Now that we are all rested up from a long (but fun!) day at Six Flags Great Adventure yesterday for Fright Fest, it's time to get a trip review up!
First off, as a reminder the park is open until November 1st. The hours until then are:
Fridays: 5-11
Saturdays: 10:30 - 11
Sundays: 10:30 - 10 (Except October 11th, that is 10:30 - 11)
Monday October 12th: 10:30 - 8 (Columbus Day!)
Show times are listed at the end of this trip report.
First, let me say that yesterday was THE PERFECT day to be at the park. Besides the rain during the middle of the day it was cool, calm and most of all EMPTY. Even around 6 the parking lot was not even half full, and I heard some of the employees say there were only about 6,000 people in the park. And from reading around this site today people waited a half hour tops for rides like El Toro and Ka. That's nuts for how busy it can be during Fright Fest.
So anyway, we arrived around 1:30 to start the day off at the park, and as soon as we managed to make it through the front gates it began to pour. We waited some of it out inside the Main Street Market, but once it calmed down (and picked up, and calmed down) we started walking around the park, eventually making it to the Xploratorium as it started to rain again. Pretty neat place, I had never been there before. After that we walked around the rest of the park (from there to Bizarro is a hike!), and made it back to the Main Street Fountain for the Mr. Six Spooktacular Street Party at 3.
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Here are some random photos from around the park-
Photos of the Trick-Or-Treat TrailOver the next hour we managed to catch some of the Dance Party, Wiggles Halloween Show, Scary-Oke, Dawn of the Dead & Local, Monster Mash Bash and Professor Slither's, as well as the Trick-or-Treat trail.
And at this point before I talk about the shows I'd like to voice one of my only concerns about the day: show timing. I know my time to see things was kind of condensed thanks to the rain, but with 7 shows starting between 3 and 3:30, it's a little much to fit in. Especially for what we did - Main Street (Dance Party), Wiggles World (Wiggles), Fantasy Forest (Scary-Oke), Frontier Adventures (Dawn of the Dead), Bugs Bunny National Park (Monster Mash Bash) and Main Street (Professor Slither's). I think the times could be spread out a bit more, and kind of have shows that are 15-30 minutes apart from each other in the same parts of the park.
And this complaint carries onto the evening as well. Since there is only 1 dolphin and 1 tiger show (why? I understand they are animals and might get unhappy but there has be a way to do two shows a night), our original plan was: aWAKEning, 6PM, Fantasy Forest -> Dolphin show, 6:45, Lakefront -> Tiger Show, 7:30, Golden Kingdom -> Hypnosteria, 8:30, Movietown -> Dead Man's Party, 9:30, Fantasy Forest. Now we have been able to do that in past years, but the dolphin show started late and we didn't make it out until 7:10, so making it to the tiger show with less than 20 minutes.. yeah. It would have been a jog. And then from there to Movietown for Hypnosteria? There has got to be a better way to time things out.
Anyway, other than that I only really had one other complaint about last night, which I'll get into later. Now it's time for show reviews!
- Mr. Six Spooktacular Dance Party: Pretty funny, just as good as the normal one during the year. Mr. Six in a cape was worth it too. (
Photos)
- Wiggles Halloween: Might be good for the kids, but it was pretty scary for us. Maybe that was intended! (
Photos)
- Scary-Oke: Pretty funny to listen to anyone sing Karaoke, especially 10 year olds. Although having a young girl sing "Now we're rocking on the dance floor acting naughty" was bit odd.. (
Photos)
- Dawn of the Dead & Local: Great showcase for local bands, the one we listened to was The Cretins. They have a list of a different band each day at the stage. (
Photos)
- Monster Mash Bash: Again, this is for the kids. Various monsters singing and dancing and talking. At one point one of the monsters sees a good looking girl and walks away saying "Hang on I need to tweet about this". Oh boy. (
Photos)
- Professor Slither's: I saw this last year and it didn't disappoint again this year. Absolutely hilarious, definitely worth seeing. Everyone does a great job in it and the interaction with the animals for the kids is great. And Professor Slither danced with me, so if anyone has a photo of that please share it! (
Photos)
Recommendations for the daytime shows: Professor Slither's and Mr. Six Spooktacular are definite must sees. But if you have smaller children the others might not be too bad.
