Six Flags St. Louis (SFStL) Discussion Thread

[prozach626]

If Six Flags St. Louis were going to add a gate for the water park I'd expect it to go in behind the current security checkpoint where they already have a gate they just never open. Cheap and easy even if it only cuts a tiny bit off of the walk and still feeds in to the same path.

That's a pretty good point. A new entrance there was just the only thing I could really think of at this point.

[prozach626]

Emily and I are probably going to the park on Saturday night for a few hours. We're going to grab dinner before we go and cap off the night with a couple beers in the park. We probably won't be there until after 6. I know it's bring a friend for $9.99, but how have the crowds been on the last few hours on Saturdays? Our priorities are Screamin Eagle, Log Flume, Mr. Freeze, American Thunder, and Batman, give or take. We'll ditch anything with a line over 15 minutes or so. That may leave us pretty empty handed, but it will be nice to go for our first visit this year.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

Late on Saturday Log Flume might be under 15, that's the only one on the list with a realistic chance of a short line. Beer man will probably have beer though.

[Danrarbc]

I'd expect the main park to be pretty clear while the water park is open. Maybe a slight surge in the crowd at water park close. Then the last two hours nice and clear.

 

15 minutes will probably be a stretch though.

[prozach626]

Ah, yes. Beer Man will most definitely have cold delicious beer for me to drink.

 

I swear I remember everything being like 10-15 minute waits when we'd go for the last few hours on Saturdays last year. Maybe we got lucky, but at least one of those was BAFF. Batman was on the stairs. Eagle was on its second ramp. Freeze was at the entrance to the building or at the stairs. American Thunder was at the first tunnel. Log flume was only a small wait. And JL was always about 20-30 minutes. All of this was after 7pm. I don't think we ever saw it any worse than that. Maybe we got lucky.

[thisdougsforu]

Save for one of the weekends Batman was running backwards, I haven't been to the park at all this year. However, last year I did manage several Saturday evening visits. There was never more than a 10-15 minute wait on anything (except for Justice League). It was pretty hot on those visits last year, though. These mild temps may mean more folks head to the dry park in the evening. Only one way to find out, though.

 

Our lack of visits this year and general "eh" feeling of the park are probably going to lead us to cancelling our passes next year. Kinda bummed about that, but if we aren't visiting, it's not worth the money. I suppose some exciting announcement could change my mind, but I'm not counting on that.

[Danrarbc]

Save for one of the weekends Batman was running backwards, I haven't been to the park at all this year. However, last year I did manage several Saturday evening visits. There was never more than a 10-15 minute wait on anything (except for Justice League). It was pretty hot on those visits last year, though. These mild temps may mean more folks head to the dry park in the evening. Only one way to find out, though.

 

Our lack of visits this year and general "eh" feeling of the park are probably going to lead us to cancelling our passes next year. Kinda bummed about that, but if we aren't visiting, it's not worth the money. I suppose some exciting announcement could change my mind, but I'm not counting on that.

Come on you know you want SFOT's Troika.

[prozach626]

Doug, we haven't been much this year, either. We'll probably renew our passes next year, because it is paid for in two visits and SFGadv is one of the last couple parks on my North American bucket list. For some reason we haven't had much motivation to go back to SFSTL, despite really enjoying ourselves there last year. Hopefully that will change after our visit this time around.

[SteveStL]

Our lack of visits this year and general "eh" feeling of the park are probably going to lead us to cancelling our passes next year.

 

'Six Flags Over Meh'

[Danrarbc]

Our park never appears to run much of a teaser campaign. Great America has done one

[SteveStL]

Our park never appears to run much of a teaser campaign. Great America has done one

 

That's simple, what is there to 'tease' about?

Removing the Double Helix from the Boss?

Opening a new Waterslide late, only to close it for a few weeks on its opening day.

[Danrarbc]

Our park never appears to run much of a teaser campaign. Great America has done one

 

That's simple, what is there to 'tease' about?

Removing the Double Helix from the Boss?

Opening a new Waterslide late, only to close it for a few weeks on its opening day.

Good teaser for SFOT's Troika:

[prozach626]

Damn. I guess when you really stop to think about it, it's been a pretty rough year for SFSTL. Only Wonder Woman can save us now... But, she won't.

