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Compounce/Hershey/Great Adventure - Day 3

Hutch

Hutch

Strata Poster
This past weekend my dad and I hit up a few parks, which included Lake Compounce, Hersheypark, and Six Flags Great Adventure. Hersheypark and Great Adventure were the two parks I wanted to do the most the most that were somewhat near where I lived. I wanted to add Knoebels and Dorney Park to the trip, but I had SAT subject tests on that Saturday morning (my school was let out the day before) and my dad couldn’t get another day off from work.

Day 1: Lake Compounce, June 6th

The original plan was to do a direct drive to Hershey that Saturday afternoon and do the evening preview, but we decided to do another park for the afternoon to break up the long drive to Hershey. I considered SFNE for Wicked Cyclone whoring, but that seemed a little risky to me as it’s brand new ride and Six Flags operations on a Saturday night did not sound good (we probably would’ve alright, but I can always do it some other time). I also considered Quassy, but I figured we’d only need an hour there. I decided to do Lake Compounce as I’d much rather have time re-riding Boulder Dash as much as I can. After that we had another hour drive to our hotel in Rye.

I finished SATs by 11 that morning (Math Level I and Chem if any of you were interested), and my dad arrived at my school about a half hour later. After cleaning out my dorm room and grabbing lunch, we were on the road by 12:20, with an easy 2 hour drive to Compounce.

Unfortunately I didn’t realize until that day that my dad wanted to watch the Belmont Stakes, which meant that my dad wanted to leave the park at around 4:30 so he could have enough time to drive and catch the race on TV at our hotel.

So we were only at the 2 hours, and to be honest if I knew we would only be spending 2 hours at the park I would’ve just gone to Quassy instead. Nonetheless I was happy because I got some rides in on Boulder Dash!



Up until my day at Hershey, Boulder Dash was still my favorite coaster, and it’s still amazing as usual. Every time we stop on the brake I’ll be laughing with a big smile on my face.

I also seem to be one of the few (only?) people here who prefers the back seat to the front. Yes, the front is awesome, but the back is just absolutely ridiculous, making for a much crazier ride. Yes, it is rougher, but I’ve been able to handle it fine. But this particular visit, I came off thinking that maybe the back row is indeed a little too much. Unfortunately I never did front row that day, as everyone’s obviously flocking for that seat, so I just stuck with the back half of the train. I was thinking that maybe as the years go by I’ll start to prefer front row. But back row is still so much fun.



I got in a total of four rides, two in the back. If Lake Compounce would actually run two trains I could've easily gotten in more. Waits were about 20-30 min each (which is worth the wait), but they can feel very slow at times. My dad stopped after two rides because he needed a break. :p (This was a common occurrence during the trip. About half the time I just rode alone while my dad sat out. He’s getting old. ;))

So I knew that Darren B, Ben, Tomatron, and Taylor were going to Compounce sometime that day to kick off their big goon trip (and I think some other CFers were there that day as well), but unfortunately I never ran into any of them. I did however meet some Belgian goons that were going on a similar USA trip hitting up a bunch of parks. There was a big group of them (they were all wearing the same T-shirts of their group), but a lot of them had split up across the park and were doing their own thing. I got to chat with a few of them while I was waiting in line for Boulder Dash. I mentioned I was in Belgium last year and how I made my way over to Alton and Thorpe. Turns out that Boulder Dash was their 2nd favorite coaster and a lot of them had Voyage as their favorites. So nice to finally meet some real enthusiasts in real life. It was great! :D

I would’ve loved to stay for a bit more and get more re-rides in, but my dad “insisted” that we get going.

Our hotel in Rye was actually about a five minute drive from Playland. We didn’t go into the park, but after our dinner we decided to drive by it. You’ll have to excuse the quality of this rushed picture.



I've heard very negative things about this park, and it never looked good to me. The woodie looked okay, but everything else looked bad. And I figured that the place would be filled with a bunch of rude people and ride ops with cheap food and whatnot. The park was actually still open when we drove by, but honestly I don't think I'm missing much other than the +1's (and I was already going to get plenty of new credits anyway).

So that's about it for Day 1. The next two parts will be longer with more pictures as they are new parks (for me) and we were there for full days. So hopefully they will be more interesting! :)
 
Re: Compounce/Hershey/Great Adventure - Day 1

Yeah I was there! I was like where is Sanchez I should just start screaming coasterforce. I saw those people from Belgium at SFNE two days later they were whoring Wicked Cyclone with me lol. I thought they were German but I was just guessing based on how they were talking. I look forward to your other two parts especially Great Adventure.
 
