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Six Flags America (SFA) Discussion Thread


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On 3/1/2021 at 12:08 PM, bert425 said:

Rodeo, Round-up, & Scrambler flats, all ran excellent programs -- not quite to traveling carnival level, but better than standard Six Flags programs.

Does Rodeo still have the No Single Riders rule?
When I visited a couple years ago, I ended up riding with the supervisor. I was pretty surprised with the no single rider rule, because the crazy Break Dance's in Europe don't even have that rule

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24 minutes ago, BigJoe123 said:

Does Rodeo still have the No Single Riders rule?
When I visited a couple years ago, I ended up riding with the supervisor. I was pretty surprised with the no single rider rule, because the crazy Break Dance's in Europe don't even have that rule

that I don't know. . since I rode with Laura (the Scrambler too). . so it didn't come up about riding as a single.

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4 hours ago, BigJoe123 said:

Does Rodeo still have the No Single Riders rule?

As of last November, unfortunately yes. No single riders on the rodeo. The falling star has that rule too.

I know the scrambler does not have that rule, as I rode it alone without issue last November.

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Well I was there this past Sunday; temperatures were about 45 degrees which kept the crowds minimal.

Everything (except for Ragin Cajun) was one train operations. Early in the season, I was surprised at how quick they was moving, though Superman: Ride of Steel did get stuck on the brake run a couple of times! (it's currently running the Red train, the blue one is on the transfer track).

The Macho Nacho place does have the shrimp quesadillas/shrimp tacos, but oddly enough I was NOT able to use my dining pass on either of those; specifically I was told that those items weren't even on the meal plan! I was thinking internally to myself "Look numb-nuts, those items are listed on your board as being able to use the dining pass on!". But I just walked away .... thinking "maybe early in the season, their systems aren't updated yet".

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Yeah it's the 2nd GCI ever built (and the ONLY one that runs with PTC trains as far as I'm aware) which means it's bumpy as frick; but in colder weather, I can tolerate this coaster. And I'm also aware that said trains are shipped up to PTC in the off-season for refurbishment.

I'm hoping for a future makeover (whether it's Millennium Flyer trains and Titan Track by GCI, Iron Horsed by RMC or even retracked and Timberliner trains by Gravity Group).

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Thumbs up to the Wild One; first roller coaster I ever did solo at the age of 7 (back in the Wild World era and way before I learned to sit in the middle rows of 2 x 3 x 4 PTC trains!).

 

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On 3/6/2021 at 10:33 PM, JG-77 said:

Thanks for the brief report! Anything of note closed?

No - everything was open except the water rides, which Penguins / Shipwreck Falls will open March 31. Rapids ride April 24th

Unfortunately, the park looks about the same as it did last summer, no TLC at all. Really was hoping for some as parts of this park are slowly looking like Geauga Lake circa 2008 (area around Mind Eraser) lol.

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Park looked pretty good to me last year and they have months to work on it before opening every day. It's so much better than 10-15-20 years ago. 

SFA was my temporary home park for a while last year and it really is decent when you don't have 2 better parks closer by.

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I had two pleasant visits to Six Flags America last year.  The front of the park looks really good.  The back half is awkward, but it has the park's good steel coasters so I prefer to focus on those over the lack of trees and facilities.

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1 hour ago, jconsolmagno said:

SFA is removing Zoomazon Falls as part of the 15 ride removal. It's not on their map this year. Too bad, I enjoyed it last year.

I'm thankful I got to ride it (in 2019, I want to say). An old-school waterslide with nice terrain. But removing it opens up quite a bit of space for the dry side. Maybe a flat or two, maybe even a coaster, who are we kidding, it's SFA.

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2 hours ago, SLCHeadache said:

I'm thankful I got to ride it (in 2019, I want to say). An old-school waterslide with nice terrain. But removing it opens up quite a bit of space for the dry side. Maybe a flat or two, maybe even a coaster, who are we kidding, it's SFA.

I know - there is about 6 or so abandoned buildings buildings between MInd Eraser and the Swings. It's a bit embarrasing for the chain IMO. Why would you have that in one of the parks in your one of your biggest metro areas. 

Here's footage from last week -

 

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So, the kiddo and I ended up taking a drive down to SFA yesterday to kick off our 2021 season after a limp 2020. This was our first time actually riding stuff at an amusement park since last September and October, when we took brief day trips to Dorney and Knoebels. I didn't have super high hopes for the park, given two previous bad experiences down here, but my son and I both left with pretty big smiles on our faces, all things considered.

