USA 12/18 – Six Flags Discovery Kingdom
Day 2 – Six Flags Discovery Kingdom
First impressions of this place was laughing at the parking cost. $30?! Well thats my Six Flags season pass already paid off.
The views on the long walk around the outside of the park from the car park gave me slight Aussie Warner vibes with all those rides and superhero logos so visible from the outside, just in this case a little more… desolate.
Talking of season passes. After they were so helpful and keen over email to let me buy one remotely and claimed that they ‘had to print it on the day of purchase’, it was a bit of a shambles on the day. I asked for the place to go and collect it and got bounced between 4 different locations both outside and inside the park, each stating that they weren’t actually the right place and in the end they just printed another one.
Such a stupidly good deal, even though I paid more than if I had just got it on the day. Risk.
Another rope drop scenario with a weird looking reindeer gyrating in front of some kids. Another power walk to an RMC.
I was one of the guests first to arrive but got a big fat negative as my first inside impression of Six Flags. “This ride is currently only open to membership holders.” Spite.
Superman it is then. I really struggled to enjoy my last Premier Sky Rocket as the shin bars dug into my shin bones so painfully hard that I’ve never wanted to get off a ride so quickly before it even started.
This was fine, they didn’t touch my legs as much and they’re squidgy.
Also this was the first one built so what’s your deal Holiday Park?
They’re quite fun. A triple launch is always a blast and the elements themselves are actually kinda cool. Just something about it… is it simply the lack of corners that makes it still feel a little inferior to an actual coaster layout? Or is it the prolific cloning of the ride? Once was enough anyway.
That weird Skywarp ride I wanted to judge was closed…
The Intamin Impulse caught me off guard. Never come across one before and I thought they all had vertical spikes at both ends. Guess not. That’s a plus.
I also got myself overly worried about it from seeing it go once before me. From a distance, it looked like the front half of the train was hanging upside down for a good 10 seconds at the top of this angled spike, something I’d despise happening to me.
When I was on it, it was the right way up, so that was clever.
It sucks though. Rattled quite badly throughout and 2 gimmicky rides in a row didn’t really help.
Joker was still off limits to normal people so headed out of the area to see what else was cooking.
Oh good, another Zamperla 80STD. Fun fact: some of these little rides are 20 years old now. +1.
Happened to walk past a Dolphin show just as it was starting, so gave it a go. It had some very cringey rhyming Christmas narration and dance remixes of Christmas songs.
The dolphins were cool at least. Double backflip.
Leaving this was poorly timed as all the families spilled into the Cobra queue with us. Queued a stupid amount of time for it, but wanted to clear the path of creds for ‘that wooden one’ as other guests were calling it.
Tivoli large. Whatcha gonna do.
That dumb Larson Loop ride I wanted to judge was closed…
The SLC was also spiting. Shame.
They had broken Medusa, but were sending empty trains constantly. The staff guy wasn’t helpful in his advice. Camped it out for half an hour. Gave up.
I can’t stands no more, RMC time. Queue looked reasonable, until it barely moved the whole time. Hang on, is this thing only on one train? Yes, yes it is.
So reasonable turned into 90 minutes, made all the worse by the fact that they’d stopped me from walking straight onto it with no queue earlier.
It was really good. Didn’t blow me away with any particular sensations like the previous day, but a very solid ride with an interesting sequence of events. I particularly liked the double hump that catches you off guard in the back, ending more abruptly than a traditional hill and then throwing you into another before you can process it. The little stall element was a bit underwhelming unless you were further towards the middle of the train, but that’s Wildfire’s fault.
Medusa now had people on it, so back to the other side of the park. Queue was short, but had about 200 people in the station faffing, cos the staff weren’t bothering to batch.
Well this did absolutely nothing for me. The first drop is a dumb shape with that slight corner and doesn’t give you any surprise airtime like the Spanish one. The rest of it was just there, same old sequence of elements that is getting rather repetitive, with no interesting forces to speak of.
“Just like a Boomerang, I’ll catch you guys later.” I smiled a little, but it quickly wore off when the ride began.
So this place has animals as well as rides. That’s new. Spent a while ticking them all off.
Each of the food groups represented.
Time to suffer another 90 minute queue. Look at that dormant 2nd train, mocking me.
And another 90 minute queue. So much awful queue. At least it made it get dark.
Hmm. Place started good bad but got rather fed up with it in the end. Not completely the parks fault though. Christmas obviously draws the crowds and that wasn’t helped by the limited lineup one train operation. Can‘t really complain as but it got me Railblazer Joker at this usually barren time of year.
Cedar Fair 1 – Six Flags 0
Day 3