Re: Compounce/Hershey/Great Adventure - Day 1

^Noooo, how dare you confuse Dutch with German!! Ugh <////3
 
Re: Compounce/Hershey/Great Adventure - Day 1

I have never met someone who is Dutch or German so it all sounds like the Swedish Chef to me.
 
Re: Compounce/Hershey/Great Adventure - Day 1

Dutch sounds very dull, while German sounds aggressive. Quite a big difference :wink:
 
Re: Compounce/Hershey/Great Adventure - Day 1

If you can basically understand what they're saying based solely on cognates, it's Dutch. :lol:
 
Re: Compounce/Hershey/Great Adventure - Day 1

Okay, been a while but here's my second part.

Day 2: Hersheypark 6/7

We still had around a three hour drive to Hershey PA, so we were on the rode a little after 8. The drive was highlighted by a huge goon moment of mine when we unexpectedly drove right past Dorney Park and I screamed at the top of my lungs! I managed to get a couple blurry pictures too. Quite an exciting moment.





But of course, not as exciting as the rest of the day. We arrived at the Hershey Lodge (which is gigantic by the way) at around 11:30, and, after checking in and catching a shuttle bus, we made it to the park a little after 12. I was getting a little anxious (which I guess isn’t uncommon for me when I visit a major park new to me) and I needed to get all 14 creds that day. Turns out I was fine, except I didn’t get Laff Trakk, which I’ll talk about later.



Skyrush was one of my most anticipated coasters ever, and since it was at the front of the park, we decided to ride it first. And it was a good thing that the queue was only about 15 minutes as well.







Unfortunately the ride ops assign your rows in the normal queue, but wasn’t a huge problem because the ride is great no matter where you sit, especially in the winged seats. And later in the ride had a much shorter queue so I got to choose what row I wanted and I was almost always in an outward seat.

I’m no sure whose hand this was in this picture. I don’t remember if it was mine or not. :p



I started out in one of outward seats in the right, and the amount of freedom you have in the seat is actually quite scary. I’ll admit, I was a little nervous as we ascended and fast lift hill.

And the ride… oh my **** god… that’s the best way I can describe it! It’s absolutely insane. Probably the craziest, most ridiculous ride I have ever ridden. The first drop is pure bliss, but the airtime hills are even better as the crazy ejector airtime lasts a lot longer. There’s also some really good positive g-forces in the low turns. I was speechless on the brake run. It was an instant top 5 coaster for me after my first ride. But as I kept riding it later in the day, it just kept getting better and better, and it move higher and higher until it became my new #1! 10/10

After my first ride, I wondered if the ride needed more airtime hills. But as I kept riding it I realized that the other elements, like the Stengel dive thing, the turn to the right immediately afterward, and that crazy hill after that were the most intense parts of the ride (if you sit on the end). The ride is indeed over quick, but I felt like the length was good enough for what it did. And yes, the restraints did hurt a bit going over the airtime hills, but that was an afterthought for me. I didn’t let the pain bother me (and it was really nice that they unlock on the brake run).





Obviously I would’ve wanted another quick re-ride or two but there were creds needed to be mopped up! Comet was up next, a fun little ride. Was pleasantly surprised to see two trains running on an old PTC. The bottom of the first drop was a bit rough, but the rest of the ride was fine. Some good bunny hops here and there and stupid fun. 6.5/10

After that we went up the hill and grabbed a quick lunch. I finished mine early so I could quickly get Great Bear on my own, a ride that everyone seems to have mixed feelings about.







Great Bear is good, but not great. It has some pretty solid elements, but nothing too intense. The little drop and helix is a good buildup for a pretty good first drop. The loop is good, but nothing to write home about. There’s also some good foot choppers in between the loop in the immelmann. The immelmann itself was a little disappointing; it just didn’t have any snap. The zero-g was my favorite part of the ride (I’m still a big fan of zero-g’s in general), but still didn’t have that intensity I was hoping for. Then there’s a surprising moment of airtime before a fun corkscrew, and then that’s about it.

