teacherkim

We were there on Sat Aug 28th and did NOT get a break from the heat, which usually is not an issue for me; but105? Holy hell it was hot! Anyway we were on a SoCal coaster trip and since we had been to SFMM before decided it would be the sacrificial Saturday park since we were going to have to hit one of them on the weekend and therefore could skip some of our less than favorites if time was an issue. We used our memberships to do the free upgrade to Platinum for Gold price on flashpasses AFTER I explained to the employee that I was allowed to use that perk once at each park not just once total like she thought when she told us we weren't eligible and then seemed to take a while to understand that we had been to other parks that year After she confirmed with the supervisor she did the transaction all the while being amazed when I told her we had actually been to 4 other SF parks this year and that I understood the procedure better than she did. Anyway, I can confirm that the indoor queues are not being utilized for lines due to Covid. Not because they are particularly worried about the spread but more because they didn't want to have to argue with guests about masks and such. At the end of the night when I had hit the wall but my son was waiting in line for one more WCR ride I had a long chat with the young, naïve, and clearly inexperienced ride op who confirmed that. When people lost their shit because some girls pulled the "excuse me we are catching up with our people" ploy, skipped the whole line and then he let them go on not realizing he had just been bamboozled I suggested he might want to make people show him who they were catching up to when they tried this. He did and was most amazed when they then would walk off since there was in reality no one to catch up to. And when he complained they were never going to get to leave because people kept joining the line after park close I suggested he might want to physically put the ribbon across the entrance and tell them the line was closed. Again he did and was amazed at how well that worked. You're welcome kid. Seriously I should have gotten a supervisor's pay that day. We did go straight to WCR at the back of the park and were able to get a regular line wait of only about 25 min and thus was able to save our FP for a second ride when the line had gotten a lot longer after the GP made it there. Then at the end of the night when most of the people had melted the wait was back down to about 30 min. Also, right at dusk a whole crap ton of bats came out and were flapping all around the park and helpfully eating all the bugs congregating at the various lights around the park. As far as I could tell no one else had a clue that they were there. One other couple stopped to look because they saw me staring up at the sky and they were amazed when I pointed out the bats, lol. No idea what cave and/or abandoned building they spent the daylight hours in but it must have been fairly close. Other than that pretty typical SF Sat summer day. Only major ride that we would have done but couldn't because it was down was JL. Oh yeah and Tatsu which I gather has been down a while.

We were there on Thurs 8/26, not the Dippin Dots Lady but an employee in one of the stores told me they were waiting on a part from Gerstlauer that they had not been able to get due to the current supply chain mess. Take that for what you will. Every other coaster was open that day. Jaguar went down briefly but they got it back up in less than an hour. Waits were low and we actually got to a point about 4:30 where we had gone on everything we wanted, and actually headed out before park closing which is unusual for us. Nothing bad on the park it was just kind of a dull slow day due I am sure to many schools going back that week.

Just as an fyi - we were there last Monday 8/30. Park was super dead (I know it was the first day back to school for a lot of the locals) Tidal Twister didn't even have a train on and 0 activity around it. Every ride should have been a walk on but in reality was a station wait due to super slow ops, not that it was a big deal with such a low crowd. One weird thing was that Electric Ocean was listed to be going from 4-6 but the park was closing at 5? So not sure what was going on with that but didn't seem worth it when it would still be daylight out either way. We did everything we wanted to do in about 3 hours, at a leisurely pace and including grabbing something to eat. Left about 1 and spent the rest of the day at the Zoo. It was the last day of a SoCal trip so not a big deal to us since we kind of wanted to see the Zoo anyway and had already spent the evening before at Belmont Park, but kind of a meh visit.

Weird just during the fair...............? Hmmmmm. I feel like it's weird all the time, not that that's a bad thing, lol.

We were going to stop there in December but already have a pretty packed trip (which is a bigger family Christmas trip) so we may just wait on BGT until spring break time. At least we have time to think about it. Disappointed because I was really hoping to get on it while we were already going to be in Orlando and Clearwater the two weeks leading up to Christmas. Oh well.

Here's hoping, we are going to be there right before Christmas,

On the topic of hours for the rest of the year. I have noticed that right now they are not listing the two November weekends between Halloween and the start of HITP as open. Usually it would be 12-6 hours under the theme of "fall weekends". So not sure what is up with that. At the moment the employee availability request only goes through Sept 19, which will be the last weekend before FF.

Yeah.....I have basically come to the same conclusion but was really hoping I was wrong. Sigh.

They are. Been advertising to hire scare actors and the hours on the app match up for both

So we will be there in exactly one month. When I booked our southern CA trip a couple months ago I was really assuming Emperor would be opening soon since it had clearly been about ready to go right before the initial lockdowns. That's on me, I should have known better. What are those of you that are local hearing? I take the fact that it is not listed anywhere on their web site as a very bad sign for any sort of opening in the near future.

