 Long, Detailed Report on SFGAdv 10-14-01... a must read!
Having gone to Six Flags Great Adventure and waited in lengthy queues the Sunday before last, I was prepared for even longer lines and more crowded areas this past weekend, because I was arriving later and it was a warmer day. Thankfully, though, I was wrong; Sunday, October 14 was a great day to head to Great Adventure. All the wait times for the day were five to seven minutes or less except as noted.
I waited in the parking lot for some friends to show up until about one o'clock. We entered the park then, used the facilities, and spread out across the entrance area, so those annoying photography people wouldn't take a picture of our group. Our first stop, of course, was NITRO. I was absolutely astounded when I looked at the queues for the pink, blue and yellow monster. Even with the park having been open for over an hour already, the line was nearly empty! I waited about ten minutes total for two rides on NITRO, and the time would have been cut in half if people would follow the damn signs that point out where to stand if you're waiting for the front seat. Some park guests are so brain-dead that even when ten people are screaming at them, they still don't realize that they should not be standing right in the middle of the queue for the front seat.
However, the screaming match I had with one of the riders was totally worth it, because I finally realized that Nitro was my favorite coaster. It was always near the top for me, landing in the top three or four, but in the back seat, the airtime is absolutely unbelievable. Actually, there's something you can do to make the ride better, but I'll get to that later.
My main goal for this trip was to ride Chiller. I tried to ride it the previous weekend, but it would have meant standing in line for well over an hour and a half. I walked past it on this trip and the sign said, "This Attraction Closed Today," but I knew better than to trust signs. I checked back several times, but the ride was not opened Sunday.
PENDULUM, located near the bumper cars is a good flat ride. Just when you want to lean to a person and say, "This sucks," it picks up big time. However, this was not nearly the best flat ride of the day. Doubling back to check on Chiller again, I saw that STUNTMAN'S FREEFALL was open, so I grabbed a handful of rocks and started towards the entrance. I never believed that you could actually watch an object float in front of you as you fall, but trust me, it really does work! However, take my advice; I learned it first hand. You might want to ride by yourself if you try this, because your friends will get thoroughly pissed off when they get hit with jagged stones on the way down.
We sped over to Medusa after a lunch of French fries at the best restaurant in the park, Nathan's Hot Dogs (in the Boardwalk Area). Medusa's line was about as long as Nitro's, under five minutes. MEDUSA was my previous favorite steel coaster, before I rode Nitro later this day. Unfortunately, this is incredibly loud for a B&M; they really need to do something about dampening that sound. Once again, short wait for a great ride. The best part is looking at the Safari Park from the top of the lift.
Safari??? We forgot about that! So we jumped out of the Medusa line, which we were in for a second time, and raced to the building that houses the Runaway Mine Train and the SKYRIDE. The wait for the Skyride was probably the third longest of the day, ten to fifteen minutes, believe it or not, but it was still shorter than walking back across the park. Plus, you get to hit old people with acorns and dimes from 100 feet in the air. What could be more fun on the ground than that?
The Six Flags Great Adventure SAFARI is the most underrated attraction in the park. Today, we drove an ostrich nuts with goldfish crackers, watched the rhinos stampede with a ranger's truck, nearly hit a giraffe, and got yelled at for feeding monkeys… all in about thirty minutes. The monkeys are the best part, without a doubt. They crawl on your car and, if no one's around, eat out of your hand. That's pretty illegal, though. This time, we smeared sugar on our windshield; the sugar crystallized and adhered to hit, and the monkeys could barely get it off. Monkeys are fun.
My friend Paul wanted to hit a Halloween attraction, so we walked toward the Dino-Island building to see "Superstition: Starring Elvira." This line was pretty long, so we headed to the Great American Scream Machine instead. We were next to board the train when the ride operator announced that they would be switching trains. I never saw that before, so it was a worthwhile wait of fifteen minutes when they took the white train off and put the red one onto the tracks. The GREAT AMERICAN SCREAM MACHINE is incredibly rough and the G's at the bottom of the double loop are almost unbearable. The main problem, though, is the bumpy transitions between the elements. The only thing I like on this ride is the double corkscrew, my favorite inversion. My opinion: ride this once and forget it's there.