A lot of people seem to be bothered by the section after the corkscrew, I didn’t really care (sure, I admit, an inline twist or something could’ve been cool, but that section in general is kind of in an awkward area). I was more focused on the long straight section before the corkscrew:



I guess maybe this wasn’t the most ideal place to slap down a big B&M invert. That being said, I do love how the ride looks and how it looks like something I’d build in RCT and how it interacts with SuperDooperLooper.



A smooth, solid ride nonetheless. Just lacks the intensity. 7.5/10

I wanted to do SuperDooperLooper next, but I must’ve misread the map because its entrance was all the way back on the bottom of the hill next to Skyrush, so I decided to get that later when we work our way around. So up next we did Storm Runner, another ride I was really looking forward to.





Line was probably no more than 20 min, which was the longest I’d seen it all day. I also managed to get this neat goon picture about the brake system.



It was nice to also see a dual loading station, with both sides open all day.



We hopped onto the second row, and we were off! What I love about this ride is that, unlike other Intamin accelerators, this one actually does more after the top hat. The launch was smooth and very forceful, the top hat was a lot of fun, the immelmann was wacky (in a good way; it starts out more like an inverted top hat), and the snake dive thing was insane with some good hangtime too. The final overbank turn things were a little jerky, but not too bad. There’s also a pretty good headchopper right before the brake run. Overall, fantastic ride. I preferred it over Stealth for having more to offer, but I still prefer the insanity of Top Thrill Dragster. My dad’s favorite ride of the park as well. 9.5/10



Right next to Storm Runner was something I wasn’t looking forward to… Sidewinder.



But much to my surprise, it had the newer restraints that you find on B&M Flyers and Wingriders, so no headbanging! It’s still very meh, and the inversions aren’t that good (I found going backwards worse on this one), but it’s probably the best Boomerang I’ve ridden due to no headbanging (or not having to brace yourself). 6/10

We had passed Trailblazer earlier, so we went and picked that up next. It’s okay. Pretty forgettable family mine train. It’s nice that it’s in the woods, the final helix was kind of fun and I think there was somewhat of an effort at theming, but no need to do it again. 5/10





I wanted to do something good again so we kept making our way toward the back of the park and did Farenheit.





Longest queue of the day (for us) as expected, about 30 min. But they had three trains running and the line kept moving so it wasn’t too bad.



The chain lift system on this one is also pretty intense, with a lot of crazy mechanisms and whatnot. I was specifically intrigued by the friction wheels in the middle of the track just before the vertical lift.









And the ride’s great! We were assigned backrow, so we were really pulled over the first drop. The Norwegian loop was pretty cool, and I love the wacky looking cobra roll. It only gets better with the second half of the ride with some tight transitions and elements. The corkscrews had some nice snap, followed by a tight overbank turn into a great ejector airtime hill. I was a little concerned that there might be some headbanging, but there just some gentle jerks in the corkscrews. Overall great ride! Don’t know why there aren’t more of these around. 9/10

















Lightning Racer was next, my first GCI woodie. I got one ride on each side that day (I just did them back to back), and as great as it was, I did feel somewhat disappointed. They were fun, but I was hoping for them to be stupidly fun and more rerideable as others have described. I probably should’ve come back later and try riding them at night (as both sides were a walk one during the day), but I never bothered.

It’s still a great ride nonetheless. There’re some good moments of airtime (nothing amazing), and the way it twists and turns over and other the other side is pretty cool. The steep first drop to the right is pretty cool, but I remember it being pretty rattle at the bottom of the first drop. There isn’t much different between the two sides, but gun to my head I enjoyed Thunder more than Lightning, due to sitting in the back row, the lift hill being higher than the other so you can view the park, and that fact the Thunder almost always wins! 8/10

I think after that we got in line for Laff Trakk, but after ten minutes we left because we realized that the line was quite long and it wasn’t really moving that quickly. Glad we left because it turns out the wait would’ve been 1.5 hours. And it remained like that all day. Had we arrived to the park at opening, the line probably would’ve been shorter.



I needed the cred, and I actually had enough time later in the day to wait that long if I wanted to. I checked it a couple times later to see if it had gotten any shorter, but at 8:30 later that night it was still a full queue. There was no way I was going to wait that long for a family spinner. I was actually kind of looking forward to it too (I enjoyed Sonic Spinball, so something like that indoors would’ve been fun). So I sacrificed the +1 for several re-rides on far superior rides.

