Six Flags America (SFA) Discussion Thread

[Hercules]

^ That is in the past. You mean the type of people that are frequenting the park over the past couple of years have drastically changed? For some reason I go into the Greater DC area, and I don't see anything different.

[Bolliger&Mabillard]

^The president's black now...that's definately a difference. Maybe that has something to do with it?

[KDCOASTERFAN]

I hope the employees are trained a bit better on how to deal with Qbots, then they were with the paper FlashPass tickets.

 

On our East Coast visit, some employees got on the microphone and suggested that everyone in the queue 'Boo' the people who were using Flashpass!!!!

 

They do it in all good fun. Now, I can't say the same thing for people in line because I know most of them get mad. As I said in another post, they need to get rid of Flash Pass. On weekends when they only have 1 train, it makes the wait in line twice as long. On top of that I don't think it's fair unless you have rides where there are multiple trains, to put in an express line or a single rider line. In conclusion I think everyone should have to wait in the same line.

 

It looks a bit unorganized when you are exiting the station and there are a tone of flash pass people in your way, on top of that non-riders who got stuck holding possessions of people who did not put their stuff in fluffy, fluffy bunnies filled with medicine and goo.

 

I agree,in order to add qbots they'd need to reconfigure the main lines to have merge points similar to those used for I305's single riders line.

 

When all these new rides went up at SF parks that already have qbots that was taken into account when planning the layout of the ride queue but SFA's rides were installed without such consideration.

[Nozzy]

I agree,in order to add qbots they'd need to reconfigure the main lines to have merge points similar to those used for I305's single riders line.

 

When all these new rides went up at SF parks that already have qbots that was taken into account when planning the layout of the ride queue but SFA's rides were installed without such consideration.

 

I agree completely, the only things that have made me accept q-bots are the newer style beepers and the merge points before the station, rather than jumping in from the exit platform. If SFA is serious about it, they should reconfigure their stations to accommodate this. Great Adventure took a while to do so, but finally has most of their Flashpass configured this way (basically Scream Machine and the old smaller coasters without). You no longer get anywhere near as many holdups from people trying to get on the same train but a row was taken, clogged exit ramps, and FP don't complain about being forced to sit in specific rows. Of course, it is not likely to happen during the season due to necessary construction and this does require more staffing to work the flashpass entrance.

 

Just whatever they do, make it better than Mind Eraser's FP entrance at SFNE! The FP "entrance" is take down the chains through the switch backs to walk through/past the people waiting in line... I can only imagine how many fights/ line cutters have happened with this.

[CoasterNERD502]

Sharktums, next time just report their behavior and call it a rap.

 

As a former employee, I know they enforce employee behavior very seriously.

Edited May 1, 2010 by CoasterNERD502

[SharkTums]

^What are you talking about!?!?!

 

Oh, you're a SFA Employee, that explains the fact that this post that makes no sense from someone that obviously didn't read ANY of my actual post.

 

I don't even believe I stated which ride our problem occured on, but I'll tell you it wasn't Superman or the Octopus! What are you talking about 'calling you out'!?!? Oh man, this post just pretty much summarized the amazing employees at the park.

 

Of course we told Guest Relations about the situation, but based on other people reporting similar incidents, it's not something high on the parks priority list to fix.

[alpengeist04]

Edit: Nevermind, Elissa already responded.

[ArizonaGuy]

Sharktums, next time just report their behavior and call it a rap.

 

As a former employee, I know they enforce employee behavior very seriously.

 

LOL@ you editing your post after Elissa called you out. I guess your shoe didn't taste good?

[krazekiddd]

LOL wow Sharktums, I think your overreacting. They weren't encouraging the GP to fight, they were just having some fun. They knew that the people without flashpasses would be upset since they waited x amount of time, and when they were about to ride, someone with flashpasses takes their seat.(sorry for my huge run-on sentence lol) Its not like they said everyone spit at them or flick em off.

So everyone, lets stop overreacting trying to keep SFA's bad reputation going when they are clearly doing 1000x better now than before.

 

Okay, I generally avoid this thread because people seem to get very pushy when it comes to this park. I might as well chime in since, you know, I was the person that was booed along with my friends Jacob and Ryno. It was no where in good fun. This was in 2008, so hopefully they have gotten better.

