teacherkim

As my grandmother used to say, "from your lips to God's ears"

Well since no one ever answered me, I'll answer myself, in case anyone else wants to know. We were at the park from about 3:30 to close on Sunday and open until about 3:30 on Monday. Monday was a bonus day since it was Columbus Day which IL schools still celebrate, but there were no haunts or FF activities at all that day, since they were only open until 7. Still fairly respectable sized crowd for that sort of day though but nothing too ridiculous as far as lines. Sun night they were open later than normal since Monday was the holiday, until 10. Typical Six Flags FF as far as scare zones and atmosphere, I thought Gates of Hell was by far the best maze, although I would advise not doing it until it is full dark since there are some outdoor portions. We did it when there was still a little light left and I think that detracted from it a bit. But it's a long haunt with an appetizer, main dish, and dessert portion to the whole thing. Best scares I saw all night were the people coming off of the far side of Joker and the scare zone actor in the covered bridge next to the exit was getting them as they came off the ride and were completely not expecting it since they were in the exit queue. Had never been on Am Eagle and all I can say is what a weird layout. The helix might have been interesting if it was dueling but alas only the blue side was running on Sun and it was closed all day Mon. Maxx Force, personally I thought it was more interesting than TTD. The launch was less uncomfortable even though faster because it was so much shorter and something actually interesting happened after that. One beef- I made a reservation for preferred parking for Sunday which we get with our membership, knowing we wouldn't be there until later in the day and it would be busy. Get there only to be told it was full, too bad. I explained that a reservation meant that a spot was being held for me (which the fine print says it will be until a couple hours before close), toll booth employee looked at me blankly clearly not understanding what a reservation meant and I felt like I was in a Seinfeld episode. Anyway checked the next day at guest relations and was told yeah it is simply first come, first serve. To be fair the employees there were sympathetic and apologized. Ok, fine. Not that big a deal. I know we showed up about 4 hours after opening. BUT then why bother to let people make reservations online which is kind of a pain in the butt? That kind of stuff drives me crazy.

Fair assessment. We've never made it out to Silverwood so cannot comment on the comparison. I will say that HW without doing the waterpark is really only half the experience in my opinion, even for those that aren't generally waterpark fans the 3 water coasters there are unique, quality rides. Part of the unique fun of HW is the improbability of encountering something like a B&M launched wing coaster in the middle of a cornfield. I mean it just shouldn't be there, but it is, lol. Trimless Voyage does make it haul ass through the second half but I think riding it at cooler temps affects the smoothness and roughness issue much more.

Thnaks! I don't think it was temps though. Beast was down then up then down on Fri night and it was just as cold on Sat night (down to about 40 by midnight) and everything was up until close.

The funny thing is, employees were sent an email a couple weeks ago about this and told to put their availability for it in the schedule, but it never opened up. So.... I have no idea who is staffing this thing, lol. Very curious how this ends up working out.

I honestly have no idea what is going on with the ada ramp and agree that is a project that needs to be done quickly once they started so F on that. As far as the lowest level pass not including HH and FF. I'm really not sure how I feel about that. I mean at one point a lot of people on various threads (not just this one) were complaining that they were "giving away" season passes and it was too crowded/too many teens, so that would theoretically address some of that and maybe justify the more expensive passes with more perks; but I get that in essence something is being taken away and will make some grumpy. Also, there are some people that could really care less about HH and are fine with an option that cuts that out, although they might be the minority. I'm honestly waiting to see what happens with the memberships that are still on going. A team member in guest relations at SFGAm on Monday strongly implied to me that they would be going away soon, so .....? I have to say about HITP though, and partly because people on FB are losing their shit about it. For all those that claim it was the ONLY reason that they have a pass (again not necessarily here but a lot of the FB crowd are claiming this) Really? You got a pass just because of HITP? Not buying that. I mean put in in perspective. This is an event that cost a lot of time and money to set up and tear down, plus all the extra pay to performers for rehearsal time on shows and such for maybe 18 operating days. Minus the 2-3 that almost always got canceled for weather AND the fact that a good chunk of the rides didn't operate. Plus the park basically not making any money on it. As well as the fact that it was hard for employees to rely on those hours because they were short shifts, bad weather conditions, and sometimes got canceled at the last minute. I agree the current CEO is making some head scratcher decisions but not sure I blame them on this one.

