A Great Adventure on 8/13 (TR)

[TombRaiderFTW]

(If you've been reading this as I've been writing it, it's now done! Sorry about the wait. Enjoy!)

Hey guys! A week ago, I (finally) made it to my first Six Flags park, Great Adventure. I had a great time! Several expectations I had of the park and its rides were shattered (for the better), and it's easily one of the top three parks I've ever been to.

Now, in the usual style of my TR's (if you could say I even have a style after writing only one), I don't really like to say "and then we went here, and it was wunderbar, and then we did this, and then that." I'm not a big fan of integrated TR fluff--I'd rather just hear about the rides, and the fluff can have its own section! (If you're that interested in the order in which we did things, then pay attention to what order I review each coaster, because that's how we did it.) Now, without further adieu:

General: The Fluff

Now, I don't know what you've heard about Six Flags parks, but if you're like me, you've probably heard mumblings about poor operations, uncleanliness, unruly guests, and a general disregard for park atmosphere. Point blank, Great Adventure blew these out of the water. The operations weren't exactly at, say, Cedar Point's standards, but they were doing very well--especially considering the large number of Flash Pass users that seemed to be there that day. The only exception seemed to be Bizarro, but that was a moot point: despite the train stacking, there was at most a one-train wait for any given row. The employees weren't the friendliest I've ever encountered, but they were far from the listless, eye-rolling teenage snobs the Six Flags Enthusiast Stereotype would have you expect--I'd compare them to Kings Island in 2011 and earlier. The park was very clean, and I don't think I saw any (non-paying, anyway ) line jumping all day.

And the atmosphere? Wow. Every area of the park, save for the end of the Boardwalk area near Superman: Ultimate Flight and Green Lantern, was committed to a solid theme that really worked. Absolutely gorgeous--especially the Golden Kingdom, which I'm pretty sure is my favorite area in any park now despite that it's literally just Kingda Ka and a couple shops. If they plopped Tomb Raider: The Ride in there (which would fit perfectly, by the by ), I'm pretty sure SFGAdv would be pretty dang close to absolutely perfect. But that's an entirely different rant.

Also, unfortunately, I missed out on Houdini's Great Escape, something I'm still bummed about. (I know, I know! I tried. I got in line on our way out of the park, and then the ride went down. I did the best I could!) Hopefully we visit again soon.

Moral of the story: I had a wonderful time at this park, and I'd absolutely visit again in a heartbeat. Now, for the rides:

The Rides

The Dark Knight Coaster

>>6/10; the preshow and theme made me want to like it, but the ride itself was a little lacking.

Truthfully: prior to visiting Great Adventure, I was pretty much only interested in this ride so that I could say I'd ridden it. I knew it had some sort of preshow/theming, but I was more or less apathetic about it. Like I said before, to hear enthusiasts describe Six Flags' attempts at theming, I was pretty much expecting some construction paper glued to a wall. So when we walked through the outdoor queue straight into the (surprisingly well-themed to one of my favorite movies) preshow room, you can imagine my surprise when it fairly convincingly resembled a grimy metropolitan subway station.

The preshow started, and the room dimmed so that the only lighting was Harvey Dent's press conference and the overhead subway lighting. When the Joker "hijacked" the feed, the lights flickered, and this Nolan-esque gunshot BOOM went off, leaving the room covered in the Joker's "HAHA" lights. When your last taste of theming this good was Tomb Raider: The Ride sometime around 2005... Well, you can imagine my excitement. Not the same as if TR:TR returned, but I was pretty giddy, and I'm not even afraid to admit it.

Our handful of riders were let into the station. First of all: can I just stop to appreciate the ride's cars? I didn't know how they were going to not make them look cheesy for the theme, but Six Flags succeeded, as far as I'm concerned. We climbed in (what's with wild mouse-style coasters and cars that don't stop in the station?), pulled the restraints down, and headed up the unexpectedly fast lift. Man, I wanted to like this ride. Honest.

And I did, up until we made that turn off the lift hill. Not to hate on Mack (as Avalanche at Kings Dominion was pretty great), but if Arrow was still around to put one of their wild mice in there, I might have liked it better. If SIX wanted to make this a family ride, that's fine--but The Dark Knight isn't something you theme a family ride around, in my opinion. If you want an indoor family ride that's a wild mouse, give it a lighter theme than one where an insane, homicidal clown is taking over a subway system. If you want an indoor ride that's themed to The Dark Knight, then give it more of a kick than the fairly tame turns and dips that this ride had. I think some of the theming may have been off/down, too, but that didn't matter as much to me as the disconnect between the hype the preshow created and the tame ride the coaster delivered. The scare the final brake delivered (which I'm not spoiling, because it's a pretty clever trick) helped, but I couldn't avoid feeling a little let down by the ride.

