Six Flags Great America (SFGAm) Discussion Thread

[IrishCasual]

Crowds won't be terrible during the week, but expect A LOT of school grouos. Crowds on days with school groups should thin later in the day though.

Thanks so much! Any idea on what is the best day to go to the park?

[RaceBoarder]

Crowds won't be terrible during the week, but expect A LOT of school grouos. Crowds on days with school groups should thin later in the day though.

Thanks so much! Any idea on what is the best day to go to the park?

Typically the rule of Tuesday/Wednesday will give you the best results with Saturdays being the worst... Weather can be a big factor... Predictions of storms can keep crowds away on a given day throughout the Summer... June 3-5 and 8-12 are "Bring a Friend for Free" days for season pass holders, so that will bump crowds...

[IrishCasual]

Thanks everyone. What is the best way to get around the park?

[willthegolfer]

I'd get back to Goliath as soon as possible. Most people go to Bull and Superman first. After Goliath, I would go to Eagle and X-Flight and Demon then Southwest territory for Bull and Viper. After those, I'd head for whizzer then head to superman and go up to mardis gras and yankee harbor for BTR and V2. And after that you'll be back to Goliath. Essentially you'd be going in a circle clockwise from Goliath. But this is just a suggestion, the park is pretty compact, so there are many ways to get around.

[coasterdude5]

Arrive at the park at least 30 minutes before the posted opening time, and "walk quickly" to Goliath as soon as possible. I'm not sure what its second season will be like, but people were lined up from the queue entrance all the way to the go kart track just about every day of the week.

[IrishCasual]

Thanks guys! What Flashpass should I get? (We plan really early)

[IrishCasual]

Post deleted

[coasterchitchat]

Thanks guys! What Flashpass should I get? (We plan really early)

 

Platinum. Although it's pricey, it's worth it for this park. Just be careful about your Goliath rides as in 2014 they only allowed 2 per flash pass.

[willthegolfer]

I agree its worth it for this park to get platinum as there are a lot of good flats to ride so there's more time for those if you aren't waiting in line all day.

[IrishCasual]

I agree its worth it for this park to get platinum as there are a lot of good flats to ride so there's more time for those if you aren't waiting in line all day.

Thanks guys! What Flashpass should I get? (We plan really early)

 

Platinum. Although it's pricey, it's worth it for this park. Just be careful about your Goliath rides as in 2014 they only allowed 2 per flash pass.

Thanks guys, but my dad doesn't want to spend too much money while we are there so we are just going to get the Gold Pass. Is the Gold any good?

[RaceBoarder]

I agree its worth it for this park to get platinum as there are a lot of good flats to ride so there's more time for those if you aren't waiting in line all day.

Thanks guys! What Flashpass should I get? (We plan really early)

 

Platinum. Although it's pricey, it's worth it for this park. Just be careful about your Goliath rides as in 2014 they only allowed 2 per flash pass.

Thanks guys, but my dad doesn't want to spend too much money while we are there so we are just going to get the Gold Pass. Is the Gold any good?

The Gold FP can be efficient... You just have to plan things out a bit... This would make Goliath a "1st thing in the AM" case since you can't use the Gold FP for it... You should also plan things out since wait times are cut in half.. Example: Bull is a 90 minute wait... Viper is 50 minutes... Call up Bull on the Flash Pass and go through the standard line on Viper... Walk off Viper then go directly to Raging Bull... Repeat that process throughout the park... As mentioned, SFGAm has several flat rides that are fun, so use them as your filler... Most won't be terrible waits, but they can be more than a 1-2 cycle wait....

[VF15]

Sorry if this sounds too off-topic, but when I rode Batman last summer in mid-August, the wheel assembly covers were not on, which made the look of the train not as good. It didn't affect the ride experience at all, but if anyone knows, was there a reason for this?

[coasterbill]

Must be the work of the joker...

[thrillseeker4552]

Sorry if this sounds too off-topic, but when I rode Batman last summer in mid-August, the wheel assembly covers were not on, which made the look of the train not as good. It didn't affect the ride experience at all, but if anyone knows, was there a reason for this?

 

My guess is they are doing some general maintenance to them. It does look funny, though. I recall seeing a video of OzIris running with the wheel covers on 7 of the 8 cars; only one car had it off. It looked really funny.