After Professor Slither's ended around 4:10 (yeah, it's a half hour+ show too, very nice) we took a break to get ready for the evening events. When heading back to my car we saw that Superman is apparently down, not sure for how long but they had cranes and tractors carrying around what looked like motors. And at 10PM when we were leaving they were still there.
We headed back in and saw the aWAKEning at 6PM (
Photos), which was nice as always and it's good to see all the ghouls walking around beforehand. It was a little disorganized as security had to make sure everyone stood behind an invisible rope by the dumpsters (just like the Glow in the Park parade route), but it worked out. The pamphlet says the aWAKEning is by the Big Wheel, and it is, but you can see the parade come from Movietown.
After that we headed to the dolphin show (
Photos), which is the same as in previous years, but it doesn't make it bad. Seeing one of the dolphins not want to cooperate was pretty funny, and they brought out one of the younger sea lions, so cute! It's a good show if you want to watch animals and silly humor. Great for kids and for adults who have a sense of humor. If you have/are a grumpy teenager who can't put up with that kind of thing you should probably skip it.
After that we wanted to go see the tiger show, but as I mentioned above we didn't have enough time to get there. Maybe next time!
We did manage to catch them doing the Wheel of Fright (
Photos) at one point though, which was gross as usual! If you don't know what it is, basically a few guests have the opportunity to eat whatever the wheel selects, and if you can do it you get a free exit pass for a coaster. And we're talking nasty stuff...
Also we did manage to swing by Dead & Local real fast to see what was going on with that. You can see a photo
here.
So we decided to go watch the 7:45 Dead Man's Party. Had a great view, and enjoyed it as always (more about the show later), but at about 10 minutes into it you could tell something was going on. One of the dancers walked over to the right where the techs were, then looked like he talked to one of the other dancers, went backstage, came back, they finished the current song and then stopped and walked backstage. People were slightly confused to say the least. The tech was giving the 'cut it' motion to the security guard, who finally said to the people in front of him that the show was cancelled for lightning in the area. But no one told the crowd at large (even though the cast came back out onstage) and people were mad, to say the least. About five minutes later a general park announcement came on saying rides were closed due to severe weather in the area, but I think they could have handled DMP better.
So after that abrupt ending to the show we headed to Hypnosteria (
Photos) for the 8:30 showing. Got in, got good seats, and when the show started we were SO HAPPY TO SEE DENNY MORE. Last year they had some other guy sub in for him when we were there and he was terrible. Absolutely terrible. I said if it was that guy again we were just going to walk out because it was painful. But no, it was Denny! Hurray! And this is on Denny's website: "Denny More will not be appearing in the show on October 9, 10, 30, 31 & November 1. Filling in will be hypnotist Bill Pettek." Now I'm pretty sure bill Pettek is the guy from last year, and if it is, I hate to say this but do yourself a favor and skip the show, especially if you've never seen it before. Otherwise you'll come out and wonder why we're all so thrilled about it.
Anyway, if you haven't seen Hypnosteria before basically 20ish people go on stage and attempt to be hypnotized. After weeding out the ones who can't do it or fake it the fun begins. And while it's the same act each time, due to different people being hypnotized the results are always hilarious. Now this is a PG rated show (although I do believe Denny does more mature ones, I need to see that one day), but it's amazing. I do have some videos to show to give you guys an idea in case you haven't seen it, but I don't have the best part of the show taped: One of the guys hypnotized was supposed to be a male dancer, giving the audience "what they came to see". Clothes stayed on but the guy TOOK OFF around the room. Denny was chasing after him the whole time, and so were security guards. Absolutely hilarious.
After that we headed back to the 9:30 showing of Dead Man's Party (
Photos), where we finally got to see the full thing. It felt longer than normal, which is good, and they added in small effects like sparklers on fingers. They also changed the song lineup a bit since it's their 10th anniversary. Bringing back Bring Me to Life in the beginning has been my wish for 3 years so I'm SO happy they did that. But it was cut short, as was Rama-lama or however it's spell, their new opening song the past few years which is right after Bring Me to Life now. They also added in two songs towards the end, I think they were Feed My Frankenstein and
. I knew the second song when they were playing it but I forget it now. Both of those, honestly, I can see why they were removed in the first place. They didn't really fit with the rest of the show in my honest opinion. So those can go, but keep Bring Me to Life around!