It's still one of the more solid theming attempts I've seen from the seasonal parks I've been to, though, and it's definitely worth a try. I bet I'd feel a lot more let down by it if I'd had to wait any more than 15 minutes for it, however.

Batman: The Ride

>>8/10; a fantastic layout, but a bit headbangy and short.

Compared to Dark Knight, the theming of this ride felt a little outdated. Still, the queue was impressive, compared to anything Cedar Fair offers in themed queues. The extended part of the queue, in particular, was impressive; I really, really like the way they turned an extensive amount of line space into a walk though a park in Gotham. Once you near the station, the theming turns to sewage pipes, including these steel tubes that encompass the line up the stairs to the station. (It was a neat effect, particularly after seeing The Dark Knight Rises, but I'd sure hate to be stuck in them on a hot day.) The station itself is very dark--and, in our case, empty--so we hopped to the last row and walked onto the train.

I guess I don't know how to go into detail about the layout, quite simply. It's a very solid and intense progression that maintains its speed, for the most part, very well, without feeling generic. The first drop, in particular, was unexpectedly very good--it feels very steep, and the simultaneous twist of banking is almost suspended coaster-like in its suddenness. Of all the rides Six Flags could have cloned to most (all?) of its parks, this was an excellent choice, and it adds to my suspicion that I do very much like B&M Inverts--just not Raptor as much as the others. Raptor's good, don't get me wrong--it just doesn't blow me out of the water, whereas Great Bear and B:TR are both exciting and memorable to me. The most accurate word I'd use for Raptor at this point is "overrated," though that feels a little harsh.

Anyway, the only complaints I could have about Batman: The Ride is that there were a couple smacks to the head involved--but I'd have been really impressed if a 19 year-old invert didn't do that. It felt a little short, too, but I don't know what else B&M could have done with the ride after the second corkscrew besides what they did. It was an impressive, somewhat-compact little invert, and it's sitting at #5 on my steel rankings because of it. There were no real quirks or unique elements to the ride, but it was just a really solid experience from start to finish without being the tallest or fastest.

Nitro

>>5/10; if I wasn't so used to Diamondback, I'd likely have liked this much more.

I honestly didn't know what to expect out of Nitro. "Old-school" B&M's tend to be more highly regarded online by enthusiasts as more forceful, and with the way people praise Nitro, I was half-expecting it to blow me away. On the other hand, it's still B&M--seven times out of ten, I'm not that wowed by their rides, though I do feel they add something to a park's coaster lineup. So when we sat in the last row, I didn't have much trouble maintaining an open mind--and the slow lift gave me plenty of time to do so.

The ride was... I don't know. At least pre-MCBR, nothing about it really struck me as being more intense than anything Diamondback has to offer. It was a solid ride, but it was all B&M hyper, alright. A quick yank over the top of the lift, floater airtime that's quickly interrupted by a sudden turn, floater airtime, a Diamondback-esque turnaround without the rattle, more floater airtime, floater airtime that's quickly interrupted by a sudden turn, and a marginally more intense helix... It was nothing exceptional, and the pacing felt oddly familiar.

The second half is pretty clearly where the ride gets its fame, as it's got quirky features I don't think B&M ever replicated again. You hit the MCBR, which only grabs lightly--and then the drop off the MCBR is this ridiculous burst of ejector airtime (at least in the back), followed shortly by these miniscule bunny hops that just kind of wiggle up and down in midair, rather than going all the way to the ground and back like Diamondback. I think I kind of liked it for its uniqueness, but I was more in shock that B&M actually designed legitimate ejector air into a ride than anything else. One fairly generic bunny hop later, the train took this innocent-looking leap into the final brake run that seemed like more ejector air until the brakes very quickly grabbed and brought us to a near-instantaneous stop.

When it was over, it was a fun ride, but it likely won't be the first thing I think of when I think of Great Adventure in the future. With all due respect to the Platinum Flash Pass-holder who informed me that that was the best ride in the park, it wasn't the best thing that ever happened to me. It might also have been the victim of comparison, too--if Nitro showed up at any other park I've been to, I'm sure it would be much more prominent to me, much like the effect Diamondback has had at KI. As it were, Nitro just didn't... blow me away. (I'll be here all week.)

Skull Mountain

>>8/10; arguably the biggest surprise of the trip--felt like the prototype for Adventure Express.

Let's be honest: expectations were pretty low for this one. I guess I had Kinzel's Cedar Fair on the mind when I looked at it while approaching from Nitro, because everything on the outside screamed, "The previous owners plopped this here, and we wanted to expand the kids' area, so we just kind of awkwardly wrapped it around this building so people won't notice it's here." Fortunately, the various parts they added to the outdoor part of the queue (the bamboo plants, the shade trees, the giant Panda Express building--wait...) showed that this ride wasn't totally forgotten by current management. So we headed through the very Volcano: The Blast Coaster-ish queue, both excessively long and volcano-ish, to the station, where an... interesting ride op was trying to inject the ride with as much "swag" as humanly possible with his microphone. (I think the ride's permanently going to be known as Swag Mountain between me and the people I went to the park with.)