Just like what constitutes a "new" ride for SFSTL, which will probably just be our delayed flat that was supposed to go in for this year. I'm happy for you all down there but our poor park (one of the original 3 ground up parks for Six Flags) just quietly celebrated our 50th anniversary. I mean it was very very quiet. We got new paint, and some fireworks, and a new kid's structure in HH......oh wait that isn't done yet despite there only being about a month left of waterpark operations. Pfffft. Seriously though congratulations to SFFT and those of you lucky enough to have it as your home park!

Oh that's a big whoops. Yikes!

That's true. He would never take the time to look through and read a lot of posts. He just relies on me to give him any important info.

It's clearly NOT going the other way. If you want it you better lock it in now!

Shhhhhhh........ I did NOT tell Joel things opened back up. It did rain later and hotel employee told me at breakfast that it rained all night. I did ride Adv Express, Joel and I were just ahead of you and waiting on the exit ramp for you guys when the ball hit me. Little twerp. We rode red since their were two blue trains and one red to guarantee a race.

When you are there make sure to go through Marvel Cave, it's free and the entrance is in the big gift shop that you walk through at the start of the park. It is the whole reason the park exists and is really a cool cave.

Sucks doesn't it. Not living right in your neck of the woods but having been there a number of times through my growing up years I have seen the change. The area was always religious and conservative but we were there right after the 2016 election and people had put up all sorts of billboards rejoicing that HC had lost the election and the vitriol in these completely unnecessary "ads" was unbelievable. That's when I knew things had really taken a vicious turn. BUT nobody should be deterred from visiting, SDC is a really great park and the employees will go out of their way to be helpful.

Ironically I even though we have been to BGW I came on here for my own question. Without boring everyone with all the details we unexpectedly ended up with BG/SW passes until April. We usually try to hit a park for Halloween and had never done CP at that time and it was next on our list, but since we always have CF passes and things have been kind of wonky there this year and we have the BG passes I thought maybe we should do BGW instead. I see on the schedule that they have some Wed and Thurs nights open, which we could do, so................: Are most of the rides open during their haunt event? And does anyone know if it is different on those weeknights? Anything specific to their Halloween event I should know? Was gonna ask what the locals have been hearing about Pantheon but perhaps the survey mentioned previously answers that?

Second Colonial Williamsburg it is really cool and if you go don't cheap out, buy the ticket that let's you go in to all the places, lots of cool stuff. IF you are REALLY a history buff the Jamestown site/museum, Yorktown battlefield and Museum of the American Revolution at Yorktown are all very cool........course I was a history teacher so that may just be me, lol.

Sadly both unbelievable and not at all surprising at the same time. Sigh.

So I have to add: I regret so much that there is not a pic, video, or even audio of our rain ride on Adv Express. I am sure it would have sounded like we were all being tortured Even though the boy is hardly a boy anymore if I don't feed him regularly he gets super grumpy AND he won't eat breakfast very often. I told you. Teens. Are. Annoying. So on the log flume I was actually in the back and my extremely helpful son ducked all the way down when he realized we were about to get Tidal waved (which did NOT happen the last time I rode this flume) so his back was soaked and my front was soaked. Thanks kid. And after I finance your coaster trips and feed you. The Brewhouse food was fantastic and not just by theme park standards I also had no idea that there was that cute bar area behind the Mexican restaurant and I have been to this park multiple times. It really is a biergarten and although I am not much of a beer drinker as Bert mentioned they had other drinks, a little show, and it was just a pleasant pleasant area to take a break and relax. Joel and Zach went and rode something so the old people (that's you and I Bert) could take an extra long break.

Thank you for the clarification!

Welcome to theme parks during a pandemic. This is happening everywhere.

Yes, but the description of the VIP tours is either before park open or guided for 4 hours only, not just unlimited access. Unless something has changed or been added that I am unaware of. I agree with Bert that fast passes are available to all and I utilize them whenever I can BUT as you can already see from a previous response some people view them as "cheating" and favoring the rich (even though that is crap because it is up to you how you spend your money and I would not have taught middle school for almost 30 years if I was rich ) While of course there are always exceptions, conservative, rural folk tend to be more of the "cheating" view and the opinion that it gives certain people an unfair advantage. The VIP thing happens before hours so most people don't see it going on in front of them and the guided tour is $250 on top of admission with a guide so I cannot believe there are a lot of people doing it. Although I certainly have been wrong before, lol. It is my opinion after talking to one of the owners that the profit to potentially be made was not worth the complaining they believed they would receive. Now that was 5 years ago, things could change, and perhaps the fairly new tours are a toe in the water to test things out.

You better check if you can do advance schedule with Uber in Sandusky. It is NOT available in all markets. Last time I checked Orlando had it but not for me at home in STL. I also vote to do the rental, at least Breakers let's you park for free.