Photo TR: Derek, Nicole, and James do SFNE

[DerekRx]

Being up in Albany this past weekend, the original plan was to hit up The Great Escape. However, we decided to change our plans and hit up SFNE instead, as James (Canobie Fan) agreed that it wouldn't be too unbearably crowded this early in the season. Nicole had never been to the park before, so I wanted to get her on Superman as well as some of the other good coasters like Cyclone and...um, I guess that's it. But yeah, she needed the credits and they had a lot. Plus I assumed the weather would be hot and they have a pretty cool looking waterpark, and I need me some Nicole in bikini action. (Sadly, it was only in the lower 70s, so that didn't happen )

 

Getting to the park at opening (actually earlier but guests can't understand that you only pay the guy at the parking toll, not ask him all your questions for the day), we ran right to Superman, and our plan to hit all the coasters before any sort of crowd appeared would have worked wonderfully...if the employees at the park moved even remotely as fast as turtles. However, the majority of them in the whole park were so slow with checking restraints and dispatching trains that I think some were actually moving backwards.

 

With one train operations on the woodies, extreme stapling on everything, smokers in the queues, linejumpers, inability to use Qbot properly, and a general ho-hum attitude from the employees, it definitely felt like the old Six Flags New England I loathed so much. I'm glad to see Great Adventure improving last year and this, but New England pretty much stayed where I've always known it to be, even back in its Riverside days. We'll see how Great Adventure is doing soon enough, onto the pics from this wonderful day.

and I'll leave you with one final shot of one angry coaster. Of course, if I lived at this park and knew how awesome I was but was underappreciated and being reduced to what I currently am, I'd be angry too. Heck, I'm angrier just going to this park. Thanks SFNE!

Lots of spinning, it's always nice to ride a Huss Frisbee, especially when you don't get puked on. Watching a riot almost start behind you over linejumping is fun too!

I finally remembered to ride Houdini, which had no wait and 2 obnoxious kids sitting (laying) behind us the entire ride. Yet the ops did nothing about this. Guess it'll take someone getting killed before action is taken.

So filled with airtime, and pretty much a perfect steel coaster. If this was at Cedar Point, it would have gotten the Golden ticket every year since 1998, even though the ride wasn't even built until 2000!

Lots of people in this shot are going "weee, we're having fun for the next few moments, and then we have to get off this ride and wait more. Now we're getting sad" (and then there are the people about to get on the George Foreman grill only to say "ouch, this is painful, why did we go on this??")

But Aquaman was holding out for an Aquatrax, so he summoned the carp, mackeral, and other creepy river creatures to rebuild the ride on dry land

SFNE tried to alter Superman to have a more Maverick-esque 1st drop. Shortly after this picture, the whole ride fell into the Connecticut River

Sideboob on the family coaster, Welcome to Six Flags!

The park couldn't decide if it was Poison Ivy's Twisted Train or Poison Ivy's Tangled Train, so they just said "Catwoman's hotter, let's just give her a ride instead"

Who needs a Wipeout when you can have the Justice League shop. At least they put it in the DC area instead of like Crackaxle Canyon though!

Ug, the Catapult. At least now I got both of these credits. This one was much lamer, with a lapbar that continued to keep retracting throughout the whole ride. As Kelly Clarkson would say, "Never Again"

After like 7 guys pushed it, it finally made it though the rest of the course. Greased the track, sent the trains like another 6 times, and hooray, we got to ride (and with the rest of the train empty, except for us in the very back)

and sometimes it does stop completely! Like when they added the 2nd train midday and testing it empty and "cold", resulting in a "temporarily closed" sign, thus a cleared out station except for the 3 of us. TPR party in the station for the next hour! (We'd have ordered Papa Johns, but I didn't have my Platinum Card with to pay for it.)

Though there is still some moments of extreme air, the ride has so many trims now it just meanders around for much of the duration. Sometimes you think it's going to stop on the course completely and just stay there

Ah, the Riverside Cyclone, one airtime filled woodie...at least back in the day. Check out that first drop, no not the one the train is on, the one they painted over under that!

The skycoaster has a pretty cool location, up on a hill. Of course, these people chickened out when up at the top and had to be winched back down. Wonder if they still had to pay full price?!

