teacherkim

Um no offense to any individual or SFFT but if you think brisket at a theme park is the best you have ever had you have clearly never been to a Jewish deli; or had real brisket.

SHHHHHHHHHHHH! Don't taunt LR before we get there on the boy's 18th birthday trip and 3rd attempt to get on.

When we were there a couple weeks ago we both thought Stingray was by far the best coaster in the park and I thought Wavebreaker was a lot of fun too! I was a little underwhelmed by Steel Eel, liked Mamba at WOF much better. But to be fair I only ended up riding it once in the front row. Glad to hear they had multi train ops, maybe they will have better ops than we experienced going into summer.

My Dad was the same way, I almost bailed after we had been in line for a while but he talked me into it. In the summers when school was out, he used to have Thursdays off because he worked Saturdays and we would "do stuff" every Thursday. I can remember we both got in trouble with my Mom after a day at the park, she had prepared a nice dinner and after a day of rides and lots of junk food neither one of us could touch it. She was quite put out and we got lectures that night!

Yes, your member perks should work at all SF parks. Although I did run into a weird thing where I could not make two preferred parking reservations even though they were for two different parks a day apart. Every ride that you cannot carry your drink cup on has the holders at the stations.

Jet Scream was my first coaster with an inversion. When I was in junior high they used to have "double rides after 5" on Friday nights which was really nice for Jet Scream because that thing was super short, lol.

As far as Eagle and the double up; I was 8 when Eagle opened (yes you young uns' I was born in the 60's) so I definitely rode it with the double up. However, being just a kid, not at all knowledgeable about coasters and their elements I really have no memory of that specific element, although I definitely remember the original trains (my Dad used to slide over and squish me) and I do remember the banking being added to the turns; but just don't remember the double up or realizing it had been removed.

You have to carry the big cup. I agree with some others that it would be nice if they did it like CF parks where you just scan your card and use a refill station. Those move people through much faster than the cup refills too.

I can confirm that. Just made reservations today and it did not have me choose a time. Just a date.

Ok I just secured tickets, reservations, etc for Mon May 17, taking an extended weekend trip for the boy's 18th birthday. We are going to go to SFOG on Saturday and then take the scenic drive through Smoky Mt park to Gatlinburg and hit DW on Monday. IF the stars align and we don't get lost looking for preferred parking in the DW lot, it may workout to make LR his 250th coaster, which would be a nice birthday present. Let's hope 3rd time is a charm for him in his attempts to get on it.

A lot of the kids rides to have maximum heights so you cannot ride with her, you will just have to check next time. Joel has had to kick off some adults more than once. But you can definitely do the little kiddie train together. The earliest the carousel will be open is 2022 and that was just an optimistic projection. As of last September they were not sure of an exact date because how long each horse and chariot refurb will take is speculative until they get into it and see how much damage there is.

Waiting for a night ride on IR was worth it but it did come at the expense of doing some other stuff a little further down on the priority list. Never made it on the train, nor did Joel make in on Pirates and a few other things. We loved this park and will for sure go back one day.

We had a really fun day. The super windy lift hill was the scariest thing I have every done in a theme park; felt like you were going to blow right off the damn thing. Thanks so much for all the great pictures Bert and for being such a great host!! And I think you mean that Kim won a wheel from Iron Rattler but gave her ticket to her son like Moms tend to do It is now down in his room next to the chain dog from Mine Train at SFSTL he won a few years back (and ironically now works that ride) I texted the pic of us on WW to my husband and parents and had to then answer all sorts of inquiries regarding what it was and why it was a single rail and why we sat single file, much to Joel's embarrassment at his "GP" family, lol. And when Joel asked the park Pres about the "coast to coaster" name for Boomerang he said "you're right, it's dumb....that was before me!" HA!

And since you are staying at Breakers add to everything Zach and Bert said the chance to leave the park at close by the front gate (or the gate by Windseeker depending on if your feet have died or not) and walk back to Breakers down the beach boardwalk enjoying the lovely and quiet end of the beach in the moonlight before you get back to the noisy end by the hotel. If you are doing multiple parks on the trip, the whole experience of the beach and resort will be a nice break and give it a more vacation type feel versus just a mad rush from park to park.

