The 2006 Six Flags Agenda

[willski]

Don't even get me started on how much this season sucked.

 

 

Shapiro:

 

"Let's raise prices to reflect that the new Six Flags will be better than it used to be, without actually having experienced a season and knowing how difficult it will be."

 

So, logically, the price of everything goes through the roof. General admission, season passes, parking prices (but you get a free map for your $15, even though it seems to have been created by young children with crayons), even food prices went up at SFoG.

 

And, of course, as soon as June was over, the real crowds hit and the park went down the crapper. Now, in terms of the old management, this was to be expected. But I would think that if you charge people more money, you'd actually try to make some sort of an improvement. Ha! I'm wrong.

 

Also, Acrophobia sat for several months in the exact same position with no work being done. They didn't even attempt to get it running again during the season. Also, what's up with running 1 train on rides on Season Passholder Day and failing to get Acro or DV running? It sends the message, "Hey, thanks for buying a season pass, we don't give a damn about you now that we have your money."

 

 

Plus, Deja Vu was constantly down due to lack of staffing, while at the same time I saw many employees simply wandering about the park. No, they were not on break and were not sweeps, we saw them many times over the course of the afternoon. It was honestly like they were getting paid to walk around the park and not help anyone or tell people to put out cigarettes. The no smoking policy is NEVER enforced, and line jumping became rampant towards the end of the year; even when employees witnessed line jumping, they just looked at the line jumper and went back to their personal conversations with other non-working employees.

 

 

Goliath ran one train on several occasions this season when lines were well over 45 minutes. There was nothing wrong with the other train (no one working on them, sheds were devoid of any workers), they just didn't bother to put them on in the morning and then held up the line further by putting the trains on later in the day.

 

 

Generally (and I refer to 99% of the employees and supervisors here), the employees were extremely lazy, stacking trains on Goliath when all they had to check was 8-10 restraints in 2.5 minutes. These employees checking restraints moved as if they were terminally ill-each step (and thus, work) was more painful than the last. To top it off, there would usually be anywhere from 12-15 employees working the ride:

 

-1 at entrance not check large people in test seats or anything, just watching people get in line

-3 at Q-Bot entrance-go figure, they always talked and ignored customers and acted inconvenienced if-God forbid-they were actually interrupted to do their jobs

-1 preventing people from entering the station-not assigning seats or anything, just causing more people to fry in front of the station, where there is, of course, no shade, encouraging purchases of $5.50 cups of terribly flavored ice.

-5-6 restraint-checking ops, who, apart from Richard, managed to set new world records for slowest time to check 8 restraints with no seatbelts

-1 head op, who did nothing to speed the other ops (great leadership!....not)

-1 op to keep people off the exit side of the platform who was usually using a cell phone to text people, hiding it from the head op behind a well-placed garbage can

-2-3 supervisors or ops to stand around and take up space

 

 

 

That was just one of many examples of how bad the operations are. On one of the rare days the DV happened to be open, two of the ride ops were using their cell phones to make personal calls-while checking restraints. As if the ride really needed any help at having a lower capacity, given that it has two seatbelts and an OTSR, plus, the loading technique used by the park is terrible. On a very good day, the ride hits 320 pph (one dispatch every 6 minutes), but on this day, with the ops on cell phones, the ride was barely getting 192 pph (one dispatch every 10 minutes). It is absolutely ludicrous that the supervisors were not immediately at the ride to determine why the crew was operating so slowly. But, it IS SFOG, so the line became two hours before the ride broke down and remained down for the day.

 

 

 

So, to sum it up:

 

-Prices up for admission

-Prices up for season passes

-Prices up for parking (with pathetic map)

-Prices up for everything (food, merchandise, etc.)

 

-Customer service was great for about 1 week, then steadily declined to old SFI levels.

-Lack of rule enforcement for the entire year (even in March)

-Terrible operations

-General return to the park as it had been for several years, but the prices are higher.

 

 

Consensus: Shapiro, Snyder, et al suck at running theme parks and were completely delusional when they bashed the old SFI, as they have proven that they cannot do any better and will charge more for the same poor experience.

[Golfie]

Every time I have been to SFGAm, someone has been smoking in line... right in front of me.

[asr]

The only SF parks I wen't too this season where SFNE and SFGAdv. At SFNE, I swear they had two trains running on Thunderbolt, Two trains on Cylone, multiple trains on everything but Flashback. By the end of the season, the park was packed, B:TDK seemed to perpetually have 2 1/2 hour lines, sucky operations on everything except S:ROS, only one train on the woodies, Catapault done, and Cyclone was down frequently for some reason too.

 

SFGAdv, I only took one visit, and it was great, much better then most people on here give the park credit for. But Kingda Ka and Rolling Thunder where down, and El Toro wasn't finished yet, so I missed all of those, but I hope to ride them next year.

[kraxleRIDAH]

 

It's not like next year Shapiro can say....."Come see the NEW six flags....we really mean it this time! I swear!"

 

Those customers might be lost for a while.

 

Shapiro really didn't think that part through when budget cuts were made mid-summer season.

[kenshinmac]

Wow...

 

Honestly I had no idea things were this bad. It kinda seems like the parks with problems got worse and the parks which were fairly well run got better.

