Six Flags St. Louis (SFStL) Discussion Thread

[Woodie Warrior]

I don't believe that the cars for JLBFM are at the park yet (along with the two main animatronics?), if they are then they are being hidden well.

Both animatronics are already installed in their spots. The encounter with the Joker is going to be absolutely jaw dropping.

I'm extremely excited for the Joker. He looked extremely lifelike at IAAPA, and that was without any lighting effects or fog. Is he going to do the same speech that was shown off there?

 

And thanks for the updates by the way! Hoping to make it out for opening day even if it rains.

[bbmchl]

Awesome update. Lot's of work went into that. Thanks HWFan!

[HWFan]

^ Unfortunately, my sleep deprived state made some of my wordings a bit confusing. I'm not the official liaison, but last summer, it started to seem that way. I do not speak for the park officially as the only Dave Roemer and Elizabeth Gotway can really do that.

You're really starting to become the unofficial Paula of SFStL on here and that is a compliment. Given your screen name, I hope you get what I mean. Every Six Flags could use more employee's like you (not to say there isn't any) who care about their job and care about the customers. Thanks for keeping us updated on all that is going on with the park. I wish you and everyone at SFStL the best of luck this season. Hopefully, one day, all of your guys hard work will be rewarded with a state of the art steel coaster (not to say JL isn't a state of the art ride, but honestly, no new ride matches a brand new roller coaster) and you won't have to get on here and read all of our comments complaining about it.

First off, that is probably one of the best compliments you could have given me, but it made my day as Paula & Holiday World's 'corporate culture', if you will, is what I base my personal attitude on working at a theme park on. I started emailing Paula when I was around 8 years old I guess (there's even a Holiblog post that was made out of my first email to her on March 29th, my birthday, of some year). Theme parks need to be staffed with thousands every year, and to a lot of the employees, Six Flags is/was their first employer. While it's by no means anywhere near jobs like first responders, heavy construction, or other dangerous/hard jobs, it isn't always a walk in the park . It can be extremely hot, long hours, handling complaints with tact and grace, etc, so while there are a lot of amazing team members out there, the season can break you down on some days making them not the most obnoxiously enthusiastic/friendly (of course, if they are rude, let us know because there's not really an excuse for that at all).

 

"This is our hyper coaster" was a quote that was said a few times during our training. At this point, I am honestly more excited for this ride than I would be for a hyper, but if we did get a huge steel coaster, I would get bored without reading the negative posts. The Holiday World Forum can be almost obnoxiously positive sometimes, so I like a little drama in my forums.

So, I'm curious, with all of theseason really

awesome updates of really cool stuff from you, HWFan, do you know if the Justice League HQ store will be changed/refurbished at all?

Justice League HQ may get a little update here or there but nothing notable that I'm aware of. This area will need all of the dining/retail capacity it can get.

HWFan, are times posted on when you can use your dining pass? Will the snack be allowed at any time duringq the day? It seems like the hours change based on park hours and we're never quite sure exact times.

Unfortunately I don't have an answer for you about the snack right now. However, the times will be in the dining pass menu guide, available at Guest Relations, Season Pass Services, and hopefully all the restaurants. The reason behind the changing times the last couple years was due to Fright Fest only. Because of the very drastic hour changes during those days, the lunch and dinner hours were just pushed back one hour (I believe). That is the only time the hours were different, and I would expect the same this year. However, I will try to get the information on that this weekend. Sorry about that.

Both animatronics are already installed in their spots. The encounter with the Joker is going to be absolutely jaw dropping.

I'm extremely excited for the Joker. He looked extremely lifelike at IAAPA, and that was without any lighting effects or fog. Is he going to do the same speech that was shown off there?

I'm not exactly sure if it will say the same thing, with parts of the video/story of the ride still being changed here and there by Sally to keep making it better. You will be shot with his smoke cannon thing though. When your vehicle stops in front of him, he will be right there, eye level with you. It'll be great!

