The Great Six Flags Adventure

Speak freely but don't be stupid about it or you'll find yourself on the last train to Clarksville, ya dumbass.
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NWOWWE
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The Great Six Flags Adventure

Post by NWOWWE » Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:30 pm

As followup to the Roller Coaster thread, there is the story behind the day (we wouldn't tell you if it wasn't at least somewhat interesting, right?).

It actually started the day before we left as I was doing a lot of nothing, as usual, when I got a call from Chris saying something to the effect of: "I've got this cool coupon for buy-one-get-one-free ticket to Six Flags". So the plan was set, and that night was spent making our travel CD, and watching the first half of Mystery Men (still gotta finish that). So after a nice early wake-up, we set out on the road around 8 a.m. and some really cool dense fog greeted us. The trip through the PA protion was fairly uneventful, but it got kinda iffy once we got into New Jersey. Apparently slanted lines pointing in arbitrary directions are perfectly acceptable on road signs there. At least the tolls weren't too bad (about 12 bucks round trip). Then arriving at the park had its own adventure of finding the right parking lot. Well, at least we were there, and we made good time. As a side note, we decided to compare the coasters here to those of HersheyPark, which in retrospect seems unfair, but what the hell.

So we ended up getting into the park right around opening time and we decided that we would start at Superman... well, we got over to the ride, but it wasn't open yet. A ride attendant informed us that the ride probably wouldn't be open for an hour or two (keep that in mind for later). So Chris and I shruged that one off and decided to move on to the next closest coaster, which was the Great American Scream Machine, which had very little line which we figured was mostly due to the park just recently opening. Nevertheless, it served as a very acceptable coaster to start the day. After we were done, I made a judgement call to go for Kingda-Ka while it was still early, to take the best advantage of the line.

In the end, this was probably a smart idea, since the line was already starting to take on a large size. The line itself had an interesting moving style. For a little while there would be no movement at all, then a fairly large move would happen. Well, after about an hour and 15 minutes of line stop-and-go, we were only a couple ride runs away from our turn. Standing in line and watching the ride take off did no justice to actually riding. The initial acceleration was so intense, and if you can regroup quick enough to take a look around at the top of the loop, it's quite a few (we heard a rumer while waiting in line that you can see New York City on a clear day from that spot).

After surviving Kingda-Ka, we puzzled over our next stop, and eventually wondered our way towards Rolling Thunder. Outwardly, the line looked manageable, but in reality a good deal of it was hidden. Still, the ride itself wasn't too shabby, but after it was over, we decided to take our first break from lines and found some quick food in the form of $6 hot dog/fry meal with $3 drinks. wow... Medusa was in this general area, but was also temporarly closed. El Toro's line looked too big at the moment, so we wandered over to the other side of the park. Our first stop over here was the Batman ride which had a very managable line. The ride itself was nothing to write home about, but it was still fun.

Up next we decided to head over towards Nitro which seemed simple enough, but we were glad to see it had four seated rows which boded well for line movement. The restraints (or lack thereof) caught Chris's attention more than mine. The climb to the top of the first hill was incredibly long, which was good for suspense building I suppose. Once you started down that first hill, the ride seemed to delight in being evil with some truly crazy hills including one smaller one near the end where the ride slows you down (like it would at the end of the ride) before suddenly sending you full speed down the hill. Yowza.

Next came Skull Mountain, and as things went, the begin of the downward sprial of the day. I don't like to think of it that way but it is somewhat true, At the very least, the day still had a few high points left. All I'll say about Skull Mountain was that waiting in line was probably better than the ride itself. Yep. So we decided to refuel with some soda and got in line at the closet vendor where the service...was...so...fucking...slow. Eventually we got our refillable drinks and decided it was time to check out the El Toro line again.

The line didn't look any shorter than it did earlier, but we knew we'd have to endure it at some point if we wanted to ride. So we got in line, and to our surprise, it did a good job of moving. It was still a bit of a wait, but not as bad as we were thinking it would be. The ride itself was worth every minute of the wait thankfully, especially with the first hll climb, which goes so fast, you don't even have time to think about how crazy the rest of the ride is going to be.

After leaving El Toro pumped up and excited we decided to check out Superman again, to see if it was open. Guess what? CLOSED FOR THE DAY. "Bull-Fucking-Shit" was my only comment to that. Since it was right next to Superman, we decided to give the Scream Machine another go-'round and were shocked to see that there was no line at all (I'm not even joking, we waited like 2 minutes and that was just for the coaster car to get back to the station from the previous run). Still a bit stunned from the lame Superman closing and the and the bizzare no-line of Scream Machine, we dejectedly headed back towards Medusa expecting a similar fate to that of Superman. It was a nice surprise to see it was open, too bad the ride itself was the most generic ride of the day.