I did Wild Mouse later because the line looked a little long (it was probably 5 min, but I wanted a walk on :p), so I came back later for that. Instead, we did Wildcat, an old GCI.





I guess the older GCI’s like this and Gwazi don’t age very well, because this was a POS. Worst wooden coaster I’ve ridden by far. It was just a rough ride all the way through and didn’t do anything. I couldn’t wait for it to end. Kind of a shame too, it actually has a promising layout (not that I had any hopes for this ride). 3/10 I wonder what it would have been like in its first few years of operations back in the late 90s.

With that out of the way, we made out way back towards the front of the park.





Of course on the way back I had to pick up Cocoa Cruiser for the +1. It looks so silly and tiny sitting right next to Storm Runner.





It was getting close 5 pm, and my dad wanted to go back to the hotel. Luckily the shuttle bus worked out great so my dad left me and spent some more time at the park and take the shuttle bus on my own later. In fact I was only halfway done for the day as I didn’t leave until closing! :D

I still had a couple more creds to get. But at that point I didn’t worry about it too much anymore as I was doing great on time. So after my dad left I did a couple Skyrush’s, including some of these. :D



Then I went and rode my first Schwarzkopf coaster, SooperDooperLooper. And it was actually pretty fun! The trains aren’t the most comfortable, but it uses lap bars (this was a first for me: a coaster that goes upside down and uses lap bars instead f OTSRs). The first drop was fun, and the loop had some nice g’s. After that it sort plays out like a mine train. Some fast turns, a tunnel, a few little hills and drops, nice interaction with the trees and Great Bear. Overall a solid ride! 7/10



I wanted to make my way back towards the back of the park, so while I was in the area I did a re-ride on Great Bear, this time in the back. Better ride than before, but I still didn’t think that “Great” Bear was “Great.”

I continued on towards the back so I could get the wild mouse, but of course I couldn’t ignore Storm Runner. So I quickly got in another ride in on that (this time back row).





After a second ride on Storm Runner I made it to Wild Mouse, which was just a standard model. They’re alright I guess. At least they provide some sort of excitement with the hairpin turns and sudden drops. 6/10

I think after that I took a break and grabbed myself some dinner. Then I went back and did another Storm Runner before doing four more Skyrush rides, which kept blowing my mind. Then it was a little after 8, and I wanted to go back and check Laff Trakk on last time to see if the queue had died down (which it hadn’t). Instead, Farenheit’s queue was about half of what it was during the day, so I did that. And as a bonus, they put me on front row!

After that I did one more ride on Storm Runner in the front row, just after sunset. It was about 9 pm after that, which gave me an hour to whore Skyrush for night rides! :D

I already had 6 rides in earlier that day, but in the last hour I got 7 more rerides in, giving myself a total of 13 rides in of Skyrush in one day… pretty insane!





I started the hour with a couple rides in on front row, which were only about five minute waits each. Front seat on the very left is the best seat in the house, and riding that seat at night was one of the single best rides I’ve had on any roller coaster. At one point when I was waiting for front row, I looked behind me and the normal queue was completely empty. After a couple rides in on front row I and just stuck with the normal queue and just kept riding the second row on the left (I also hoped that maybe there was an odd number of people in the front row just so I could snag the empty seat without having to wait in that queue). Every time I went up the lift I just couldn’t help but start laughing. I realized that this whore session was the most I fun I’ve ever had at a theme park, and that this was my new #1.

What also worked great for me is that there’s a big clock lit up that you can see on the brake run, so I knew exactly what time it was. It seemed like I was getting a ride in every 5 minutes at one point.

And yeah, the ride itself is out of control at night. What I love about it is that the lift hill is the only thing that’s lit up, and you can’t see anything else during the rest of the ride. The on ride photo is located at the bottom of the first drop, so the light blinds you for a second and before you know you’re already out of your seat on the first airtime hill. The ride is so intense that I found myself holding on during some of the elements. And the pain still didn’t bother me (if the pain actually bothered me, I probably wouldn’t have ridden it 13 times :p).

At some point I also tried back row (can’t remember if it was during the night or earlier in the day), but it was not as good. It was way too intense to the point where it was hard to enjoy and it even rattled a bit during the low turns. After that I avoided back row and keep sticking with the front half of the train. If anyone’s going to ride this for the first time, have your first ride towards the front!

