SFNE PTR

[Edwardo]

Finally got to go to SFNE!


101_0686 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Finally here!


101_0863 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Very SFA-esq.


101_0857 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

The park is very nice, here is the carousel at the front (Where all nice carousels should be!).


101_0854 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

It was such a beautiful day.


101_0701 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

The park is just very well done, and it was very clean.

Okay, as you can see in the previous picture, and in the next few (I tried to minimize how many I used here), there was sunscreen on the camera lens, and the photos are blurred.  I didn't notice because I also had sunscreen on my Oakleys, so when looking thru the viewfinder, I couldn't tell, until later when I switched over to the back display.


101_0708 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

This was our first stop in the park.


101_0709 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

And this was why.  First credit of the day (221) was Pandemonium.  Just like the one at St. Louis, and I loved it.


101_0719 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Had it been open, and not just testing, I probably would have rode it then, and not chickened out later.


101_0721 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Looks can be so deceiving...(we'll get back to this one)


101_0727 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

The Looney Toons section was so nice.


101_0731 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Gettin my credophile on.


101_0735 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Is this Disney, or Universal?  I forget.


101_0741 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Another credit down, and my first Boomerang of the weekend.


101_0750 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

So this was where we headed next...only to find out it was broken down.  Thankfully I got my ride later.


101_0751 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

So since Bizarro was BizarrNo, we went here instead.


101_0756 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

It looks so fun.  I was panicking because I didn't know if I would get a ride on it.


101_0759 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

This was a quaint little floorless.  More parks should get them.


101_0762 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Okay, time to get this out of the way.  It wasn't that bad.


101_0764 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Then we hit this up (It was fun!).


101_0765 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Had my swim trunks (and my flippy floppies), but it was too cool for this.


101_0767 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Kept trying to fit this in, but never did.


101_0768 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

So we rode their unique skyride.  It was fun.


101_0773 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

We were heading to Cyclone.


101_0775 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Not your average skyride.


101_0778 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

I like this better than the skate board ramps.


101_0784 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

I can't even begin to talk about how much I loved this coaster (up till the last 30 seconds, which was trimmed).


101_0785 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Major violent ejector air all over.


101_0788 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Wait, is that Bizarro I see running!?!

101_0794 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

We'll get back to you...


101_0798 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

OMG!  (P.S. this is where the new mouse is going)


101_0800 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Why, yes, all of those hills DO have airtime.


101_0801 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Mmmmmm...airtime...


101_0803 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

I really loved this ride.  Forgot to take a pic of the station, though, boo.


101_0818 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

This is where the Dark Knight would have been (and where the new mouse will go).


101_0820 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Thanks for the memories, Bizarro, but we're off to finish the park and head to Boston!


101_0821 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

I shot too soon...


101_0822 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Ugh.  This thing punched me in the ribs (and it HURT!).


101_0824 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

I love that 90% of the park is themed.


101_0829 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

This one wasn't as good as Great Adventure's Houdini.


101_0831 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

My first regular Huss Frisbee.


101_0865 by C. E. Beavers, on Flickr

Annnnnd we're done.  Off to Boston.  Part 2 (Quassy & Lake Compounce) coming soon.

Rest of the pictures are Here

[Edwardo]

And the full Trip Report.

Since I don’t have a lot of vacation time (the consequences of starting a new job), I’ve tried to use all of my extra days off this summer, as much as possible, for going on a couple coaster trips. I had considered Chicago, then Ohio for Labor Day weekend, but then Matt suggested I come up and do SFNE & Lake Compounce. That sounded tempting, so after a few weeks of planning, we had a quasi-plan.

I purchased my plane tickets a few weeks prior to the trip, and on Friday afternoon I left work at 4pm, bound for Greensboro (GSO) to get my flight on. I was worried that I would get stuck in traffic, but I was in the terminal 25 minutes after I left work, and my flight wasn’t until 5:50pm. The flight to Charlotte (CLT) was quick and easy (I’m getting used to that trip), and my layover in Charlotte went by quickly as well. Then the flight to Hartford/Springfield (BDL) came and went much faster than expected. In fact, we were at the airport about 20 minutes early, which was good because Matt was there waiting for me.