[Password121]

Maybe it's just me, but I think it looks kinda cool. With the urban, metallic, city sort of vibe around the better themed Batman clones, the wheels uncovered actually look pretty cool, if you ask me.

[rcjp]

Hasn't it been like that for a few years? Some cars/trains with the covers on and others with none?

[Jodon]

Not sure about previous years, but this year, both sets of wheel covers were in the transfer track tunnel on the ground, seemingly fine, just not on the trains.

[scottm13]

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Edited February 26, 2015 by scottm13

[nicman]

Must be the work of the joker...

 

[batmanfan80]

Just went to Universal, Busch Gardens, and Sea World toward the end of last month. This time the whole country of Brazil was on vacation there instead of the UK. Don't think there were many native Floridians at all. Universal I would say should be called Underwhelming Studios. It's basically a bunch of 4-D motion simulators that all feel like the same ride over and over and are never really satisfying. Mummy was kinda cool I guess. Spider-man was prob the best of the bunch. The Harry Potter rides are way overhyped. The one in Islands of Adventure was slightly nauseating too. They could call Universal Harry Potter land since the HP stuff takes up so much real estate. I could be wrong, but riding these rides takes a cumulative toll on your body's ability to handle forces.

 

The Rocket coaster looked like a combo of a straight vertical lift hill that would freak me out partnered with several block brakes. No thanks. Dragon Challenge fire was kinda lame. Ice was a lot better but seemed inconsistent in its pacing. The Sinbad show was really silly and not all that cool. Fear Factor live was alright. The posieden tour broke and we got stuck for a long time. Waited longer there than for either HP. Eventually they just had us all leave and gave everyone a flash pass card for one ride. One of the HP rides broke but we waited and it came back after like a 10-20 min delay.

 

The worst thing about this place are the long queues. I would estimate some are ten times the length of Eagle's. At least Dragon Challenge has a reride line that cuts it more than in half. Oh, and this place has free lockers during rides. The IOA HP's suck though because they keep the area as dark as possible. Because they had these lockers, we felt fine buying stuff there. At Great America we rarely buying anything since we don't trust the bins and don't want to pay for lockers.

 

Hulk looks like it'd be a really cool ride but it's kind of running with an uncomfortable level of G-force throughout the whole ride and has headbanging for some people apparently. I doubt I'd ride it again. We rode it first thing before anything else too. Lines in universal were long but they always move. They run this place with a very organized system. It only ever slows down when something breaks. At SFGA lines like these would take maybe 10x as long. There were some flash passers but they didn't result in the line slowing to a crawl to accomodate them. We intended to use our flash pass for T2 and went in that line. No one bothered to check so we gave it away to the couple who were picked at the horror make up show(which was kinda cool). The ending spectacle was pretty good at this place. I would say far and away the T2 was the best thing at either park.

 

Back to BG. Rode Montu first and went 3 times. This ride has lost a lot of appeal for me for some reason. I feel like there's too much space between elements. The G forces were a lot less tolerable than last time I was there. The ride op asked us how many times we had been on after our 2nd even though no one was waiting. Sheikra felt a lot better this time but still a bit underwhelming. Saw a guy from theme park review with a worker at the exit ramp for Scorpion. The ride op told this worker to tell the TPR dude that he can't just "ride and ride and ride. that his body has to return to a natural rhythm". Scorpion felt insane this time. Like it just keeps speeding up and speeding up til it slams into the brakes and you feel like you've been in a non-violent car crash.

 

They had Peter Noone's herman's hermits there. Unfortunately no one bothered to tell us you need to get a ticket for a free show. Plenty of other people had the same problem. Every 80 year old in Central Florida was there for this, making them stand out amongst all the Brazilians since again we didn't really see much of anyone who looked like a native Floridian. The white haired Sugar Bear, the goatee dude, and Zoltan or whatever his name was were not cool at all to people who didn't have tickets. We had spent like a whole hour waiting in line and these guys just do not care if anyone waited. They say stand off to the side and if there's space we'll let you in. That's worse than any treatment I've gotten at Six Flags. Ended up with good seats on the side and the place has great sound.

 

Didn't have time to ride Kumba or Cheetah Hunt again. Wife still loves Falcon's Fury. Lines were basically non-existent except for the sky ride after the concert, where we waited like a half hour.

