sixflagsguy5

The trains alternate between blue and green. The first two cars are blue and then the rest alternate between blue and green every other. American Eagle only had the blue side running (with two trains). Raging Bull had two trains and I think Batman did too. Viper had one train and so did Iron Wolf and Demon. The park was dead. It was the first time I've ever been able to reride Raging Bull (5 times). We weren't really going for rerides, but you could have stayed on Raging Bull all day if you wanted.

I was at the park today and Demon got attacked by stride gum just like El Toro did. They only have one train done so far. The other is supposed to be done soon. I don't think the third train is on the tracks yet.

I like Hades and Tremors. Hades tunnel is really cool (especially with the lights on). Tremors has shorter tunnels, but they're cool because you get airtime as you're going into and out of each tunnel.

Besides the ones in Orlando, I really like the one at WOF. It's in the woods and because of the terrain difference you are actually 30ft+ off the ground at points during the ride. The one at SFSTL isn't bad either.

Just for the record I never said anything about any of the other ride names. I'm just pointing out that "The Beach" is very generic. That's like naming something "The Coaster" or "The Ride." Do I care? No. I will never go back to Geauga Lake unless they get a new coaster (which won't happen). I think it's a good concept even though I'm not really sure how clean that lake is.

Very creative naming for this one.

"Jacuzzi room down by the river."

Don't forget if you go to the park after 3pm on Friday you can get in for free on Saturday. So if you take your time driving you can get there around that time and basically get Friday at the park for free. I would probably not get a Q2Q on Friday and get one on Saturday if the lines start to get over 20 minutes. The best way to use it is to reserve a ride the second you use your last reservation. So what I would do is use mine to get into the station of a coaster and I'd get in line for a row. While I was in line for that row I'd reserve the next ride using my Q2Q and by the time I'd get off the wait would be 5 or 10 minutes shorter. Then if the ride wasn't near where I was I'd walk there and by the time I got to the ride my wait would be up. The wait times on the Q2Q depend on how long the regular line is. I suggest getting one if it will save you time. You can get about 1.8 times as many rides in as you normally would.

Ok thanks guys. Right now getting a platinum pass would have me paying a little more than I would just going to the four CF parks I'm already planning on. I figured it would be worth it if my girlfriend and I could get the walkback and that way I could also buy her a discounted ticket.

The $120 season pass isn't unrealistic. A SFGAM season pass is around $70 now if you get it at a good time. A parking pass for the season is $65. Last year I paid $135 for a season pass with parking. I'd rather have them make the price $120 and include parking and keep all parks included. Maybe have a waterpark add on for some of the parks that have separate admission from their waterparks. This year I got lucky and paid $50 at SFSTL and got parking for $45. I think the idea behind raising the price to $120 would be that not everyone is going to take full advantage of the parking feature and really the park is profiting more by having a higher price, because some people would have just paid for the park itself w/out parking. For example imagine a family of three (mom, dad, son). In this situation there are two options. 1) Mom takes son to park. 2) Dad takes son to park. This family only needs two parking passes, but technically they are paying for three. The park makes more money than they would have if the family only bought two parking passes. Also, they could offer the passholder to chose between having a parking pass or a Six Flags in park voucher for food or games. Either way, I would be happy with having a higher price, because I am already paying for parking. Besides that, it gets annoying when I go with my girlfriend, with my friends, or with my family and you have sketchy people line jumping or just screwing around in line. I'd rather pay more for better quality parks than pay less for crap.

That's too bad that you missed three wood coasters. I would suggest making the trip in the summer if you can and adding on Valleyfair. The Dells don't really get a lot of visitors until the waterparks open up.

Thanks for posting this PTR. We're doing the exact same thing in a few weeks!! For the King Dominion platinum pass 10 minute walkback can you bring a friend with that or is it just for platinium pass holders? Also, if I buy a platinum pass at a different Cedar Fair park can I still get the walkback? Can't wait to ride I305

^Most people go to Okoboji in the summer (Arnold's Park) or go to Worlds of Fun. People near the quad cities go to SFGAM. I've never had anyone show interest in going to Adventureland and if I bring up going to an amusement park usually WOF is where people would want to go. I've only been there once and it was dead. I would love to have an intamin mega-lite 30 minutes away from me though.

^Good point, but Beech Bend and Kings Island will also.

When I went in 2007 they would stack one train for a short amount of time. I think this was mainly because of the seatbelts and people taking a long time to put loose items in the bins. I really don't think they need three trains. They rarely get long lines and the timberliners will allow them to increase capacity (from what we've been told).

I went in 2007 during read to succeed (unfortunately) and the park still wasn't nearly as bad at SFGAM gets on a regular weekday. However, the crews were extremely slow and didn't seem to care very much. It was 105* when we got to the park, so I decided to buy a few flashpasses. They were extremely cheap (I think $10 for 4 rides) so I got to ride a lot of stuff. I used one on the SLC and the others on superman. For the SLC I just walked up to the exit and they let me on the next train in the front row. They didn't even tell the people waiting that I was taking their seat until the train was starting to unload. I felt like a jerk, but at the same time I just avoided a 45 minute line by paying $2.50. I used the rest of the flasspasses on Superman. What they would do is wait for enough flass pass people and let them onto their own train. This was frustrating when I was waiting in line, especially for the front or back rows. Besides their former poor operations I actually liked the park. The rides were decent and the lines weren't too bad.