We had a fabulous time at haunt last weekend. No massive line to get in on Friday night but we showed up about 5:40 and they had clearly been letting people in for a while which I think diminished the backup. In my opinion the best themed maze was Killmart but the best scareactors were at Cornered. They were hilarious. Also, the scare zone in that area was done really really well. Rides had a bit of a rough night on Fri. At various points Beast, DB, and Orion were all down and lines were pretty terrible, 1-2 hours. Most of the mazes had at least hour long lines on both Fri and Sat nights as well. We got Frightlanes for Fri night to do mazes and FL+ for Sat to focus on rides and that was perfect as far as maximizing our time. Don't miss the pumpkin beignets and apple cider doughnuts.....they were amazing!

Saw a few articles on this, apparently has happened at some other parks as well. I mean what happens if you drop the phone, lol?

Ok, but if you hate it so much and it is so rotten; why do you keep going on about it and posting. Boycott and be done with it already. Nothing either of us says here will affect the progress. Accept it or don't. Calling a truce for the weekend, I have to get up and drive to KI tomorrow.

Well I wasn't comparing SF to Disney on a park to park basis, I was comparing two similar projects involving the same ride type that followed the same timeline to show that it was not out of the ordinary. Also, comparisons between them are proportional to the money and attendance at Disney versus SFSTL. My point was that all of this "discussion" has stemmed from a complaint that SFSTL is committing some major sin in taking several years to properly refurb a historic carousel, which was the plan from the beginning, and the implied claim that no other park would take that long and it's pointless and no one cares and yada, yada, yada. I have simply been refuting that claim. Also, as pointed out Disney doesn't hit a home run every time. I mean Tron is really just a clone. An elaborate clone perhaps but how long have they been working on it? 4 years now? Why is it taking so long? If Covid shut down is the answer to how slow it is going then why isn't that a good enough reason for the SFSTL carousel. Compare that to Velocicoaster which was also built during Covid and I think took something like 2 years and if you have not experienced it is beyond spectacular..................all I'm saying is that in my opinion the scope and timeline of the carousel project at SFSTL isn't as out of the norm as is being suggested.

And the entire center of Epcot has been a giant dirt construction pit for how long now? As well as the fact that they shut down Tron construction and left it halfway done for awhile, which also meant the train has been out of commission that entire time. The site isn't abandoned, just a very long project; but no where near the glacial pace of Disney construction projects. It will be done when it's done. How long we gonna play this game?

Good to know, we are mainly planning on doing haunt stuff on Fri night and rides on Sat and will most likely just do a marathon all day on Saturday but will keep this in mind if we decide to take a break. Got it. We're too theme park savvy for that at this point and I went ahead and bought Frightlanes for Fri night so it's probably a moot point other than getting a parking spot. I'll report back next week.

Actually it does. The Disneyworld carousel was originally PTC #46 "The Liberty Carousel", made the rounds at several parks, Disney bought it in 1967 when it was 50 years old and spent 4 years refurbing it, stripped the horses down to the wood and made each one unique..................sound familiar

We're going to be there Friday and Saturday. Despite all the visits we have to KI, we've never been there for haunt so looking forward to it. Just decided to have an enjoyable trip so got Frightlanes for Fri night and FL+ for Saturday and therefore no need for complicated ride strategy. Although I did see a report that lines to get into the parking lot can be atrocious. Anyone know if that has been the case for Fri nights? Just trying to decide how early we need to be lined up at the tollbooth or since we have the Frightlanes if we are just as well off to let the initial wave get in and then show up a half hour later.

Any reports on how FF is going here? We will be there Sunday and Monday of next weekend. Taking advantage of the later hours on Sunday and Monday open due to Columbus day and swinging by after a Fri/Sat visit to KI to catch FF and complete some ride lists since our other visit was a stormy summer day a few years ago that impacted how much we could get on.

Yeah, I don't think chatter amongst the employees is, ummm, favorable. They did switch over to two train ops last night. At least I know they did on Boss, but probably on everything else since crowds tend to grow as the further into FF we get. Hopefully, stays that way.

You are right about there only being one train operations on the coasters. According to the ride op that lives in my house it has been that way for most of the summer. They were told as FF progressed ops would go up to two trains, we will see if that comes to fruition or not. Staffing continues to be an issue but crowds were definitely light for the first weekend. Apparently they topped out at only 5000 guests on Sunday. Hopefully, crowds will get better. While no one wants insane lines, the park does need people to show up. I mean this is usually their big money maker event for the year. My experience has been that the crowds tend to grow steadily each weekend the closer we get to Halloween AND a major school district in the vicinity of the park has no classes on Monday (it's a teacher meeting day) so that might make next weekend a bit busier.