[Stagman]

It does seem like it has been a rough year for SFSTL. Shazam and Xcalibur have been down all season. Not really sure what their “expansions” could entail. Really curious to see what happens at the end of the month when corporate announces what new ride we get.

[grsupercity]

Me and my wife visited SFSTL for the first time this year. I really enjoyed your park. It was one of the cleaner and better landscaped six flags I have been to. Food operations were horrible but it is six flags. I thought it had a solid middle of the pack coaster collection and a nice selection of flat rides. American Thunder, Batman, and Mr freeze were all amazing rides!

[thisdougsforu]

Doug, we haven't been much this year, either. We'll probably renew our passes next year, because it is paid for in two visits and SFGadv is one of the last couple parks on my North American bucket list. For some reason we haven't had much motivation to go back to SFSTL, despite really enjoying ourselves there last year. Hopefully that will change after our visit this time around.

 

Yeah, for sure makes sense if you visit it twice or if you want to visit any other parks in the chain. I was in LA last week and was bummed I didn't have time to get to Magic Mountain for the first time ever. But yeah, I hope to visit SFSL sometime for frightfest both to ride the "improved" boss as well as to get our money out of it.

[prozach626]

^Add highland fling to the mix and the dry park is really hurting. Sucks.

[bachir]

I go to Six Flags once a summer with my kids. My annual trip was Friday July 27. Between 11:30 - 12:30 more than half the rides were not operating, and that might be generous. I went to guest services and politely expressed my surprise that so many rides were down, and she just kind of slumped her shoulders and said "we were surprised too". With so many rides not operating, Six Flags reminded me of a mall with 20% occupancy.

 

I rode the Boss. That thing is so rough its unacceptable. Its terrible. Rename it 'the concussion' or 'battered'

[Philrad71]

^ Sorry to hear that. We went earlier in the season and while there were a lot of rides down, I kind of expected it being right at the beginning of the season.

 

I am not sure if I would deem The Boss "unacceptable", but it was certainly a "one and done" ride for me due to its roughness. Other folks have mentioned having great rides on it this year, so...like a lot of other wooden coasters, it seems like you can catch them on a good or bad day or you either get a good seat or bad one.

[prozach626]

I'm really not trying to bash the park, but I have to leave an honest review. I'll admit that our decision to go on such a discount day was a bad one, so we're partially to blame.

 

We grabbed a dinner and a couple beers at O'Fallon brewery on the way. Good food and better beer. I love that place. When we got to the park close to 7, we didn't realize closing time was 9. Our fault, but what the Hell? Kids aren't back in school, yet. The parking lot was filled all the way to the back, but it was thinning out and people were leaving. All of the trash cans from the parking lot to the entrance were crammed full of trash and spilling out.

 

When we got to the metal detectors there was water streaming down hill making a pool that you couldn't avoid. Why was there a large hose just propped up and spraying on the pavement? Emily asked if it was the new attraction for 2018. We passed the metal detectors and noticed that the entrance looks like shit this year. It's just become so dated and there were a lot of rope lines really cluttering the entrance area.

 

When we got inside, it was 'People of Walmart' all day long. Seriously, we barely saw any normal looking people with the vast majority of people being obnoxious and classy of all varieties. I can't tell you how many large groups of people just took of the whole paths. When they were oncoming you had no choice but no navigate through them trying not to bump into anyone while they clearly gave no F***s. I damned well know better than to say anything after youtube being chalked full of people getting jumped by the masses, even in Six Flags.

 

We walked around the park trying to decide what to ride, while feeling somewhat unconformable around the crowd. Here's what we noticed closed:

Log Flume

Shazam

Xcalibur

Fireball

Boomerang

Tidal Wave

Ferris Wheel

 

I think there was one game open from antique cars to JB's. With Log Flume and Shazam closed, that area looked like shit. Garbage filled the pathways and with nothing to look at you notice how worn down things look. The basketball hoops in front of the flumes were the worst. The back boards were discolored, the tarp looked dirty, and the nets almost looked like they were starting to rot. What the F*** happened to this place? There were a bunch of rowdy kids hanging on the closed games and playing with the closed sprayer guns on one of the games. I went to the bathrooms by JB's and the trash was overflowing, they were out of paper towels, and the floors were wet enough to make me think I was back in one of the older CP bathrooms. (If only)

 

We grabbed a beer at JB's. The bar tender was friendly, but most of the tappers were gone. Our draft options were Stella and Shock Top. Bar stock items were in plain view and unorganized. The bar top was unclean and the finish was wearing off leaving exposed wood. Why not use stainless steel in a bar exposed to the elements? We just grabbed a couple 16 ounce bottles and watched all of the people... My God.