We got there about 15 minutes before their scheduled 11:00 AM opening. The entrance procedure was pretty similar to what we experienced at Dorney last year, with a touchless thermometer screening that we just walked right through. Thumbs up and we continued on. They moved the metal detectors in front of the main gates since our last visit, and they have one of the new ones where you don't need to take anything off, you just walk right through with all your bags and items in your pockets, etc. Well, that's the theory, anyway, as it ended up flagging me and I had to give them my backpack for X-raying, then I ended up getting wanded. Still, many other patrons were just walking through without any hassle at all, so I think it's a win for them even if it wasn't for me personally. While we were waiting in line, I noticed that everyone was masked up and giving each other space. I had heard stories about this kind of being overlooked at other Six Flags parks during the 2020 season and was very happy to see everyone going along with it down here.

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Since our last visit, my kid ended up reaching that all-important 54" height requirement, so our number one goal was to hit all the coasters that we hadn't previously ridden here. That includes the three back in Gotham City, Firebird, and Mind Eraser. We started off by beelining it back to Gotham, and walking into an empty station for Joker's Jinx. As we queued up for the front row, they were sending off their final test train of the day. The employees made it back safe and sound in one piece, and so off we went. The kiddo has been on the KD Flight of Fear, and he was excited to try this outdoor version. Needless to say, we both loved it! While the indoor's version of disorientation is cool and all with the low lighting, it was like a wholly different experience to be able to see just how much you flip around during those first few elements. The ring tube halfway through the layout is also a cool visual trick. And it's just a solid coaster from launch to finish. We ended up riding this three times in a row; once in the front row, once in the third row, and once in the very back. The ride ops were great about letting us switch rows or stay in the same row without having to walk around, and this was something that was true for all of the rides we went on throughout the day. No matter where we sat, it was all great and it was my son's favorite of the day. 5* out of 5.

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From there, we made our way a little bit further back in Gotham, taking a detour through the eerily deserted Whistlestop Park kids section. This section is just plain weird, I don't have any other words for it. The Bugs Bunny kids section up front is much more successful it seems. I can't remember ever seeing any kids doing anything back here, to be honest. We rounded the corner and saw Superman: Ride of Steel in front of us. We wanted to save this for later, so we tried to walk down towards Batwing, but there was a rope up blocking the path, and so Superman ended up being our second new coaster of the day. Overall, we both really liked it. It's not the best hyper out there, but it was plenty entertaining. We started off with a pair of rides in the third row. As we were getting off of our second ride, we noticed that the front row was now empty, and we asked if we could move up. As it stands, they decided to take the train out of active service and give it a sanitization cycle. So we went off to Batwing and did that, then came back to Superman for a second pair of rides. This time around we ended up in the front row, which is super thrilling, and then moved all the way to the last row which just cranked up the intensity to a whole new level, especially going over that first drop and through the airtime hill after the first helix. For whatever reason, though, no matter where we rode on the train, we got zero airtime on that first hill. My son was waffling all day long over which one he liked better between Jinx and Superman, and although Jinx eventually won out in his heart and mind, we're still giving Superman a very respectable 4* out of 5. (I personally prefer the Superman hyper up at New England, and hope to get back up there this year with him so he can get his first rides on it.)

So, yeah, Batwing! For him, this was his second Vekoma flyer after Nighthawk down at Carowinds, and for me, it was my third behind Nighthawk and the now defunct Firehawk at Kings Island. I'm not particularly a fan of these coasters, but he had an okay experience on Nighthawk and was looking forward to trying it. It ended up being the worst out of the ones we've ridden. Staring directly into the sun as you're going up the lifthill and trying your best to avert your gaze or block out the sun is always a bad time and just a bad design in general. Overall, it was hecka rattly, shaky, and just left us both feeling dazed as we got off. We both agreed that this would be a one and done, with him stating "glad I never have to ride this again!". I'm probably not so lucky, as I'm sure I'll be riding it once more when my daughter gets up to 54"... unless they scrap it before then. 1☠️ out of 5.

After our last ride on Superman for the day, we took a brief break from rides to grab some souvenirs and some lunch. We used the iPhone app to do their mobile ordering. This was my first experience with this part of the app. It was easy and painless to navigate, it linked directly to our passes to calculate how many meal credits we got from our season dining plans, and gave us a number to pick up our food from the window. We ended up grabbing some food from the Gotham City Food Court; he got a cheeseburger and fries, and I got a chicken caesar salad. They had some socially distanced tables with umbrellas set up in between the food court and the arena. Unfortunately, it was kind of a windy day, and this section was one of the worst for being hit with wind gusts. All I have to say is if you have a container filled with food that doesn't weigh a lot, such as french fries, you might want to hold onto it with one hand... :( The food itself was fine. It's your average park food, nothing to write home about but not blatantly offensive. It's... fine. Just fine.

