TheDealMaster

To answer all of your Fright Fest related questions from the last few days: I think I may have come off sounding like I know a lot more about FF 2016 than I actually do. For all I know houses like Blind Fury or Insanity Alley could come back with entirely different names and some different themes. There's also a lot that is still up in the air. The one thing that is certain is that FF 2016 will be even bigger and better. By the way, it was great getting to see a few of you in the park this weekend, just by chance. I hope you enjoyed your visit, as we enjoyed & appreciated everyone who came out to make this "extra" weekend a huge success. I'll try to post some more information and pictures regarding the end of the year & Dave's retirement party/gifts, but it's been a long weekend for me. However, I am looking forward to just working Monday through Friday 9-5, which will let me have my weekends off...until we get to January/February with the rehire party, job fairs, and training classes. Finally, just a quick FYI, the official opening date for next season is (Good) Friday, March 25th, 2016! It was great seeing you at the park Saturday and what a fantastic day it was! It was by far my best day this year, also the only day without some major issue. Seriously, my compliments go out to all park employees, but above all, ride operations were great this weekend. As a perfect example, this was the only time I can remember where my Batman train didn't have to stop coming into the station. (I have hundreds of cycles in on that ride for comparison.) I know not everything was open but what was had been properly staffed and everything (at least from what I could tell) was running smoothly. I guess it was just something about the absolutely perfect Fall day and the last weekend at the park that just had everyone in great spirits. I don't think I saw anybody else mention it but some of you on here would be happy to know that on Saturday morning there was a ceremonial "blowing up" (safely animated dropping with fireworks and smoke) of the Cubs Thunder sign. Within the hour, they had the rightful title restored to the ride. Very fun involvement activity, and even had people from Team Fredbird on hand to help. Also I'm VERY happy to see we're starting park operations earlier again this year! I of course like the less popular, less crowded days, so I may actually get some use out of my pass next year. Only went about 6-7 times this season.

Does anybody know if we can process season passes at the pass office by thunder river, or do they have to be done at the gate? Reason I ask is I have an upgrade I need to do there, but I have another in my group that just needs general processing. They have a 2015 pass that could get them into the park. Don't want to wait in 2 lines if we can just do one.

That is pretty damn cool man. Great job so far. If I were him I'd absolutely love that.

I grayed out in the helix on Titan every time I rode it. I've ridden coasters hundreds of times and that is the only coaster to ever do that to me. I haven't been on Goliath (SFGA) but I have done Titan and didn't grey out on it. Hopefully that basically means I'm good to go for everything.

Can't wait to ride the real American Thunder again. My ride on Cubs Thunder left me feeling sick and shameful. 99% chance I'll be there this weekend. I may take you up on the lunch.

You said it better than I did. The lack of respect to the themed sections makes it difficult to take seriously. However, I am still one of those people that care about theme throughout as you said, I'm just becoming divided about this park in particular. Part of me really cares - it's my home park, I've been coming since I was 5, I have a ton of memories here and the themes and the rides/attractions that were properly themed are a big part of that. But flash forward, here we are with everything sort of broken up and scattered, with brightly colored generic stuff spattered into every section of the park wherever it fit at the time. The Illinois section has no identity anymore and maybe that's okay. It hasn't had terribly much going for it in a long time and maybe it needs a re-brand. Lots of big, thrilling attractions there - maybe some sort of generic thrill naming and just keep it clean, bold and colorful. (and add the hyper, lol) Brittania was absolutely destroyed with the addition of Tony Hawk's big Spin and the land sacrificed for the kids park. I also think this might be an opportunity for re-branding. DC Plaza would have actually been flawless this year if they hadn't just replaced Villain's with JB's. Pulling the 'barrels and putting in Tsunami Soaker was bad for the west section. I could go on. You're right about CF parks though, they seem to have figured out how to do smaller themed areas better. Wall of text being said, I still love SFSTL. They can mess it up or fix it up all they want and my opinions may change but I'll always come back. Unless RMC Eagle. Then it's a boycott.

I don't know, SDC is great, they just probably needed to get out of Branson. It's ok for a weekend but I'd go insane if I had to live in such an awful tourist trap and deal with all of the awful tourists daily. XD Depending on what you want, I can agree. lol My thoughts, except I don't really even compare SF to SDC. They exist for different reasons and I like them both for their specialties.

That's just it though, they don't care. They made that painfully obvious with the generalized design of Boomerang and Sky Screamer and removal of the only themed elements like the Water Street Cab building and now the nail is in the coffin with RSF going out and being replaced with a generic ride. SFSTL is a nice park, but I think to some degree they're done with themeing and just need to admit it to the rest of us. Until JLBFM, they didn't make a theme-conscious capital investment since Xcalibur. Personally I believe that SFSTL is going to do away with themes and just go to a generic park, because it's totally what they're doing. I love themeing, but it's just become so watered down that it doesn't hold any value at this park anymore. Management is doing a great job keeping the park clean, safe, and functional, but they need to take a good chunk of cash and time to refurbish themeing throughout the park. I'm not asking them to be as good as Disney, just to restore and preserve the charm that the park had when I was younger.

This one. Have them mounted on a small tasteful plaque. Something He'd want to hang. Maybe align them from top to bottom with the funny ones up top leading down to the more serious ones. End with friend. I agree. This one is the way to go for sure. Additionally, I want to say that for what it's worth, the park was running well yesterday afternoon. We had acceptable wait times and quick dispatch times on pretty much everything. Freeze and Boss were walk-ons! Only things not worth the line was JLBFM (1.5hrs), Eagle, which bummed me out, but it was a very long line over 30 min, and Boomerang, which just isn't worth riding anyway. It seemed like most food locations were open, and getting passes processed at the gate was painless enough (although still stupid busy and roughly 1/3 understaffed). Unrelated, were you at the park last night Zach? Saw a ride eerily similar to yours at the back of the main lot when I left.