We got in the last row. Up the first lift, I think my expectations fell even farther. Around the windowed "cavern" and up the second lift, I was fairly prepared for an unexciting coaster. [sarcasm]Then, like any other long-trained ride that appears to have preceded most of the other rides in the park, the ejector airtime had us standing up down the first drop.[/sarcasm] Wait, that was ambiguous--we really did stand up down the first drop. That's not exactly what I'd been planning on from Swag Skull Mountain.

When the train's as long as the average Zierer kiddie coaster, I was expecting a kiddie coaster, but this was actually a really great ride. Quick turns, a handful of airtime pops, and some blacklight-lit African masks (and strobe lights, and a random evil pumpkin) pretty much comprised the otherwise pitch black ride, but it was charming in its own way. Definitely the hidden gem of Great Adventure!

On a side note: a ride of this intensity is exactly what I'd prescribe for a steel coaster for Holiday World--it rides right between Howler and Raven in terms of intensity.

Bizarro

>>6/10; not bad, but not as good as I'd hoped--in a different park, it would be everyone's favorite looper, a la Vortex.

Of all the coasters, I was probably anticipating Bizarro the most, but not in the usual way. I was pretty much just anticipating one element on this ride the most: the zero-G roll. I realize that sounds odd, and honestly, I can't really explain it. I just always had this notion that a zero-G roll on a B&M floorless would be this really cool, defining element, like Nitro's inexplicable ejector air or Voyage's triple-down: unexpected, awesome, and rarely (if ever) replicated again. And after riding Dominator at Kings Dominion in 2010, I was sure Bizarro was going to really be something.

Well, it was something, but not the something I was expecting. I actually liked this ride's first drop more than Dominator's, and, while I know seemingly cheap fire effects are the Six Flags stereotype, I thought the fire was a surprisingly neat touch, at least when viewed from the last row. The zero-G was nothing like I expected; of the zero-G rolls I've experienced (B:TR, Raptor, Great Bear, and Sky Rocket), Bizarro's was the least interesting or dynamically unique. With your legs dangling, I was expecting some sort of uniqueness with the quick rotation (think what zero-G's on inverts feel like, only more intense), but there really wasn't anything that exceptional about it. I also noticed a pretty defined vibration--not a rattle like Diamondback, but just a constant shaking, like Fahrenheit--throughout the course.

Even then, this was a really solid looper. I was caught off-guard by the fact that I enjoyed everything after the MCBR more than almost everything before it; there's literally no B&M "dead track" like on Great Bear or Raptor. There are enough changes in banking to draw attention to the fact that your legs are, in fact, free to swing, which is the point of floorless coasters to me. In fact, Dominator's double corkscrews, one of my favorite parts of that ride, pales in comparison to Bizarro's, as there's no pause in pacing to transition to them. It's all swooping turns that jump straight into a corkscrew, then a quick jump around into another corkscrew, then more highly-banked swoops into the final brakes. I love it, and I'm pretty sure it's set a standard for me for floorless coasters. It's just a shame that you have to go through a decent but highly generic course leading up to the MCBR to get there.

I do have to ask: what's up with the ride's placement? Was there more to the area when Medusa was installed? This thing's totally tucked away in the corner of the park beyond Runaway Mine Train, and if you didn't have a map and/or didn't notice the top of the lift from El Toro, there's literally nothing drawing you to it. And it showed--all other coasters on that side of the park, minus Runaway Mine Train, maintained an hour wait (or longer) that afternoon, but Bizarro was lineless. If the ride ops (the slowest we experienced that day) had been a little more speedy about their jobs, it would have been a walk-on. They ended up stacking trains pretty regularly, but I guess can't really fault them for that--it's not like they actually had riders to worry about.

In the end, I liked Bizarro, but I feel it, like Nitro, is probably the victim of comparison. If we got this ride instead of Vortex back in the late 80's to mid-90's, I think it would be the centerpiece looping coaster of the park, much like Vortex. In a park where they've got Batman: The Ride (and especially, I imagine, when they had Great American Scream Machine), a B&M floorless looper hidden back in an obscure corner just feels like a hastily-added coaster count booster. (I guess I know what a floorless at Cedar Point would feel like now!)

Runaway Mine Train

>>7/10; definitely the second-biggest surprise of the trip and reassurance that the mine train is the best model Arrow ever produced.

Picture it: you've grown up riding Adventure Express. Then you ride Cedar Creek Mine Ride when you get older, shortly followed by Trailblazer at Hersheypark. Kinda sets your bar low for mine trains, doesn't it? It did for me, anyway. From what I read, people tend to hold Adventure Express in high regard as a mine train-style coaster, so Runaway Mine Train wasn't exactly high on the to-do list for me. But since we ended up taking the sky ride over to that side of the park, we were pretty much right on top of this ride, so we went for it.

