Six Flags St. Louis (SFStL) Discussion Thread

[XYZ]

And speaking of the peeling paint, I saw pictures of Boomerang on newsplusnotes from last weekend. There is a big piece of orange paint missing from a support column in one of the pictures. WTF?

 

You can tell on those photos that they aren't done painting Boomerang.

[jray21]

Here a few pictures of the boneyard field. Cool of the park to give them some stuff to use.

 

 

 

 

That's pretty awesome! I would love to be able to play around some old theme park stuff!

[Woodie Warrior]

I'm sorry, please stop all this hating on ProZach.

 

He has the right to state his opinion without being heckled. I mean seriously, sure, it's a coaster, and most of the public see it as a cool coaster, but coaster-fans know what it really is. It's a 20+ year old, head-banging Vekoma coaster.

 

I'm not saying you guys can't say that you like Boomerang, but those who dislike it have the right to say that they do.

 

I'm pretty sure that this all started a few pages back when he said something about how the train colors don't matter because soon they'll be covered with ads. This was a joke, and it should be taken as one, even if it could come true one day . (On a side note, Six Flags has removed all the ads on the coaster trains this year! )

 

Now let's stop hating on ProZach and get back to the park. Sorry for my rant. Stay classy, TPR.

[ernierocker]

Okay, guys. Let's stop with the posts directed at prozach626. It is the moderator's job to deal with posters that are out of line or being obnoxious and having 3-4 posts in a couple of page about another forum member in a discussion thread is nothing but off-topic and pointless.

 

Let's get it out there. SFStl is getting a used boomerang. Bitch. Moan. Be excited. Whatever. Just look at the SFA thread this time last year when they were getting a used stand-up coaster. Tons of bitching, tons of moaning. When is the last time anyone has mentioned Apocalypse enough for it to be relevant on this forum? It's been several months. The same will happen here. And if this time next year, someone is continue to bitch and moan about getting a used boomerang, they will not be doing it on this website.

Edited May 1, 2013 by ernierocker

[Vonni]

I started to lose faith in SFStL when we found out about Flashback/Boomerang. But here lately my faith has been restored. I am back to holding high hope that we will get our signature steel coaster we are all wanting, and that our park is needing. I think the next one or two years will be our flat ride years, which is a good thing, and I think in two to three years we will get our awesome coaster.

[angrynerdjosh]

From what I can tell the stl gp prefers the water park over the rest of the park. The water park is always busy while the lines to the coasters were non existent

[XYZ]

Just because SFStL is getting a Boomerang doesn't mean they won't be getting a new major coaster in a long time. Look at Carowinds, they received a B&M Hyper one year after they received a used Boomerang. Now, I don't expect SFStL to get a B&M Hyper in 2014, though I can see a good chance for something major for SFStL in the next few years.

[StLCPfan]

Nobody is HATING on prozach. There have been a few people asking him why EVERY single one of his posts is extremely negative. My explanation wasn't criticizing him personally, just explaining WHY he is negative in his attitude towards Six Flags corporate and their lack of respect for our park.

 

Okay, I just read the post by ultimate again, and that was knocking prozach. Sorry ultimate, a Vekoma boomerang is NOT a major steel coaster.

[Woodie Warrior]

Nobody is HATING on prozach. There have been a few people asking him why EVERY single one of his posts is extremely negative. My explanation wasn't criticizing him personally, just explaining WHY he is negative in his attitude towards Six Flags corporate and their lack of respect for our park.

 

Okay, I just read the post by ultimate again, and that was knocking prozach. Sorry ultimate, a Vekoma boomerang is NOT a major steel coaster.

Okay this discussion was over a few posts ago.

[ZZSTL]

I am new here but thought I would chime in. I have been a SFSTL pass holder since the 80's. I can't tell you how disappointed I am with the addition of the craptastic Flashback/Boomerang thing going in there. I have seen it in person this year and the paint job is HORRID! The orange portion on the beams is literally "falling off" in big splotches on EVERY beam that was painted. It looks totally half-assed, to put it mildly. I feel this thing will be a walk-on ride by the end of the year, no doubt.

 

Long live the Mule-Go-Round!!