That's pretty sad. Dave was really getting this park back on track to be great again someday.

See I don't even want to ride Barman anymore half the time. For me, half the fun was walking through Gotham lark, watching it slowly change into the nasty, underground Gotham. With all that stuff gone and it just being used as a storage place for Roar trains, it just doesn't get me as hyped to ride it. I say one of the biggest disappointments SFSTL has given us is the negligence of the themeing of our best-themed coaster. When I visited other Six Flags parks in recent years, they all still had the cop cars, water, batmobiles, sound effects throughout and better effect lighting and the fog cannons in the stations.

Just wanted you to know that I caught that caption. lol. My initial statement still stands though, outside of fright fest and the very busiest summer days, you can usually at the very least walk into the station. It's not uncommon for my group to ride it 5-6 times in the last 30 minutes or so of our trips.

American Thunder is already the most consistently walk-on-able coaster in the park and I love it. As long as it's running both trains, its cycle time and good ride ops actually keep its capacity near maximum (rare at Six Flags parks for sure).

I can't possibly believe that you would do such a thing... XD

Thankfully only through the end of the season!!

Every Six Flags park has an employee shortage issue. It's their business model. Get by with the least amount of humans necessary. I've seen coasters with a 2-man crew recently. Disgusting. It should be any company's business model to staff as few employees as possible, but to still achieve optimal results. I don't think Six Flags is intentionally under-staffing the park. That doesn't make business sense. I do think however that they're probably having a hard time keeping people on staff and reliably coming to work. I've heard of weekends with half of the scheduled employees calling off. That's not the park's intention. Could they staff more? Yes, but from what I can tell, the good guys in HR are hiring constantly. I would recommend the HR Reserve job to anybody who wants to do some seasonal work in the park. I was hired for it and it sounded like a great gig but unfortunately I won't meet a silly facial hair requirement made by corporate.

This. I agree completely. Coaster is doing just fine, only needs a bit of work, and anything more than a simple retrack (even with topper) would make me boycott the park.

Agreed. Eagle is definitely still on top of my favorite classics list. I feel like the people who hate it so much are missing something in their riding experience.

I think the park is only open at night on the 9th Pixelated is correct, park is only open 6-midnight on Fridays.

I don't see why not, St.Louis has to be warmer than Great Adventure and they're getting one. It's not just about the temperature. In the coming years it will be interesting to see which parks might get Holiday in the Park. With SFGAdv, they're really the main park in that area and would pretty much dominate the theme park holiday market. However, it's interesting for Missouri as SDC throws a really popular & established Christmas event. Shows are a big part of it. Either way, let's just see how SFGAdv does first, and then see if we get lucky. Regarding Holiday in the Park - I'd love to see STL get it. From what I've seen of the others it's really neat and I'd love to extend the ride season. However I understand that the park may be concerned given the popularity of SDC's Christmas season. I went last year and it was MUCH busier than a normal summer day, but I'm sure it would still be possible for Six Flags to draw a huge crowd. There have to be tens of thousands of patrons here who don't have the time or means to get to SDC, and even then it's a different situation that may not be appealing to all. I feel like Six Flags has a history of saturating their portfolio with similar attractions (Batman, Fireball, Fright Fest, etc) and with HITP they're just in that phase where it's slowly being rolled out as a test run year-by-year. It probably won't be long until most Six Flags parks have it.

Regardless, that whole Ninja to Tsunami Soaker area needs to pick a theme! I agree, except I think the whole park needs to take a year off from dropping millions into a new attraction and spend that on theming improvements throughout. I'd be happier with better theming than I would be with anything short of a new large-scale coaster at this point.

I don't know about any of the other parks doing it besides SFSL (I also don't know of any other parks doing the HR Reserve program besides SFSL either), but it couldn't hurt to contact them. Looks like SFMM has a similar program in place. That does look similar, but it sounds like the STL program is more flexible though. It should be really interesting. I hope everything works out and I'll be able to join it.

EDIT: I also wanted to mention that it was a pleasure to meet RKO as well as one of the "lurkers" during my temporary stint working in Colonades on Labor Day. I wish we could have spoken longer, but it was still great to meet you! HWFan, that application took quite a while! But really, I just finished it and I'd love to be able to spend some time this season working with you guys!

Has anyone gotten any response from this past weekend? I sent them an email Monday night and haven't heard squat. As it says on the website, please allow a week for a response. Especially if there's a time that they're jammed with web comments... ...however... ...once you get to that eighth day, go ahead and absolutely flood them. Flood their social media. Flood their phone lines. Flood their web comments. Flood the forums. Tell everyone you can. After today, I'm too burnt out to pretend to care anymore. I'm not going to apologize for any experience you have. I'm not going to help with any issue you experience. Absolutely hold them accountable. Be reasonable, but after they don't respond, call the media for all I care. Damn, sounds like you need a drink! (Let me know any time, I love a good beer and conversation) I've lurked here a good while and been consistently impressed by your above-and-beyond level of dedication and service to the park and involvement on TPR. I can understand why you're burnt out after recent events. Nobody is ever going to be happy... Staffing issues happen, rides and operations experience hiccups, guests muck up procedure and make your days difficult and enthusiasts will never be happy because the park necessarily doesn't cater to them. (Not really criticizing, I certainly include myself in that group). The most important thing to remember is that the job needs to be fulfilling for you, not everyone else.

I don't fully understand here. What would make us concerned that a B&M hyper would be anything like Mamba? Mamba is not a B&M or in my opinion, anything like one. I quite like Mamba, but B&M hypers are a different breed entirely.