We made our way to the La Quinta near the airport, which was pretty nice compared to the last La Quinta I stayed in. We settled in and I dealt with a stomach ache for the rest of the evening before finally drifting off to sleep after 1am.

On Saturday morning we got up and headed down for a quick bite to eat at La Quinta, and then we headed out to our first park, a place I’d wanted to go for a very long time, Six Flags New England. The weather was beautiful, and Weather.com was calling for some clouds and blustery winds, which is what we got, and it was fantastic.

This was my first time in New England in 16 years, and I don’t know why, but the atmosphere and everything just feels so different up there. We paid to park (still hate that $15 parking fee, and we could have parked cheaper, but oh well) and took a tram over to the gate.

Even just arriving at the front gate, the park looked very nice. I was snapping pictures everywhere. Sadly, the first 60 or so pictures I took were blurry because I didn’t realize that I’d smeared sunscreen on the lens (I didn’t notice because my Oakleys were smeared too, so I couldn’t tell when looking thru the viewfinder).

We headed into the park and started back towards Bizarro (the reason I was there), but Matt said maybe we should do Pandemonium first, since the line could get very long, and we didn’t know how busy the park would get on Saturday before a holiday. Walking thru the park was an experience in itself, because there is so much theming in many of the areas, and the park looked fantastic. In fact, as far as theming goes, this may be my favorite Six Flags Park. We headed over and walked right on to Pandemonium.

Pandemonium: This was the same layout as the one in St. Louis, which I really liked. We got some good spinning throughout the ride, and the placement of the ride in the park was good. I was surprised at the trench work around parts of the layout. I like the Gerstlauer spinning rides a lot, and this one didn’t disappoint. Plus I didn’t get queasy like I did in St. Louis, so this was a bonus (I think the lack of spinning on the brake run helped).

We walked up to the entrance of Cyclone and Catapult. I took some pictures, but the rides weren’t opening until later, so we headed back down. This whole section of the park was dead. I do like that they had 3 different kids sections. We headed over to the kiddy coaster that was in the Looney Toons section so I could ride it.

Great Chase: I headed up the queue to the station to find no one there but the ride op. I asked if they let adults ride, and she said sure, so I got a ride to myself (Which was nice because I didn’t feel as creepy as I would riding with a bunch of kids). It was a quaint little coaster, with a nice hill after the drop, and a fun layout. I actually like kiddy coasters, but I won’t wait in line to ride them, so this one was a quick credit.

We headed over to Flashback next. Matt didn’t need to ride, so I headed up to the station. Matt was taking tons of pictures, but unfortunately, they’re all a bit blurry. Oh well. I was very careful to make sure the lens was cleaned the rest of the weekend.

Flashback: A standard Vekoma Boomerang coaster, and my first one of the weekend. This was the first time I’d been on one with these particular trains (Covered in Stride Gum advertisements, no less). I sat near the back. I really like Boomerang coasters, even if they make me a little queasy. The drop off the back spike is great, the inversions are okay, but the drop off the second spike, backwards, is a lot of fun. No need to ride again, though.

So we headed over to Bizarro. This was the one coaster of the trip I was most looking forward to riding. It’s so notorious for being a great ride, but some have said it’s no longer a good ride due to the changes made when switching it from Superman to Bizarro. Would I like it?

Well, I didn’t get to find out at that point. We got in line and the ride had just broken down. When we were walking over, it was running, though the trains looked to be going a bit slow thru the course. We waited for about 20-30 minutes before they emptied the queue. I panicked because I didn’t know if I’d even get to ride at this point, and this was the only ride in the park I really wanted to ride. The theming in the section was rather nice, though. So we headed over to Catwoman’s Whip instead.

Catwoman’s Whip: I’d ridden Beaverland Mine Ride at Geauga Lake, so I knew what to expect. These are fun coasters with huge trains, and our train was mostly filled. I wonder why the changed from a Poison Ivy to a Catwoman theme on here, because the trees and plants around the ride are much more suited to Poison Ivy, but oh well, a fun ride and another credit down.