Coming into the brake run during my last ride, I saw that the clock said exactly 10 pm, so they had closed the queue line. There were still two more trains being sent through for the handful of people still waiting in the station, but that was it for me, so I started heading back towards the park entrance.

Another thing I love about Skyrush is the loud mechanical sound it makes when the cable dumps the train down the first drop.







What a day that was! I arrived back at my hotel at around 10:30, all sweaty and gross. I eventually counted up that I had done about 30 rides among the 13 coasters I had done that day, which I think is the most I’ve ever done. I had an absolute blast during my visit to Hersheypark that day and loved the park (even if it is a little bit cluttered in some places, but I actually like how it’s set up). The front half of the park is actually really nice with all the trees and landscaping. The back of the park with Lightning Racer and Wildcat could use a little more landscaping; it felt a lot different from the other side of the park.

I think the one ride I regret not trying (besides Laff Trakk) was the Kissing Tower. It would’ve been nice to get some good views from the high observation tower.

Another thing I liked about the park is that it uses bins in the station for your phones and wallets and whatnot. But what's great is that they close them off so they don't get stolen while you're riding. A lot easier than Six Flags lockers or the system that Merlin uses.

Overall, I loved my visit to Hersheypark and can’t wait to go back there. It has a great selection of coasters, with the three Intamins at the top and being supported by other decent rides like Lightning Racer, Great Bear, SooperDooperLooper, and Comet.

Thanks for reading report on Hersheypark, and stay tuned for Six Flags Great Advenutre!
 
Re: Compounce/Hershey/Great Adventure - Day 2

It's always great to find a new number 1, but even better when you're able to whore it :)

Really enjoyable read. It sounds like you hit the park on a pretty good day in terms of crowds. I too was a little disappointed with Lightning Racer. I thought it lacked the 'oomph' of better GCIs.
 
Re: Compounce/Hershey/Great Adventure - Day 2

I could sit here and gush about Skyrush all day long, that ride is just perfection to me.

Glad you loved it too, it just has everything tied up in an insane package.

Such a good ride <3
 
Day 3: Six Flags Adventure 6/8

Six Flags Great Adventure doesn’t deserve to be called “Great” Adventure because the park/experience wasn’t great and could’ve been better. The park has a pretty sweet coaster selection, but there were a few things that held it back.



After a 2 hour drive we arrived at the park at around 12ish. I do like how Kingda Ka is the first thing you see when driving in the park, it’s massive! The park had some pretty good-looking coasters I was looking forward too. But naturally I headed to El Toro first. But as we were walking over to it, I was beginning to have my doubts, as I hadn’t seen any trains running on it.



I’d heard that the park didn’t really have a good path layout, which is something I immediately noticed when trying to figure out how the hell to get to El Toro. It really is pretty bad, there’s just a bunch of narrow, winding little paths going all over the place, with some shop/restaurant/building blocking what could have been an easy straight path.



When we finally found El Toro, my worst fears had come true and my heart sunk…



:cry:



Of course, my most anticipated coaster ever is closed the day I finally go. Ughhh, so annoying. <///3 Think it might’ve been down for annual maintenance or something, as it was supposedly open the previous day.

At least wooden structure looks beautiful… (and this area is probably the only nice-looking area in the entire park).



Was praying that El Toro would open up sometime later in the day, but it never did. So instead we started off with Bizarro.



This ride had a walk-on to front row, which was nice. I’d imaging the queue for this would remain quiet most of the time since it’s hidden in the corner of the park.







This ride is pretty good. The first half is great with some smooth, fun inversions. As always, I find the zero g the best inversion, and it was no different for Bizarro. Unfortunately it just gets a little rattly in the second half, but not too bad. 8/10

Now I would’ve immediately rerode this a second time, but the rattly section gave me a slight headache (in the ride’s defense, I think I was already sort of getting one anyway). So I didn’t feel like reriding just yet, so we left it. And unfortunately, we never came back to it later.

Runaway Mine Train, or whatever it’s called, was up next.





I didn’t expect much from this, but it was actually surprisingly fun. Much better from Trailblazer from the day before. A nice smooth ride and there’s some good little hills and drops too. 6/10 But I still think that RMT at Alton Towers is the best mine train I’ve ridden.



