bluestreak Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 Hello all, tomorrow we are leaving for our annual coaster vacation. This year's includes 3 new parks (all 3 parks in Missouri) and 3 more we visit yearly. The schedule is as follows: August 5th: Drive from Cleveland to SFSL. Enjoy the park until closing. August 6th: Go back to Six Flags for a little while then head out to Worlds of Fun. Enjoy WoF for the rest of the evening. August 7th: WoF all day, probably Oceans of Fun too. August 8th: WoF in the morning then head down to Branson. Enjoy Branson the rest of the day. August 9th and 10th: All day at Silver Dollar City (the highlight of the trip to me) August 11th: Long day. Drive to St. Louis. Enjoy SFSL for a little while. Drive part of the way to Holiday World. Stopping for the evening in Mount Vernon Illinois. August 12th: Finish drive to HW and enjoy the park all day. August 13th: Drive to Kentucky Kingdom. Enjoy the park the remainder of the day with the awesome out of state discount. Drive to Kings Island after. August 14th: Kings Island all day then return home. It is quite the trip but there's a lot of credits and awesome coasters to ride! I will try to post a trip report from each park each day when we return to the park including some pictures. The parks all have relatively early closing times so typing up a report before bed shouldn't be too hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ytterbiumanalyst Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 "What do you mean, ALL 3 parks?" --Hydro Adventures Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RollerManic Posted August 5, 2017 Share Posted August 5, 2017 (edited) Maybe too late now, but have you considered skimping on the third day at SFStL and going to the City Museum instead? Edited August 5, 2017 by RollerManic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 5, 2017 Author Share Posted August 5, 2017 We thought about it. I know I really want to go but not everybody wants to so I'll have to settle for more time at Six Flags. Which isn't a big deal since we have passes. Hopefully on a future trip we'll add the city museum to the itinerary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 6, 2017 Author Share Posted August 6, 2017 Well we are checked into our first hotel of the trip after a few hours at Six Flags. It was dark and gloomy and we got a few showers. Not good for taking pictures so none in this update. Before I go on to my thoughts of the park, our plan is to go to the park again tomorrow morning until about 1 in the afternoon then heading to worlds of fun. This is depending on the weather. Not looking good right now. So anyways, this park was really a pleasant surprise! Good rides, fantastic operations, friendly staff, well kept, and beautiful park all around. American thunder was very smooth and just what you expect from a GCI. Mr. Freeze was tons of fun. Can't wait for more rides on this. Screaming Eagle was a ton of fun too. Great speed. Scorecard for the day: American Thunder: 2x Mr Freeze: 1x Screaming Eagle: 1x Superman Tower of Power: 1x Batman: 1x Ninja: 1x (never again) Mine train: 1x Pandemonium: 1x Lots of fun in a few hours at the park. Very impressed. Now off to bed. It's been a long day! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 6, 2017 Author Share Posted August 6, 2017 From my snapchat. Definitely tells you what the weather was like. Weather looks semi dry for the morning today so it looks like we'll hit the park for a couple hours then head to Kansas City! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jameslofton Posted August 6, 2017 Share Posted August 6, 2017 I like the MO TRs and really looking forward to this one. I lived in Missouri off and on between 1992-97(in Joplin, Seneca, and Anderson) and will always regret not going to the parks back then. I still have family in the SW MO area and within the next few years I plan on visiting them and I'll have to hit up the main parks on the trip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 7, 2017 Author Share Posted August 7, 2017 Ok so we are checked into our hotel right across the street from worlds of fun. We were at Six Flags today from opening till about 1 o'clock. With the crappy the forecast the park was absolutely dead. It was great. We left the park and stopped at a nearby St. Louis (Panera) Bread then started our 3.5 hour drive to worlds of fun. We got to WoF at about 5:30 and stayed to 8 o'clock closing. Overall thoughts of both parks today: Six Flags Still just as impressed. Great staff. Fast ops. Great rides. Finished getting the credits by riding Boomerang which was rougher than most boomerangs I thought and the Boss which was a lot more rideable than I thought it would be. That's not to say I loved the ride but I liked it and will give it