Next we headed over towards Batman and Mind Eraser (which looks to have a shiny new paint job as of recent). We debated which ride to hit first, with Batman winning out. Walking over, I was still amazed at how nice the park was. We walked thru Wiggles World, and it was very well done. The midway between the floorless and the SLC was kind of big and sparse, but still nice. We toyed with going to the water park, but it was just too cool out. The line for Batman wasn’t very long, but the wait was about 30-40 minutes due to the subpar ride operations we encountered around the park.

Batman-The Dark Knight: This is a short floorless, both in terms of height and length, but it packed a punch. The first drop was fun, and the loop was really nice and smooth. The Zero G roll gave a nice pop of airtime before heading into the dive loop. The overbanked turn heads out to the corkscrew section, and though I usually don’t care for them, the interlocking corkscrews were fun, and we hopped back up into the final brake run. This was a nice little floorless coaster, too bad it had a long wait.

We headed over to Mind Eraser next to get our quick credit. The line was about a 20 minute wait with two trains running, and we ended up riding towards the back.

Mind Eraser: Standard Vekoma Suspended Looping Coaster. It wasn’t overly rough, but I hate the way the over the shoulder restraints are shaped, because they’re really uncomfortable. Drop, inversion, hill, inversion, turn inversions, drop, brake, done. And so was I.

I had been looking to see if Bizarro was running, and it never did. I was panicking at this point, as we had planned to go to Boston that evening, though that could be scrapped if Bizarro came up. We also discussed coming back quickly the next morning to get the credit before Lake Compounce. As we walked by, we saw the Magic Carpet ride, named Buzzsaw, and themed as such, so we decided to hop on.

Buzzsaw: Matt said the last time he rode, it didn’t go all the way around, but this time it ran a decent program. Not quite as good as the one at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, but a lot of fun, with some good airtime on a few revolutions. The ride did make me a little queasy, though.

We headed back down towards the front of the park and then made our way to the unique sky ride, which we took across the park after about a 30 minute wait. The first ride we planned to do over here was Cyclone, which I’ve been told by numerous people can be very good, or very bad. Honestly, I was more worried as to whether Bizarro would open. We waited another 35 minutes for a back row ride.

Cyclone: It doesn’t look like much, but this ride was very good. The first drop/turn was really awesome, and the hills and turns after were great. In fact, the entire ride was running well up until you hit the 2 trim brakes towards the end, which kind of kill the ending, but it was made up for with the rest of the ride being so good. I’d love to have had another ride, but the line was moving so slow.

We toyed with riding Catapult, but Matt already had, and I was afraid I’d get sick. Instead we headed to Panda Express for some food and to wait out some time and see if Bizarro would open. It was around 1:30, and even though we’d gotten a few things done early, the park was steady busy, and the lines were long due to the slow operations.

After eating, we headed over to see if Bizarro was running, and as soon as we saw a train go up the lift hill (with people in it), we booked it over to the ride. The line was rather long, but I was willing to wait for my ride, since I’d waited this long. There was this really REALLY annoying kid in front of us that kept butting in to our conversation to talk about comics and what not. Matt was short with his answers and I was trying to ignore him after about 45 minutes, but he just didn’t get the hint. We got away from him when we finally got into the station and headed for a back seat ride. Now the only worry was would we fit? The test seats said we were fine, but that didn’t mean the train would.

Bizarro: Yep, we fit. Easily, in fact. Pretty soon we were heading out of the station and up the hill, and I was excited. The first drop is really amazing as you get pulled over the top. The hill after was much like the hill after the drop on Six Flags America’s Superman. The there was the overbank and track leading up to two amazing hills with lots of ejector air. The next hill had nice floater air before heading into a great helix, which lead into the wonderfully airtime filled twisted hill that goes into another helix, then up into a hill, down into a turn, and then into the final 3 bunny hops. Bizarro did not disappoint!

So finally I’d ridden Bizarro. It wasn’t my new number one (it ranks currently at #3 out of 233 coasters ridden), but it was really great. I would love to have ridden again, but the line was even longer now, and we had other stuff to do. I wanted to do the park’s Houdini’s Great Escape ride, and we still had a coaster to ride, so we headed across the park, stopping at the last coaster of the day, Thunderbolt.

