Great Adventure Boards > Great Adventure Trip Reports and Meeting Plans

Six Flags Great Adventure PTR July 23, 2010

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KI Kevin:
First off, this is my first post on these boards! A few things about me:

-I live near Cincinnati, so my home park is KI (hence the name), so if there are any references to KI or CP(Coney Mall, Diamondback, Dragster) know that this was originally posted on a KI fansite
-This was my first (but certainly not my last!) visit to Great Adventure

After leaving our hotel early in the morning, we arrived to the parking lot around 10 AM.


The entrance sign to the Great Adventure Complex. It's more than just a theme park. They've also got a separate gate water park and a safari attraction.


My first close-up glimpse of Kingda Ka from the parking lot. This coaster completely TOWERS over any other coaster at the park. The height is incredible.


Why is this picture so blurry? Anyway, that's Superman Ultimate Flight, a B&M flying coaster. Unfortunately, it was down all day so I didn't get to ride it. BUT, I had ridden its previous clone at Over Georgia, so the only thing I was really missing out on was the credit.

To you SFKK Season Passholders? The Season Passholder Letterhttp://www.sixflags.com/national/footerNav/kentuckykingdompassholders.aspx stated that if you chose to keep your pass you would recieve 4 free tickets for friends. Well I did, but I never got the tickets by email or mail. So before my SFMM visit we worked it out with their Guest Relations and got four free tickets there, but they were only valid at SFMM. So we had to go to Guest Relations at Great Adventure and get the two remaining tickets exchanged.

I entered the park with my SFKK Season Pass. The entrance is very deep into the park. Before 10:30 while my friend and dad were waiting for Guest Relations, I walked around the entry plaza to the park.






I LOVED the entry plaza. It's bright and colorful filled with several shops.

Anyway, when they finally entered the park, we went over to the Character Cafe (thinking back now, I really shoulda taken a picture of it: it's a giant building that looks like huge ice cream scoops) to wait for Security to walk us over to the rides. We were headed to one place: El Toro.



I loved the Boardwalk area. It's sort of like Coney Mall as far as the games go, but it's much more bright, colorful, and upbeat, some things that Coney Mall is missing.



Some queuey goodness.

On my first ride, I sat in the back. Let me tell you, this ride is all AIRTIME AIRTIME AIRTIME, beginning to end. It's got the most airtime ever. Yeah, I know Voyage technically has the record, but it has the most (quantity) airtime. Toro has the best (quality) airtime. Man, that 76 degree drop is really incredible. Probably my favorite drop on any coaster, because it seems a lot steeper than it really is. 76 degrees is just incredible for a wooden coaster. Unfortunately the ops staple you, but that didn't bother me one bit. The banked spaghetti bowl areas were really awesome too. I still liked Voyage more though. It was longer and had much more to it. But wow, El Toro is incredible.



Can you say, "HOLY AIRTIME!" ?


Hold on to the grab bar at all times? Are you kidding me?! They obviously didn't enforce that rule or I woulda been kicked out of the park after my first ride!


Sigh....this makes me sad....at least one of the trains is still the original brown.

Later on in the day I rode Toro again. Twice. Front seat. After that, everything I knew about coasters was SHATTERED. You think Maverick has intense airtime? Um, every single hill on Toro has more than Maverick's. And that one hill that goes over Rolling Dum....errr Rolling Thunder has the most insane airtime probably ever on a coaster. Period. In fact it's my favorite element/ moment on any coaster. It's THAT amazing. After my first ride up front, I decided that Voyage is a fantastic coaster, but it can't deliver the crazy intense airtime Toro can. El Toro is now my favorite wooden coaster, and my favorite overall coaster. If I had to choose, I would move to Jackson, NJ now. You really have no idea how amazing the airtime is til you try it. El Toro FTW!

After that we just went on and got all the credits.


That's a huge sign, huh?


Cool theming.


Bizarro was a great floorless coaster. It's a mirrored clone of Scream! at SFMM, so I'd already basically ridden it. However, this actually had great theming and was smoother. Like I said in the Dorney PTR, the Zero-G roll is probably my favorite inversion. Also, the mist felt great on the hot day it was. Unfortunately the on-board audio wasn't working like it was on X2 or Terminator, but the ride was just great without it. Bizarro is my favorite floorless coaster.


The fortress building which holds the Sky Ride station as well as the Mine Ride station.

We also rode the Houdini's Great Escape ride which was pretty awesome....can't really say anything about it as it's hard to describe so you gotta get out there and ride it!