another try on Friday when we are back at the park. Worlds of Fun Let me first start by saying that the park itself is absolutely stunning. Absolutely beautiful landscaping and everything. The new front gate and entry plaza is amazing. Now the operations were a different story. Everything was running 2 trains which was a nice surprise since I had heard this park tends to run only 1 usually. But they might as well had been running 1. The operations were so dreadfully slow and all the ride ops looked like they'd rather be dead. Very disappointing. The rides were pretty good. Prowler is fantastic though a little rough. Patriot and mamba are just a ton of fun. We'll be back at the park tomorrow and part of Tuesday. Hopefully the 5 minute dispatch times get better. Scorecard from Six Flags today: American Thunder 2x Mr. Freeze 2x Justice league 1x (Holy poo poo fantastic) Pandemonium 2x Boss 1x Log flume 1x Screaming Eagle 1x Boomerang 1x Batman 1x Worlds of Fun Scorecard: Prowler 2x Mamba 1x Spinning Dragons 1x Patriot 1x Timber Wolf 1x (not as bad as anticipated) On to pictures. Only Six Flags Pictures this time. Worlds of Fun will come tomorrow or Tuesday. This ride is so stupidly fun. Because nobody has ever taken this picture. Ever. Didn't know it was running backward Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prozach626 Posted August 7, 2017 Share Posted August 7, 2017 Great report. I liked your pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canobie Coaster Posted August 7, 2017 Share Posted August 7, 2017 Great photos! I think Six Flags St. Louis is the last of the Six Flags parks in this country that I need to get to. It looks like one of the nicer ones (in terms of appearance) and the wood coaster collection looks pretty good. Wow Over Texas really shows up the St. Louis version of Mr. Freeze for the ride entrance. In Texas, you enter directly into the well-themed ice cream factory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThemeParkJunkie51290 Posted August 7, 2017 Share Posted August 7, 2017 Wonderful report! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 7, 2017 Author Share Posted August 7, 2017 Great report. I liked your pictures. Thank you! Great photos! I think Six Flags St. Louis is the last of the Six Flags parks in this country that I need to get to. It looks like one of the nicer ones (in terms of appearance) and the wood coaster collection looks pretty good. Wow Over Texas really shows up the St. Louis version of Mr. Freeze for the ride entrance. In Texas, you enter directly into the well-themed ice cream factory. This is only the 3rd Six Flags Park I've been to, the others being Great America and Great Adventure and this is easily the best as far as appearance and operations go. Wonderful report! Thank you too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 8, 2017 Author Share Posted August 8, 2017 So our full day today at Worlds of Fun... Ugh. I really, really want to like this park. The rides are fun. The park is absolutely freaking beautiful but the operations are just awful. For a monday that the park was only open until 7, it was packed. And Worlds of Fun decided that they didn't need to run two trains until lines for every coaster was well over an hour. So then a second train was put on and they had to test it and that just led to more annoyance. Once the 2nd trains were put on every coaster the lines did go down but the operations were still incredibly slow. At Patriot the girl who was in charge of opening the load gates decided to take a couple minutes and sit down on the empty train in the station. Then finally got up and let people board the train. Absolutely appalling and unprofessional. Another thing was that there was a lot of break downs. Prowler didn't open until last noon. Mamba got stuck on the lift a number of times and then broke down again right before park closing. I also believe patriot went down a couple of times. We spent some time in the water park and were not impressed. Fairly old waterpark with exception of the newer complex that's at most Cedar Fair parks. And of course, they were only running one of the drop capsule slides which broke down twice in the 2 hours we were in Oceans of Fun. So overall, yeah it's a beautiful park with decent rides but the horrid ops will keep me from coming back for years. Except we will be there tomorrow until about 2 before driving down to Branson. Prowler really grew on me today. Really a great ride dispute a little roughness. Patriot and Mamba were still a lot of fun, but nothing that really stands out. Timberwolf is underrated in my opinion. I thought it was no more rough than prowler. Had decent air too. Also of note was Finnish Fling. Cool to ride a classic like that. So anyways like I said we'll be at the park till about 2 tomorrow then we'll