So up next was the infamous Kingda Ka, and I wasn’t sure what I would think of it. I didn’t no if I would find it great, bad, meh, or what. Obviously it’s not as good as Top Thrill Dragster, but that’s one of my favorites (was my #1 for some time too), so I came on Kingda Ka with an open mind. My dad also sat out on this one. :lol:

The queue was about a half hour. Was kind of annoying as a staff member would only let so many people into the last half of the queue, so there’d be a lot of standing around a bit before the line would actually move.

There’s a big dual loading station with two more loading stations on each side (so you could technically load 4 trains simultaneously). But of course, Six Flags would only load one train at a time. I think they had three trains running, so it would’ve been nice to have at least one more station open.

Anyway, at some point the ride broke down (of course). Kind of annoying, but after five minutes, they got everything going again (felt kind of bad for the riders waiting to be launched lol).

So eventually I finally got on. I heard front row is the place to be because it’s smoother, but GP file into the front row line and it would’ve been another 30 min. So I just went for the easiest row, somewhere in the middle.

And holy **** the ride was bad. Seriously, this thing is such a piece of ****. The only good moments were the anticipation before the launch (which wasn’t as good as my experience on Dragster a few years ago, because it was my first Strata Coaster), and the first second of the launch. But as it keeps getting faster the whole thing starts to shake and rattle like crazy urrgghhh. It ruined the entire ride. I couldn’t enjoy it at all. Thankfully the ride is really short because by the time I reached the very top I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I don’t even remember the rest of the ride doing anything. I remember the vertical twists on Dragster being incredible; the rattling on Ka was so bad that the elements didn’t do anything. I was pretty relieved when we slowed down on the break run. Worst coaster in the park.

Wow it was so bad. Worst Intamin I’ve ridden by far. I’d rather ride Rita over this, no hesitation. Hell, I think I’d rather reride a kiddie coaster than this again.

So one little second of the actual ride was good, followed by nonstop roughness. 3/10 Ugh.

Disgusting.



It’s kind of a shame they just put a really nice drop tower attached to it too, because I would’ve loved to see this thing get nuked.

Alright, enough of my rant. It was time for lunch.



The food was surprisingly pretty good, but we each got full pretty quickly and I couldn’t finish the pretzel (which was fab btw).

Before lunch I actually wanted to see if I could do Green Lantern beforehand; I thought that my legs would be tired after the ride and would want a break (my experience on Mantis), but the line was too long anyway (as expected as it’s towards the front of the park).

I wanted to quickly do Zumanjaro after lunch (which, now that I think about, may not have been the best idea!), but it was having maintenance issues (come on, Six Flags. El Toro, Kingda Ka, and Zumanjaro all broken down at one point during the day? Get it together) So instead we worked our way to the other side of the park. We passed a Skyscreamer, and I guess I thought this was a big 400 ft one, but it wasn’t. We skipped it (I can always do the one at SFNE).



Soon we arrived, and I was hoping to see if Nitro could cheer up my day.



And boy, this ride is fantastic! We did two quick re rides (they had three trains going, which helped the line moved along, despite some stacking), each in back row. I know it’s not the best way to get a good opinion of the ride and you only do one row, but when everyone’s queuing for the front you might as well just stick with back row (I probably would’ve tried more if the line was shorter or I had time more rerides). We also avoided Train C at all costs, which is supposedly rough as hell for some reason.

The ride is much better than Apollo’s Chariot, my only other B&M mega. There’s plenty of floater on every hill, some good positive g’s, but the helix is what surprised me. I didn’t think much of it to begin with, but it had some pretty sweet forces and I even noticed myself greying out on my first ride! That has never happened to me before on a coaster. And the bunny hills on the way back are great fun. During my second ride, I made sure that there were a good couple inches between myself and the lap bar, making for a more fun ride! 9.5/10

And while waiting in the queue, I did notice one of Batman’s trains laying in the pavement between Nitro and Batman (don’t have a picture of it, as my phone was in the lockers by then), which was pretty cool. Up until recently I didn’t think that they were probably for the Mantab trains that occurred a few weeks ago.

Speaking of Batman, that was up next.









It didn’t occur to me until we entered the queue that the trains laying in the pavement meant that the ride was had one train operations. That along with classic Six Flags operations added up to our longest queue of the day (actually, one of the longest I’ve had in a couple years), going over an hour. And the hot, cramped, and slow queue made it pretty bad. This was pretty unfortunate because I was actually looking forward to this ride and was hoping to get a few rerides in.