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After getting in a quick ride on their Riddler-themed Round-Up named Riddle Me This, we left the Gotham City section behind to check out the rest of the park. Next up on our list was Firebird. I had never experienced this ride in its original stand-up form and honestly from the sounds of things, I hadn't missed much. We walked through the queue, passed the remnants of what appeared to be a Skull Mountain structure, climbed up the stairs and got to the station. This was probably our longest wait of the day, with about 10 minutes of waiting all told. They were loading all rows on the train; there was one empty row as we made it up to the top, and so we filed into row 6. They had big plastic plexiglass barriers between each row's queue, and the groupers were good about making sure only one party ended up in each row. Ridewise, it reminded me a lot of Rougarou at Cedar Point, just a whole lot smaller and more compact. This one definitely felt like it was twisting in and over itself to make the most of a small footprint. I got a little bit of headbanging thanks to the OTSRs at some points, but overall it was pretty manageable. Definitely not high on my list of favorite floorless coasters, but I'd give it 3* out of 5, and a passing grade overall.

We killed a little bit of time on High Tide, their pirate ship which ran a really short cycle. It didn't even feel like a whole minute from start to finish. After that, we did a ride on Roar. We had both been on this twice before and couldn't remember whether we liked it or not. After thinking about it, our first ride was during a rainstorm where we were desperately trying to hide inside our hoodies to prevent getting soaked, and our second ride was at night during their Holiday in the Park event in 2019. We had never ridden this during a beautiful sunny day. We walked into the station and got right onto the front row. It was a little bit rough, but a whole lot of fun! The layout was excellent and kept us guessing. I was hanging onto the grab bar for dear life though. Asked the kiddo what he thought of it, and his response was "It was pretty good! It definitely wasn't as bad as Wildcat or Thunderhead. I'd ride it again!" (For the record, he's had some pretty bad experiences at both Hersheypark and Dollywood on those two specific wooden coasters, so those are his bottom of the barrel woodies that he refuses to give any more chances to.) We didn't end up riding it again, but definitely will do so the next time we come back. And while it might be a good candidate for the RMC treatment at some point in the future, based off how it was running yesterday, I'd say it's definitely got at least a few more years of life in it for now. 4* out of 5.

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Our final new coaster of the day was Mind Eraser, and we took our time getting over there. First, we made a stop to pick up some fruit snacks from the shop in Coyote Creek. Then, we did a couple rides on Rodeo. Neither of us had ever been on this kind of flat ride before, and we ended up really enjoying it! It felt like a scrambler mixed with teacups, or maybe a Tilt-A-Whirl multiplied by three and all spinning around each other. Whatever it was, it was fun enough for us to ask to stay on for a second ride. Afterwards, we walked over to the Crazy Cars, where we got our bumping action in. Between the wild west theme and the sounds of Dolly Parton's "Jolene" wafting through the ride's speakers, it almost made me think I was back in Pigeon Forge for a second. Well, just a second, because then I got jolted back to my senses from my son gleefully ramming his car into mine. Always a fun time. We also briefly checked out their arcade, or what passes for an arcade right now. Between it being comprised mostly of claw machines, and the fact that their change machines gave you 12 "tokens" for $5 (even my son could figure out that that math didn't add up), we wisely decided to pass.

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I say wisely, but then we walked over to Mind Eraser, so I don't know who had the wisdom in this scenario. It certainly wasn't us. I'm not going to make this a long paragraph. We've been on a number of SLCs before, but this was the worst one we've rode to date. The literal worst. It was just non stop headbanging and elbowbanging from start to finish. Straight up, f*ck this ride. Unless they pull a SFNE or a Morey's and commit to replacing track and/or trains, I'm not going to be riding this one again, not even with my daughter when she gets tall enough. 5☠️ out of 5.

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After a ride on their actual scrambler, we found ourselves back at the beginning of the park. We decided to try and fill in some of the remaining rides we missed on our first loop through. The kiddo took a ride on their Wave Swinger (I sat it out). We walked over to Ragin' Cajun to find them only running two cars and a full switchback; we decided to skip it. We went up to the Zydeco Zinger and got a ride in on that. They only were loading about 1/3 of the actual ride capacity, with empty benches left in every direction between any occupied benches. As such, this was our second longest wait of the day, but we still only had to wait one cycle. We were going to hop on Wild One next, but the chain was up for unspecified reasons, and so with limited time left in our day we decided to skip it as well. The kiddo was going to do Voodoo Drop by himself as well, but then just as he was about to get on it went down for maintenance as well. Some bad luck to round out the day. At this point, we had factored in a 5:00 PM leave to make it back home, but at 3:30, we were running out of things to do due to all these closures, so we decided just to call it after a ride on their antique cars. Since I was gonna be making the drive back up 95, I let him take the wheel for a few minutes. It was a good way to round out the day, and with a pretzel and bag of popcorn for the road, we left as two satisfied parkgoers.