[SFZIP]

People can continually complain about the additions that the park receives and hope for better in the future, but the actual problem is that SF corporate in the past and currently does not really care that much about SFSL (and a few other of the mid-to smaller parks). SF is has been managed badly corporately for a number of years, from Premier to Shapiro to today's management team (several of them having no theme park experience) yet somehow running a theme park company (people/investors can think that everything is great today, but SF is currently micro managed like they have never been before). The parks have very little control over what is done and what is not done. Six Flags currently has no COO (Weber retired last year and has never been replaced), you can read reports from every park about poor/cheap operations and there are numerous reasons why (a lot of it has to do with spending/hiring the proper amount of people and properly training them). I'm a little tired of everybody complaining about their local park and how they are treated, the parks are basically corporate puppets now a days that can only do what is directed from corporate, most of the people working at your local Six Flags park have a lot of theme park experience and probably would like to do thing differently but aren't allowed to (SF is just a cheap company that wants to spend as little as possible).

 

In the past Six Flags St. Louis has been poorly developed at different times throughout it's history. During the 70's/early 80's this park got several major additions (Screamin' Eagle, Sky Chuter) that were record breaking additions and the park was very popular at that time. In the late 80's and early 90's the park got cheaper/used additions several years (Colossus was used, Ninja was used), the park got Tidal Wave several years after the other Six Flags parks did, it didn't get anything in 93 or 94 - it was the only SF park not to get a Batman Stunt Show that was introduced at this time. The park did get major additions from the mid to late 90's (Batman, Freeze, HH and The Boss), attendance at this time was close to 20% higher than it is today. Since 2001 the park has added - Scooby (modified ride), Xcalibur (used), Superman (used), remodeled kids area, Pandemonium (same as WOF), American Thunder, Sky Screamer, Boomerang (used/same as WOF), 3 water rides in that time frame and 3 years of nothing new.

 

Attendance during the summer is basically like a 50/50 split or maybe a 60/40 (theme park to water park), so whenever people want to say that there are a lot of people in the water park that is true, but the park always had much higher attendance during the 90's (without the water park). The park is not really conveniently located when compared to where most people live in the St. Louis area, so a lot of people today may need a reason to drive "out to the park" and there really hasn't been a major reason in a long time.

 

The park's Carousel is going to turn 100 in a few years and in the condition that it's currently in is pathetic for a major theme park (you will always hear the money excuse), but why is it that every other theme park has a carousel that probably looks better than this one. How many major theme parks allow a ride (Hannibarrels) to sit SBNO for 15+ years? How many major theme parks don't have a small kids coaster (the park did in the past but removed it and didn't replace it)? The problem that all of these issues with the park all come back to one major thing and that is Six Flags corporate doesn't want to spend the proper amount of money to make their parks look like they could/should and until that philosophy changes you will basically continue to see what you see today.

[deathbydinn]

^ I disagree with you on the new management. The new corporate team seems to be giving the parks much more control over what they get. Under the Shapiro regime, parks were told what they were getting and then they had to decide how to market it. Under Jim Reid-Anderson, parks are working with corporate to plan out their additions. This is all coming from a Season Pass Podcast when they interviewed a higher up at Discovery Kingdom.

 

As for the carousel, here's a quote from a Negative G trip report from last year.

 

"Want a carousel cheep" is what Dave Roemer, Six Flags St. Louis' Park President said to us out of the blue during our night time ERT session. We were really were kind of shocked by his caviler tone about getting rid of this classic ride. My question is why not just paint it and get it restored since Six Flags has not painted it since what, the early 1980's. His answer was "Well we need to paint Superman and that costs half as much as painting the carousel so just removing it is one of the options that we're seriously looking at".

 

You can't put the full blame on corporate when park management themselves have this kind of attitude. When a park president really cares about their park and fights for it, it shows. This kind of attitude doesn't do the park or it's rides any good. Not saying that Six Flags corporate is the best it could be, but I don't think the "problems" of Six Flags St. Louis can be fully blamed on them.

[SFZIP]

I don't believe for a second that anybody in SFSL management went to SF corporate requesting that a 24 year old Boomerang could be moved to this park (nor would SFA request Apocalypse last year, etc.), this addition was directly from Six Flags corporate (it has already sort of been a tough sell for the park, which is why the park is pushing the coaster capital marketing along with the ride).

 

Also, the part about the Carousel is that SF current and previous corporate management will never give the park the proper budget to rehab the Carousel to the point where local management has basically given up (corporate has to care about the condition of their parks and there a lot of "holes" in several SF parks that continually seem to go unnoticed/not really cared about and as I said before if corporate doesn't say that the park can fix the problems, then there will continue to be quality problems in the SF parks).

[nrs2420]

And speaking of the peeling paint, I saw pictures of Boomerang on newsplusnotes from last weekend. There is a big piece of orange paint missing from a support column in one of the pictures. WTF?

