Danrarbc

I really do hope park opening day ride openings become a thing post-merger. It's a really nice thing that Cedar Fair seems to aim for and Six Flags never really has.

I stand corrected - it could still beat Rookie Racer. I should have looked at more of the Giga installs to see how they compared. Definitely won't be a Memorial Day ride though.

I'd like to again say that Justice League, Pandemonium and Screamin' Eagle were all open last weekend. Yes there was downtime - things come up when you go in to full operation for the first time. But all were able to open and continued to reopen after shutdowns. Justice League, in particular, is a very complex system with a lot of moving parts. It's not the first themed ride with things that stop working and it won't be the last. Even Disney's rides have failures - the difference is generally they design both an A mode and B mode so if the primary elements fail there's a fallback that can still tell a story. Justice League doesn't have that (and for the most part I don't know of many other Sally rides that do either). Disney has even had a few notorious unfixed failures over the years - the Yeti comes to mind immediately, and of course Rise of the Resistance still goes down at least once a day. That said Six Flags corporate itself is definitely is not providing enough of a budget to keep most of the Justice League rides running as well as they can. They don't have enough spare ride vehicles to keep capacity up when they have to remove one or four for motion base or sensor issues. They don't appear to have backup projectors (heck they probably removed 3D not only to not have to buy glasses but to also extend the life of the projectors - they can use them until they get way dimmer now). They don't have enough equipment on hand to keep the game system in good condition and we all know that they don't have anywhere near the ability to keep all of the effects operational. I'd argue ALL of that is on corporate - for such a signature ride across the chain and how big a showcase it was for Sally you'd think corporate would want to directly ensure it remains good. They have failed to do that on a corporate level. The only argument against that is the concept is near a decade old now so maybe it isn't considered important anymore. As for the carousel - putting chariots and horses on takes no time whatsoever. They've removed the construction wall surrounding it. The structure itself out in the park is nearly complete, with only a little painting remaining and replacement murals on the outer ring left to go. You can pretty clearly see the mechanical bits have already been restored and installed. We know that they're doing the final horses and chariots now because the park actually released that in a backstage update. It's perfectly reasonable to believe it'll open this year given the state it's in right now. ------------ The two complaints I'll entirely endorse are the state of Buccaneer and the lack of anything resembling real progress on Joker. Buccaneer really does look like a fairground ride - except worse as there's not even a lighting package. I get it's something simple and cheap to run that people will actually ride so they want it in the ride lineup, and they probably really did get a late start on the retheme but it doesn't look good at all, I'd really like to see more effort go into that in the next offseason if they plan on keeping it around. I'd like to point out that by the end of March parts of CraZanity had already arrived at Magic Mountain and that ride even with the better weather in LA didn't open until July. To my knowledge there's no hardware here in STL yet. There was construction equipment and nearly complete site prep by mid-April and that probably isn't even close to happening here, foundation work was what they were busy doing in LA around Memorial Day. There's clearly no effort being made to hit the start of summer with Joker and I'm not confident this will be open any earlier than Rookie Racer opened last year. And they already know how long it takes to get a Giga Discovery built so they'd have known when they should have started if they wanted it to be running this summer. I'm not sure if this is a corporate or local issue but it's not great either way (given the fact that footers are pretty far along at Great Adventure for Flash late opens probably aren't corporate policy).

Before their family boomerang they installed their last coaster in 2014, and it was intentionally built on a somewhat smaller scale with 5 car trains. That's a 10-year coaster drought (same gap as Boomerang to Rookie Racer). Beyond that it's been some flat rides and a couple waterslides, and they run the same trains on all of their woodies to keep costs as low as possible too. I'd venture to say more capital expenditures have been spent at SFStL in that decade than at Holiday World. That's not to say SFStL is better. Just to say that the comparison isn't cut and dried. Koch Development Corporation also happens to not be on the stock market with public shareholders and that plays a significant role in how it is run too.

Justice League was up but the first screen didn’t have the guns working. Pandemonium and Eagle were both running to you probably just looked when they had a temporary error code. Agreed. I mocked it up that way months ago and then showed using what seems to be the site plans that it absolutely would have worked turned 90 degrees. Just to highlight how rare it is for a Giga/Giant Discovery to be installed in an orientation that doesn’t highlight the pendulum motion I looked at 10 installed in North American parks. 8 of the 10 are installed so that most of the time from midways, especially the primary ‘approach to the ride, it’s angled so you can see it swinging in front of you. The two that aren’t are Discovery Kingdom’s and SF America. America is not a well run park so they just plain installed it the least impressive way on purpose. In DK’s case though it’s really tucked in behind and between two rides and even turned the way it is a support is partially in a road - if turned 90° a support would have been smack in the middle of it so it really wasn’t their choice. If SFStL turned this one 90° counterclockwise it would accentuate the pendulum motion as it swings above the arcade building AND this would also swing out directly towards the reservoir. Great America seems to understand what the most flattering angle is.

I know it’s opening day but Mine Train’s operations are ABYSMAL. Joker’s location isn’t really seeing action right now. I get the feeling the Buccaneer decision was made a bit late. There are bunch of chargers throughout the lot.

The park has continued to post updates all week. Nothing on the new Joker name though.

Nice to see the Britannia arcade get a new life. And the new signs look good.

Well there’s no way they’d give up a revenue source. You can still buy it.

All of the spaces in the photo are in Preferred. If they make the EV chargers a Preferred perk this means there’s a security associate present. They can block those spaces and then open them one by one for individual vehicles.

They have to have redone most of roofs in the park these last few years at this point. Those EV chargers in the parking lot really stick out like a sore thumb with the really old asphalt surface.

Buccaneer also had a fair amount of red IIRC. Would DC sign off on a re-theme given the "standards" they have on theming projects? Would Six Flags want to expend that kind of budget on such a thing?

Yes but between 305, Thunder Strike and ??? which will have the worst theming? Thunder Strike is off to an early lead.

National Six Flags account fail.

Still no announcement of Old-Joker’s name. But we can see one of the new colors.