Yeah, it wasn't a perfect day, but in the scheme of things, we both felt that it was a much better experience than we had previously had, and so we'll probably be back at some point in the future. Maybe just as a pit stop on the way to Kings Dominion or Busch Gardens, probably not a whole destination like today, but it's definitely not being completely written off by us anymore! All in all, a great start to the 2021 season and a more than welcome return to something resembling normalcy for our family.

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Great report!  Was Wild One closed all day or just when you tried to ride it?  That's my second favorite ride at that park after Superman- partially for nostalgia reasons since it grew up just 15 minutes from my parents' house.

It sounds like Superman was running slow if you didn't get airtime on the first hill.  I've never had that issue on my April or October rides on it.

I had two nice visits to Six Flags America last year.  I think a lot of the issues with masking and distancing at Six Flags- from my experience- was during F(r)ight FEst, which tends to have the rowdiest crowd of the year anyway.

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OMG how do we ALWAYS barely miss you? We were there yesterday too.

^ Wild One opened around 5:30. We saw it cycling with riders with people for the first time since we got there around 1 and considered walking over but we were on the other side of the park and heading out so we didn't bother.

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3 hours ago, Canobie Coaster said:

Great report!  Was Wild One closed all day or just when you tried to ride it?

It was running earlier in the day. We saw riders when we crossed over into Gotham City, and again when we left to go ride Firebird. Sadly the kiddo had wanted to do it first, but I suggested that we do the Gotham City stuff first to knock them off our checklist. Cue the failhorns when we finally cycled around to give it some love. It wasn't a complete loss, since we've rode it on both prior visits, and in fact it was the kiddo's 100th credit (during its 100th anniversary year no less!).

2 hours ago, coasterbill said:

OMG how do we ALWAYS barely miss you? We were there yesterday too.

I saw that on FB after we got home! I wasn't really checking my phone much while we were in the park, aside from taking a handful of photos and videos and sending them intermittently to my wife. Truth be told I'm so out of the loop on Six Flags after not doing anything but the drive-thru stuff last year. I didn't even realize you could check into rides while you were in the park and earn points. I'm a bad enthusiast, apparently. Looks like you guys had a fun time and an equally "pretty good" day!

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I was there too! Definitely got some Wild One rides once it finally (re)opened, 2nd best ride in the park. I hadn't ridden Mind Eraser for a while, actually enjoyed it more than Firebird this time! Got a couple pops of inverted air in the back row and my ears weren't cold anymore ;) . 2 train ops on Superman was so welcome.

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I didn't know you could check into rides either. lol

And yup, we had the best day we've ever had at SFA outside of HITP. It's still easily the worst Six Flags park where they don't speak French but I feel like they know they suck and they're trying. They actually paint rides which I guess is more than I can say for Great Adventure, Superman ran 2 trains which I've never seen before and since our last visit they added a bathroom near Superman and turned Apocalypse from "f*cking atrocious" to just "really bad" so things are looking up!

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Wow it seems like everyone was at SFA yesterday! I arrived there with my brother around 3:30 and stayed until close, so I'll give my little report (no pictures, sorry).

 

For a Sunday in March during Covid, I was impressed with how busy the park seemed to be, so I'm looking forward to SFA continuing with this extended operating schedule in the future. Luckily the vast majority of people I noticed actually wore their masks correctly, which made me feel a lot better considering that there was no row-by-row distancing even for the woodies.  

 

We pulled up around 3:20. I was worried based on other's experiences that we could have trouble with vaccination traffic, but luckily that was not an issue. Vaccinations used what I assume is an employee entrance a block from the main entrance, and there was plenty of signage and cops to ensure everything flowed smoothly, which was good to see. We attempted to ride RC, Wild One, and Ragin Cajun, but skipped all 3 for the time being because of lines, closed for maintenance, and lines respectively. This made Superman our first ride.

