coaster? Or maybe the park just got small additions in 2016/2017 due to JL being such a large addition in 2015?

Personally I think this a great addition to the park and it will be a huge hit with the GP. I really like that we are getting a custom version that will differ from the other installations. I rode the JL version at SFGAm earlier in the summer and I was very impressed with it. Plus, it consistently had the longest line of any ride in the park. For people complaining about it not being a coaster, just look on the bright side. Since tons of people will be in line for JL, it will make all the coaster lines shorter!

These Giant Discovery pendulum rides are probably my favorite flat rides and I'm very happy to see SFDK get one. It's a little bit of an odd choice though considering how similar the ride is to Tazmanian Devil. I wonder if Taz is on it's last legs and will be removed in the future? Either way, it's great to see the park get such a big addition after getting Joker last year.

That policy is so weird to me, as a former ride operator. We were trained to push and then pull to make sure that the restraint is close enough to the person's body to keep them securely inside. With the policy you mentioned, it's possible for a guest to not lower their restrain far enough, have the R.O. check just by tugging upward, and then have the guest get ejected from the ride. Specifically on coasters with really intense negative Gs (aka, every RMC coaster). Which seems like the opposite of what the response should have been to the incident on NTAG. Lowering a bar too much will cause some discomfort (it's happened to me), but not lowering it enough can cause death. Dollywood's policy seems really weird to me as well. Every other park I've been to always has the ride ops push down on the restraints to make sure they are tight enough. And on all of the RMCs I've ridden, the ride ops specifically tell you NOT to pull down the restraints and to only buckle your seatbelts. The ride ops then go down each row pushing down the restraints. In fact, I have learned to position myself a certain way as to not get stapled in the RMC trains so I can actually experience the wonderful airtime their rides have. I just find it odd that Dollywood's policy is the exact opposite of pretty much every other park in America.