drive down to Branson. Scorecard: Prowler 4x (front seat on the last train of the evening) Finnish Fling 1x Boomerang 1x Mamba 1x Railroad 1x Flying Dutchman 1x Detonator 1x Timberwolf 1x Windseeker... Ahem... Steelhawk 1x Patriot 2x Spinning Dragons 1x Long path to the entrance provides nice views of patriot Love the new entrance Love the plaza too Gorgeous I didn't know this! Very cool to ride this since it used to be at our home park before it closed. Also a lot of fun like pandemonium Beautiful Damn I didn't notice the finger at the time Looks vaguely familiar to steel force I'm in love Lots of Grizzly attacks today... Noticed Detonator has the same logo that Mean Streak did. Sometimes it's easy to forget you're at an amusement park. Worlds of Fun really is beautiful. See you tomorrow Patriot! Thanks for reading Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prozach626 Posted August 8, 2017 Share Posted August 8, 2017 Another great report. WoF is frustrating, isn't it? It's such a good looking park with nothing really inspiring to ride. Prowler is as good as it gets and if you're like me and not nuts over wooden coasters WoF will leave you starving for more. Patriot is such a great looking coaster, but I have to make myself get excited about it, especially with Batman the Ride at my home park. Mamba is just meh after the first turn around and every time I go the Mamba operators are running painstakingly slow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 8, 2017 Author Share Posted August 8, 2017 Another great report. WoF is frustrating, isn't it? It's such a good looking park with nothing really inspiring to ride. Prowler is as good as it gets and if you're like me and not nuts over wooden coasters WoF will leave you starving for more. Patriot is such a great looking coaster, but I have to make myself get excited about it, especially with Batman the Ride at my home park. Mamba is just meh after the first turn around and every time I go the Mamba operators are running painstakingly slow. Thank you! Yes it's extremely frustrating. I do love wooden coasters so thankfully Prowler fills a big void for me at the park but it's still not even as good as Mystic Timbers. I'm just a GCI nut. We just came from riding Batman and its kinda crazy how much more intense and fun that ride is compared to Patriot. Patriot is fun but it feels more like a starter B&M warming you up for rides like Batman. Mamba had a disturbing lack of airtime on the bunny hops back into the station. It's such a similar ride to Magnum at my home park but it just doesn't deliver the same airtime and speed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 9, 2017 Author Share Posted August 9, 2017 Not much to report on today. More slow and crappy ops. Lots of breakdowns. The usual. Left the park at about 2 and made it to Branson a little while ago. We rode an Alpine coaster here. The one that recently reopened. Very rough for an Alpine coaster but still fun. Branson overall is a lot less busy than Pigeon Forge which is nice. We'll be at Silver Dollar City all day tomorrow and Thursday. I'm very excited! Definitely the park I was most looking forward to. Here's the scorecard from today at Worlds of (Not Much)Fun: Prowler 3x Mamba 2x Steelhawk 1x Boomerang 1x Timberwolf 1x And to close today's update here's a picture from right before mamba went to 2 trains. Must've been a 2 hour line. Thanks for reading! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canobie Coaster Posted August 9, 2017 Share Posted August 9, 2017 That's a bummer about a poorly run Cedar Fair park. Usually minimal breakdowns and fast dispatches are the norm for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 9, 2017 Author Share Posted August 9, 2017 That's a bummer about a poorly run Cedar Fair park. Usually minimal breakdowns and fast dispatches are the norm for them. Each park does its own thing I guess. It's a shame because I really love the park itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WOFanatic Posted August 9, 2017 Share Posted August 9, 2017 Worlds of Fun is such a beautiful park. They really just need a large new attraction to really make the park stand out. Well that, and better operations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ytterbiumanalyst Posted August 9, 2017 Share Posted August 9, 2017 Sucks to hear you didn't enjoy the Runaway. It was very smooth originally. I haven't been back on it since it reopened, but the coaster had significant storm damage. Enjoy Silver Dollar City! Glad you're taking your time with it. It's absolutely the sort of park you need to take time to appreciate. Take the cave tour. Eat cinnamon bread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EliHorton Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 Sucks to hear you didn't enjoy