This is my first trip report so dont freak out if I do something wrong. Today was my last day of school, which only lasted two hours so when I got home my mom brought me to six flags. Since it was her birthday we had to do what she wanted, and be very nice because she doesn't really enjoy being there. We rode all of the 48'' rides that my brother hadn't been on which included Viper and RC On to the photos:
First up was Little Dipper which ended up to be a 25 minute wait
Station
Noted!
For you brake enthusiasts
Brake run
Does anyone know why the back two cars are closed?
Random footer next to dippers queue
Rules
Then we headed over to viper, walked on, and then rerode.
Clown Car time!
ewwww...
Through the loop!
The demon is slowly taking back it car little by little
OM NOM NOM! this harness sure is yummy
Next up was BB which had no line and got us all drenched. The whole time we were there they were announcing that there was no line Empty
Working on the ropes course, which is coming along well
First rider!!
Mmmm some meeting
"Hey boss! We have some extra blue paint, what should we do with it?" "Hell, just paint some of it on Iron Wolf. That should help."
HeHe... Erect
Time for some bull!
Twisty turny
From this angle it looks like the camera is mounted on the support
I'm readdy for a Ragin' Cagun good time!
We got there at about noon and left at about 4, and when we had gotten there all the school kids had just gone to PG for lunch, so we were able to hop on a few rides really quickly before the crowds picked up again.
Little Dipper- 1 Viper- 2 Orbit- 1 Demon- 1 Raging Bull- 1 Iron Wolf- 1 Ragin Cagun- 1
Comment and tell me what you think!!!
--Aeater333
Last edited by sfgamfan717 on June 6th, 2010, 10:12 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Is that footer by the Little Dipper close to the line? Maybe, it's for a tv, and they didn't install the tv yet?? Edit: To me, Duh you said next to queue.
"I've been staring at the world, waiting. All the trouble and all the pain we're facing. Too much light to be livin' in the dark. Why waste time? We only got one life. Together we can be the CHANGE. So go and let your heart burn bright"
That ropes course looks like a real eye sore from your pictures. I am glad that some of you will have an extra activity to tackle, but really? They should have put that back in Wolf's spot where it is all "foresty"
sfgamfan717 wrote:Just edited with more pics. ^It looked like something for a TV, or maybe a lampost.
Aren't lamp posts at the park usually rounded though even though I know some tv's have rounded poles too like the older Demon and Iron Wolf poles, and I know one Superman pole for sure is like that? Are there any lights for the line though? I guess it's not anything that important - lamp post or tv though. Ha, ha begging people to ride BB.
Biggest mistake in my opinion the park has made was not trying to fix capacity on Deja Vu, and taking out Deja Vu instead of Iron Wolf. Iron Wolf was a much better target to get rid of with it's slower loading, and short lines. To me, the biggest flops of the park were under Shapiro - Dark Knight (even though I like it. It's only 3 years old, and the line is so short. It shouldn't be that short for a mouse coaster that's only 3 years old!!), Spygirl which lasted one season, Buccaneer Battle, Pictorium stupid shows, getting rid of a theater, and getting rid of Deja Vu (A ride that was getting better with being up much more.)
I mean the guy is redoing the Texas Giant at Six Flags Over Texas instead of just tearing down the piece of junk, and building something better for $10 million. Holy cow, I didn't realize how old that ride was (19 years), but to me it's still a piece of junk with no airtime and nothing to gain, but pain. And essentially aren't they just building the same layout? Is that really going to convince people that they must come to the park? Sorry for the Shapiro rant, but I heard it before about employees begging for people to ride BB. The thing I don't like about those water things is that they are annoying to turn. They are so darn hard to turn. They remind me of Chubasco wheels. Those things are hard to turn compared to Santa's Village snowballs. Who wants to crank out water? Let me just push a button than crank it. I'm kind of surprised you don't hear of eye injures of that ride though.
"I've been staring at the world, waiting. All the trouble and all the pain we're facing. Too much light to be livin' in the dark. Why waste time? We only got one life. Together we can be the CHANGE. So go and let your heart burn bright"
The reason there are no eye injuries, is because the cannons "ashore" are not very powerful when they reach the boat, their just good at getting people wet. And vice-versa.
When we were hanging around BB and Demon for about 45 minutes (we were waiting for another group to meet up w/ us) they would have very frequent announcements like "Tired of waiting in line? Then head over to Buccaneer Battle because there is no line!"
Those are automated, so whenever they want to get people, they press some button and it gets people there. Once I heard, "Tired of waiting in line?! Raging Bull has no wait!" But there was a line. hah.
Question: Why didn't they get rid of Deja Vu earlier (2002-2006) when it has some horrible days during the season; 2002 & 2005 I hear were the worst) instead of 2007 when it ran great? They should have at least announced it was leaving (along with Splash Water Falls) so fans can enjoy it one last time. Not all park goers are enthusiasts that know everything that is about to go on.
/\ Well it wouldve been rediculous to remove the ride in 2002 considering they had just invested $10 mil to build it, it went under a huge rehab in 2003 that took over half the season, and went under several major rehabs and reprogrammings the following years. It took Shapiro to finally say enough is enough time to move on. In regards to not announcing it's closing it was pretty clear the parks executives hated that ride and wanted it to have as little attention as possible because of its breakdowns. There were many flashes of hope, there were several months where it ran flawlessly and everyone would get excieted, then it would always come back and make up for it with several months of absolute sh*t not long later .