The very beginning of this ride lived up to my expectations, as it was pretty much this ginormous helix for a "first drop," followed shortly by a slightly uncomfortable and jerky transition into some nearly straight track. But then it got interesting--out of nowhere, these really sudden pops of airtime started showing up. I considered it a fluke, especially when the train neared the MCBR. I mean, even CCMR has the faintest sense of airtime if you're in the correct row from its sheer Arrowness, right? That's just what happens sometimes when your rides are straight lines and circles.

Then the MCBR brakes slowed us. Oh wait! They didn't. Like, at all. And they tossed the train into this forested series of slightly violent pops of ejector air. It was almost comedic, the way this ride transitioned from relatively tame to this Magnum XL-200 of the 1970's. The restraints were super padded, a la the looping swinging ships at KD, Busch Gardens Tampa, Carowinds, etc., making the pops of airtime much more comfortable. The turn over the pond/lake/whatever you'd like to call it was a relatively good finale, too.

This ride seriously does not get the praise it deserves. If I didn't enjoy Skull Mountain this much more, I'd say this is the most underrated coaster at Great Adventure. Even then, this can and should be on your radar if you're headed to Jackson, New Jersey and enjoy Arrow rides (and especially Adventure Express.)

El Toro

>>10/10; oh my goodness.

Back when I first went to Holiday World in 2010, I had this really strong urge to overhype The Voyage in my head to the place where it was the only ride that mattered in the park. Logic, as well as several people's opinions on the park, kept me from doing so, despite the fact that the ride seemingly had every reason for me to love it. I did end up loving the ride, but I also ended up appreciating The Raven and The Legend, as well as several aspects of the park itself. That ride absolutely deserves hype, but I had to let it prove itself, because otherwise I probably would have been disappointed from the huge standard the hype was creating in my mind.

When it came to El Toro this year, it was the other end of the spectrum. I was very excited to visit Great Adventure (and it exceeded my expectations), but El Toro wasn't anything spectacular to me--I think I was initially more excited for Kingda Ka. Huge, repeated camelbacks have never been my thing. Because of that and how much I love The Voyage, I hated to see El Toro top it on occasion in various coaster enthusiast polls, because it just never seemed worthy from its (apparent) uninspired layout. I mean, even if it was supposed to be really strong airtime at the top of the hills, what was the layout? First drop, hill, hill, turn, hill-ish turn, hill, turn, hill, turn, turn, turn, hill-ish turn, hill, brakes. It had the means to be above average, but I was hardly expecting to become one of the "El Toro people."

Um... I think I'm one of the "El Toro people."

I mean, I'm still one of the "Voyage people," too, but El Toro is so great in its own way that there's zero way I could ever declare one ride as being better than the other. The Voyage is the wooden coaster style we've known and love gone absolutely crazy; El Toro is this ultra modern-feeling class of wooden coaster that can take a seemingly simple layout and completely turn it on its head.

The cable lift is impressively fast, but the thing that gets me is how silent everything is when you reach the top. It's silent, save for any noises the other riders make. There's no clicking, squeaking wheels, nothing--silent. And then the train rounds the bend and starts to twist downward in this maneuver that vaguely reminded me of my first ride on The Raven, and all heck breaks loose.

Like several coasters before, we rode in the back seat. But what sits a back seat ride on El Toro higher than any other ride in that park is the fact that this ride feels almost exclusively designed around the back seat. The drop is steep, but when you're in the back, the start of the drop feels like the first half of the train is halfway down the drop while you're just getting there. And when you do get there, you feel like the only thing that's keeping you from getting flung from the train is your lapbar and the high seatback behind you. (And it likely is! I think I forgot the seatbelt was there.) And when this same feeling keeps happening on every hill, the ride tends to kinda make a name for itself, haha. Every drop felt like the first, and the first felt like it never stopped getting steeper until the last possible second.

The exception: the hill over Rolling Thunder. On a wooden coaster, I've only ever had one ride on one coaster where I could sincerely describe the airtime as painfully strong. Even then, it was more the pain of the lapbar suddenly digging into my waist than anything else. When the El Toro train took this huge leap over the hill over RT, I was more than used to feeling the lapbar dig into my waist, so my attention was drawn to the fact that I could actually feel the blood rushing to my face. With all due respect to Jack Rabbit and Raven, that hill is the most memorable moment of airtime I've ever had. It has to be somewhere around -1.5 vertical G's, because it was borderline uncomfortable (though that may have been due to how unexpectedly strong the airtime was.) Toss in three really fast and fun turns (take that, Maverick) and a couple lighter-airtime hops, and the train smoothly rolled into the brakes.

I just can't build on it any more than that without repeating things that have already been said many more times elsewhere. El Toro is just that good.

