Dude the *only* thing I cared about at this park was the RM, Wicked Cyclone. I was keeping my expectations at like, waist level I would say. This isn’t an RMC that the enthusiasts rank very high in their RMC Glory List but listen Linda: even the worst RMC is better than most other coasters. You have to believe me on this. So maybe this isn’t the Iron Gwazi of New England, but I was still gonna stuff my ass in a seat and appreciate the motherfucking ride.
The line was not long at all, and at a park with good ops, I would guestimate that it was about a 20 minute wait. They had two trains running and the ride duration was not very long. So the line should have moved quickly. But oh FOR THE LOVE, the ops here were excruciatingly slow, like literally crawling. The ride crew was straight up meandering about the station, and it was just such a slap to the face of RMC. This park clearly doesn’t appreciate the glorious mass of I-box tracks that is Wicked Cyclone. Give it to Kennywood. (Well….maybe.)
If you’ve ever ridden Steel Vengeance or even Twisted Timbers, you know that the ride operations on RMCs are TIGHT and STRICT. They don’t let you bring anything on the ride, there are no loose article bins on the platform. You go through a metal detector. They tell you repeatedly not to pull your own restraint down – they will do it themselves. There’s even a screen that counts how long each dispatch takes. The whole process is INTENSE AND EFFICIENT.
It was the total opposite of that on this one, lol.
But, we finally got our back row ride! Which promptly ended at the bottom of the lift hill, lol. Luckily, an evac wasn’t necessary but if we had to, it wouldn’t have been too scary since we hadn’t really gone anywhere yet. I didn’t really pay attention to how long we were stopped but it was probably somewhere between 5-10 minutes. They got us up and running pretty quickly and I was lowkey excited to have been stuck on RMC. Weird flex?
OK, honest opinion? DANG ya’ll. This little RMC was FUN. It exceeded my expectations too – not nearly as forceful as SteVe but maybe more along the lines of Storm Chaser at Kentucky Kingdom? It still had the crazy elements but the way it took them was almost GRACEFUL. Yeah, I’m a fan.
We only rode it twice since ops were so fucking abysmal, plus it seemed to break down frequently (like when we were in line for what could have been our second ride). The line never really got any longer than it was the first time we rode it but damn, Six Flags, get your shit together. You need to train your Wicked Cyclone crew accordingly if they’re going to be working on an elite coaster.
I would have loved to have gotten a night ride but the park closed at 8 and we clear on the other side of it when it was nearing time to leave. :(
Aside from that, I would say the lowest point of the day aka the most ridiculously long wait was for the fucking rapids ride which we only rode because it was after Wicked Cyclone broke down and it was right there. I’m fucking sorry, but when you even have shitty ops for the rapids ride, then you really should reevaluate what business you have being a part of the amusement industry because this was absolutely absurd and NO ONE was actively being amused.
We had to have been in that line for an hour and bitch I would never wait an hour for a water ride but that line did deceive me.
AND IT WASN’T EVEN THAT GOOD.
NO ONE GOT WET??
Plus, we were partnered with another group of 3 who came in from the Fast Lane line and the first fucking thing the dad said was, “Thank god for Fast Lane.” Yeah, how about fuck you.
OMG Chooch and I were so fucking miz.
Here we are mumbling, “Is he taking a picture, or…?”
Then we got right into another stupid-long line for Pandemonium, a family spinning coaster. Literally the dumbest rides had the longest lines. The line actually wasn’t TOO bad but not worth anything over 10 minutes, to be honest. Here we are waiting (Henry surprised us by saying he would ride it too!):
At one point in line, I caught Henry chuckling to himself. I put on my INQUISITION CAP and started firing away. He admitted that he was watching the Looney Tunes episode playing on the queue TVs and that he remembered watching it when he was a kid. Of course, Chooch and I took that as our invitation to mock him mercilessly. I literally can’t picture Henry being a kid and doing kid things. So, now we know that he:
- was a paper boy
- smoked trees
- watched Looney Tunes.
Crazy stuff.
