Six Flags Great Adventure - October 1, 2023

With Six Flags' great Labor Day deal on a 2023-2024 Diamond Pass, my wife and I decided to buy one and make 2024 a Six Flags year. For better or worse.

Great Adventure is geographically my "home park" but I've been there maybe a dozen times. As a kid, my family went mostly to Hersheypark, which is still my preferred park. But we had Hershey passes this year and we're a bit Hersheyed out. As much as I love that place, it's time to give it a little rest.

I'll start with rides and get onto other park stuff afterwards.

• Medusa (3x - front, middle, back) - This is a solid underrated B&M floorless coaster. It's basically a "greatest hits" of B&M elements. You get a great banked first drop, massive vertical loop, some awesome corkscrews, and a big cobra roll. One YouTuber described it as a "powerhouse of upside-down" and that's a great assessment. That being said, it's not the most memorable ride, and sported a short line even later in the day as the crowds got much denser. Which is why it was our only coaster of the day to get three rides.
• El Toro (2x, middle & back) - The last time I rode El Toro was early 2022, before I really got my sea legs. I was horrified and pretty shooketh the rest of the day. By the time I felt more comfortable riding coasters like this, the coaster was already closed for the year and undergoing renovations. Finally I got to ride this as an enthusiast and... it was good. I don't know. The first drop is fantastic and the airtime over the camelbacks and Rolling Thunder hill are really good. The sound of the airtime over the camelbacks - that being the upstop wheels jamming into the rail - is something you don't get to hear too often. But in this era of modern woodies, full of twists, turns, and ample airtime, what does El Toro offer besides being massive? It's a woodie that thinks it's a steel hypercoaster. Has this ride been rendered obsolete, in a way, by today's hybrids? It was a relatively rough ride, not enough to ruin the ride for me but definitely scared my wife away from a repeat ride. The ops here were fantastic. The guy behind the mic was funny, and made some great Kings Island puns after he saw my Beast t-shirt. And the girl checking restraints had a sick El Toro tattoo on her forearm!
• Kingda Ka (1x, front) - My second time on Ka almost didn't happen. The ride was closed for much of the day, and we booked it over when we saw a train go over the top hat. We waited a little extra for the front, and it was 100% worth it. The whipping air and face-flapping glory of that launch is unlike anything else you can currently experience. Timing couldn't have been better for us - the coaster closed only a few cycles later.
• Green Lantern (1x, front) - This was my first chance to ride the maligned B&M standup. I made the questionable decision to take some Internet advice and made sure that the bike seat was just a bit lower than my nads. The decision paid off and I had a great pain-free ride. This is actually a great layout and solid ride. It is far from dead last in the park. I don't love the sensation of standing up on a coaster in general, but overall I actually really enjoyed this one.
• Nitro (1x, 2nd-to-back) - This is my 2nd-favorite B&M hyper after Candymonium. It packs more of a forceful punch than Candy overall, but Candy gets extra points for being beyond glass smooth. The helix and bunny hills at the end are excellent. This one is supposed to get a repaint next year, and it needs it, but I'll be sad to see its original color scheme go.
• Batman: the Ride (1x, 2nd row) - I've been on this a few times and always enjoyed it, but really appreciated it this past visit. I'm always up for a good B&M invert but this one is just masterful. Great first drop and excellent whippy inversions. Maybe the best cloned coaster ever? And I love the vivid color scheme.
• Jersey Devil Coaster (1x, middle) - While this ride has a great layout, it's slowly making its way lower and lower in my rankings for this park. Issues from beginning to end: The line often moves slowly due to how they handle the Flash Pass. The seating position is terribly uncomfortable, needing to spread your legs unnaturally wide or bend them awkwardly over the hump in the middle of the train. The ride itself is surprisingly rattly. Between this and issues affecting other Raptors, I'm concerned about the long-term viability of this model. The airtime and hangtime are as good as any RMC, but there are major problems.
• Runaway Mine Train (1x, front) - SFGAdv's oldest coaster and only remaining Arrow ride is an old janky mine train in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. That being said, it's a pretty solid mine train, and hard to beat the ejector hill of doom at the end of the ride. The setting over the lake is pretty nice too.
• Superman: Ultimate Flight (0x) - I don't love B&M flyers and really was only going to ride this for completionism. The line was longer than most other coasters in the early afternoon - this ride is very popular with GP. They had issues with one train and kept running it empty. After 45 minutes of a slow line, we got to the station only for them to announce a delay in operation. We noped the hell out and headed over to the other side of the park. As far as I know, they ended up taking the problematic train off and just ran one-train ops for the rest of the day. We were having ourselves a Six Flags day.
• The Joker (0x) - S&S Freespin. The line for this is always hopelessly brutal, and even worse with Fright Fest crowds, so we skipped it. No worries, it'll be a walk-on during Holiday in the Park.
• Skull Mountain (0x) - Indoor Intamin coaster with an iconic facade. Closed for the day.
• The Dark Knight Coaster (0x) - Indoor Wild Mouse with good Batman theming. Closed for the day.

Didn't ride many flats:

• Congo River Rapids - Let the record show that I do not like water rides. My wife loves water rides. We both got fully saturated on this torture device. Great if you love your sneakers squelching around for the rest of the day, I guess. She can go on this alone next time.
• Zumanjaro: Drop of Doom - I don't do drop towers but my wife does. She said this was decent, and of the course the height factor is freaky, but the drop itself is not punchy enough, and the brakes hit too soon.

Now onto the rest of the park experience. A mixed, mostly not-great bag on this front:

• Atmosphere - Great Adventure is not renowned for its atmosphere, and a year later, things have not really improved. Faded and peeling paint, rusted metal, and cracked/worn pavement are all common here. They are talking a big game for next year's 50th anniversary season and I hope they make good on it. This park could use a lot of freshening, and some new lighting effects on the rides would not be a bad idea either.
• Food - This park is also not particularly well-regarded for its food, but the Oktoberfest selections looked and smelled fantastic.
• Ops - In general, ops did a fantastic job here. Friendly and efficient.
• Crowds - The ride counts are low for this visit because we wanted to get in, ride stuff, and get out before the Fright Fest crowds really started to get dense. When we left, the amount of people filing into the parking lot and into the park itself only made me feel better about that decision. Dense weekend Fright Fest crowds are miserable, but if you get to the park at opening, you get two or three really quiet hours on walk-ons and rerides.
• Safari - To me, this is one of the park's best qualities. A full-blown safari/zoo experience. This year it's drive-through only, next year it'll be a guided tour on a safari truck that you board from within the park.
• Surrounding Area - Unlike other parks in the region, this park is purpose-built to be a day trip from the NY or Philly metro areas. Not much surrounds SFGAdv in terms of restaurants or hotels. There's some fast food joints nearby and the closest viable hotels are 20 - 30 minutes away.
• Price - Six Flags remains the bargain amusement park chain. The Diamond Pass was selling for $110 per pass for Labor Day, which gets you admission, preferred parking, and several discounts at every park in the chain. No other amusement park or chain offers that much for that price. The dropoff in quality from other parks is noticeable, but no denying that it's the cheapest way to coaster.

The ride lineup here is hard to beat and only improving with the addition of the Vekoma Super Boomerang. With that said, this park still has room to grow, and the old arena is finally getting torn down (you can see the demo work from Medusa). That'd be a good place to put a big ride. Let's hope for a great 2024 for this park chain.