 

Basically, we didn't use the flashpass all day, because it really wasn't that busy. We arrived at The Penguin’s Blizzard River and it was about a 30 minute wait. Since we had lunch soon, I figured we might as well take advantage of the upcharge service provided to us. We entered the line and got to the front. The ride op got on the microphone and said "Look at these 3 guys cutting in line in front of all your kids. I bet you guys have waiting a long time just to have people go in front of you" and then proceeded to boo us. Yes, boo us, and then encouraged the people in line to actually boo us. Not only is that highly embarrassing but has the potential to start a fight afterwards or even have us targeted by anyone that may just be having a bad day. People have gotten angry for a lot less. Did I mention he did this on a microphone for everyone in the general area to hear?

 

As a customer service manager, if anything like that happened in my company or anything similar, it would be grounds for an immediate discharge. When you boo people for having an extra service that should help a company generate more revenue, its not going to allow for repeat customers.

 

Oh, and trust me, it was reported directly to the PR rep when she heard us discussing it. Oh an in good fun, we gave our fast passes away to a family that had a short time because we didn't want them to waste. Let's hope the kids didn't get booed! So please, unless you were actually there, do not say we or Elissa/Robb were overreacting.

 

Edit: Please note that wasn't the only issue, but the rest had to do with guest behavior and not the ride ops. I've been back to DC twice since my visit and opted to skip the park based on my experience.

 

So now that that is over, let's get back to discussing the current news about Q-Bots.

Edited May 1, 2010 by krazekiddd

[B-RadG]

I'm going to the park for the first time next Saturday and just a couple questions:

-How long will the waits be on average?

-Do they force you to use lockers or do they have bins in the station?

-Is the food cheap, expensive, or what?

[CoasterNERD502]

Arizonaguy, I edited it because I re-read it, and it wasn't as clear as it was in my head, when I first typed it. I agree with my statements as well as Sharktums.

 

krazekiddd, I've never heard the real story until now, if I had heard that, I wouldn't have even tried to argue saying it was all fun and games. That was very immature and I hope they were punished for their behavior.

 

B-radG, the only long waits will probably be in Gotham later o in the day. Batwing will always have a line, so ride it first. Superman usually gets a line and so does Joker. The rest of the coasters will most likely be walk-ons for the entire day.

The Gotham coasters and the Wild One enforce lockrs, Roar and Mind Eraser have bins.

And unfortunately the food is kind of expensive.

[sixflagsguy5]

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.

Edited April 30, 2011 by sixflagsguy5

[SFA Regular]

Well of course you all may have heard that (DAN SNYDER) lost his seat on the board of directory of Six Flags Inc. Here is the link.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002502.html

 

How will this change the company?

[KDCOASTERFAN]

Well of course you all may have heard that (DAN SNYDER) lost his seat on the board of directory of Six Flags Inc. Here is the link.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/30/AR2010043002502.html

 

How will this change the company?

 

Good riddance. I think he only bought the company to ruin SFA & eliminate the competion from his stadium that's a mile or so up the road from the park.

[SFA Regular]

WoW, it's interesting how someone feels the same way I did about it. When he first took control of the company, I knew it was bad news. With (SNYDER) not being the owner of the company anymore, how will things improve for this park?

[larrygator]

Good riddance. I think he only bought the company to ruin SFA & eliminate the competion from his stadium that's a mile or so up the road from the park.

 

Are you joking, insane or just not thinking? He could have just bought SFA, and not wasted millions on the whole chain to accomplish this.

 

As far as the rest of the SFA fanboys asking how this will affect SFA. Hopefully new management understands that now is the time to raise Season Pass Prices chainwide to $120 or so (including at SFA) to increase profit through valued customers and keep out the riff raff.

[SFA Regular]

(Larry) most of us have to disagree with that. SFA is does not have enough in there to make it that expensive. Once they get let's say 4 or 5 more rides, then maybe. But there is no way they would get away with charging people that much for an SFA season pass. If they did that, then Kings Dominion would really be making more money. But as far as things changing for SFA, there may be more things added in the future. I can expect more money to be spent on improving the parks, now that (Snyder) is not there taking all the money for himself.