 

Last day we went to Sea World. This was the best place. The theming is outstanding here just like at Universal. First thing we rode was Manta. Now this is what Pretzelman should be. Variety, good pacing, great theming. No real line either. At first I thought I might like it better than Montu when we rode in row 7. We rode it again later after riding Kracken, this time in row 3, and it wasn't working as well for me. The cumulative effect of all those motion simulators at universal made my tolerance for Gs so much lower.

 

Kracken was the real surprise. I only got to ride it once, but my initial impression was that this was the coaster I had been waiting for. Just about perfect. Not one bit of wasted track. No uncomfortable forces but never feels slow. Epic ride with 7 loops. The way they chain the elements is brilliant too. They seemlessly flow right into each other and just feel wild without head-banging or anything else detrimental. The head chopper thing is cool too. Yeah, if I could have designed my perfect coaster before going here, this was about 99% similar. Everything in the ride means something. Extremely underrated. Wish we had gotten something like this last year. No line either to boot. These parks were as packed as SFGA is during peak season and lines were never an issue.

 

The turtle movie is really unique and awesome. The shark encounter is underwhelming and just kinda sucks compared to Ripley's in Myrtle Beach or even the Tampa Aquarium. I thought it was really cool in 88 and 92 though. Blue Horizons was an amazing show. Did not expect it at all. The Shamu show should really be scrapped. There was a lot of empty seats and the show is very repetitive and underwhelming. Tilikum is a sight to behold but his dorsal fin is all flopped over. We watched black fish after we got back and with all the controversy and the probably true facts about Sea World separating Orcas that shouldn't be and that unfamiliar Orcas don't form real families, I don't see why they don't just release all the Orcas and put something else in there.

 

Sea World and BG were also extremely organized in how they handled the ride lines even though there weren't any. They had several ride ops all there organizing everyone. Very different from SFGA most of the time where stuff overflows and gets all mangled. Raging Bull ran much more efficient when they had ride ops organizing it. Universal had workers talking about their dispatch goals. Like 40 seconds. There was never any of this SFGA 5 minutes nonsense.

 

The one thing I can give SFGA again is the ride selection. And everything is very re-rideable, SFGA rides will not stir up indisgestion and nausea like Universal motion sims. I hope they do put in a Universal styled dark ride though. It would draw people and hopefully pull a thousand or so away from the other rides assuming they give it a Universal styled queue that can house 1000. The HP theming was like being on a movie set. It was far cooler than the ride. But it left you in almost total darkness at times. Same deal with DC and Poseiden. The queues can be extremely dark and claustrophobic.

[Sfne1313]

^ I don't understand why you are comparing to completely different parks. You literally put a bgt trip report in a Six Flags GA thread.

[Coastin Eric]

I think one reason some of them ran without wheel covers is that they aren't used when running the train backwards. (No idea why). Or this is just what i've noticed. And then maybe they got lazy...

[batmanfan80]

I'm comparing them. If you've been paying attention to the discussions on here since Goliath opened, there's been a lot of talk about what SFGA has been doing wrong. People also mentioned that it'd be good if they had a dark ride like Harry Potter. And if Six Flags corporate reads this forum as has been mentioned in the past, they should get all the feedback about what their customer base does and does not like about SFGA and other parks. At the end of the day, I'm not sure I'd prefer to have all the Florida parks instead of SFGA. But, I would take Kracken and Manta with no lines over the whole SFGA lineup with long lines.

 

Anyway, I forgot to mention that Universal has this habit of ten minute long introduction speeches before every ride in addition to the 10x the length of The Eagle queues. A lot of it is just "no cameras, no videos" over and over. It got real annoying. The barracudas in Sea World Shark Encounter were real creepy too. They literally stay still and stare at everyone.

[GCI Wooden]

Hey, I just realized that the last day of school for Chicago Schools is on June 17th (It was supposed to be 16th, but they had to make up for a snow day, apparently), so that means that schools won't be out the monday that we visit the park. Do you think that Flash Pass would be necessary is the schools aren't out yet (As in, does the park get busy on days that kids have school)?

[RaceBoarder]

Hey, I just realized that the last day of school for Chicago Schools is on June 17th (It was supposed to be 16th, but they had to make up for a snow day, apparently), so that means that schools won't be out the monday that we visit the park. Do you think that Flash Pass would be necessary is the schools aren't out yet (As in, does the park get busy on days that kids have school)?

Most of the suburban schools will be out after the 1st week in June... Although it will be lighter than July/August, I wouldn't expect no crowd at all...