Let me take you back almost exactly two years ago. On the way up from a family trip in North Carolina, my wife and I stopped at Six Flags America to make use of our Gold Plus passes and catch a Bowie Baysox game. We had heard a lot of negative things about the park in the leadup to that visit, but ended up having a decent time. At the time, I wasn't really riding many coasters beyond woodies or smaller, non-inverting models. I wanted to get back to SFA to try the rides I had missed.
I'll talk rides first, and get to the rest afterwards.
Some flats here have been removed and not replaced, such as the Larson Loop and the Magic Carpet, leaving nothing but empty space and concrete footers in their wake. The EXCELLENT Huss Breakdance was replaced with a Zamperla NebulaZ, the current flavor-of-the-month flat. The Scrambler here is actually unironically fantastic, as it runs faster/wilder than other Scramblers, with a longer cycle. It does have a distinct grind/rumble as it spins, so I'm not unconvinced that it's tearing itself apart.
Six Flags America provided by far the worst park experience of any of the parks we visited on this road trip. Beyond just being poorly maintained, every ride was on one-train ops, and ops were listless and lethargic at every turn except for the SkyWinder crew. The ride op at the mic on Joker's Jinx literally stopped reading the instructions halfway through and just said "whatever" and trailed off. It was actually kinda funny, but also just too aloof for the people you count on to run the rides safely and effectively. It shows the same signs of organizational decay as SFGAdv, but doesn't have the kind of ride lineup that makes up for it.
That morning, I woke up to texts from coworkers and friends about the Crowdstrike/Windows outage. I think it must have affected Six Flags, as they didn't make anyone pay for parking, and didn't scan our passes on the way in. I wonder how many people got in for free.
One train ops on a Friday in the middle of July is some bullshit. It made what could have been a very quick visit to this park artifically long. Artificially worsening the experience is something I have accused Six Flags of doing for some time. Removal of shade and misters in the queues, reducing coasters to one train, all of this is meant to make the standby lines longer and more unpleasant. This is my official tinfoil hat moment. Six Flags is making things worse to try and sell more Flash Passes. I ain't gonna do it!
There is a noticeable lack of shade in many areas of the park, specifically areas that extend beyond the park's original Wild World/Adventure World footprint. The Six Flags-developed areas towards the edges of the park, like Gotham City and SteamTown, are a real drag to get through in the hot weather.
Speaking of SteamTown - I was pretty interested to see Six Flags investing some money into this neglected park by retheming an entire section of the park. Unfortunately, this is a lazily-done, slapped-together mess of a "retheme." Several buildings in this section remain closed. Some cheap signs and window wraps have been erected to "transform" the former Coyote Creek into a thematically inconsistent steampunk area. The river rapids ride has been cheaply rethemed into a time travel ride with some dinosaur statues. Kind of funny, but kind of cheesy, and not in a good way.
The bathrooms here were an absolute wreck. Super dirty and mostly out of hand soap. Doesn't make me feel very good about touching any surface at this park. People are sweaty and smelly enough as-is, and if they're not washing their hands on top of it... no thanks.
When we visited two years ago, we noticed that the playlist here is packed with music that has been slowed down and pitched down a half step. This includes songs like Carry On Wayward Son, Another One Bites the Dust, We're an American Band, and others. Other songs are not slowed down, so obviously someone decided certain songs needed this... but why? What a bizarre choice. It adds to the feeling of this park being the absolute dregs!
The crowds here were strange. More crowded than KD or Carowinds, and also a little edgier? Kind of meaner and more aggressive. When we left the park midday, a couple of people seemed annoyed that we were driving... in the parking lot. Made gestures and yelled at us. What even is that?
The new Six Flags is sitting on a park that could be something really special just given the location of it. If given the proper treatment, I bet this could be an incredible regional park. As it is, it's deep in the shadow of KD and BGW.
We left after only a few hours here for greener, more chocolatey pastures.
Some non-park travel details for those possibly interested - last time we were in the area, we stayed at the Hampton Inn, which was gross. This time we stayed at TownePlace Suites which was a lot nicer, though you always run into characters at extended stay hotels. Dining options in the immediate area are slim, and we ended up having to choke down breakfast at Bob Evans. For baseball fans, you can catch the Orioles AA affiliate, the Bowie Baysox. We did this in 2022 and it was a decent and inexpensive experience. There's something about Bowie, though, that just makes me want to get the hell out.
TL;DR:
My personal ranking of the coasters at SFA: