Photo TR: SFOG Review

Yesterday morning, April 23, I went to my school at 4:30 in the morning for my fist trip to SFOG. We arrived at the park just after it opened. I was in a small group of people, and our plan was to ride every (good) roller coaster at the park. The forecast showed rain and wind, but it was wrong. We had a great, but slightly cool, day at the park.

At first I could not decide what to go on first. I wondered if I could catch a ride on Deja Vu, so that was where I headed first. I saw a line of people at the queue, and a train was being pulled backwards up the lift! I jumped right in line, excited about the fact that I might actually get to ride it. The train got up to the second lift and stopped about half way up. I noticed nobody was on the ride. Then the train was pulled slowly back down to the bottom of the lift, and it just stayed there. The ride was closed for the rest of the day, so my friends and I headed over to GASM. The line was surprisngly short, so I hopped in line and took a back seat ride. It had great airtime over every hill, and I thought it was really cool how the train was pulled up to the second hill for another big drop.

After that, I looked at the line for Superman Ultimate Flight. The sign in front of the ride showed a wait of 2 1/2 hours, and I was not willing to wait that long. I headed back to the front of the park to Gotham City, where I met up with about 10 people from my school.

We all decided to ride Mindbender next, so we got in the "20 minute" line. We soon realized that the wait would be more like and hour and a half, the longest wait of the day. The ride was only running one train, and the other train was sitting on the ground under the first drop. When we finally got to the station, most of the people in the group were hungry. A few people actually got out of line after waiting an hour, just to get some food! I took a seat near the middle of the train. The loops had some really great, intense g's. I could not even keep my hands up. The "third loop" didn't seem to me like it should be considered a real inversion, but it did have a cool headchopper about halfway down that really made me duck. Everyone but me and one other person went to get some food.

We waited for about half an hour to get on Batman the Ride, getting a great view of Mindbender from the queue. I didn't really like the sewer/junkyard theme. The tunnels were pretty cool, but random piles of junk were used as cheap scenery. The station was very ominous, with its huge Batman logo up on the wall. The vertical loops, which seem to make you hang forward in your seat, were the best parts of the ride. The tight helix near the end pulled some really intense g's. The headbanging was a little bit extreme, too. The ride was not my favorite B&M, but it definately had some great moments.

I had a headache after getting off, so I decided to go on a relaxing ride, the Deer Park Plunge. I expected a short, one drop ride, but it actually had a few hidden turns and a smaller drop. The ride seemed really old, and it thought it was really ghetto how that the boat just bounced off the sides of the trough around the turns. The drop got me a little wet, and my onride photo was really crazy-looking. I looked like I had a really fake smile.

Since we were already wet, we decided to go over to Splashwater Falls. The ride op was looking at all of the riders like they were crazy, because it was a really cold day to be going on water rides. I was hesitant about getting so wet, because I was already starting to dry off from the last ride. Of course, the ride broke down right when we got in line.

We decided it wasn't really worth the wait to get so drenched on a cold day, so we tried to find the Dahlonega Mine Train. We saw the ride, but we didn't find the entrance. Since we took a wrong turn and ended up back at the front of the park, we decided to take a ride on the Georgia Scorcher. The girl in front of me was crying and begging her mom not to make her ride it, and she screamed throughout the whole ride, even up the lift. The Scorcher was really fun and smooth. It was better than Chang, and it didn't make my feet hurt nearly as much. I was going to take a second ride, but when I heard the girly scream "Mommy I want to go again!!!!!!"

I just decided to let my ears have a break from her and ride the Cyclone.

I could tell it was going to be rough, because of the look of the trains. Orange reastraints usually mean a rough ride, so I sat up at the front of the Cyclone. The ride op gave her repetetive "Welcome to the Gee-oh-gee-a Psych-alone" speech so many times in the short short wait that I almost had it memorized. I loved the ride's steep, curved drops. Unfortunatley, I missed seeing my onride photo, because I stopped at the exit to take a picture.