At least the ride is good. Like always, we stuck with back row, and there’re a lot of great forces, inversions, and barely any dead spots. I did feel that some moments there was a little too much force. I really wish I got more rides in, because I feel that I could enjoy it more as I keep riding it. But still one of the better coasters in the park. 8.5/10

There were still several creds I needed to check off, and my dad was already thinking about going in a couple hours, so I quickly hammered through the rest of the creds. Thankfully the rest of the rides were more or less a walk on.

First up was Dark Knight Coaster. They had an okay preshow, but it was just wasting my time and a wanted to get on the ride. And to be honest, this is probably one of Six Flags’ best theme rides (which says a lot), and it’s kind of a shame that they would put all that effort into a Wild Mouse. The ride is alright (I am starting to get kind of sick of these now that I ride more), but it’s probably the best one I’ve been on because it’s in the dark.

Up next: Skull Mountain



Another indoor coaster with some family layout. The first drop was kind of fun because the backrow gave a little airtime, but the rest is meh. No need to do it again.

Blackbeard’s Treasure or whatever was up next.





They have a clone of this at SFNE (and I’m sure at others), but I had a better experience with this one because the ride ops at SFNE were unacceptable. On these rides the trains are stupidly long (longer than the lift hill and can barely fit in the station), so it results in a few slow moments during the ride. +1

After that we started working our way back toward Superman and Green Lantern, but I remembered that the park had one other coaster, but I couldn’t remember which one. After a quick look on RCDB and the map, I saw that it was Road Runner Railway, and of course it was all the back next to Nitro and Skull Mt. So I quickly hauled back toward the corner of the park, got the +1 (was a clone of Cocoa Cruiser from Hershey), and made my way back to the front of the park. And fortunately the lines had died down.



First up was Superman: Ultimate Flight. I like flying coasters, but now that I’ve been on a few of them, there not as incredible as I used to think (my first ride on Manta was unforgettable). There’re still great fun, and the pretzel loops are still fantastic, but they need to do a little more than that to maintain the intensity. This one is still pretty good though, much better than Air, but nowhere close to Manta. I still think it’s worth re-riding a couple times (given we had the time). 8/10

So finally the last cred of the trip was Green Lantern, something I wasn’t looking forward too.



Fortunately this wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be (I guess sometimes it’s good to lower your expectations or fear the worst). There wasn’t much headbanging and my legs felt fine. So does that mean the ride is good? No, absolutely not. It doesn’t do anything, and it’s still pretty uncomfortable. The only part where I remember the ride actually did some interesting was the little transition before the MCBR (which I thought would be death, but it just kind of whips the train around).

So 5/10, for doing next to nothing (and being a stand up :p) At least it wasn't painful. :D

There was one more ride I wanted to try out, and that I was Zumanjaro, which had thankfully opened back up. Was also probably the only ride in the park to have a single rider queue.

One thing I really like about this ride is the restraints. They’re B&M wingrider style OTSRs, but without the vest, so it feels more like a lap bar. During my day there, I didn’t see both the drop tower or Kingda Ka go simultaneously, but when loading in the seats you can feel the entire tower vibrate has Ka sprials up and down. The view is spectacular, as expected, and it feels like it’s dropping forever. I don’t know what it is, but every drop tower I go on I still get a little feeling of nervousness at the top. Great ride. 8.5/10

So by then my dad was looking to get going, but of course I needed one more ride on Nitro and end the day on a high note, and of course it was all the way on the other side of the large park. But I managed to get one last ride in on the back row (was considering sneaking in another ride, but I didn’t ;)), before meeting back at the entrance and leaving.





So Six Flags Great Adventure is a lot better than Six Flags New England. The coasters in general are good (and probably great, if El Toro was open). But operations aren’t the good and the park doesn’t really look nice. They really need a better path system, especially on the left side where it’s a maze. Their record breaking ride is a joke. And of course, El Toro, which I thought would’ve been my new #1, was down.

If El Toro wasn’t down (or it wasn’t there to begin with), I wouldn’t have the need to return. I do want to return at some point, but I think I’d rather wait until they get a nice new coaster, and who knows how long that’ll be.

Okay, I know I did take a while to put this together, but thanks for reading my final part of this PTR. :)
 
Nice TR. I never got why Rita and KK are hated so much. Yes they're rough, but I feel like that adds to the ride. It's kinda like sitting on a massage chair while being launched at high speeds.
 
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