the Runaway. It was very smooth originally. I haven't been back on it since it reopened, but the coaster had significant storm damage. Enjoy Silver Dollar City! Glad you're taking your time with it. It's absolutely the sort of park you need to take time to appreciate. Take the cave tour. Eat cinnamon bread. Also ride the flat rides in the Grand Exposition. Plus one of my favorite things to do is sit on the back porch of the culinary school. Even before Time Traveler construction started it was still nice to sit back there and eat an ice cream cone or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 10, 2017 Author Share Posted August 10, 2017 Back from a very fun and exhausting day at Silver Dollar City. Got on a lot of rides. Ate some good food. And didn't really deal with any lines even though the park was pretty crowded. Just wish it didn't close at 7. First off the park is absolutely stunning. Feels a lot like Dollywood but it just seems bigger. There's so many good places and beautiful views. I absolutely love it here. So many quirky little things around the park to look at. The ride operators are all really nice and super fast! Even though they were only running one train on everything besides Fire In The Hole, lines remained manageable thanks to super fast operations. Much different than worlds of fun operators that's for sure. And a nice change too haha. One thing was that the park was pretty hard to navigate. Took us quite a while to figure things out. And it's kinda weird that most rides are off on dead ends. So anyways the rides, Outlaw Run is absolutely amazing. Such awesome speed and airtime. Yeah it's a little short but there's never a dull moment. Such a great ride. Wildfire is also outstanding. No there's nothing out of the ordinary but it's so smooth but yet forceful and has great airtime itself heading down that first drop. Thunderation is definitely one of the best mine train rides I've been on. And powder keg is also a ton of fun even though the ride ops insist on shoving the restraint so far I to you that you can hardly breathe but it's worth it. Fun ride. Good air. Forceful launch. On to the scorecard. Definitely the most rides today so far on the trip: Powder Keg 2x Wildfire 7x Outlaw Run 5x Fire In The Hole 1x Giant Barn Swing 1x Train 1x Flooded Mine 2x Thunderation 2x S&S double shot tower that I can't remember the name of 2x American Plunge 1x Swings 1x Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy so that will be the day to do the Cave and check out all the stores and whatnot. We also checked out The Branson Coaster. Definitely the better of the 2 Branson Alpine coasters and maybe the best I've ridden. You're not doing Branson right if you don't stop by and give this a ride or 2. It's very hard to get pictures of rides here so not as many pictures. I also limited myself to only rides since there's so many things to take pictures of. Didn't want to kill my phone battery. As always, thanks for reading! Can't wait to get back to the park tomorrow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ytterbiumanalyst Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 Glad you had fun. Enjoy the shops and remember they'll hold stuff for you at the Ozark Marketplace near the exit so you don't have to carry it around all day. A lot of things are made by the craftspeople who work at the park, so look for the labels. Anything without the label is contracted from factories elsewhere, so just keep that in mind. Enjoy the cave! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluestreak Posted August 10, 2017 Author Share Posted August 10, 2017 Glad you had fun. Enjoy the shops and remember they'll hold stuff for you at the Ozark Marketplace near the exit so you don't have to carry it around all day. A lot of things are made by the craftspeople who work at the park, so look for the labels. Anything without the label is contracted from factories elsewhere, so just keep that in mind. Enjoy the cave! I'm getting the feeling that SDC is your home park haha. Thanks again for the info! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ytterbiumanalyst Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 Glad you had fun. Enjoy the shops and remember they'll hold stuff for you at the Ozark Marketplace near the exit so you don't have to carry it around all day. A lot of things are made by the craftspeople who work at the park, so look for the labels. Anything without the label is contracted from factories elsewhere, so just keep that in mind. Enjoy the cave! I'm getting the feeling that SDC is your home park haha. Thanks again for the info! Yes it is. Happy to help. It's really a great park, and not too many people get out this way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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