 

But I don't think this is the end of board of director members leaving. With Stark Investments in charge, it's possible that they may want to adopt themselves as board members. Same thing happened when Snyder took the company from (Burke). As of now Shapiro is still on the board, but it doesn't mean that he wont see the back door as well. For all we know, this whole Stark Investment could just be a quick way for them to make a lot of money from selling Six Flags Inc to another theme park company.

 

My question, is who would they sell it to?

[CardCraze]

^Actually season passes are too cheap for the park, considering you get every Six Flags Park included, AND Hurricane Harbor at Six Flags America.

 

Reasonably, there are 4 Six Flags parks you could do, without ever having to leave the east coast area(notice I said area).

 

Fifty follars is reasonable for SFA alone, but for all 14 parks... it's not so hard to see why they're struggling.

[SFA Regular]

Or what they could do is the Cedar Fair method. They sell a season pass for that particular park that your at and then they have a platinum that goes for all the parks. Maybe Six Flags Inc should do that. This is why I got excited when I heard that a group of bondholders wanted to merge the company with Cedar Fair if they got control. But then again Cedar Fair offers a lot of deals. Arriving at Kings Dominion after 4 oclock, the price for a general day admission is only like thirty dollars. If you have a season pass you can enter the bottom of th park early, to avoid the big crowd of people rushing down there.

 

Six Flags should consider doing these things if they want to improve.

[netdvn]

Or what they could do is the Cedar Fair method. They sell a season pass for that particular park that your at and then they have a platinum that goes for all the parks. Maybe Six Flags Inc should do that. This is why I got excited when I heard that a group of bondholders wanted to merge the company with Cedar Fair if they got control.

 

^Actually season passes are too cheap for the park, considering you get every Six Flags Park included, AND Hurricane Harbor at Six Flags America.

 

Look up...

[SFA Regular]

I don't understand what your saying.

[CardCraze]

Well it's quite obvious they're attempting to clean up the park a bit. They still have a long way to go, but they are slowly working their way there. It was empty today, especially considering there was an "Iyaz" concert. The only two coasters running more than one train were the two wooden coasters, which in an ironic twist, I did not see a full train dispatched on.

 

The ride-ops are now supposed to hi-five people after checking the restrainsts. Sometimes it was fun, but for the most part unenthusiastic employees just made it depressing. By far the most enthusiastic was on ROAR, Joker's Jinx, and Superman.

 

They really need to pick up the dispatch times on Penguin's Blizzard River. This was the longest wait all day, because of the time it took the ride-ops to load each boat.

 

The park has MAJOR technical issues. I was actually on Batwing when it broke-down. Fortunatley the ride-ops were really cool and talked us through the whole ordeal. It was fixed about fifteen minutes later. Skull Mountain was down almost all day, I did however manage to make it on. Mind Eraser also went down for a period of ten-fifteen minutes.

 

The game table operators were something else. I mean there's pestering, and then there's being straight-up rude. A group of teenage girls was passing one game table when the employee said "How you doing girl?" and when she didn't respond he said "Oh I see, just ignore me. Can I get a hug girl?"

 

The prices are awesome. The refills all day cups are an amazing value, especially on a hot day. The souvenier popcorn buckets for $4.99 are a good value too. The food/drinks are the same as everywhere, but what got me was the price of t-shirts, which were $10 everywhere. That was awesome.

 

Other than that, I loved everything. Some awesome coasters, and a nice little park. Like I said, the potential's there, but the park still has a bit of work to go.

 

Bottom line is there's "potential" but it's just "not there yet".

[B-RadG]

The ride-ops are now supposed to hi-five people after checking the restrainsts. Sometimes it was fun, but for the most part unenthusiastic employees just made it depressing. By far the most enthusiastic was on ROAR, Joker's Jinx, and Superman.

It can't be worse than having someone scream "CHECK" in your face but really that sounds like something that's only gonna make operations slower.

[Spideyfreak]

train dispatched on.

The ride-ops are now supposed to hi-five people after checking the restrainsts.

 

 

I hope not while the train is moving... That can be very dangerous for the ride ops.

[nitrofan]

train dispatched on.

The ride-ops are now supposed to hi-five people after checking the restrainsts.

 

 

I hope not while the train is moving... That can be very dangerous for the ride ops.

 

I thought he meant check restraint, high 5, check next restraint, high 5, and so on...