I do have one question - the mob of people for Dead Man's Party is INSANE! Wouldn't it be better to put the show in Northern Star Arena or something?
Recommendations for the evening shows: Dead Man's Party and Hypnosteria, as long as Denny More is there.
After that we headed over to see the final showing of Saturday Night Lights for the year, which unfortunately did not happen. Well, not really. They did 5 minutes of it, or less even I think, and then stopped. the reason? So much fog, and the wind was blowing the smoke back into the stands. Even though there wasn't much wind. Just wasn't a good day for fireworks.
As we were leaving we saw one of the strangest sights - Kingda Ka obscured in fog. I mean seriously, from the parking lot you could only barely see the middle red light. I guess they could see the top lights from the station because they were still running the ride but wow. I've never seen it that covered in fog. And when the smoke from the fireworks blew through the whole coaster was completely hidden from sight. I do have a video of that! But they kept running it. I bet it was a great ride up there in the fog.
We did not catch Zambora or the Freak Show. But from past experience I can say the Freak Show is definitely worth a look, especially if you like people eating glass, stepping on glass, swallowing swords.. oh yeah!
And we were not able to visit any Terror Trails or Haunted Midways, just not enough time in one day! Oh, if anyone is wondering the terror trails are $5 a piece I believe. But we do have some photos from earlier in the day:
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Lakefront Graveyard-
Circus Psycho-
Freaky ForestAnd this brings up my other complaint - are ghouls banished to just Terror Trails and Haunted Midways now? Is that by design or because of cutbacks in staff? I miss the days when they roamed free in the park. It's definitely not as fun without random ghouls popping up on girls. Even Main Street, which in years past used to be dark with hearses and such was bright this year. Not very exciting. I do hope ghouls can be brought back to roam free. Oh, and I see on the pamphlet that Frontier Adventures is still Bone Butcher Terror-Tory, but no sign was up to say that, and there wasn't much going on there. Even the bridge didn't appear to have fog effects like in the past.
So my three things that can be improved from last night: Better spacing of times on shows (and more shows on things like Dolphin and Tiger), better announcements when weather shuts things down, and more ghouls roaming the park!
And we have some videos to share!
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Small clip from the Voyage to Voodoo Island dolphin show-
Tiny taste of the hilarious Hypnosteria-
Fog and smoke obscuring Kingda Ka. And yes it's still running
And while not new, if you have never seen Dead Man's Party and want to know what it's all about here are two clips from two years ago:
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Dead Man's Party part 1-
Dead Man's party part 2All photos and videos are up! Sorry about the quality of some of them, my iPhone takes better night photos than my Kodak so some of those are from that!
Here are the show times: (note if the park is not open during a time listed then the show does not happen)
Mr. Six Spooktacular Street Party: 12, 1:30, 3
Kids Scary-Oke!: 3:15, 5:15
Trick-Or-Treat Trail: 12 - 5:30
Professor Slither's Creepy Critters: 12:30, 2, 3:30, 5
Dolphin Discovery: Shiver Me Flippers: 3:30, 4:30
Monster Mash Bash: 2, 3:30, 5
Get Ready to Wiggle Halloween Show: 12, 1:30, 3, 4:30
Team Tiger: Jungle Rumble: 2, 5
Bengal Bios: 3:30
Dawn of the Dead & Local: 1, 2:15, 3:30
Elvira's Superstition: Runs all day
Hypnosteria: 4:30, 7, 8:30, 10
The aWAKEning: 6
Dead Man's Party: 6:15, 7:45, 9:30, 10:45
Voyage to Voodoo Island: 6:45
MIB: Predators vs. Aliens: 7:30
Zambora: Continuous after 7
Professor Zombini's Freak Show: 7, 8, 9, 10
Wheel of Fright: 7:15, 8:30
Dead & Local Music Showcase: 7:15, 8:30, 10
The Ghoulmaster's Ghosts: Various after 7:30
Demented Forest: Continuous after 7PM
Escape from the Asylum: Continuous after 7PM (Not available 10/12)
Freaky Forest & The Bloody Fountain: Continuous after 6:30
Lakefront Graveyard: Continuous after 6:30
Circus Psycho: Continuous after 6:30
Topic: Fright Fest 2009 Trip Report! (Read 9603 times)