thisdougsforu

I'm cool with a Joker clone and realize we'd be fortunate to get one, but in reading through all the excitement around Georgia RMC'ing the Cyclone, it sure would be nice to get a notice that the Boss is closing down sometime around mid July one year!

The FreeFly really will fit perfect in the park, wishes for a hyper be damned. RIP Tidal Wave. Each section of the park will then have a nice marquee attraction to anchor it.

During the fall last year they were running a promotion that you could get a Gold Season pass for $30 with a day's admission ticket. My wife works for Edward Jones, who rented out the park for an employee day, and we used our free tickets for the deal. I got 4 Gold Passes for $120. Great deal! Hope they run it again this year as I'll take advantage of that again!

Thanks for the information. This unseasonably cool weather has to be fun for maintenance!

Trains keep getting stuck on Freeze when coming back to the station this season, causing big delays for maintenance to push them back. I was in line twice Saturday when the ride was temporarily shut down. Is this something that always happens? Great time at the park otherwise over the weekend. The weather was perfect.

Nice TR! Shame about Eagle as I love it. The old girl just may not of been running good that day. Being local to it, SFSTL is the only SF park I've ever visited...do the other Batman clones have the insanely long queue? I always figured they did.

Yeah, crowds will probably be pretty obnoxious that Saturday. As always though, that depends on the weather. Thanks all. I had never even heard of Swamp Fox before planning our trip there, then it became one of the things I had to do. It's a nice coaster that the park takes pride in. Always good to see a classic treated well. As for Screamin' Eagle, yes, for all the lack of a signature steel coaster it's sure nice to have a true classic woodie that's in great shape. I do wish that it was operational for Holiday in the Park though, as the view of a fully lit park while coming around the lift hill turn would be spectacular.

Just caught up on the thread. Lots of activity! Great trip report. Funny fact for myself- I've never done Justice League. For whatever reason, I just have zero interest in non-haunted dark rides. Line usually being super long doesn't help. Since you brought up Eagle (sucks it was closed that day), that gives me a chance to discuss something I've been meaning to for a couple weeks.... I recently had the chance (3 weeks ago) to ride the Swamp Fox coaster in Myrtle Beach while on vacation week before Memorial Day. As soon as we got home, we went to Six Flags STL and I took my first ride of the season on Screamin' Eagle to compare it while the SF ride was fresh in my mind. Swamp Fox was built in 1966, designed by John Allen and PTC. It's got a smaller footprint than Eagle and is a figure 8 versus gigantic out and back, but a lot of the characteristics are similar. It's located in Family Kingdom at Myrtle Beach, SC, a boardwalk amusement park that's really nice for families. Swamp Fox is the marquee attraction, but there are several other fun rides including a Zamperla Wild Mouse and some good flats. In the early 90's the park and coaster were damaged pretty heavily by a hurricane but were rebuilt soon after back to original specs. The park maintains it very well and it's similar in color scheme to the Eagle. The lift hill goes into the same style of corner that Eagle does before its first drop, except instead of having a nice view of the park nestled into the hills of Missouri you get an amazing view of the Atlantic Ocean and boardwalk. The old girl was a fun ride! Rode in front and back and both had good pops of airtime. It was relatively smooth as well given the age, although Eagle is definitely a smoother experience. Riding them back to back in relative close proximity was interesting to me as you can clearly see that in Screamin' Eagle, Allen and PTC took what they knew and dialed it up to 11. Pics are below. I love the Screamin' Eagle so much and it was cool to check out one of its direct predecessors! For my money, when at Six Flags St. Louis, nothing compares to the Eagle when the weather is cool and the trees are starting to get their fall colors.

Great pictures. Yeah, the one star attraction thing is why many of us whine for it. The work put into the park in recent years has really brought it back. Just needs one thing to really put it over the edge.

That's an interesting post in regards to the issues plaguing the ride. I've been curious on who fits the bill for all this continued maintenance as I work for a custom industrial machine engineering/manufacturing firm that, while completely unrelated to coasters, uses a similar work flow. For example, we recently had a customer that contracted us to build a machine that presses railroad wheels onto railroad axles. After plans were approved and everything put together and tested, we moved it to their plant for final assembly and experienced problems. This has been going on now for several months where when the line goes down, we have to send techs to get it back up. After a certain amount of downtime, we are the ones that have to eat the cost. It's all due to some engineering oversights and unexpected real world conditions. Sounds like that's the deal with LR. Because of all the issues with the ride our visit in two weeks has been changed to Holiday World, with the plans to go to Dollywood after it's stabilized, hopefully next summer. I know that Dollywood is an amazing park and LR isn't the only thing there, but it's the main attraction we wanted to do and with having only a 4-5 hour window to be at the park, we'd rather just not risk frustration.