And as an addendum to Bert's pics.....that was the youngest (though not shortest) of the group riding in the back of Woodstock Express, but everyone in the pic was over 18 and I don't believe that was ert at Coasterstock, I think it was just after regular open. Also, the Whirlybirds are legit because that is a genuine, bona fide smile on a normally expressionless "too cool to smile" 19 year old. Of course it occurred when Mom was not in the vicinity

So we shouldn't make any attempt to improve things just because they will/might get messed up again? Like never clean the house because we will just make it dirty again. Yeah I'm not buying that. Besides not a lot of teens waste time riding a carousel, not exactly high on the cool factor rating. I understand your frustration over it being closed at a time when your child is young, and I've avoided responding because I just haven't seen the point as we aren't going to convince each other to change our opinion (agree to disagree at this point) BUT I do not think as many people are as uncaring as you think they are. When we saw the presentation on the process a couple years ago everyone there was fascinated and appreciative of what they were doing. While I realize it was a group of enthusiasts, they were not necessarily people that usually cared about carousels all that much. I have talked to many many random people that were reading the info billboard and seeing the sample horses that thought it was pretty damn cool. A true representative sample, no, but you can't say you have truly surveyed the masses either, so no way to really say with authority what percentage really care; and frankly, if your main goal is to ride a carousel with your daughter, there are other places you can do that for a lot less money and much closer to your home. The zoo springs to mind.

It is my understanding that it was a go on the end of Six Flags and there had been preliminary contacts to RMC and that it was to be a possible 50th celebration ride for 2021; then it all got blown up by the virus. If they were starting the process in early 2020 for the next year's anniversary that would make sense timing wise but someone else may be able to shed more light on it.

To address a few of the things brought up: I don't think there is any worry about the park being open weekends only because the festivals are only on weekends. Lots of parks, much bigger more premier parks, do festivals that run weekends only. Takes lots of extra staff to man the booths. It COULD be a way to get more locals to the park IF they ADVERTISE it to the GP and have some really good food booths and drink specials, etc, etc. Our park doesn't always do a very good job marketing to the masses. I have been on JL and in my opinion it is better without the 3D, clearer. At worst I don't think a lot of people will even notice a difference in picture quality. And yes I believe it was a chain wide thing. Thunder River went down for a mechanical issue around a month ago and they pretty much knew then it would not come back in time for this season The ride op that lives in my house has said that they are "supposed" to add trains in time for FF so hopefully only a couple more weekends of one train ops. Although I agree it's disappointing that they didn't have them for a holiday weekend. As far as Boss, I had it on very good authority that there was a firm plan to RMC the thing before the virus that shall not be named struck. Do with that info what you will. Is there any chance now with the new CEO? Probably not, at least in the near future, but I really don't know where it stands at the moment. I've been butt hurt ever since they removed the helix.

I agree with you but for reasons I'm still not clear on my son prefers it forward launch, so I guess to each their own. It was suggested at a Q&A with park management about 5 years ago that they could have one side launch forward and one backward and have Twix sponsor it; do a left Twix, right Twix sort of thing. I'm guessing there is probably an operational and/or maintenance reason that cannot be done, although at the time they acted intrigued by the idea.

Ha there is a huge groundhog, to me, (woodchuck to you) colony around Screaming Eagle at SFSTL too. I too often get partially undressed by Mystic Timbers and a few other coasters. Iron Gwazi is the worst for that in recent memory.

Glad you enjoyed SDC on your first visit. Although I love Wildfire, way more than any B&M invert, lol, I swear that coaster has one of the best top of the lift hill views anywhere. Seriously glad you went through the cave, so many enthusiasts ignore it because it isn't a ride and it's such an awesome experience. If you ever do have time to stop at SFSTL, let me know and I'll meet you and show you where all the bodies are buried.

Oh God! TWA!! Way to open up old wounds. I am still butt hurt over that one. I surely hope not. There is a rumor, completely unsubstantiated, that some park presidents will officially be canned on Thursday's earnings call. One of them being SFSTL, will be interested to see if that holds any water or is all BS and what if anything it means for the park. They are advertising for performers but not sure what the exact plans are, will stay cautiously optimistic. I thought last year's FF was back to about 75% of what it used to be. I think it will really all depend on how many employees they can get/retain through Halloween.