Thunderbolt: It looks like it was going to be a fun, classic ride. We waited about 30 minutes and got in the back of the train. Unfortunately, I’m not a fan. It started off smooth, but we hit a rough patch that made the lap bar punch me in the ribs, and it hurt. Bad. So I have no reason to ride this one ever again.

I wanted to try out Scream, but the line was long. We walked up and headed to Houdini next. The storyline inside was rather disjointed, but the ride itself was cool. I won’t go into details, but I’d done a Vekoma Madhouse before, and would be doing the other Houdini in a couple days. This one was just okay.

After that, I rode Tomahawk, a Huss Frisbee, as Matt watched. I got a little nauseated on this, but it was a fun ride. Once I got off, however, I asked Matt if he wanted to do anything else. We debated, but eventually decided to leave and head to Boston for the evening. The park was really nice, the weather was beautiful, and they have some great rides, but operations were definitely lacking.

Once in the car we were on our way 90 minutes east towards Boston. I hadn’t been in 16 years, and Matt had never been, so we really didn’t have a plan. Matt said he just wanted to ride by Fenway Park, and to drive thru the Big Dig. When he said Fenway, I remembered that the Red Sox were playing the White Sox, so I got on my phone and looked up how much tickets were. Nothing online was available, so I tried to call, and the park has an automated system that you talk to (I hate those), and it wasn’t working correctly, which lead to me screaming “FENWAY PARK!!!” over and over again before giving up.

We got into Boston and drove by Fenway as the game was starting. Parking near the park was expensive, so we decided to try and park around Faneuil Hall instead. Matt got his wish of driving thru the Big Dig before we got over to the marketplace area and found a parking garage (that ended up being just as expensive as if we had parked at Fenway, but oh well).

After leaving the garage, we headed over to the Greenway so that Matt could get a good look at the Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge. We walked towards it and took pictures before finding a subway stop. Yay! New subway credit! We asked which line to take to Fenway and were told Green line, D train, though after waiting forever, we found out that we could go on C or B trains too. The trains on the side we took were small, but nice.

We headed over towards Fenway after getting to our stop. The area was really busy. We couldn’t figure out where to try and get tickets too, and all of the scalpers were only selling singles. I heard one say the game was sold out, but we finally found a ticket booth and it was not. However, they only had single seats, with the cheapest being around $50.

Neither of us wanted to pay that, so we walked around outside Fenway for a bit before deciding to go to the Bull & Finch Pub, the bar that stood in for the outdoor shots of Cheers! (And has since been renamed Cheers Beacon Hill) It was a LONG walk, but we got to see some of the neighborhoods around Beacon Hill. We headed down to the bar, and they ended up seating us upstairs in the ‘Set bar’ area, set to look like the TV show. I would have been fine downstairs, though.

We ordered drinks and burgers and sat around for a bit. When it was time to leave we asked how to get to the nearest subway stop. We walked by the Boston Public Garden at nite, so sadly we didn’t see much. We took a train ride back down towards our area, but the final stop was still 2 stops from ours, so we had a bit of a walk. Once we arrived at the garage Matt said he wanted me to drive him over the bridge we had seen, so we did. The GPS lead us thru Cambridge and we drove by MIT. We headed back around thru the city, and the drive back to Connecticut was over quickly. I fell asleep much quicker on Saturday nite than I did on Friday. Sunday we had plans for 2 parks and some driving, so I had to rest up.

[B-mac]

That looks like it was a good trip. The atmosphere looks very classic and calm.

[Millennium Force 44]

I love this park. On of my favorite Six Flags parks. Thanks for sharing the photos and report!

[AV Matt]

The operations at SFNE were atrocious. You really need a Qbot to enjoy the whole day. I didn't want to stick around any longer the way things were.

[B-mac]

How much was a Qbot there anyway? I hope it isn't $50+ like at Gadv.

[AV Matt]

It's something like that. I think we figured it would be about $80 for the two of us?

Still, you shouldn't need one to enjoy a full day at the park given the reasonable crowds that day. Their operations plain suck! Aside from the breakdown, Purple Supes is operated about as efficiently as it can be with the unforgiving restraints.

[B-mac]

I wish everything was priced like BGE, their best Queue pass is less than $30!!!