It is looking like my family's first visit to HW will be taking place on the Saturday of Memorial Weekend. We are going to be traveling home from Myrtle Beach to St. Louis, and we will be in the area to hit the park first thing in the morning for a few hours. I'm assuming that weekend will probably be crazy busy, but assuming that we show up early and do not do any of the waterpark, is 4 hours enough time to reasonably do most things in the park? Also, given that time is relatively tight and that I'll probably be able to only hit each of the 4 main coasters once, is there a recommended best spot to sit in each?

Sorry, had my weekends all fouled up! Yeah on the 20th I doubt it'll be that bad. It will be the next weekend when attendance ratchets up.

I'd agree. Let the Ninja just be until it's time to replace it with something. As for the park being crowded, the day you speak is Memorial Weekend Saturday, plus the grand opening on Spinsanity, so it will be pretty busy assuming the weather is ok.

Just got the e-mail that goes over the Mardi Gras event and announced Memorial Weekend as Spinsanity's opening.

I am needing to buy a couple tickets for my trip coming up in 3 weeks. Are there any good deals you all know of to save a few bucks? (i.e. some kind of code from a Coke can or what have you?)

This has been said about every clone made by Six Flags. So far the only ride close enough to fit this bill is the star flyers. Will several parks get S&S Free Spin coasters yes, will all no. There is no guarantee that SFSTL will get one, we might instead get the next coaster clone. But it is the next coaster clone, isn't it? Isn't that what its classified as? There may be no guarantee but if there were betting odds then it would for sure be a favorite. There also appears to be several prime spots where it could fit in. I know people here like to say destroy the Ninja but I'd think Tidal Wave would make a heck of a lot more sense than axing a coaster. That back corner with TW always seems dead. Putting a freespin over there means each corner of the park is anchored with a popular attraction, and Ninja would maybe even see an uptick in riders with a new attraction like that in its vicinity (Spinsanity is right over there as well).

Yep... unfortunately. It's the new Justice League Indeed. Every park is going to have one. I hope ours gets announced this year so there is a little mystery the following ones. Assuming Spinsanity is well received I'd think at least one other park is going to get a disko next year. Nice pics of the park. Weather has been beautiful this weekend.

I was just at SFSL and it was the best experience I've ever had in regarding ride ops. Whether that's because it's early season or not is debatable, but it was as smooth as it could get.

The weather in St. Louis over the weekend was horrendous, with non-stop rain for the better part of 48 hours. It's now very cool out and flooding is running rampant. Most likely Boss was shut down because of something involving that. I was in the area of the park on Saturday and I could not even see it from I-70 due to the hard rain . Very cool to hear that about the building being painted to match Spinsanity. Seeing the ride in person two weeks ago it looks so damn sharp with that bright paint, and that extended queue should really help bring it all together. Any word from you park folk on when it's going to open? I was just kinda figuring at this point they'd do it Memorial Weekend.

I'd like to know this as well. I'll be able to stop by for about 4 hours then while on another trip, so I'll probably be able to do each just once to get everything in.

Thunder is a great riding and performing coaster with nice trains that's less than 10 years old. That would make zero sense. I think you are correct on your other observations though. Boss is a good coaster with lots of personality...it's just on the rough side. I can get why financially it doesn't make sense for them to RMC it, especially if it would shorten it substantially. Still though, it's easy to see why so many want it done.

That's a good post Bill. Shareholders can never accept "well, this is as good as it's gonna get" so it will be interesting to see what kind of stuff they come up with when those type of quick fix ideas dry up.

A friend of mine got stuck on one of the trains outside of the station yesterday on Freeze, waiting about 15 mins to get a push. She says maintenance told them emergency brakes were deployed as it had built up too much static electricity due to higher than normal speeds.

Yeah, the scanning at entrance took forever on Friday. Also, while the ride staff was amazing during our visit (seriously, all lines were flying and everyone was in great spirits) the food service was ridiculously bad. So bad that my wife actually gave them a scathing survey for that part of the experience as a good hour of the day was spent in line at different stands, despite crowds that weren't bad. I rarely ever order food at the park, and this just reaffirmed that. It looked like the hold-up was people using the meal passes as all the ops were completely confused by them. Somehow it took them much longer to process those transactions versus those with cash. I'm generally pretty easy to please and I go to the park for the rides, with food as a complete afterthought (and the ride ops were awesome!) but good gosh, the food service was so terrible it bares mentioning. Hopefully that's just because it's a lot of new staff still learning the ropes. On a more positive note, American Thunder felt like it was running smoother and faster than it ever has...and it's always been a great coaster. Hell of a time on it. As a shocker, Ninja felt MUCH smoother than before as well. My daughter said the same thing. Did it get any love during the offseason or did the stars just align? I didn't even bang my head!

Spent a few hours at the park on Friday and it was a great time. The paint jobs look great, particularly Pandemonium which looks new. Spinsanity looks really good and save for paint on the queue, it looks like it could be open at any time. It will be a great addition to that side of the park. If and when Tidal Wave goes bye-bye for something new in the near future, that whole side of the park would be in fantastic shape.