[HWFan]

For anyone who is going to be there opening weekend, instead of Guest Relations like usual, I'll be helping out our short-staffed Marketing & Promotions teams. I'll be in front of the park talking to Guests & administering surveys from 9:30-3:00 every day of the weekend, so if you see me, feel free to say hi. Now, if you'll be there on Friday or Saturday, if you're interested maybe meeting for lunch at JB's Smokehouse, across from the new ride, it might be fun to enjoy some BBQ while talking about the park and the amazing details going into the new ride. If you're interested, send me a message, and we'll get it all set up. While I can't promise anything, I'll see if one of members of full-time management has time to stop by. I am also tentatively working from 3:00-7:00 Friday & Saturday with sampling team at the park exit, so I'll have an hour break that I can take whenever it works best. We'll work it out through messages though, and it doesn't necessarily have to the JB's either.

 

Hope to see you there!

[WildStangAlex]

I will be at the park with some friends not this weekend but next. Maybe we can meet up.

[TNT]

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[HARLEYGUYJB]

Happy Opening Day!! I really hope SFSTL has a great 2015 season! I know lots of work has went in the off season to make our park a better park! Wonder what will be the new ride for next year?

[Woodie Warrior]

Park is looking really nice this year. A lot of rides weren't running at opening but they got going pretty quickly. Justice League looks pretty far from completion. I wouldn't be surprised if it opens early June at this point, but I'm sure they could get it ready by May. They are advertising it as "opening this summer". Screamin' Eagle was running pretty well.

[theymitbgi]

At the park today, just suffered a park wide power outage.

[Woodie Warrior]

Update: Power outage in certain areas of park. Mr. Freeze and Batman are closed but the sports bar right next to Mr. Freeze has power. Main gift shop at front of park lost power while all the gift shops around it have power.

[HWFan]

Park is looking really nice this year. A lot of rides weren't running at opening but they got going pretty quickly. Justice League looks pretty far from completion. I wouldn't be surprised if it opens early June at this point, but I'm sure they could get it ready by May. They are advertising it as "opening this summer". Screamin' Eagle was running pretty well.

The outside of the ride is by no means a valid measurement of the work going on inside. The facade is something that can be done extremely quickly and easily compared to the more technical stuff. If you saw the pictures inside the JLBM at SFOT during their recent media tour, the ride at SFSL is in very similar shape in terms of completion level.

 

The banner may say summer now, but that's most likely just a 'better safe than sorry' mentality. The "spring 2015" talking point is still the one being followed by the park's team members (hopefully), as the estimated opening date has not changed in the last couple months at least. Because I am pretty much the opposite of anonymous and that it isn't worth possibly losing my job over, I believe a user or two posted the target date previously in the thread.

 

I just got back from the park, and when I left, it was beautiful following a pretty chilly morning. I have a bunch of pictures from yesterday as well as general updates on things in general. I'm hoping to take some of the SFOT JLBM media tour pictures to illustrate what the ride is looking like, but with KSDK & Fox 2 News being in the park this morning, I'll see if they might have a thing or two already.

 

I got to spend the last three hours of my shift just going around the park to talk to different Guests about how their day was going and collecting email addresses for a special survey or two. What was really cool was that for the last 30min, Donna, the VP from Sally Dark Rides, came down and accompanied me. You could really see her passion for what she does while she explained the ride to the Guests, many of whom, knew nothing about it or Transformers/Spiderman. I convinced her to play one of the games after she saw a new cape she liked. That right there is why I love my job. Getting to make sure people are having a fantastic time (including fixing any problems they have run into), especially while goofing around the park with one of the top dark ride manufacturer executives in the world, is a privilege I am very thankful for. She leaves for Texas on Tuesday where she will be for three weeks now that they are going to start heavy testing on the ride there. This way, the team in STL will have lots of time to finish things up and make changes after learning from any issues that could possibly show up in TX.

[HWFan]

At the park today, just suffered a park wide power outage.