 

You can tell on those photos that they aren't done painting Boomerang.

 

They painted it in Texas before they brought it up here. Why would it not be done?

[ArizonaGuy]

SFStL may have just been given the "Take Flashback from SFoT or get nothing" option from Six Flags corporate. As crappy as it could be, at least it's a new addition to the park no matter how old it is. We all know that when it comes to management and marketing, Six Flags isn't the brightest light on the porch. I mean come on......they gave SFFT a B&M Inverted coaster 11 years after Sea World got Great White........and then to top it off rather than naming the coaster something to go with the Los Festivales mexican theme like "El Toro" or possibly "Ragin Bull", they name the damn thing "GOLIATH"!!! Not the tallest or biggest coaster in the park or San Antonio for that matter, not the first of it's kind in Texas or San Antonio but they sure as hell marketed it as it was. That's Six Flags......they do what they can with what they're given no matter how ridiculous it is or how much it doesn't make sense. At least SFStL and WoF are over 200 miles away from each other. SFFT and Sea World San Antonio are only 15 miles away from each other. How's that for a marketing challenge???

 

In the past Six Flags St. Louis has been poorly developed at different times throughout it's history. During the 70's/early 80's this park got several major additions (Screamin' Eagle, Sky Chuter) that were record breaking additions and the park was very popular at that time. In the late 80's and early 90's the park got cheaper/used additions several years (Colossus was used, Ninja was used), the park got Tidal Wave several years after the other Six Flags parks did, it didn't get anything in 93 or 94 - it was the only SF park not to get a Batman Stunt Show that was introduced at this time. The park did get major additions from the mid to late 90's (Batman, Freeze, HH and The Boss), attendance at this time was close to 20% higher than it is today. Since 2001 the park has added - Scooby (modified ride), Xcalibur (used), Superman (used), remodeled kids area, Pandemonium (same as WOF), American Thunder, Sky Screamer, Boomerang (used/same as WOF), 3 water rides in that time frame and 3 years of nothing new.

 

As far as attendance, just wondering where the figures are coming from??? (not trying to discredit anyone here but I've never been able to find recent yearly Six Flags attendance numbers especially for the smaller parks in the chain i.e. SFStL, SFFT, SFA.etc...)Just curious to see how the parks stack up against eachother.

 

I do feel bad for SFStL though cause it seems like it's taken SFAW's place as far as getting the shaft but then on the bright side, at least they're getting something vs. nothing.

[SFZIP]

I don't know the current attendance for the middle or lower level SF parks (I do know SFSL's), in the past you could get the estimated (fairly accurate) information from Amusement Business magazine, when it was in business (I found a lot of back issues from various library database searches that are available on the internet, you can also do various searches for old newspaper articles that had attendance data in the past, when it was more easily available, using library searches as well).

[Woodie Warrior]

And speaking of the peeling paint, I saw pictures of Boomerang on newsplusnotes from last weekend. There is a big piece of orange paint missing from a support column in one of the pictures. WTF?

 

You can tell on those photos that they aren't done painting Boomerang.

 

They painted it in Texas before they brought it up here. Why would it not be done?

Well either they haven't finished or that cheap paint is already falling off. There's lots of HUGE chips in the supports already. It looks sloppy.

[ArizonaGuy]

^^

They're also not finished. What do you think they use to lift it and put it into place? How do you expect it not to get scratched up. They'll touch it up soon enough. Give them a break.

[prozach626]

Prozach is one of the people who will bitch about how Six Flags corporate doesn't respect the people of the St. Louis metro area because we don't have a major full-circuit multi-looper, preferable a B&M, or a hypercoaster. He complained just as much as he does here on the sfstl.net forums until that went down.

 

Consistency is the key. They just aren't used to it, yet.

[netdvn]

Sounds like somebody just needs to take a time out from the park for a few years.

[SteveStL]

Solution: don't set your expectations so high for our park, it will never be the park you hope it could be. And then go to King's Island.

[Vonni]

It certainly has the potential

[RCF]

Solution: don't set your expectations so high for our park, it will never be the park you hope it could be. And then go to King's Island.

Instead of that, how about we enjoy the park with what it offers, and not complain about what it could be or what it "should" have.

[Vonni]

I'm really looking forward to the 28th! I hope its nice weather. Does anybody know what crowds may be like then? Its a Tuesday.

[Zcev5454]

I'm really looking forward to the 28th! I hope its nice weather. Does anybody know what crowds may be like then? Its a Tuesday.

Hard to tell, most schools are out the week before, and I'd expect the waterpark to have insane crowds.