Rolling Thunder

>>4/10; Six Flags did a fantastic job of theming this ride to a metal trash can rolling down a hill!

Oh, Rolling Thunder. Poor thing. I did my research on this one before going to the park, and I figured it had as much a chance as any of the smaller rides (Runaway Mine Train, Skull Mountain, etc.) of me liking it. Considering how well most of the other smaller rides wowed me, you can imagine my enthusiasm about RT had grown. It appeared to be a spin on the same idea behind our Racer, but with each track slightly different from the other for each turn and hill. So I figured, like our Racer, I'd end up considering it a really solid classic ride that, while not having the same sorts of thrills super-modern B&M's and Intamins have, was underappreciated and relatively forgotten by most park guests.

Where I Was Wrong #1: Rolling Thunder wasn't forgotten by park guests, or at least not on August 13th. Both sides had a decent line, and the ride ops, while not bad, weren't doing much to promote rider throughput besides not bothering with racing the trains. (I didn't know a seatbelt and a buzzbar could be so much trouble, but more often than not, the ride ops would unlock the train and recheck the restraints multiple times before sending the train.) Even then, the ride attracted families pretty well.

Where I Was Wrong #2: the ride wasn't horrendous, but I don't think I'd use "underappreciated" to describe the experience. I'd call it somewhat comparable to, say, Kennywood's Racer: it's appreciated well enough for what it is, but what it is isn't anything special. (At least with that Racer, you have the novelty of the ride's age and the Moebius loop.)

Where I Was Right: I guess I'd still use the word "classic" to describe it, though maybe I'd have liked it more if our train raced the other side's.

But there was something really unnerving about the noises the trains made. I've heard some weird coaster noises before, like the squeaks The Legend, Beast, or Mean Streak make when the train makes a tight turn in the hotter parts of the summer or the weird humming noise Trailblazer at Hershey makes. Particularly in the turns, the train would make a sound like if you took a metal trashcan and threw it really hard down a steep, rocky hill. When you get to the bottoms of hills, the trashcan bounces repeatedly off several rocks. That's not an overly threatening noise ordinarily, except you're in a roller coaster car that's probably not supposed to make noises like that. (Ironically, you get the same feeling of that trashcan bouncing off some rocks when you get to the bottoms of some of the hills.)

Good news, though! When you get to the last turn before the station, the ride attempts to dazzle you with some impromptu headchoppers. Somebody slapped some pieces of wood together and stuck them on the ride to try to make you think you're on El Toro and not Rolling Thunder: Life Story of a Metal Trashcan. Zing!

...Alright, maybe I'm teasing a little bit too much with that last bit. It's pretty obvious (to me, anyway) that those are supposed to be a finish line, but the effect was lost a little when we were the only ones racing. (Not to mention that they don't even say anything--they're just some random white boards sticking up over the track.) Rolling Thunder wasn't abysmal, but it needs a little love from Six Flags. It's pretty well forgotten in the rest of the coaster lineup by management (which shocks me, considering the strong attention to detail for most of the other aspects of the park), and it's suffering. With a little TLC, it could be a very nice ride.

Kingda Ka

>>7/10; like Top Thrill Dragster, only better... kinda.

I don't know if there was anything in the area this ride and the Golden Kingdom area sit in prior to 2005, but wow, that's easily the best-looking area I've ever seen installed for just one coaster. Like I said, I adore the GK part of the park--you go straight from the Boardwalk, with its flashy lights and classic amusement park feel, to this lush, bamboo-filled area with old temple remnants and canopied shops. It's gorgeous. (But I'll stop here lest I keep ranting. With all due respect to Kings Dominion's Congo, this is my favorite park area in any park now.)

Going into it, I expected Kingda Ka to really be pushed by the park as tall and fast, much like Top Thrill Dragster. I mean, think about it: TTD's in the center of the park, with nothing preventing you from seeing just how tall and fast it is. The line is situated such that you're hearing every launch and have a perfect view of the train rising all those feet to the peak, where the train seemingly just makes it over. You've got signs in the line stating that it's 420 feet tall, and you've got a speedometer mounted on an adjacent building showing you reaching 120 miles per hour. And with a ride that's that tall and fast, why wouldn't you push those facts, really?

But no. Kingda Ka illuminates exactly none of this, from what I saw. The only indication that you're about to ride the world's tallest roller coaster is a sign in the queue, much like TTD's, stating that the train might not clear the top of the tower, but that that's part of the design and the train will safely come to a stop. The queue, which stays outside the infield of the ride (unlike TTD), almost entirely blocks your view of the tower for its entire duration and lets you see only the beginning of the launch. In some ways, I thought this is a fairly clever little way of building up just how impressive the ride is; in some ways, I wonder why they thought building up the world's tallest (and at one time fastest) coaster was ever necessary. You don't even see the ride in its entirety until you reach the station, which, in theory, probably supports the idea/theme that the ride is "prowling" in the bamboo forests of the Golden Kingdom. For me, it was more of a relief that I could finally (if only for a few minutes) see riders' reactions. But to each his own.