Update: Power outage in certain areas of park. Mr. Freeze and Batman are closed but the sports bar right next to Mr. Freeze has power. Main gift shop at front of park lost power while all the gift shops around it have power.

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Just saw this and my mood just crashed. I know that the facilities in general, including some minor plumbing issues that did not affect any Guests, are really strained, understandably so, on opening day. It's like the Griesediecke Tower at SLU (the 16-story behemoth right off of I-64/40 with 'St. Louis University' on it) has a lot of issues on the fall move in days, with a couple floors temporarily losing power & random in-room fire alarms going off for a half hour (went off during my first shower there actually).

 

No matter what though, it isn't something that is really excusable....for Ameren. But they won't be the ones losing business & being blamed for the resulting issues of the outage. Props to Elizabeth Gotway who continually takes the beatings without faltering the least bit. However, I think that this is a much larger Ameren UE problem as our marketing manager, who doesn't live too far from the park, told me this morning that her power was out so she had to shower at a friend's house. Even with the not-so-perfect weather earlier today, the park actually passed the original attendance estimate a little bit, which is made with perfect weather in mind. While I would plan for a crowded park tomorrow, the line to get in the front gate (even including the line to process & receive your cards) was never over 15min and after the first couple hours, wasn't any longer than a minute or two.

 

Hopefully this power stuff gets fixed soon. I hate to say that I hope all of Eureka is out of power too so that people see it's a wider problem, but it might help get things patched up sooner. <--- That sentence is probably a perfect example of why I have needed to put in a reminder every once in a while that I do not speak for the park, but at least I'm honest! Just gotta Shake It Off like Taylor Swift says I guess.

 

EDIT: Check out this video from Channel 5 KSDK for a look inside the ride: http://www.ksdk.com/story/entertainment/2015/04/03/six-flags-st-louis/25248131/

[Woodie Warrior]

^A small part of the park still had power which makes me think it was SFSTL only.

[HWFan]

^A small part of the park still had power which makes me think it was SFSTL only.

Maybe that means it will be easier to fix then, but the park has two main power lines that come into it. One of the lines was completely replaced by Ameren over the offseason as part of the repairs they did. It's sad that the day had to end like that, but at least it was during the last hour and 45 minutes of the day. At the time that the power went out, all of the park's full-time management including Dave were all sitting in a conference room above the Main Street Market store for their daily meeting where they go over a lot of information (including a lot of the complaints/compliments that are received by Guest Relations. I wish I had been there just to see the reactions when the lights went out. Hope everyone was able to still have some fun today at least. Anybody know if it caused Mr. Freeze to valley?

 

Thank goodness out of all the possible stories to feature as #1 on their homepage, Fox 2 News has their priorities straight. Just like how the media sensationalized the story of the Hulk at USF IOA had a train stop on the MCBR.

At least we were able to make the media happy today...

[Woodie Warrior]

Mr. Freeze didn't valley. We walked through the shade arbors and there wasn't a train visible on the track.

[StlSS]

Yep this is what I saw lol

 

Get to the bottom of it HW I want to know if ameren was at fault or SF, with the amount of power SF has to draw I can definitely see two feeds coming in. Opening day what a shame.

[theymitbgi]

Well as I posted earlier we were at the park today.

 

Some good, some bad. We waited in line at gust relations for almost two hours to get my two sons' passes reprinted. This should be totally and completely unacceptable. I don't understand why someone doesn't work the line that can solve the "easy" problems.

 

Finally after getting into the park we were going to eat lunch at the burrito place, but line was very long so we decided on JB's BBQ instead. As much as I liked the food last year, it just seemed different. At this point the kids split from the wife and I and met back with us at about 3:45. In which time they said they had ridden all the coasters except The Boss which was closed.

