DoomPlague

This is somehow my first trip to California in my life and instead of checking out the more popular socal parks, I'm in the SF bay area. I only had a small idea of what to expect from Santa Cruz, and ended up enjoying the experience. First things first: cost We messed up by not buying discounted ride wristbands ahead of time. So buying them the day of the visit would have been about 75/each or 150 total. Instead, since many of the flat rides are just smaller versions of what I've been on before or will on this trip, I opted to start with with one of their prepaid cards which give "bonus points" that can be used on rides. IE $100 can get you $115 worth of rides. The bonus points can't be used on food or other items but fortunately they are automatically used before any paid points where applicable. This system worked out well for us. The wristbands aren't good for the walk through Fright Walk attraction and food. So for the price of two wristbands, we did all the rides we wanted, including 2 rides on GIant Dipper, the Fright Walk and covered one meal. Still more expensive than the other two parks on this trip but...it is a boardwalk park. The rides: Giant Dipper is wonderful. It's reasonably smooth for an old woodie and has a couple good pops of airtime. The pre-lift section is also a nice treat as is the more rare, rounded station. Our first ride, we just walked to the front row because the other guests just instinctively filled in the back of the train. So we got front and another ride near the back. Both were great. The park also has 3 decent dark rides. One is the Cave Train Adventure. It has your usual bright colors with blacklight-effects. The characters are crude looking but there are a ton of them and many animate. There's also a decent sense of humor to the ride and its surprisingly long. We also hit Ghost Blasters, which is, in fact, a boo blasters ride complete with Boocifer. No omnimover system but the guns work really well. They also have a Haunted Castle dark ride, which is arguably higher quality than the others but at the same time more generic. It was decent but nothin that interesting. We tried a couple flat rides, including an indoor Huss breakdance complete with lights and music. We skipped the EF Miler kid coaster but did ride Undertow, a Maurer spinner. I continue to have bad luck with spinning coasters as this one had almost zero spin. We also rode their Arrow log flume, Loggers Revenge. Didn't get very wet and the layout is your typical one where it stays in the air the whole time until the drop. WIth our remaining points, I rode Tornado by myself. I'm not sure I had seen one of these rides from Wisdom Rides. The cars swing as the ride spins but you can spin them like tea cups. Crowds were pretty moderate. Enough people that you had to work to avoid bumping in to people but the lines weren't terrible. If the crowds were smaller, I would have wished we had wristbands but it actually worked out pretty well. We ate at a fish&chips place on the arcade side of the boardwalk. It was decent quality food. My overall impressions are pretty positive. They actually have a ton more rides there that we didn't ride, including a skyride that covers most of the boardwalk distance. It's impressive how they managed to cram in some things. One end of the park is basically two layers, where they put indoor rides underneath a higher part of the midway. And while its somewhat expensive overall, the park is well kept and maintained and I never felt like anyone was trying to rip me off. So don't overlook this boardwalk if you're ever in the bay area.

ElToroRyan has a video on the subject and its pretty clear that something changed and it can't be explained by weight gain. One guy reports having a 34" waist and not being able to ride. Probably an outlier, as body shapes vary quite a bit, but still very concerning.

What were coaster enthusiasts supposed to do? They/we have no sway over anything. Not sure those are good examples. Last I checked Tennessee and A&M are still underperforming considering their revenue and fanbases. And Cracker Barrel...well, okay they should have known better but the change was completely harmless. I still can't believe I had to hear about that nonstop for a full week as if it was a national tragedy.

"Is this park Great?" "Nah, that's near Chicago. This park is Mid" How about: "Gateway Enchanted Park" or "River City Enchanted Park" or... "The American Midway"

Did you ask it to create a saloon for giants? EDIT: note that I'm just poking fun at the AI's sense of scale.

At least this could (potentially) solve the issue of the FL people crowding into one or two rides at certain times of the day, hurting the experience for everyone. In October I saw what a full FL queue does to the standby line at the end of the day on Siren's Curse. What an awful experience that was. Not that anyone asked: but I've thought about how to improve the system for awhile. My admittedly flawed idea is that each guest has Fast Lane points or credits. Small rides use 1, bigger rides and most coasters use 2 and a small number of high demand rides need 3. Single day guests are given 2 or 3 points for free. Passholders also get a modest amount for free for the season and can earn more in different ways, similar to perks. Outside of that, they are bought in packs and are connected to a (preferably RFID) wristband. Obviously there are problems with this (like having to refund points when a ride shuts down or how it doesn't first people to spread out to different rides) but I think it creates a more fair system that lets everyone feel like that have a chance at using it.

What does it even mean and how would it be enforced? Are they gonna watch you eat the meal?

It would definitely need a more decorative building but I would put something over Cargo Loco before Monster. I do think the park needs more sheltered/indoor rides

I've seen these types of ads all over the internet. It's all AI generated too and the products are even worse than you might assume. The Corridor Crew guys bought one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nanCGeac_-Q

They're definitely planning to move the CF parks to the Six Flags app, based on the new site. But so far it still just has the legacy SF parks on it. If I were to nitpick, when you select a park on the site you get big thumbnails for each park and some have good pics that represent their parks well, including KI and CP. But other parks...not so much.

Seems to be the same items as last year? I had that smokehouse mac & cheese last year and it was great.

Just about everyone is in agreement on this. There should be a restroom either there or next to the Area 72 entrance (where it could also serve the center part of Coneymall) Are we only counting restrooms within the park? That small one outside the entrance usually seems decent. In my 40+ years of going to the park, I don't know that I've ever been in the Festhaus restrooms.

RIP Vekoma Flying Dutchman Outlived...by the SLC

Giving away the gate, in and of itself, is not a terrible strategy. In fact, its a tried and true strategy that parks started a long time ago because the real money was in concessions and merch, etc etc. But now they basically give food away (to locals that visit often at least) and that's a big chunk of the revenue. Of course if we're being honest: It's not like KI or CP or KBF or the other top parks are losing money. The real problem is that successful parks are being used to pay off a debt that they didn't create to and to subsidize struggling parks. Since the dining plan came up, I think it would have been smarter to offer a food discount add-on instead of the dining plan. That is, to pay like $70 or something to get 50% off any and all food items in the park up to a certain amount per visit. I doubt many would see the appeal but it would work better for those of us that can't visit the park as regularly and it guarantees that the park gets not just up front revenue but revenue for every use.

Months back the chain said they would focus on their top 15 parks and yesterday I heard something about the top 16 parks account for 90% of revenue or something along those lines. Over Georgia and Over Texas are easily in that category, though I believe both are owned by a holding company and not completely owned by the chain? As far as the top 15, I'm assuming these 14 are included: Cedar Point, Knotts Berry Farm, Kings Island, Canada's Wonderland, SFGAdv, SFGAm, SFMM, Carowinds, Kings Dominion, SFOG, SFOT, SFFT, SFNE, SFM I recall Dorney being the more profitable of the lower tier CF parks but that may have changed. No idea about Discovery Kingdom or St Louis or LaRonde.