 

I went to Elitch Gardens like 4-5 times this year... Every time it was a joy and it was amazing how much cleaner most of the park was. The only real problem I had with the park was the fact that the rapids ride was closed all but 1 time I was there. That was my only disappointment. Every coaster ran with full trains all the time. Twister 2 which almost always ran with 1 train all the time in previous years was ALWAYS running 2 trains. Load times were very fast on most rides and overall employees seemed to really want to interact with guests.

 

Of course there was the very sad tragedy with the acrobats and the cuts to the entertainment budget of the park but it really has flourished this year.

[Tanks4me05]

This year was the first year I went to a Six Flags park, so I really don't have any previous experience to compare it to, but I have some comments anyway. I found the operations at Darien Lake and La Ronde to be HORRIBLE. I know these are both pretty neglected parks, but it wouldn't hurt to throw an extra train on when a line is 2 hours long. I was very disappointed to see Superman at Darien Lake running only one train all day when there was a two hour line. I didn't see a character at either of these parks either.

 

Well, I would have to disagree for Six Flags Darien Lake being bad. Maybe I just went on a good day, but I really liked it. Predator, Mind Eraser, Grizzly River Run, and the Log Flume (whatever it is called now) were all closed, but Mind Eraser and the Log Flume were down temporarily, not more than an hour or two. There was obvious track work being done on Predator, although I couldn't see anything being done on Grizzly, I didn't look at it really extensively. Superman: Ride of Steel and Viper were running two trains, (the lines for the front and back of Superman: Ride of Steel hadn't gone above twenty or thirty minutes) and Viper was pretty much a walk on. Mind Eraser, however, was the only real complaint I had during the day, where it was running only one train, and the ride ops seemed to unload slowly. So, the line was about 40 - 45 minutes, but it probably could have been as low as 10 or 15 minutes if they had quicker staff and that extra train going through the course. Also, there was a patch of pavement behind this fast food place near Mind Eraser that needed some repair. Also, Big Kahuna could have been running faster, because the line was thirty minutes long, only with the queue line up to the top two flights of stairs. However, I don't know if those types of slides normally have low capacity. I didn't feel like riding any slides that day, anyway. (I left the queue line of Big Kahuna half way through because I really wanted to go back to Superman) Also, the Poland Springs Plunge was broken down for a while, but that eventually was up and running, and a couple of rows in the fascination booth were down. But the bathrooms were clean, the rides were running great, relatively small lines for most of the rides, an overall nice experience.

 

So, 2 rides closed for renovation, 2 rides that closed briefly, a patch of pavement in need of repair, queue lines for one slide and one coaster longer than they should be, and two or three Fascination rows out of order. They are all pretty much minor problems, so I did see an improvement. Viper was smooth, and it really was not all that painful (the back seat of the Yellow train). Even the back seat of Mind Eraser wasn't unbearable. Boomerang was quite smooth, only slightly rough in the back seat. Viper even produced some floater air time on the pre drop, which was unexpected. Superman had a bit of a rattle to it, but personally, I liked it. I could sense the speed more on the straight section, making it more enjoyable. The back seat of the blue train in the morning produces amazing airtime on the first drop, and the back seat on any train at pretty much any time of the day gave a huge amount of airtime on the hills. I saw a few costumed characters going through the park, which although there should have been more, was a nice improvement. So overall, I rode a large amount of stuff there, and it was actually pretty fun. Maybe I'm being nice to Six Flags Darien Lake because it is one of my home parks and Predator started my obsession, but I generally had a really good day there.

 

I also went to The Great Escape a few weeks earlier, and it was very nice. Well shaded, fun atmosphere, and some of the most photogenic rides I've ever seen in person because of the mountainous surroundings. The only rides that were closed were Nightmare at Crack Axle Canyon, the Trabant, and the Rainbow. I was depressed that I didn't get to ride New York State's only Schwarzkopf coaster, and my first ever Rainbow, but at least there was Comet. (Also, it was my first ACE event ever, which I had a great time) The ride ops were efficient, and all the lines were short, except for Canyon Blaster, which the line was thirty five minutes, and Alpine Bobsled's line was about twenty five minutes, and Boomerang had a line of about twenty minutes early in the day, but the line went down to ten or fifteen minutes at night. Boomerang is probably the most photogenic coaster I have ever seen in person, because of all the nice scenery all around, and the mountains really helped. That Boomerang, was also smooth. I noticed the costumed characters sporadically roaming through the park, and I had an overall fun experience. I really liked it there. Trees almost everywhere, quite clean, the coasters ran great, Comet especially during the ERT in the back seat. However, the only disappointing ride there was the Huss Condor they have. There was basically no swinging, and you started your descent almost as soon as you got to the top. Unlike Hersheypark's model, where the swinging was nearing ninety degrees and you were up in the air for several minutes. However, the park served well as a family park. There were shows at various places in the park, and overall, like Six Flags Darien Lake, I had a really good time. However, the worst thing at both parks was the food, drink and extra charge attraction prices, which I thought were just unreasonable. But, that was my first time to The Great Escape, so I don't have any previous visits to compare it to.

 

Overall, I think Shapiro still could have done more with the two Six Flags parks I visited this year, the improvements I did see were nice, and I think Shapiro improved these parks well. Somewhat. It was enjoyable, but they still need to be improved a lot. It is a good start, though.