Good thing for single rider line, the regular wait was way too long for this! And the crew wasn't too shabby with dispatches

Pandemonium, no longer a Mr. Six attraction, sorry Mike

Nicole says "I don't wanna be a credit whore anymore"

Not even a pretty vertical loop entrance can make me happy to ride a Boomerang, especially one sent from SFKK

OK, this is the best thing in the park, the dog show. At least it was all energetic, unlike the other SF employees. Shapiro, train the dog to operate the rides, please!

Not as spinny as Cypress Gardens', but still fun, and not too wet. Though Nicole wanted to get wet to see if the ops were at all creepy like the ones on Log Jammer at SFMM.

Astroworld's remains sure are better than the log flume that used to be around here.

The newly moved Crime Wave looks good next to Batman, but why didn't SF think to put both of these in the DC Comics Superhero Adventures section of the park!?!

A little rough in the flatspins, but it has a compact layout, steep lift, and a good zero-G roll. It may not be too intense or unique, but at least it's not as lame as Hydra

Hooray for New England's first B&M. This will be good, right? I mean, check out that loop!

No! A prime example of why it's called a "hang and bang" Plus the shaking and shimmying now also delivers kidney blows, thanks Mind Eraser and Vekoma!

Mind Eraser had probably the most efficient crew all day, and was even running 2 trains! James, what are you doing with that napkin, do you have built up earwax or something?

From Mind Eraser you get a good view of Supercan: Rattle of Steel! (in its defense, I think most of the rattling comes from the back "wing" of each car on the train rustling in the wind from all the speed)

Quick, to the crappy SLC before the line gets too long. Nothing worse than waiting a long time for something you know stinks

One ride on Superman done and we decide to hit Thunderbolt before chaos engulfs it. Always a 1 train operation, now with extra wait time because of Qbot AND super slow checks

Only with such slow operations and extreme stapling to the point that the lapbar is entangled in your intestines, it kinda moved down a little in my rankings

First stop of the day, Superman, what used to be my favorite coaster in North America

Typical holding at the gates until 10am with a song and dance, then unleashing the fury upon the world of SF

Welcome to SFNE. At least the park looks nice, and they're proud of their good coaster

[easytoremember]

Ha. I had never been on a George Forman before I went to SFNE, and once on it, I was thinking the exact same thing. WHY?

[ginzo]

Only with such slow operations and extreme stapling to the point that the lapbar is entangled in your intestines, it kinda moved down a little in my rankings

 

I've been getting a ton of stapling this year. Are operators trained to do this nonsense? It's like they're told to jump up and down on the restraints until the rider gets internal bleeding. On my first Maverick ride yesterday they checked the restraints 3 times, and pushed mine down further each time.

 

What's the point of this anyway? Stapling isn't any safer than putting the bar down to the correct position. It just hurts more.

[BarryH]

Great photos!

 

Too bad about James' injury.

[Meteornotes]

Thanks for the report. Sorry you had such a sucky day. Good to know I don't need to go up there again if that's how they're going to run the place. Looks like "Clean Safe Fun" is really taking hold. Keep up the good work, Six Flags!

 

dt

[307]

Dude we were thinking "No way can this George Foreman Grill be that bad, everyone is just a bunch of wusses!"

 

And then we went on and JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESUS.

 

I mean

 

!

[CycloneMan]

The same thing happened to me on Mind Eraser at Six Flags America!

 

-Dainan "VEKOMA IS EVIL " Rafferty

[funkybadger]

Thanks for the nice TR guys! Saves us from having to post pics since we were just there Friday. Though I must say that Rich's photos of Catwoman looked a bit more pornographic than Derek's if that's possible. Ride of Steel was incredible, but Dark Knight definitely had some of the worst-but-so-easily-solved-if-you-aren't-a-moron capacity issues I've ever seen.

 

Six Flags Great Adventure was good this evening though. We even got 5 (oh yes, FIVE!!!) rides on El Toro, including two rides in a row and the last ride of the night. Wow. Just ... WOW!

[Wes]

S:ROS needs a paint job...it's almost the color of Mind Eraser from the looks of those pictures. Maybe they'll give it a solid rehab over the winter. It's a shame to let a steel coaster as amazing as Superman degrade in quality.

[Canobie Fan]

Yay bloody ear photo!

 

 

And for you lamers like me.. Here is a video of Cyclone stuck

[arrowfanman]

 

Great PTR Derek! Sad to hear that the park isn't any better than your old experiences, as for some reason I've felt like this park could be really nice...at least from the PTRs I've seen.