After that ride, we went to try to find the Dahlonega Mine Train again. We passed by the kiddy coaster, deciding that it was not worth even a 5 minute wait, and we followed the path next to long the mine train to find the entrance. We sat in the very back, not expecting much out of the ride. It was very unique and different compared to any other ride I've ever been on. The ride was almost like a little kiddy coaster with random bursts of speed and great backseat airtime on the final underground drop.

I was getting really thirsty, so I stopped by a small cocession stand to get a 3:00 soda, ouch, that was expensive!

We decided to go on Freefall. It was my first time riding a 1st generation freefall, so I didn't know what to expect. The only other vertical drop ride I had ridden before that was Wicked Twister, which didn't really feel like falling to me, so I thought this ride would be about the same. It was really weird how the cars just backed up in a line, each one waiting for their turn to go up to the top. Every time we moved back, I thought, "okay, this is it. I'm going up this time", but then I would hear a car behind me being pulled up. After about 4 or 5 times, I finally felt my car click onto the lift. It zoomed right up to the top, providing a great view. I was moved slowly forward, and suddenly, I was dropped down the seemingly-endless drop. My head was pounding, and it felt more like 2 negative g's than a freefall. Once it was over, I had decided that that was definately the greatest and most intense drop of the day. I didn't know whether or not to count it on my coaster count, since many people don't consider it to be a real coaster.

We went back toward the back of the park to go to the two coasters we had still not ridden: Ninja and SUF. I was really scared to go on Ninja, since I had heard so many horror stories about it. I wanted to see for myself what had apparently made this great-looking ride into a Vekoma Smashterpiece. I really liked the location of te ride over the lake and the cool oriental music played in the station. As I was going up the lift hill, I prepared for the worst. I pushed my head back hard against the headrest so I wouldn't be headbanged to death. The ride had some really great headchoppers, and it really didn't turn out to be as bad as I expected. It was actually a pretty cool ride.

I wanted to save the best for last, which was SUF, my very first flyer. I had 2 1/2 more hours left in the park, and the sign said there was a 2 hour wait, so I thought I would barely have enough time to ride it before leaving. The line moved really quickly, and I was actually up at the station within an hour. I was nervous about going on the ride, since I had heard that the pretzel loop would be really intense. I thought that the pullout at the bottom right before the onride photo camera would provide some really uncomfortable negative g's, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I ecxpected.

When I was near the top of the steps, the ride broke down.

The ride op made an announcement that the ride would be closed temporarily and they didn't know when it would open back up. We thought we would end up not having enough time to ride it, but we were determined to get just one ride on it before the end of the day. I pulled out a deck of cards, and we played a quick game on the steps up to the staion. In about five minutes, I heard the ride op say the ride was back open. I wasn't sure what was wrong, but I think that a person had gotten stuck in the restraints. I finally got on the ride, and it was definaltely the best ride in the park. My first thought was, "what's with the rubber OTSR's?" I thought that "flying" would be an uncomfortable position, but it actually ended up being much more comfortable than I had expeced. The downward-facing drop was not very intense, but it was really cool to go down head-first. The bottom of the pretzel loop was the best part of the ride.

After getting off, I was done riding all of the coasters on my checklist, and I had about an hour and a half to shop and eat. I was about to go on Monster Plantation, but would much rather get something to eat than go on a boat ride full of animatronics. We went to the Panda Express for some really good, but expensive, Chinese food. I went around to the various gift shops, wanting to buy a SUF shirt, but I couldn't find one that looked good. I ended up with a SUF postcard as my only souvenir, but I got several pictures.

Going back to the bus, I got the see the whole park lit up. Mindbender's track was really cool with lights going all the way along the track. We left the park at around 9:00 p.m., and I didn't get home until aroung 2:00. It was a very fun, but exhausting trip.

This trip has brought my coaster count up to 26. My count is still really small .

Here are some pics I took:

What a long and great TR. The pictures looks so nice. Thanks for posting. It looks like you had a great day.