I know somebody was joking that Wild Adventures should get one after going there for media day. After thinking about this, it wouldn't be a bad idea. For awhile they tried to get visitors by using the "9 coaster" advertising method, but after that failed (and getting a new owner) I think they've realized this won't do much for them. An airtime intense coaster would be great, because the park would be much more appealing to the teen/ young adult crowd. I know if I lived in Valdosta, I would rather drive the 5 or 6 hours to Six Flags rather than riding a medium sized wood coaster and a bunch of fair coasters. They need something that is visible from the highway though, so I'm not sure if a Mega-Lite would accomplish that.

That's sad to hear, because I was planning on running into Kennywood on the way home from King's Dominion in late May. I guess we'll have to add a different park on the way home or stay out East another day.

So what Holiday Park/ Robb is saying is that the ride didn't technically derail, because it was still in contact with the track as designed. I'm very happy to hear that because it's frustrating hearing people bash Intamin. I can't think of a single incident where someone was seriously injured on one of their rides due solely to a poor design. The accidents that have occurred besides this one were not because of a design failure and have never proven to be the fault of Intamin. People always mention that B&M is flawless and has no accidents and I think this comes from people being biased towards their rides. I like all coasters- 5 feet tall, 400 feet tall, 7 inversions, no inversions. To me they're all fun to ride and that's the purpose of riding them. Just because a ride valleyed doesn't mean you need to go pull out the B&M/ Intamin safety comparison.

I like the airtime onto the loading platform.

Because adding that additional train would decrease your wait time from five to two minutes? Opening weekend, small crowds, small employee pool to work with. No waits longer than ten minutes. I'll take that any day. Unless, you like to go in July and wait two hours. Speaking of which, I already received a Front of the Line pass through Funatics! No just the fact that they didn't even have it on site. I could care less about waiting and obviously I was just going for the experience, because I only rode about 6 rides and left. It just seemed like they threw some trains back on the coasters and reopened them. On a side note I was very impressed with the Little Dipper's new location. It would be nice to see them open up the looney tunes area a little bit kind of like KI does with their kiddie area.

From what I've observed, many roller coasters have steel extending above, under, and on the side of the rail in order to prevent de-railing. This is done so that in the case of a wheel(s) becoming disconnected from the axle, the train is still constrained to the track. However, with a design of three wheels per side of each car (so 3 on left, 3 or right side of individual car), the train could still become disconnected, because it is not entirely constrained anymore. For example look at the knex screamin serpent cars. You can twist those about 30* and get them to come out of the track. When the side friction wheels become disconnected you risk the train derailing much more easily than you do with the other wheels. If you look at a vekoma SLC, they have two top wheels (ride wheels?) per side of each car. In between these two wheels is a plastic (or rubber) bumper which in the case of a derailment would be contact the track and cause the train to slow down. I have no idea how an intamin hyper coaster is constructed, but I would imagine there is some sort of device like this. Obviously it is very difficult to determine how well this design works, because these types of situations rarely occur. I'm sure the park will have the ride down for awhile just to ensure that they know what happened. They can't risk re-opening the ride with the other train in the rare case that this were to occur with the other train. I still think this looks like one of the best out there.

I was actually very disappointed on saturday. I like that the park had a lot of park improvements done on time, but there were a lot of small things that were frustrating to see such as Raging Bull having multiple rows roped off, ride operators sending 3 groups of two on Giant Drop on separate cars vs. combining them, and not even having the 2nd train on site for American Eagle. I was only there from 5pm-7pm, but the park just seemed like it wasn't ready to open. I'd like to point out that I think MagiQuest looks completely out of place and is just weird. Do they really need to have hired 'actors' to advertise a virtual reality game. And why do you need a wand to play this game? Why can't you just use a controller like Xbox or any other normal game system. It seems very unnecessary to charge people for a wand. Besides that I still had fun

You shouldn't have had to pay for parking at Six Flags America. The parking passes are supposed to be valid at any Six Flags park with the exception of Kentucky Kingdom (which is no longer in operation). The person working the booth must have not known this. In the past two years I've gotten free parking at La Ronde, St. Louis, Magic Mountain, Over Texas, New England, and Great Adventure with my season pass parking. They changed this for the 2008 season (I think). I would suggest calling up guest relations at Six Flags America and ask them what their policy is on it. If you go back to the park this year they may refund you or if you write a formal letter they may reimburse you if you have a receipt. Worst case they won't refund you and you will have paid $15 to go to Six Flags America instead of paying full admission.

Add up what you would actually pay for admission. Some parks offer discounted admission if you buy online. Also, factor in the fraction that you would pay for parking. If you'd go with 3 other people you'd only pay $2.50. Also, only count the parks you could go to for sure. If you know there's only a small probability that you would make it to Canada's Wonderland then you probably shouldn't count it. I've had Cedar Fair platinum passes twice and they both paid off, but I also went to a ton of Cedar Fair parks and do not live near one.