I guess we will have to put it down to a personal preference issue. I wouldn't consider that an option because by the time I stop and buy the cooler/food and then deal with the ice in the morning and then have to dispose of it all; unless I'm a jerk and just leave it in the parking lot, pus the walking back out to the car and having to go back through security. That takes up the better part of the hour I spent standing in line. Plus buying something made of styrofoam for a one time use isn't very environmentally responsible. Not to mention, adding dining plans on reduces the cost per visit somewhat. Agree to disagree and move on

I don't remember to be honest so it may have but it didn't say it was the only way, keeping the paper in tact all day in your sweaty pocket and constantly dragging it out is annoying so we usually just get the wristbands. The thing that I was irked about was that when we asked we were told to go back out to guest services and then it turned out that was a wasted trip back out and standing in line.

Ok so we were there on last Friday and I totally get the "80's vibe" and they definitely need to give some attention to updating the theming/atmosphere/look of the park (whatever you want to call it) Every coaster was doing one train ops with the exception of wave breaker and Steel Eel stopped every single train that I saw or was on, on the lift hill until somebody who had taken their mask down put it back on. So just getting through one cycle was tortuously slow. We really should not have needed QQ with the amount of people there but the ops were so slow I am glad we had them. Water rides all running which ended up being nice since it was mid 90's that day. I will say that the food festival was fairly well run and the items I sampled were all pretty tasty. However, the park was open til 6 and at about 5 we looked at each other and shrugged that we were more than ready to head out since there was really nothing left that we wanted to do. Keep in mind we had fooled around at the Alamo in the morning and didn't even get there until about noon. And that included the time it took to go through the dolphin encounter and aquarium right after the entrance but before you went through the turnstiles which is odd to begin with. So to me this is definitely a half day park. One super annoyance was that we did not redeem our QQ voucher on the way in at guest services because the line was predictably long and I foolishly assumed we could do it at some location inside the park, like every other park I have ever been too My bad I guess. Nope. We were told after we entered the park that we had to go back out and go to guest services to get the wristband, which after doing that were told by guest services that they were out of wristbands and just to use the paper. Seriously. So we had to go through the entrance queue again, for no reason.

Sorry I have no idea why it posted upside down, and I don't have time right now to figure it out.....but you get the idea!

And a big thanks to Bert for being our host for the day!! We loved this park and will definitely return at some point in the future, particularly since we never had time to do some of the "minor" rides like the train and the rapids ride. We went back for a couple hours on Sunday before we had to hit the airport. Were there about 1:15 - 3:45. I had made a reservation the night before (we did not need them on Sat since we were with the official group event) Not one person asked to see our reservation coming in on Sun. So either it is purely theater at this point, they can see that you have a reservation when they scan your pass, or as long as the reservations don't exceed the capacity they assume people won't show up and don't feel the need to check. This is how Poltergeist spent the day on Sunday

Again, I get all that and that may be true but when you are out of town that would necessitate bringing a cooler with you on a plane. And dealing with dragging it up to the hotel to get ice and yada, yada, yada........it just isn't always doable.

Zach on the issue of eating at the parks, I get what you are saying, but when you are out of town and have 1 day and are barely getting all the coasters in with Platinum pass you really don't have time to leave. Mom can (and is willing) to give up a few coasters to wait in line for food so the boy can get all his creds. And being there until well after 8 pm we needed some nourishment. #whatmomsdo

Yeah I know it was sold out by late afternoon last year because an acquaintance tried to get tickets at that point, but not sure how quickly before that it happened.

I hope none of us have problems getting tickets tomorrow. Particularly since I talked Bert into it!! My second hour class will just have to work on their own for about 15 minutes while I secure tickets, thankfully since this is my last year teaching no one is watching me at this point anyway

It's about on par. I think McDonalds is offering $11 and if it's only a couple miles from your house........ The food locker thing seems like a practical idea. They really need to do something. There have been some glitches with the mobile ordering it seems this year too, got to get that worked out.

The food thing really does seem to be a chain wide problem. I waited 20 minutes for a soda refill and then 1 hour for food at SFOT a couple weeks ago and we didn't even eat until 3pm just trying to avoid the worst of the crowds. I think it mostly comes down to lack of workers paired with the system could probably use some streamlining. I mean look at it from a worker stand point, if you are just going to work a fast food job (which most park "restaurants" are) why would you drive all the way to an amusement park, mostly on the city outskirts, when you probably have a fast food joint within a couple miles of your house that pays the same. I don't think the perk of free entry to the park is probably worth that for most people. Ride ops and lifeguards and such that's a little different because you are doing a unique job that you cannot do at too many other places. Now SFSTL just raised their pay to about $12 per hour, not sure if that is chain wide or unique to them but we will see if that gets them more employees. Clearly parks do have a severe labor shortage overall and food service is probably the hardest area to staff.