--Soeren

I'm actually really stunned about the lengths of those lines. Folks who love around SFOG represent: is it really that crowded, or is this just a major Saturday crowd?

We're going to hit the park on a Monday in May; I was hoping the crowds wouldn't be that bad. Should I go ahead and expect to pick up a Lo-Q?

Nice trip report, by the way. Sorry your day was so line happy.

That park really can get insane on the weekends. On a weekday it shouldn't be as bad, but one big group or school trip can really mess with you. I'd pick up a normal qbot, then upgrade to gold if you need to.

Elissa "qbot enthusiast" Alvey

Reckon I oughta.

I guess we've always gotten lucky as far as crowds go, so I'm probably WAY too accustomed to waiting no more than 10 minutes for anything. I can't think of a single ride in existence that could possibly justify a two and a half hour wait.

At least you get a coupon for the Q-Bot thing when you buy season passes. Even if we don't make it back this season (though I suspect we will), it'll be worth the additional green.

The Qbot was the only reason I was able to actually able to reride stuff when I was there last july, at opening the lines for Georgia Scorcher, Superman, Cyclone, Batman, and Mindbender were all like over an hour!

That day was my first experience with a Qbot and it was great but there were a few drawbacks:

Line to get a Qbot was almost an hour

I did the stupid thing and reserved Batman, Superman, Cyclone right at the Qbot depot area. The problem is with doing this was: Batman rang right a way went there got on, and then superman rang, rode that and then Cyclone rang. so in the matter of less then an hour we had been at 3 totally opposite sides of the park. AFOG is deceiving in how big it was and then it was hot as hell too. Talk about exhausted at the end of the day..... LOL.

We were there yesterday and got on Superman 3 times, GASM, Cyclone, and Acrophobia twice. All other coasters except for Deja Vu and Canyon Blaster. We were only there from 10am - 12pm and them from 3pm - 8pm.

I didn't think it was that crowded.

Look for a complete TR and photo's later.

^ I thought you guys said you were going to upgrade to a gold Q-bot!

--Robb

Two things:

A. Robb, thanks for inserting the paragraph breaks. The TR, while nice and thorough, was a bit hard to read - my eyes kept skipping lines. That could be attributed to the fact that I'm an idiot.

B. Anyone care to explain what the difference is in a standard QBot vs. a Gold QBot?

Ok...since I seem to have become the resident qbot expert (I think I've posted about Qbot 7 times this week!) I will answer...

Qbot - You still have to wait however long the actual queue time is. For example is Deja Vu has a 3 hour long line, you virutal queue the ride up at 11am, it beeps and tells you to go ride at 2pm. You could not have used your qbot for anything else during that time. But while you're 'virtually' waiting for Deja Vu, you can go ride every other ride in the park and not be annoyed with the constant break downs! In reality they normally set these things at about 75% of whatever the actual wait time is.

Gold Qbot - Exactly the same unit...just programmed to only make you wait 5% of the queue time.

Elissa "does that make sense?" Alvey

^ Whats the difference pricewise?

Gold is usually double the price of the normal one.

Elissa "and well worth it on a busy day!" Alvey

Sorry for giving such a long post. I had just woken up at around noon when I wrote that, and I was still really tired (not feeling like re-reading it to break it up into paragraphs when I realized it was so long ). I have never been able to re-ride more than two coasters in any park. At Cedar Point, I rode more coasters in one day than at any other park, and it was only 10 (with no re-rides). I got in 9 at SFOG, which is pretty good for me. I guess the real reason for all of the long lines were the school groups. When I got to the park, I saw abot 30 school and charter buses.

Gold Qbot = Qbot you want when going to ride Kingda Ka or any other new coaster at a Six Flags park.

Great TR btw and some good photos.

Thanks for the info, Elissa. I guess I missed the other threads where this came up, otherwise I wouldn't have made you repeat yourself.

End of threadjack

I guess I could technically be the resident Q-Bot know-it-all since I worked for Lo-Q before the fallout between them and Six Flags .. then moved onto better things.