Six Flags Great Adventure's Disastrous Start to the 2024 Season

Six weeks ago I visited Great Adventure for their opening day. In my trip report, I detailed some things I considered "the excellent, the good, the bad, and the ugly" for the park's opening:

The Excellent:

• El Toro running the best it has in years
• New footpath between Ka and Toro, and cleared footpath from park center to Golden Kingdom area
• Batman still rules
• Friendly, enthusiastic staff

The Good:

• Nitro running well, but needs a repaint
• Jersey Devil with a good layout, but rattley
• Fresh paint on the Carousel
• Footers poured for The Flash coaster
• Some nice new park merch with decent, tasteful designs

The Bad:

• Kingda Ka closed without explanation, after being hyped for opening weekend
• Mine Train, Green Lantern, and Superman were also closed
• Skyway, Log Flume, and Big Wheel still undergoing renovations
• Cyborg Hyper Spin was closed due to constuction on Flash
• Skull Mountain was closed for no reason

The Ugly:

• Ride-again wristbands, allowed riders with wristbands to ride twice, made worse by...
• One-train operations on everything, which didn't help the...
• Inefficient Flash Pass system
• New prepaid Speedy Parking system that nobody knows how to use
• No more self-serve drink refills, leading to long lines and belligerent guests

When we left the park that day, my wife and I figured, "let's give them a month and we'll come back when they've ironed out this year's bugs. I'm sure it won't take long."

Six weeks later, here's what they've fixed:

• Kingda Ka, Green Lantern, and Superman are up and running
• Ride-Again Wristbands were only a first-weekend fiasco, so that was done with relatively quickly

But still, guests are dealing with issues that I feel aren't acceptable for a park that's been open for six weeks:

• One Train Ops - Every coaster in the park is running one train except for Ka, which finally added a second train this past weekend, and Nitro, which has been running two trains for a few weeks. Spring crowds are generally low, even during Spring Break, but with one train ops on almost every ride and a piss-poor flash pass system, the ride waits are close to peak summer or Fright Fest.
• Parking - The new "Speedy Parking" system is horrible. There are 12 lanes of parking booths and signs that are not immediately understandable or clearly visible as you drive in. This leads to a panic of people cutting between lanes trying to get to where they need to be. Along with that, they've significantly extended the "preferred parking" area, but moved the entrance to the far side of the lot. This, too, is not clearly indicated as you drive in, and you can't easily cross between general and preferred once you've entered the lot. Is Six Flags that worried about people stealing a preferred spot? There are parts of preferred that are arguably worse than general. Along with that, the lack of clarity and direction in the Speedy Parking system causes it not to work at all - pulling up too close to the car in front of you renders the system unable to read your license plate.
• Drink Refills - No improvement on this front, and with the spring's low staffing, it can take well over 30 minutes of waiting on a food line to get a refill on your drink. I don't really understand why they'd dig their heels in on such a fixable issue. Again, is Six Flags that worried that someone will be stealing a fountain soda? How much money could they possibly have been losing on refill stations? No other park has this problem with theirs.
• Rides Closed - This goes beyond a staffing problem. Skull Mountain continues to be closed for no apparent reason (how hard could a small indoor family coaster be to maintain)? Jersey Devil was down for an extended period with the rest of the park on one train ops for weeks, and now it's returned... with one train ops. Houdini, the Vekoma Madhouse ride that pretends to go upside-down, has now been abruptly closed with the sign indicating it's closed until Fright Fest!
• 50th Anniversary Breakdown - The Ferris Wheel, Log Flume, Skyride, and new Vekoma Super Boomerang coaster "The Flash" were all hyped up in anticipation of the 2024 season. It's almost May, and the new Vekoma has only just had its first pieces of track installed, while the Log Flume is still missing a significant amount of track, the Ferris Wheel is still missing its gondolas, and Skyride looks damn near abandoned. Allegedly, both the flume and wheel will be up and running for Memorial Day Weekend, with the Skyride following shortly after. The Flash coaster purports to be open "this summer."
• Still Fucking Ugly - Not that this park has ever been an aesthetic masterpiece, but you'd have thought that there would be at least a little more work done to try and make this park look better. I noticed some fresh paint on Opening Day, but reports indicate that there hasn't been much progress on this front in the past six weeks.
• All the Wrong Priorities - Every time I see the advertisements for Great Adventure's new "glamping experience" at Savannah Sunset, I wonder how it ever got further than "dumb idea thrown around in a boardroom meeting." $600 a night minimum to stay onsite in a glorified fancy tent next to the safari. For that price, you get the tent "suite," breakfast, a park ticket, and a giraffe feeding experience. Allegedly there will also be nightly activities like lawn games, a firepit with s'mores fixings, movies, music, and animal encounters. For an upcharge, you can get a massage or spa treatment. Does this park understand its clientele at all? Knowing the way this park runs, some poor TikTok influencer will end up getting mauled by a big cat or trampled by an elephant.

I just don't get how this park was so poorly prepared to open for the season. No other park I've ever visited early in the year has these issues. Hersheypark runs damn near flawlessly on opening day. Even the northeast's redheaded stepchild Dorney Park managed to open a brand-new beautiful B&M dive on time, and everybody loves it. The Diamond Passes were cheap, and I'm looking forward to visiting SFNE soon (although it sounds like that park is having its fair share of issues too), but I'd be lying if I said I didn't regret just reupping my Hershey pass instead.

This park was not ready in the slightest to open six weeks ago, and they're not any closer to being ready today. The parks are drawing crowds and it reeks of "fuck you, we got your money." Six weeks in, SFGAdv is a disaster, and I would be surprised if that changes anytime soon.