The ride, in essence, is identical to Top Thrill Dragster. I've heard people mention some sort of roughness or vibration attributed to Kingda Ka, but I certainly noticed none of it. With the exception of that compression on my legs Intamin's OTSRs tend to deliver, the restraints were just as nonexistent-feeling as TTD's lapbar. And while I love the feeling of speed over Kingda Ka's bonus camelback, there really wasn't any airtime to speak of--just the feeling that you're practically flying. I like it a lot more than Dragster's extended brake run, but it only marginally affected the ride experience.

You could argue that I like Kingda Ka a little better than Top Thrill Dragster, but the ride itself only barely would affect that judgement--I'm more excited about the area around it. Still a great rush of adrenaline, but only barely better than the Cedar Point model.

Superman: Ultimate Flight

>>2/10; it's like anticipointment, except your anticipation gets washed away in the first hour of waiting in the painfully slow line.

In the name of fairness, I'm going to admit that I was getting worn out at this point in the day. It's 3pm, we're pretty exhausted, and then we get in this line. "It's a B&M," I think to myself when entering the queue. "Here's a short-ish B&M with a long train. We'll be through this two-thirds full queue in a heartbeat."

And, you know--I was right. As long as "in a heartbeat" now means "in over two hours of standing in a poorly shaded queue, being stood on top of by the people behind us, and dodging the firehose-magnitude sprinkler the maintenance guy inexplicably decided to aim towards the queue."

Hell hath no fury like the tedious tempo with which the Superman: Ultimate Flight queue moves. I can be a patient guy, and I think I just about snapped. At last, I thought we'd finally discovered a ride with the infamous Six Flags operations. Nope! Twenty nine thousand, six hundred, and seventy three passes of the sprinkler later, we made our way to the station, where the ops were moving just as quickly as just about any other ride we'd ridden so far. I just... How does this ride manage to have such horrible people capacity?! The restraints aren't overly complicated, the ops had a decent move on, there's a ton of people per train, and the ride isn't that long... It's like this thing defies the laws of physics. Just... how.

I'll admit that I was being optimistic for the sake of not going insane when our train finally left the station. The restraints are a bit more restrictive than Firehawk's, as there's literally shackles (I can't think of a more positive name that's still accurate) around your ankles. The lift actually built excitement with the way you see the ground get farther and farther away, and I think that riding position is more comfortable for the lift than Firehawk's. But no worries! Once the excitement of the lift was nice and built up, there was a dull first drop waiting in the wings. There's a name for the loop-ish element that followed shortly thereafter that I've forgotten, and the slight disorientation it caused is seriously the only redeeming factor I can come up with for this ride. I hate to be that negative, but I was not impressed. Toss in the subsequent meandering, the "here's something interesting at the end of the ride so you hopefully will think this ride was worth it" in-line twist, and the uncomfortable lie-on-your-stomach wait on the brake run, and I'm kinda wishing I could get those hours of my life back.

Now, all things considered: it's likely that I'd have much more positive feelings toward this ride if I hadn't had to bake in the outdoor portion of the queue for hours while dodging sprinklers and trying to peel the tourists behind me off my feet. If it was, say, a 15 minute wait? S:UE may have been a decent ride after all. If I (hopefully) visit this or another Six Flags park, I might try a S:UE clone again, but... man. This was just such a bad experience. I think Invertigo's line moves faster than Superman's, and it's a shuttle coaster!

Green Lantern

>>4/10; like Mantis, only with every element taken 15mph faster. Or: "thank heavens for the single rider line."

After Superman: Ultimate Flight, you can imagine how weary I was to see that Green Lantern has a similarly-designed line. Fortunately, it wasn't nearly as long... but then our tourist friends decided it was time to ride Green Lantern, too! Then came the best thing that could have happened for us: the single rider line. I had no idea that GL even had an SRL, and I'm not entirely convinced its existence wasn't an act of God to save us from more tapdancing on our feet. Long story short, even though we got in the SRL, we ended up being able to ride together in the last row.

Maybe it's been long enough since I last rode Mantis, but this felt an awful lot like Mantis, only faster. Like if they kept all the elements the same size (but mirrored) but raised the lift and eliminated the trims, making everything up to the MCBR more intense (to its benefit) and, inexplicably, slightly less headbangy. After the MCBR, the ride still felt like it was going too fast for its elements--but this time, it worked against it rather than for. The first corkscrew started the headbanging, and every turn through the second corkscrew was smacking my head a little too much for my liking--which is such a shame, because the second half of this ride is actually very interesting in theory. Taken about 10 mph slower than what it was, the turns into the second corkscrew, as well as the second corkscrew itself, would be this fluid, unique twist that would work very much in its favor. (It would also be a great floorless coaster maneuver, on that note.) What it was was this unfortunately unpleasant thing that just didn't feel appropriate for a stand-up coaster, despite how much the ride had going for it up till that point.

I will say that this ride makes me very interested in Georgia Scorcher. If Mantis was the original grande-sized stand-up (i.e. taller than 100 feet), then Chang/Green Lantern improved significantly on the original. While GS took a cut in height compared to Mantis/Chang/Riddler's Revenge, I feel like that coaster likely has all the lessons Walt and Claude learned about what not to do with a stand-up coasters built into it and would likely be one of my all-time favorites. Now I just need to head down to Six Flags Over Georgia!

[The Interpreter]

This is gonna be good!

I can just tell!

When the park opened, Runaway Mine Train was the ONLY coaster!

[kblanken]

asdfjkl is a good way to describe El Toro.

I've heard that the Gumball Express train has been rethemed, is that true?

[Rustbucket]

Yes. El Toro. A great, great coaster that blows away all other wooden or steel coasters except one. For me that is.

[BeastForever]

I'm glad you enjoyed El Toro. I can understand not being blown away by coasters like Dark Knight or maybe Bizarro but you gotta love El Toro! I don't know anyone who has ridden El Toro that was not completely BLOWN AWAY.

[TombRaiderFTW]

You whippersnappers! What did I tell you about reading beforehand!

I had to run for a second and didn't have any way to save the TR in progress, so I did what I did. Now I'm back at it!

Terp: I'll try to make sure it is! (You might not like my review of Rolling Thunder, though... You've been warned. ) Runaway Mine Train was unexpectedly awesome--definitely wasn't expecting the fun ride that it was.

kblanken: Hahaha, asdfjkl is a good way of describing El Toro. And if you're referring to the Stride train, that wrap is, in fact, gone. It's been replaced by a car wrap. I want to say it's either a generic Toyota wrap or specifically a Prius one... Don't quite remember.

Rustbelt and BeastForever: So true, so true. Except I don't think I could ever choose a favorite from I305, El Toro, and The Voyage. They're all unbeatable in their own ways. El Toro easily has the most intense first drop in the back seat of any ride I've been on.

[The Interpreter]

Rolling Dumpster

Rotting Flounder.

I've heard many things about one of my favorite wood coasters. Once when I rode it, it actually had grease on the track!

[Ogrmac]

I'm glad you enjoyed El Toro. I can understand not being blown away by coasters like Dark Knight or maybe Bizarro but you gotta love El Toro! I don't know anyone who has ridden El Toro that was not completely BLOWN AWAY.

It's a good thing you don't know me. You wouldn't be able to say that anymore.

I really wanted to like it. We planned an entire trip around El Toro being our new #1. After we rode it, we were painfully disappointed, emphasis on the painful. We refer to it as "El Staple" in this house.

[The Interpreter]

You don't even want to know what it's like to ride that thing not stapled.

Terp, who sometimes almost says too much...but then stops.

[TheCrypt]

Terp, who sometimes almost says too much...but then stops.

...and then leaves us all on a cliffhanger!

Interesting approach on a trip report. I look forward to the complete version.

[Rustbucket]

El Toro can be painful if you are NOT stapled. BTW, Skyrush has same intense first drop airtime.

[dudecoasterman]

Rustbelt and BeastForever: So true, so true. Except I don't think I could ever choose a favorite from I305, El Toro, and The Voyage. They're all unbeatable in their own ways. El Toro easily has the most intense first drop in the back seat of any ride I've been on.

I305 all the way.I haven't been on El Toro but my current favorite ride is I305.

[The Interpreter]

Awaiting the rest of the adventure, patiently yet anxiously....

[stashua123]

me too^^^^

[TombRaiderFTW]

Interesting approach on a trip report. I look forward to the complete version.

Good news for you, then, because it's done!

Awaiting the rest of the adventure, patiently yet anxiously....

me too^^^^

Thanks for the encouragement, guys. As of late, I've been a little busy--and otherwise lazy, I'll admit--but your comments made me want to finish it. Hope you enjoy.

I305 all the way.I haven't been on El Toro but my current favorite ride is I305.

I305 has a fantastic drop, but if there's one thing you should get from my TR, it's that you definitely should not judge El Toro before you've ridden it. Preferably in the back seat, because it's just redonkulous back there. (That's right. I broke out the italics and the bold. El Toro is serious business, haha.)

EDIT: Two other things I forgot to add. One: it feels like the TR just ends, so if, by chance, you've got any questions, I'll gladly answer them. I don't really know what else to do there. Two: I've got a bonus I forgot to add to the end: I finally made it to Coney Island (NY!) during the summer, and I (finallyyyyyyy) got to ride the Cyclone! I'll toss another post in here sometime about that ride, because... wow. It's really something.