There is one thing I've never understood about Deja Vu. Why didn't it work?
Now i know, the first and second year, sure there could be some issues, that's expected with a prototype. But in later years, why did it run like crap?
And can someone use language for the everyday guy and not big words like "catch", "LIM", and other used to describe Vu before? Six Flags could not tame Deja Vu for 6 seasons and the first year out it did wonders for Silverwood. Now I know Vu was meant for a smaller park with its bad capacity but still kinda funny. All the complaining and Silverwood seemed to have no trouble at all!
Well, when you check the whole train twice, what do you think is going to happen with capacity? Retractable seatbelts to me was the way to go. They wouldn't have to do the seatbelt on empty seats (They wrapped the seatbelt from the seat onto the harness), and even if a person put a harness down, it would still be pretty easy to buckle them up with a retractable seatbelt because they usually have plastic on them in which a person can easily get to. And a HUGE problem with the seatbelts they had on Deja Vu was that if the seatbelt wasn't on the seat (It could get "lost" going off the seat), and if a person didn't know it had seatbelts, they wouldn't buckle up.
The thing to me is if they can do the seatbelt and lapbar like on Viper, or American Eagle they could have checked the seatbelt and harnesses at the same time on Deja Vu, but as I said retractable seatbelts I think would have done wonders for capacity issues. Condor's retractable seatbelts though to me aren't good as it pertains to the color. They are easy to not notice. Why would you use black? Roy G Biv - You use red first, than maybe orange, and than yellow for people to notice stuff better.
And to me with the spieler on Deja Vu, that was the worst thing to do. What I'm talking about is announcing to buckle your orange seatbelt before getting on the ride. People want to get on the ride, and aren't going to listen to what your saying. You let them in, and than spiel away. Also, the first-timers, they don't know what you are talking about until they see it - orange seatbelt on the seat. To me, they should have put a sign on the gates that said it, but again checking it twice is easily going to be reduce capacity by a ton.
"I've been staring at the world, waiting. All the trouble and all the pain we're facing. Too much light to be livin' in the dark. Why waste time? We only got one life. Together we can be the CHANGE. So go and let your heart burn bright"
I have heard from maitainance people that Deja Vu was never built correctly in the first place. They had to force it into place, so nothing was actually to spec.
Not all of them just ours. I heard there were issues with the footer spacing and it was just made to fit so when it was rebuit correctly it worked better
So we have idiots installing rides at our park? What about the reason that Six Flags installed their own system for the ride which sucked and Deja Vu or Aftershock worked better when Silverwood saved it?
^^I really doubt that the spacing of the footers was a problem. Six Flags Over Georgia was having problems too with their Deja Vu (One time I went to the park it was open, and the other time, it wasn't open.), but when I was at that park, a bunch of their roller coasters were having problems - Superman, Acraphobia, Mind Bender, and Batman the Ride. I think that one I time I went there it seems like Ninja was closed, but the other time I went there, it was open. If it was spacing of footers problem, someone would have noticed it looking so weird, and messed up.
"I've been staring at the world, waiting. All the trouble and all the pain we're facing. Too much light to be livin' in the dark. Why waste time? We only got one life. Together we can be the CHANGE. So go and let your heart burn bright"
The reason they installed their own "system" was due to the legalities of their (SF Inc.) insurance policy...same idea with the seatbelts.
As for the "fixing"....remember that the Vekoma today is not the same Vekoma of 2002. When they went bankrupt and started over, the new company really had no idea or specifications of the ride or PLC system and literally "scratched their heads" whenever they paid a visit. After a while, GAm wouldn't even let them hook it up to their computers because it would totally cause problems and then take even more time to sort out the kinks. There were many a days where the maintainence crew would just give up or wouldn't know what to do....other than occupy all of their time every single day.
Overall.....this is still a ride (prototype or not) that should never have been installed at GAm. I mean....the park could have easily installed a regualr boomerang long before the Deja Vu's of the world and they never did....that should have been their first hint
I have an update! This is kind of like a mini TR with a couple photos. From Today, 6/6/10
First off, I found out what the mysterious footer was for!
Thats right Ilovthevu I was right all along! Anyway, I guess my first visit I didn't see the big lamppost about 5 feet away from the other footer... silly me!
And then I got to witness some awesomeness. We were on the yellow train in the station and they made us get off and go back into our AG like they normally do, and I look back at the brakerun and one of the tiredrive wheels was hanging off its mount. So then maint. had to come and fix it. they tore it off and then moved the back two wheels closer together with a wrench. Then for the rest of they day they were running it with the wheel off. It looked like this:
I know its a bad picture, I took it w/ my phone because I didn't have my camera
20214029935_ORIG.jpeg (34.96 KiB) Viewed 9880 times
Also, AE red is finally operating, but only with one car.
^^^Are all the poles in that area (Yukon Territory) like that because I remember seeing that type before with the wooden things on top? Those lights remind of Friday the 13th when Jason is on the dock, and there is that light there.
"I've been staring at the world, waiting. All the trouble and all the pain we're facing. Too much light to be livin' in the dark. Why waste time? We only got one life. Together we can be the CHANGE. So go and let your heart burn bright"
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