 

Most of the people we saw looked like repeat clients of mine. Everyone had a combination of being: Covered in tattoos. Inappropriately dressed. Vaping wherever they wanted. Smoking wherever they wanted. Cursing loudly. Traveling in large spread out groups. Clearly sloppy drunk. Hadn't had haircuts all summer. Enthusiast-like odors. Loud conversations consisting of mostly slang, hillbilly, or god knows what. All different greasy poorly died obnoxious colors of hair. Bouncing and 'air shooting' basketballs while running after them when they lost control, with no regard for others. Throwing things at each other. Yelling at each other from across the midways. Walking barefoot. Cut off sleeves. Flat billed hats galore. All while their unsupervised children were hanging and climbing over the scenery, running through the landscaping, and dropping their trash wherever they pleased. People who looked already 'well on their way' were ordering the massive booze and sugar filled cocktails.

 

To summarize the clientele, it was an absolute sh*t show, which was prevalent everywhere around the park. I assure you, I'm not exaggerating. I think SFSTL is being used as a babysitter for unruly kids. Since passes are so cheap, people save the money and hassle of finding a responsible adult to watch their children. I see it regularly in my town where parents will rent hotel rooms, pack it full of kids, and then go out to get drunk and high. A couple older teens are necessary to avoid any child neglect charges. It 'feels' like a similar situation at SFSTL. Despite being a borderline idiotic mouth breathing ass hat, I have fine tuned trained intuition.

 

There was a skunk running around the patio area, with idiots coming several feet from them and recording them with their phones. Unsupervised young kids were chasing it and antagonizing it. Another 'people of Walmart' lady yelled at the bar tender that there was a skunk on the patio. The bar tender and I looked at each other puzzled and I said, "What the Hell are you supposed to do about that?" We both kind of laughed and agreed that maybe the people should just stay the away from it. At one point it hilariously walked to the Mr. Freeze queue and started walking up toward the ride ramp almost as if he were going to go for a spin. Emily said, "I guess he wants to go ride Mr. Freeze." It sounds dumb, but we laughed our asses off. We split another beer at last call and decided to try to find something to ride during our last hour.

 

It took a lot of persuasion to convince Emily to head toward The Boss for our first ride in maybe 8-10 years. As we started our climb up the hill there was some shaggy looking dude sitting behind one of the game counters hunched forward and completely spread eagle. Of course, the prizes were a bunch of stuffed piles of shit. Makes sense. As we walked by, the dude said in a melodramatic voice, "Nothing says I love you like a steaming pile of poo." Wow.

 

When we were in line the station was packed with more of the same. I typically don't pay close attention, but operations were quick and no trains were stacked. When we were in line, there girl next to us in her mid teens who was really frigidity. Her dreads kept slapping my arm, but whatever it was packed pretty tightly. Her boyfriend decided to stand in the middle of our line and the one to our left leaving us not really sure where he was going to sit. When there were only two people ahead of us, Emily looked over at me and kept whispering, "Oh my God, Oh my God." It took me a few moments to get her to tell me what was wrong and she stated she literally saw piss, not dipping, but streaming down that girl's legs. I looked over and there was a LARGE dripping puddle below her. I can't make this sh*t up. She boarded the train with a blank stare and piss soaking her inner thighs. OMFG. I asked anyone else if they wanted to go ahead of us and some poor bastard boarded the train without a clue. What you don't know won't hurt you... right? I'm going to Hell.