We doubled back to "SUPERSTITION" after that and waited in a line that was longer than the first time. Even though this was the longest line we waited in on Sunday, the building holds a lot of people and, counting the pre-ride video, we were only waiting for about 25 minutes. Unfortunately, the ride wasn't that good. Take it from me, if you want to see a Fright Fest attraction, see the hypnotist show in the Showcase Theater.
After that ride, we walked toward the dead-center of Great Adventure to a flat ride that, in the other five times I'd visited the park the season, had never been open. JUMPIN' JACK FLASH looks like a ride that should be in a traveling carnival, not permanent at an amusement park. This is one nasty ride! Six arms of the ride spin mini "gravitrons" where you spin in a circle, rotating around the arm, with seats facing the inside. The ride then revolves your arm around the center before suddenly lifting you above the ground and tilting you to the outside. It then repeatedly drops you five or ten feet, still spinning, until you're back on the ground. I haven't felt sick on a ride for a long time, but Jumpin' Jack Flash caused me to stumble down the exit ramp dizzily. Do not take this warning lightly: make sure you're stomach's empty before taking this thing on.
We tried to get reservations for the Hayride, but they were gone when we got there, so we resolved ourselves to a few rides on Freefall and Batman: The Ride. However, once we got near Batman, we saw a line that seemed like there was no ride attached to it. Needless to say, we stood in it and soon found that we were waiting for general admission to the HAYRIDE TO THE UNKNOWN. The video was funny. The hayride was spooky, not scary. The young kids on the tractor-pulled cart were annoying. But, all in all, the ride was worth the fifteen-minute wait. If it were dark, instead of dusk, it would be scarier, because you couldn't see the "ghosts" moving into position. At the end of the hayride, the woman in charge came up to my four friends and me and said, "I'm surprised I didn't hear more out of you guys." Apparently, she stereotyped us as smart-assed teenagers who only went on these kinds of rides to make fun of them. Actually, we enjoyed the hayride and came away with lots of good ideas for Halloween night.
The hayride let us out near Nitro, but the line was huge, so we walked toward BATMAN: THE RIDE and took a spin on that with no waiting. This thing flew compared to the last time I rode it. I screamed the whole time. It was extremely intense. I finally attributed that to the darkness, but BATMAN: THE RIDE, which I sat on again without leaving my seat, was scary as hell, and about ten times better, no lie, than I remembered it to be.
After seeing the line for Nitro had not diminished by 7pm, we wandered towards SKULL MOUNTAIN and go on with barely any waiting. The ride is very fun, not scary, though, and not intense at all. I personally would skip it. The only reason we went on it is because my friend Shannon said, "I wonder what it's like in the dark?" We realized once we had ridden it, that enclosed rides are exactly the same in the dark.
The best part of the day came after one of the longest waits we had. If you've never taken on NITRO after dark, leave your home right now, this instant, and go to Six Flags Great Adventure. Not only can you look out over the park and see it lit with thousands of little lights, but you can look around the park and see woods shrouded in darkness. You can see the Hayride below. You can see hundreds of cars on I-195, about a mile away. You can see the safari, the water park, the lake, all lit up for night. It's absolutely breathtaking.
The best part of the ride, however, is climbing up one of Nitro's camelbacks and staring at what seems like a vertical angle at the pitch black sky above, with just enough clouds that the moon casts an eerie shadow across. Then, dive back down into the woods below, into darkness and fly through turns and dives before you head back to the lighted area, to the station.
Riding Nitro at night is undoubtedly the most memorable experience of this past summer of trips to Great Adventure, the first year I had a season pass, and it is only fitting that this ride be, probably, my last of the season. I'll see ya next year Medusa, Dino-Island, Houdini, Rolling Thunder, Chiller, Evolution, Safari, Alcatraz, Batman, and Nitro. Thanks for the memories.  |
Linear Mode