The day was beginning to wear out, so we decided to hit two more coasters: a repeat of Nitro, and then a front row trip on Kingda-Ka to close out the day. Once we got to Nitro, we were a little dismayed that it seemed to be having some technical problems. Thankfully they only lasted about 15 minutes and soon enough we were next in line. As our future car pulled into the loading station, we noticed that a kid in what would be the row behind us had puked at some point on the ride, so as we were seated, we had the rare treat of of seeing the ride attendants in full clean-up mode, not to mention the lingering smell. Nitro claims another victim.

So after that unique experiance that only Nitro can give, we headed back towards Kingda-Ka. At this point it was about 7:30 (an hour and a half before the park closed) and when we got to the coaster, we noticed a strange sight of a group of people waiting far away from the normal line start, and we sooned learned that Kingda-Ka was having its own problems. Well, having just survived the Nitro maintance, we figured this would be no sweat, I mean the park even said that Kingda-Ka usually had minor maintiance delays. After waiting in the "reserve" line for about 20 minutes, we were finally allowed into the main line where we hoped things would get moving again. Dream on... this is where the night quickly degenerated. We ended up spending the next 2 hours moving very little while approximatly 10 loaded cars were launced. We managed to pass the time chatting with another person in line, talking about the rides we'd been on, the bloody coup that would take place if the park would end up forcing us out without either going on the ride, or compensating us. Well, when the situation finally seemed hopeless, they finally got the ride back on track, but the fun wasn't over yet...

We got up into the main loading area of the ride, where it was divided into two loading groups for the two seperate cars that ran on the ride. We happened to be sorted into the back group and we got in the front seat sub-line and waited for our long overdue turn. Suddenly, the annoucment came that they were having MORE technical problems. WTF??? Apparantly only one of the cars was still working, and that was the car that served our station. They then annouced that they were transfering our line to the other one in what was probably the most hideous ride managment that I've ever seen. All the people in the back of the line made mad rushes for the other line raising many angry explatives from some of the people (including me). So Chris and I headed for the other front line row and once again waited for the cars. Then the biggist bullshit moment of the day. They were only running two more cars for the night. We would have been a fourth (and final) run, but after all our waiting we had to move to other parts of the line. Normally I'm not too picky about line postion, but this was fucking bullshit, and I said so, but to no avail. So we rode on the very last run of the night. The ride itself was enough to lighten my mood again, but I still felt cheated.

So with a very few exceptions, the day was quite good, and a very worthwhile trip.
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

Fish Of Doom
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The Great Six Flags Adventure

Post by Fish Of Doom » Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:20 pm

That's quite an adventure. The most that happened to me when I went to six flags was it started raining while I was on the river rapids ride and everyone was freaking out.

I didn't die.

succotash_54
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Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm

The Great Six Flags Adventure

Post by succotash_54 » Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:29 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>Fish Of Doom</dt><dd>Sep 19 2006&#44; 11:20 PM</dd></dl><div>

I didn't die. [/quote]
You sure? Maybe you'd better get a second doctor's opinion. Y'know, just in case that first doctor gets kickbacks from Hallmark, which is trying to sell its line of "Thank God You Pulled Through" cards, complete with a bouquet of roses of various colors (none of them white though) and a teddy bear that, when you squeeze any of its four paws, emits the opening line "I just want to celebrate another day of living/I just want to celebrate, another day of .... LIFE&#33;", using of course, the original version by Rare Earth, because that version is best.

Yeah, you'd better get a second doctor's opinion. That first one sounds pretty suspicious to me the more that I think about it now.

Fish Of Doom
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The Great Six Flags Adventure

Post by Fish Of Doom » Tue Sep 19, 2006 11:10 pm

Now I know what Philip would be like if he were drunk

Minion33088
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The Great Six Flags Adventure

Post by Minion33088 » Wed Sep 20, 2006 6:58 am

Wow, it seems like it was really crowded there. What day of the week did you go?

NWOWWE
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The Great Six Flags Adventure

Post by NWOWWE » Wed Sep 20, 2006 9:05 am

Sunday, then again, parks are always crowded unless you're on the border of getting rain.
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

succotash_54
Posts: 2819
Joined: Wed Dec 31, 1969 7:00 pm

The Great Six Flags Adventure

Post by succotash_54 » Wed Sep 20, 2006 3:44 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>Fish Of Doom</dt><dd>Sep 20 2006&#44; 04:10 AM</dd></dl><div> Now I know what Philip would be like if he were drunk [/quote]
Sans the posting a winning RP that surprises everyone.



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