 

Nice captions.

 

-Jahan

[bulldogmom]

Great pics, and great captions as usual. (especially the "sideboob" one)

My ear is still hurting from looking at that picture of James' ear!

[BeemerBoy]

Sideboob on the family coaster, Welcome to Six Flags!

LOL. Yeah, way to go Shapiro. And Wes beat me to it. I was also wondering what color S:ROS was now.

 

Nice report!

[coastermaniac123]

Jeez, sorry you had a bad day at the park. Your TR makes it sound like it's Magic Mountain. I have been three times since opening and B:TDK and S:ROS seem to have slow crews. My last visit showed that B:TDK was extremely rough. Cyclone has been kicking for me, everytime I go, there are some trims off it not all! I haven't experience many linejumpers yet and any smokers, and the people who don't know how to use Q-bot are complete idiots. They make you watch a video on how to visit . Last visit, I didn't get stapled once and S:ROS was extremely smooth, but after 7 years of age it is not as good.

[niiicolaaah]

 

Great Photo TR Derek! Sad to hear that the park isn't any better than your old experiences, as for some reason I've felt like this park could be really nice...at least from the PTRs I've seen.

 

Nice captions.

 

-Jahan

 

Yeah, it's a really nice LOOKING park. It's very pretty. If you fired every single employee, replaced them with well-trained employees with common sense, and banished 3/4 of the park patrons, it would be a really great park.

 

But personally, I would rather visit a crappy looking park that is run well, than a really nice looking park surrounded by a bunch of idiot ride ops who don't know that one single rider + one single rider = two riders, and leave rows open on a coaster when there's a 1.5 hour queue. And not to mention park guests that smoke in line, and talk so loudly during the entire pre-show and ride of Houdini's Great Escape that if I hadn't ridden the one at GAdv I'd have no idea what was going on.

[supermanrosfan0810]

Well I'm leaving for SFNE any minute now, we'll see if it was just a bad day.

[gk]

And not to mention park guests that smoke in line, and talk so loudly during the entire pre-show and ride of Houdini's Great Escape that if I hadn't ridden the one at GAdv I'd have no idea what was going on.

 

I agree with that - We rode Houdini for the first time yesterday and I had no idea what was going on. The sound level in the ride itself was way low though.

[Hattuchili]

It looks like you guys had fun, Derek. The only thing I am missing is a beer on one of the pictures.

 

--Soren

[verticalzero]

Nice Pic's, if you get stapled with the bar or ohr, tell an Op and they can release it till your happy.

 

I push my stomach out and slouch in the seat (it's not a beer gut type) when they come and check the buzzbars etc, this way you get a lovely gap between the bar and your body when you sit up straight.

 

Anyone know why the old 1st drop on the Riverside Cyclone not removed when it was re-profiled with a shorter drop..?

[DerekRx]

Well I'm leaving for SFNE any minute now, we'll see if it was just a bad day.

 

I'm pretty certain that you'll have a better day based that it is a Monday and shouldn't be as crowded. The clientelle may be different as well, therefore less linejumping and smoking in the queues, but operations should still be pretty lagging, maybe even more 1 train operations than on the weekends, not that it makes much of a difference having 2 trains with the length of stacking that takes place at that park.

 

 

Soren, you won't be seeing me with a beer at that park, although they do sell it there and they do have a Sam Adams biergarten, I refuse to pay like $12 or whatever it is for a pint at the park. See the beer thread for the much needed drinking that was done afterwards

[cfc]

SFNE came up in coversation with Rich and Melanie at SFA yesterday (after riding their "cow pasture" version of Superman). Rich rather likes SFNE, and I'm curious to check it out. But those Six Flags parks are rather up and down when it comes to service, aren't they?

[BarryH]

^Six Flags parks are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. Some are good, some are bad, some are medicore, and some are ghetto!

[Devins3]

Every trip I've had to SFNE this year has been great....but thats just me. I learned a long time ago not to go there on the weekends during summer though.

[gk]

^ I've been there twice this year, both times on a Sunday and enjoyed both visits for the most part. Maybe I'm just not that picky.

[coastercrazed49]

Nice Trip Report. SFNE staff are idiots for putting to many trims on Cyclone. Now they can barely test it without it getting stuck. Its a fun ride the first half and you are all like weeeee, but the secondd half you go into a turn and you are all like Holy**** that hurt! Why did they half to change it so much.