[BavarianBeatle]

I have to agree about the Runaway Mine Train, but when it comes to El Toro, stapled=sucks! But I'm an old school guy who used to get bruises on my thighs from The Racer's buzz bars, and watch the kids who complained about those bruises get beat up. Even though I'm somewhat known as a B&M hater, I didn't think Nitro and Bizarro were bad rides. Skull Mountain was lame, Dark Knight was a fun little ride, and Ultimate Blight and Batman: The Oven sucked! As for Kingda Ka, being launched from a well-themed area into "Parking Lot: The Ride" was a bit of a disappointment. But my favorite memory is riding GASM with my sons a few weeks before it was removed!

[The Interpreter]

Ironically, originally Kingda Ka had a first queue section in full view of the ride. It was closed due to safety concerns after an incident while the ride was not open to the public.

Medusa now Bizarro was located on newly developed park land. It used to draw huge lines.

The pretzel loop is perhaps the only interesting element on Superman: Ultimate Flight. I much prefer the Vekoma Flying Dutchmen. The Georgia (or Chicago) version is no better, in my opinion. Tatsu is. Incredibly so.

Georgia Scorcher is the best B&M standup, by far, in my opinion. It's a good little ride with tremendously long lines in the mornings.

I've had incredible Rolling Thunder rides in the past. The ride does indeed beg for TLC these days. Then again, so does Racer.

Did you eat anything in the park? If so, how was it? Did you happen to encounter the gentleman near Nitro performing magic tricks?

I miss Great Adventure. It's a phantasmagoria of a park, where anything seemingly can happen at any time. If I lived closer, I'd spend a lot of time there. And at Dorney and BGW and KD and even SFA.

It's an interesting part of this great country with so much to explore. I'm pleased to read reports about my favorite seasonal park. Thanks so much for sharing.

[VortexBFForever]

I've never been to Great Adventure. Enjoyed the details and insights of the rides that you posted.

Glad you had a great adventure!

[TombRaiderFTW]

For the sake of not overcrowding this post, I won't quote The Interpreter's post. But to reply: thanks for those responses! Yes, I did eat an "El Toro bowl" (or something named along those lines) from the small restaurant whose name escapes me, near El Toro's second camelback. Very high quality ingredients, and it tasted very good! Definitely wasn't expecting such good food out of a large (read: non-Dollywood ) park. I was a little surprised that my friend's taco salad automatically came with many jalapeños, but that may easily have been our fault for not paying enough attention when ordering. That was actually one of the first times I've bought food at a park (that wasn't Dollywood) that felt worth the price.

And yes, I very much agree with your sentiments towards Great Adventure. Some time ago when I'd recently discovered that Six Flags has an engineering department, I was looking into the possibility of internships. The only prominent things I found online were several interviews with Larry Chickola concerning engineering for and the engineering department at Great Adventure. Now that I've been there, I'm sure that would be such an awesome job, at least for the setting. (I know parks are different places when you're on the inside, but even then.)

I have to agree about the Runaway Mine Train, but when it comes to El Toro, stapled=sucks! But I'm an old school guy who used to get bruises on my thighs from The Racer's buzz bars, and watch the kids who complained about those bruises get beat up. Even though I'm somewhat known as a B&M hater, I didn't think Nitro and Bizarro were bad rides. Skull Mountain was lame, Dark Knight was a fun little ride, and Ultimate Blight and Batman: The Oven sucked! As for Kingda Ka, being launched from a well-themed area into "Parking Lot: The Ride" was a bit of a disappointment. But my favorite memory is riding GASM with my sons a few weeks before it was removed!

I feel like I'm pretty similar, at least in terms of being a rough-and-tumble sort of coaster rider. I'm adamant that the best steel coaster at Cedar Point is Magnum (particularly when untrimmed), and The Voyage at its roughest (which, in popular opinion, was in 2011--and the thing jackhammered like crazy) was still the best coaster I'd ever been on at the time. I don't feel like I got totally stapled on El Toro: the lapbar was on my lap, but it wasn't locked unpleasantly tight like I've had on Millennium Force, Maverick, TTD, or Diamondback. There was a respectable amount of wiggle room, but nothing like the typical PTC car.

I'm very jealous of your GASM ride! Part of me feels like a solid Arrow looper is missing from the park's lineup, but part of me wonders if I'd feel the same if I'd never known the ride existed. GASM would certainly have fit into the Boardwalk area very well, but I imagine each of the recent coaster additions to the park further illuminated just how comparatively uncomfortable that ride probably felt. (I don't say that to hate on what GASM was; I'm just saying that I know several non-enthusiasts who praise Diamondback for not being rough like Vortex. But maybe GASM wasn't rough like that, for all I know!)

I've never been to Great Adventure. Enjoyed the details and insights of the rides that you posted.

Glad you had a great adventure!

Thanks! And thank you for reading!