Runaway Mine Train was a basic Arrow mine train and IMO probably the worst I've been on besides the one at Over Georgia (God that one was awful...). Not horribly painful, just very boring.




Skull Mountain was a very fun indoor family coaster. It's well themed (as you can probably see) and for a family coaster, it's pretty intense. Inside the ride room, there's a giant Jack-O-Lantern...pretty random.

[/img]http://i460.photobucket.com/albums/qq325/guitarkevin4life/IMG_0322.jpg[/img]
Blackbeard's Lost Treasure Train, a fairly large steel kiddie coaster.




Have you ever seen a train that long? 20 cars? Giant! Anyway, it was good for a kiddie coaster however like all kiddie coasters these days it had rough transitions.


The Dark Knight Coaster, our second (and my favorite) wild mouse coaster of our trip. It's extremely well themed. Not quite as much as Terminator, but still very good. We couldn't really hear the preshow due to people talking, but it was pretty interesting from what I heard. The on ride effects were great too. There's a surprise at the end of the ride. I shouldn't tell you though, you'll have to find out yourself.


Why would you put a bench in front of the ride sign? Anyway, the ride was just a basic Batman clone. It was my third and IMO the Batmans are my least favorite invert. Fun but too short.


I really like the sign but I hated all of the Snickers ads on the sign and in the queue. The line was the longest we waited for the whole trip, and hour.


Station sign.


Well everyone will now be wanting a Diamondback comparison, so I'll give it to you:

Drop: Same
Smoothness: Diamondback
Layout: Diamondback
Airtime: Diamondback's first few were better, but Nitro's last few were better. Overall, Diamondback for airtime
Positive-Gs: Nitro! The helix is epic!

Overall I like Diamondback more. Nitro's crew was very slow that day. They were running 3 trains and stacking like crazy. If we had the same line with Diamondback's average capacity I swear it would've been about 30 minutes. The train 2 trains after me was the millionth train ever, I think. Some sort of million landmark.


Kingda Ka! The tallest and fastest coaster on Earth!


We are HIGHHHH up!


There's no drag racing Christmas tree on Ka, so all you have to anticipate your launch is moving back a bit and the air compression noise.


Kingda Ka has a quadruple station, like Dragster and Firehawk combined. The station is pretty detailed and neat looking.



Kingda Ka was a great ride. I'll compare it to Dragster. The launch is more intense than Dragster's. However, the ride is quite rough and shaky. In fact, it gave my dad a headache. However, that hill pictured above actually does give some really good airtime. But my dad said it perfectly. There's something about the buildup of Dragster that makes it better: the train design, the engine revving before the launch, the Christmas tree, the grandstand, the facts in the queue, the station blasting "Ready to Go" by Republica (though Ka does play techno throughout the queue, however "Ready to Go" is a much better fit), the fact that it's visible from anywhere in the park, the fact that it's in the middle of the park. All there is on Ka is the ride. I gotta give credit to CP on this one, riding Ka really made me appreciate Dragster's theming and buildup more. I liked Dragster more.


A tiny kiddie coaster. It doesn't hurt too bad until the turnaround fail right before the station....OUCH!

The only coaster I didn't take any pictures of was Rolling Thunder....guess I forgot. Well this coaster wasn't really fun...at all. I'd take Colossus at SFMM and Great American Scream Machine at SFOG way before Rolling Dumpster. The first turnaround is just plain painful. Other than that it's just boring. IMO the best part of Rolling Dumpster is looking at El Toro.


I doubt anyone could walk past that view without taking a picture. Beautiful, really.

Overall park stuff:
The park had a very nice atmosphere and was bright and colorful.
Employees were nice.
I hate Six Flags having so many ads.
The park has several fun family coasters.
Not my favorite Six Flags park but definitely #2!
The park's layout is AWFUL so be prepared to walk far distances.


Well that's all folks (in true Six Flags fashion)! Hope you enjoyed reading and seeing the perspective of someone who'd never been before!

Bubba Z:
Nice Trip report and welcome to the site!   I agree, I'm not a big fan of all the ads on Nitro. One or two maybe , but sign after sign gets a bit tacky.

KI Kevin:
Also that food stand in the middle of Nitro's queue is a genius idea, I gotta admit. After about 30 minutes standing out in the hot air I had to shell out cash to get a drink haha.

GADVwow:
Welcome over here...from the guy known as wow over here...

See you around, soon--I hope! :)

KI Kevin:
Haha, thanks for the welcome Terps.

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