Six Flags Great Adventure (SFGAdv) Discussion Thread

[Canobie Coaster]

Strangely, if you ride something like Sky Screamer you REALLY feel the cold. On Nitro you don't care at all.

 

The New England Sky Screamer isn't too bad at New England in the colder weather since it runs backwards for Fright Fest and you don't get the wind in the face, but the Windseeker at Canada's Wonderland was absolutely frigid at the start of October. I agree that coasters aren't too bad unless it's snowing. If it's snowing, you will definitely feel the cold even on a smaller coaster.

[Highridin]

I'm going today, gonna do the Guinness world record thing as well, I'm ready for some cold nitro rides!

 

More power to ya. I'm gonna sit in my warm apartment and recover from the URI I'm currently suffering from.

 

Hmm, thanks for the info...

[I Like Theme Parks.]

I was at the park for the ACE winter adventure event. There were presentations from Diggerland, Morey's Piers, Casino Pier, and of course, Great Adventure. They actually talked about some interesting things, including some important things about Casino Pier's expansion and why Morey's is expecting the new Great Nor'Easter to be so much better. I'll share those in the relevant threads.

 

Unfortunately, today was probably the first day in Holiday in the Park history where the cold affected the rides. The Joker had its trains in storage all day, but it seems like that wasn't because of the temperature. However, Batman was closed the whole time I was there despite the park giving their best effort to get it running. Nitro was closed for the beginning of the day, and the employees said that it was closed because the temperature was affecting it too much. Nitro was able to open eventually, so once again Six Flags rose above the weather! Rides:

 

Skull Mountain x 5 - Back and second-to-last rows without leaving the station. It was running really well today for some reason! The turns felt like they had some more power, and I even felt a brief little floaty moment halfway through the ride.

 

Sky Screamer - EXTREMELY COLD!!!!!

 

Swashbuckler - Also incredibly cold.

 

Twix: The Ride - We got a program with 6 flips! It's still a pussy ride though, since Kings Dominion's does 8.

 

Superman: Ultimate Flight - Back row. This coaster is always more fun than I remember. Except the coaster aged really badly this season appearance-wise. It's really rusty, the paint on the gates are horribly peeled, the tent building is becoming even more horrendous and gross, and the dying winter grass and cloudy day really made the coaster look like a sketchy Chinese coaster in an abandoned park. It's a shame, since it's a really good ride.

 

Nitro x 5 - In the back and second-to-last row, didn't leave the station. It was so freezing and amazing. It was the star of Holiday in the Park as always.

[Devins3]

At least the right ride was open. I got my Nitro fix and got 10 rides in on her yesterday. Not only are the weather be damned but they also are the park that allows re rides these days. 8 rides in a row at night when it was 30 degrees?? Pure bliss.

[coasterbill]

To be fair, temperature always affects the rides, it's just that maintenance refuses to take no for an answer. In the case of Joker, that doesn't really sound weather related since the trains never even left the transfer track. Joker is a bit of (to use a bit of a complex, industry-specific, maintenance term) "an unreliable piece of sh*t", so this sounds like more of a Joker problem than a weather problem.

 

As for Batman, who knows? Maybe it was weather related, maybe not. But it's run in much colder temperatures with much colder start up temperatures (like on Friday night).

 

One thing I've noticed is that when a ride breaks down for any reason during HITP, people always assume it's because of the weather. In some cases it is, but these rides break down in the summer too so it's hard to tell and that's not really a fair assumption all the time. That's a shame about Batman though, it's very rare for that ride to be closed for an entire day.

 

That being said though, if you would have told me 2 years ago that I could ride Nitro, Superman, Skull Mountain and Dark Knight on December 11th I'd have been thrilled so I can't get upset. It sounds like you're sort of in the same boat, and I'm glad you had a great time!

[Devins3]

That's the boat I was in. I was all bundled up going up the lift on Nitro thinking "I can't believe I'm doing this". I was mildly looking forward to Joker as I've never ridden a 4d before but I was purely going for Nitro.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

So after hearing about this world record attempt and Six Flags' efforts to just barely break it, I went looking for news articles to see if they succeeded. I found this Jerseytastic article, which I will post below. It's not good journalism. It's better than that. Because, let's face it, if the arithmetic made sense, I'd be questioning whether this was really from New Jersey.

http://www.nj.com/ocean/index.ssf/2016/12/couples_help_break_world_kissing_record_at_great_adventure.html

 

Over 150 couples braved the biting cold and flurries to gather at Six Flags Great Adventure Saturday and help break a world record.

 

The challenge? See how many people can kiss under mistletoe at once and best the the Guinness World Record of 402 people -- or 201 couples -- set by a Six Flags in Georgia.

 

To break the record they decided that couples from all over the country would meet at their closest Six Flags and kiss underneath the mistletoe at 5:15 p.m.

 

In Jackson, that meant 175 couples, or 350 people. Each pair packed into a small space in the middle of Six Flags' annual Holiday in the Park event Saturday as a line of hopeful participants stretched around the rides.

 

"The parks made 'kisstory' by gathering hundreds more than the current record of 402 kissers," Six Flags said in a statement, though the company did not have a final tally on how many people smacked lips.