 

Superman:

We ended up doing this ride 3-4 times across the front, 2nd, and back rows. Not much has changed in my opinion since the last time I rode it, but it seemed a tad sluggish, perhaps because it was early in the season and it hadn't warmed up much yet. I'm glad to report that after the blue train sat disassembled backstage most of 2020, both trains were in action yesterday, and not only that, but there were four ops checking restraints, leading to quite efficient operations! I was hoping to get some night rides before I left, but I forgot that because of the daylight savings time shift, the park now closes before sunset :(

 

Around this point, we considered trying Batwing, but the line was down the stairs through a switchback, with one train ops. Actually I didn't even see the 2nd train anywhere on the ride. Even if the park was running it remarkably efficiently, that's still going to be a longer wait than it's worth considering I can return to this park fairly regularly, so we skipped Batwing, and then it promptly went down for the day. Better luck next time, as I actually quite like Batwing.

 

Firebird:

By this point, JJ still had a line, Wonder Woman was down for wind (understandably so, it was very windy all day), and RC joined Wild One in being closed. So Firebird it was. We waited longer than we ever had for Firebird: an entire 10-ish minutes for the 2nd to back row. I took a middle seat, and actually got one of my better rides on Firebird. The drop and vertical loop are actually a ton of fun IMO, and somehow the only headbanging I got was in the dreaded corkscrew, and even that wasn't as bad as I remembered it, so I suppose I got lucky.  This ride ran 1 train, and the fire effect was not running (perhaps because of that wind).

 

Roar:

We took one front row ride on Roar, and it was pretty fun. Certain parts could use some trackwork, but I enjoyed the ride I got, which featured some fun transitions, a few pops of floater, and fun laterals. Not as awesome as the rides we got during HITP nights, but still fun enough that I'd prefer a Raptor over an RMC roar. This ride actually ran both trains, despite having a very short line.

 

Mind Eraser:

This ride seems quite polarizing. Some people consider it one of the better SLC's, while others swear it's the worst. This is my only one, so I can't really comment. I actually braved the back row for this one. I had heard that to avoid shoulder-banging I should actually staple myself. Shoulder banging has been my biggest gripe with this ride because the OSTR's have these weird flanges covering your shoulders to prevent you from lifting your hands up, presumably because of how close the seats are to the track. By stapling myself, the shoulder thingies actually remain in contact the whole time, preventing my shoulders from bouncing around. The headbanging is still there, but the restraints are padded well enough that it doesn't hurt me too much. I actually like the layout of this ride, and with better trains (looking at you SFNE) this could be an awesome ride.

 

Cyclone:

I don't know if all the other scrambler's I've been on are just crap, but I love SFA's scrambler, they just run it stupid fast, and it lasts fairly long. My brother and I kept being pushing into the middle of the seat before being violently flung to the side, and if that doesn't sound like a well run scrambler, I don't know what does!

 

Voodoo Drop:

Solid Intamin drop tower with a resonably powerful drop with nice float on the way down, even if it's fairly short. Despite being a walk on, they actually ran all three sides, which I almost never see!

 

Joker's Jinx:

Good news, the line has died down, and we grabbed the 2nd row. Running as great as it usually does, with awesome, intense inversions, fun twistiness, and it looks fabulous with the repaint. Unfortunately the 2nd train was nowhere to be seen, hopefully they can get it on later this year.

 

Wild One:

Look who finally decided to open up! Apparently there was an issue with the lift's power or something along those lines. Got three rides on this thing across row 2, 2nd to back, and 3rd to back. Hauls through the course as usual with fun floater and wicked laterals. Fairly rough, but in the fun bumpy way instead of the painful headache way like back seat Roar. If you want a smoother ride, take a non-wheel seat (middle seat of each car), but I didn't have many issues with wheel seats. This ride also ran both trains, which is nice to see. Personally I prefer the back of the train, but the front is great too, and it's all a matter of personal preference.

 

Ragin Cajun:

Got one ride on this. Queue was just under halfway full, but with pretty good ops and four cars on the course we got though in like 12 minutes. This thing spins like a teacup, and we had a great ride. I also quite like how while most rides trim you toward the end, Ragin Cajun has a mini tire launch, which is just a single fast rotating tire that gives you a little speed boost before the finale!

 

Overall, despite some ride closures in the beginning of our visit, he had a lovely day at SFA, and I look forward to returning in the not too distant future!

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Wow, so it was basically an impromptu TPR meet-up, just without any of the actual, y'know, meeting up. :lol:

Very nice to hear everyone's opinions and experiences! Wait, Firebird was supposed to have an actual fire effect? I get it for Bizarro at Great Adventure because it's so isolated off in its own corner, but it seems like for Firebird due to its proximity to everything else it would just be super awkward. Where do they put it? I'm also really surprised at the number of people both here and on FB who are saying "Mind Eraser isn't that bad". I'm gonna take you at your word, JG, that the stapling trick works because honestly I don't see myself being brave enough to try it on a return visit.

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