 

We got on The Boss and I was actually looking forward to it, probably because I'd had a few beers and it was fully dark outside. I made sure we were in the front seat of a middle car. I leaned far forward and clutched the bar. OMFG it was fun. Seriously, I've never had this much of an enjoyable ride on The Boss. Emily was hating her life going into the MCBR and I noticed she was leaning back and bracing. I told her to do what I was doing and she did. The MCBR almost stopped the train. I'll take that any day of the week over more speed on this ride. The back half was even better than the first. The new turn had a nice little dip with some positive G's into the double-up. It was great. Even despite the girl pissing herself right next to us, this was by far the most surprising part of the trip. The Boss gave me the funnest most aggressive ride I'd had at SFSTL in years and it actually felt like a staple attraction. Emily admitted that she actually enjoyed it, too. Shocker. We decided not to press our luck and we didn't go for another lap. I really hope I have the formula figured out, because that was an absolute blast. After that, we decided to head toward our main objective, Screamin' Eagle.

 

 

When we walked to Screamin' Eagle we walked right on the train. Middle car, front seat. We like wooden coasters more and more, but part of that is sitting in the safe seats. Seriously though, we can't believe how much we're starting to appreciate mildly aggressive traditional wooden coasters and it all started with American Thunder and Beast. This doesn't include any of the rough coasters at Holiday World... Sorry. Re-track Raven and we'll talk.

 

Back to SFSTL... We were fortunate enough to get a set of well mannered teens to sit behind us. Throughout the entire ride one of them yelled, "Dis ride trash. Dis ride trash. Nah bruh. I can't belied you made me ride this. My neck! My neck! Dis ride trash! Dis ride trash" FML. We tried not to let this ruin our ride. The train pulled back into the station and the ride operators announced it was the last ride of the night. We were allowed to stay seated and thank God the dudes behind us left. Instant relief. We enjoyed the hell out of our last dark bouncing ride through the woods.

 

We left the park through the only two vibrant looking areas of the park, which was Batman's area and just inside the main gates. On the way, we did notice a shit load of skunks. It actually might be time to trap and relocate a few. I was really hoping the random waterfall would be going to wash the urine off of my shoes, but I had no such luck. Maybe that was its intended purpose after all? We waded our way through the trash back to our car and the path was illuminated by plenty of flashing red and blue vehicle lights which made it easy to see.

 

I'm really sorry, guys. I tried to be objective, but honest. We were really looking forward to this trip and my report wasn't really wasn't intended to bash the park, but I think some things REALLY need to change. I didn't even mean to write this much, but I'd forgotten all of the things we experienced. I had to go back several times and add things. I don't understand how the condition of the park seems so vastly different from last year. I know we showed up late and I know we went on a discount day. Either way, it was the single worst amusement park experience we've ever had. We learned our lesson about discount days and we'll give the park another couple of tries late summer and for HITP.

 

I'm not going to include this in my main TR thread, even though I doubt many people read it or give a crap about it, anyway. Some things in the infrastructure and condition of the park can't be painted in a different light, but I don't want to give everyone the impression that this is the M-O for the park as a whole. I'm banking on us catching an off day.

[Philrad71]

^ I don't know what's crazier...the horrible clientele or that you had a great ride on The Boss. LOL

 

Seriously though, that is some crazy stuff that you witnessed at the park. I'm glad that Michael and I hit it when crowds were manageable and people were mostly well behaved.

 

I really wish parks would stop giving those f%cking basketballs away at the games as prizes. Annoying AF.

[ytterbiumanalyst]

Yup, you went on a discount day.

[DavidB]

Sounds like a crowded, crap day at the park. Its amazing how much the crowd level/quality can impact a visit!

 

I'm thrilled you had fun on The Boss! I love it and there are few rides that can compare with the aggressive intensity in the dark. And admittedly,the new turn negated the roughest part of the ride. Get good and "lubed up" some time and try the back...just stay off the seat!

[prozach626]

I have to be honest. Our ride on The Boss alone was worth the trip. I had the type of experience you would expect to have on a signature ride and I really really really hope we enjoy it next time we go. It's funny how it was like experiencing a new coaster. I'm really not optimistic for our second try, though. I guess I never expected my coaster tastes to change.

 

Our last ride on the Screaming Eagle without the obnoxious kids was also great. It's crazy how much we've come to love that thing over the last year.

[DBru]

We were fortunate enough to get a set of well mannered teens to sit behind us. Throughout the entire ride one of them yelled, "Dis ride trash. Dis ride trash.

 

That reversal was comedy gold. I’m still laughing out loud about it.

 

I think The Boss is terribly underrated. It’s such a massive, aggressive gem of a ride. And that hidden double-down first drop...just dreamy. Glad you guys experienced a few positives in the end!