 

The wife and I really don't ride much but did enjoy a lap around the entire park and took a lap around on the train. Very impressed with how they cleaned up the construction area around JLBM and made it presentable. The newly remodeled gift shop was pretty cool. Stopped and got my "free" bag of cotton candy. As always we were people watching, biggest thing I noticed were the number of people I overheard talking about Santa Claus, In or Holiday World. The park needs to realize that HW is becoming major competition.

 

Anyway about 3:45 the kids regrouped with us after riding B:TR, it wasn't time to use the dinner passes yet so we were going to head to get one of them a bag of cotton candy and stopped by RKMT on the way there. This is when things got more interesting, shortly after 4 the park experienced the power outage, my boys were just out of the station of RKMT when it happened. Within a minute or two an employee left the station to close the line and check to see to what was going on, another employee was talking talking with the train that was stoppped coming into the station and a final employee on the bridge over the exit talking with the train that my boys were on. Within 5 minutes employees realized it was a widespread power outage and it would be awhile. I decided to take a quick walk through the park at this time to see IF Mr. Freeze had vallied and what other evacuations were taking place. I snapped a quick picture with my iPhone of Thunder River, but couldn't get any others. I did see people walking down the lift hill of B:TR. Within 10 minutes I made it back to RKMT where my boys were now on a train that only had passengers on the last two cars, apparently there was a way off for the front few cars, but as you will see in my pictures, my boys were stuck about 6 feet off the ground. Within a couple more minutes they had a stepladder and several staff members assisting them off the train to the ground making sure they were safe the whole way.

 

I must say I was very impressed with the ride ops that seemed to have ever ride cleared within 20 minutes of the power outage. What a test for the first day of operations! They passed with flying colors. I really didn't hear any guests complaining and most realized it was out of the parks control.

 

Anyway on to the few pictures we snapped today with camera phones.

 

I hate to use the term "evacuated" as it sounds like there was danger involved, but can't find another word that seems to make sense.

Evacuating on Thunder River

My kids being evacuated from RKMT

My kids being evacuated from RKMT

My kids being evacuated from RKMT

My kids being evacuated from RKMT

[TNT]

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[Woodie Warrior]

The ride crews really were doing awesome today (except for the whole "one-train operation thing, but that's not their fault). If that's how efficient you are on opening day, I can't imagine what operations will be like later on in the season.

[TNT]

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[Woodie Warrior]

I did notice fresh wood on Screamin' Eagle and the wooden handrails of the Mine Train.

 

I checked out the new gift shop and the outside looks a lot better. The inside doesn't seem much different than what was there before other than the fact that it felt less cluttered. Having it as the exit to two rides seems like it'll be really busy all the time.

[TNT]

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[theymitbgi]

^Thanks for the shout out to the rides department. Its nice to hear from guest that we are doing a good job especially in situations such as this. If you haven't already it would be greatly appreciated if you could leave a compliment at Guest Relations for the rides department (or if you saw specific employees or rides you thought were doing exceptionally well you can mention them). Not only do the managers want to know that people appreciated the work we did but also the employees involved like hearing about how well we're doing.

 

Just curious,we know Dave doesn't read these forums, but does the park have a social media liason that does? It seems the last couple of years twitter and FB have been forgotten about by the park?

[TNT]

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[ChrisGraslie]

FOOTAGE OF JLBFM'S INTERIOR! Yes, there was a media tour of the ride at opening day yesterday and it's as breathtakingly cool as you'd expect. Plus there was also a photo op added to the park near the Palace Theater advertising the ride. But anyways, wow! Here we only really get to see parts of S.T.A.R Labs and a tiny glimpse of LexCorp but wow is it cool. Not to mention the area before you get into LexCorp will be like sneaking in with realistic prop trees covering a background shot of the city of Metropolis? Wow. We got to see just a little but it is so promising. Also it seems that Joker and Cyborg won't be in the same room after all. It seems what we saw at IAPPA is different than what we are getting here. But anyway, enough DC Comics-nerding out. Enjoy!

 

http://fox2now.com/2015/04/03/new-prototype-ride-coming-to-six-flags-this-season/