[boldikus]

LOL! There's also this which is a *tiny* bit more in depth.

 

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161210005028/en/GUINNESS-WORLD-RECORDS%C2%AE-Title-Couples-Kissing-Mistletoe

 

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (NYSE:SIX), the world’s largest regional theme park company, now holds the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® title for the Most couples kissing under the mistletoe. The record was broken by 1,678 people at seven Six Flags locations during Holiday in the Park®, the company’s annual wintertime celebration. 839 couples joined hands and kissed for at least 10 seconds under romantic sprigs of live mistletoe provided by Mistletoeing.com to break the previous world record, set by Six Flags Over Georgia in 2015.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

I see. So it was a coordinated effort, and they're counting the cumulative total of all the parks.

 

Changing subjects a bit, but how is that 1,713 foot tall coaster at Six Flags?

[coasterbill]

Great Adventure just announced a Fireworks show at 9PM on New Years Eve. I still think they should be open until Midnight, put everyone in the boardwalk area, shoot off the Fireworks from the lot by Kingda Ka and drop Zumanjaro at midnight but I'm not here to tell anyone how to do their jobs.

[boldikus]

With the weekends forecast (temps in the 20s at opening on Friday, and dipping a bit before close, rain/snow mix and 40s+ on Saturday at opening, and more precipitation on Sunday) could this be the first true washout for GreatAdv's HITP. I'll be a little surprised though not really if they wind up opening and staying open Friday. Though they are pushing their BAFF promo for Friday pretty hard.

[coasterbill]

I sort of feel like Saturday and Sunday could be a crapshoot. The park will probably be dead because of the forecast but the really crappy weather is mostly before the park opens and Sunday should be semi warm despite the rain.

 

As for tomorrow, I expect a grand total of 3 people to show up and I would think they would make no effort to run the outdoor coasters. That being said, if they so much as test Nitro tomorrow I may literally piss myself laughing.

[coasterbill]

Sorry for the double post, but the park will not be open tomorrow night. This isn't really surprising news, they would definitely have lost money by being open.

[boldikus]

Sucks. I think if there was the potential for it to be nice Sat/Sun they'd take a chance opening Friday, but since those days are gonna be potential money losers (Saturday night might turn out nice but Sunday looks like high chance of rain all day), they might as well cut Friday completely since its gonna be so freaking cold and no ones gonna go.

[coasterbill]

Honestly they're getting kind of screwed this year. Since Christmas is on a Sunday they're closed all of next weekend (except for Friday night which will likely have light crowds because it's a Friday night) they basically have 2 wasted weekends in a row given the weather. Hopefully this weekend brings out more people than I'm expecting it to. I actually think Saturday night should be a nice night at the park, Sunday might too... but the forecasts are going to scare people away.

[boldikus]

BAFF promos bumped a week, just got an email.

[Physical]

BAFF promos bumped a week, just got an email.

 

Here's hoping it doesn't snow too hard on Saturday. Was planning on making a trip out. Nitro in the snow sounds like a load of fun (if it's operating)

[boldikus]

https://www.wunderground.com/q/zmw:08527.1.99999

 

While it does seem like the temps will warm up as the day/night go on Saturday, it still looks like its snow changing to rain (by the time the park opens) but the rain is forecasted to continue all day to some extent, without getting warmer than 50. Sunday looks like a washout. I hope for the sake of the event the Great Adv bubble doesnt have any holes in it this weekend.

[coasterbill]

The park will be closed today. That's actually a shame since it's supposed to be nice later but I guess they need time to clear the snow so it makes sense.

[Physical]

Yeah, I woke up and saw all the snow on the ground in the Allentown area, checked the weather in Jackson and saw it was even colder. I ended up just going back to sleep, haha.

[coasterbill]

Hey, so funny story.

 

This morning across the Northeast was incredibly warm and absolutely no wind. A front was coming through along with a random 60 MPH wind gust that caught everyone off guard. When it showed up here it sounded like a freight train coming through, and because it was so unexpected the NWS actually posted a special weather statement about an hour in advance telling everyone about it, where it was and when it would get to each town.

 

Guess what park never bothered to check the weather?

 

[fbvideonew]

[/fbvideonew]

 

From the Great Adventure Connoisseurs Facebook group.

[Genx24]

Jesus Christ! I thought they couldn't run the Skyway in winds over 20 mph. What a wild sight.

[coasterbill]

Jesus Christ! I thought they couldn't run the Skyway in winds over 20 mph. What a wild sight.

 

They don't run it in gusts over 23, but it went from no wind at all to 60 MPH immediately. They shouldn't have been surprised by it, but clearly nobody checked the weather.

[Superbatboy]

As much as an aberration as this was, just makes me even more terrified of Skyways

[coasterbill]

As much as an aberration as this was, just makes me even more terrified of Skyways

 

I mean, it easily withstood a wind gust 3 times that of what it's allowed to operate in so personally I'd say that's a +1 for Von Roll. I think it's hilarious that Sky Screamer was up in the air when it hit too. Apparently the seats were all slamming together Windseeker style.

 

Judging by the fact that the ride was already stopped this video was obviously taken after the strongest initial gust.