Some guy in line said to Henry in passing, “Hey man, nice hat – that’s a sick ride!” about his Velocicoaster hat, so Henry said, “Yes, it is” and I was SCREAMING ON THE INSIDE. HENRY MADE CONTACT WITH ANOTHER MAN IN LINE FOR PANDEMONIUM.
Anyway, we finally got on the idiot ride and at the last possible second, some teenage girl slid into the seat next to Chooch, making it incredibly awkward and also balancing the weight a bit so that our car didn’t spin at all, not even a single time.
What a waste.
Anyway, credit #231 for Chooch, big whoop. At least now it was time for ice cream!
There were numerous ice cream places around but I was insistent on getting a cone from BROWN DERBY because I liked the looks of it.
Nothing spectacular (they had a real fancy bubble waffle ice cream joint that I would have preferred but it was CLOSED) but it was like 85 degrees out so ice cream was essential.
Henry promised Chooch earlier in the day that he would ride the gigantically tall wave swinger thingie with him because that, along with drop towers and Pirate Ships, are the only things on my DO NOT RIDE list. I’ll ride the regular-height wave swingers but those skyscraper ones can go fuck themselves, to be quite frank.
I sat down on the plush Six Flags asphalt and played on my phone while waiting for them. Apparently there was some huge ordeal when a large group of teen boys blatantly cut the line so Henry was frantically on the app trying to report them while another guy was on hold with Six Flags also in an attempt to report them. I didn’t know any of this until they got off the ride and filled me in, which made me laugh because only the exact number of riders per cycle was let onto the final part of the line at a time, and when one of the groups was being let onto that final stretch, it LEGIT sounded like a house party on foot. Like all this uproarious…hootin’ and hollarin’ lol. I turned and looked just as this gigantic group of teens spilled out onto the last part of the line and thought to myself, “wow these kids like trouble with a capital T” because I’m a suburban housewife in a terrycloth robe, spying out the window with cold cream on my face.
This is who I am now.
Anyway, I was cracking up when Chooch and Henry were telling me this because while those kids were in that last part of the line, one of their buddies ran up the exit path and tried to cut with them, but they WOULDN’T LET HIM! They were like “no sir, you gotta get in that line way back there.” What hypocrites!!! Oh, this was so funny to me.
Here’s Henry and Chooch, finally in the next group to go on! People were annoying me so much while I was sitting down there, and my people I mean a young brother and sister recklessly playing with a ball that “some stranger” gave them while their mom only casually supervised from way far away under a tree. They were such brats! Actually, the girl reminded me of myself because she had very strict rules laid out for whatever game they were playing (literally, they were just kicking the ball back and forth it seemed) and she was growing more and more furious every time things didn’t go her way.
Finally the mom came over and started yelling at them and then she confiscated the ball and started dribbling it so the boy sneered, “YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO PLAY” and she glowered with indignance, “Excuse me! I played basketball for two years in high school!”
Wow. Lol.
Anyway, she had HAD it with these brat-kids and told them that as SOON AS DADDY AND OTHER KID get off the swings WE’RE GOING HOME.
OK bitch, but you better follow through.
Little cutie I saw while waiting! ^^^^
CAN YOU SEE THEM lol.
Then we rode this Super Girl thing that was fun but the people in line in front of us were so obnoxious. Like, super loud adults because extremely touchy (a guy and girl kept playfully slapping each other super hard and it was driving me nuts) and one of the guys talked in a Donald Duck voice for a solid 5 minutes while his crew cracked up and I was like, “No, guy, that ain’t it” and actually told Chooch at one point that I was going to exit the line.
Like I could picture myself doing it in dramatic fashion, swan-diving into a somersault, rolling out onto the midway and coming to a stop at Henry’s feet.
But no, I stayed and endured. I knew that the line wouldn’t be that long because the ride cycles were short and we were due to be on the next one anyway.
My favorite part was the ride operator repeated numerous times over the speaker, “PLEASE DO NOT PULL DOWN ON THE RESTRAINTS; THEY WILL COME DOWN ON THEIR OWN” but the two dumb bitches in front of me who were a part of the ANNOYING HORDE, stuffed their asses in their seats and IMMEDIATELY wrenched down on the restraints.
DUMB-ASS-ES.
Then the ride operator came around to check everyone’s restraints and when he got to me, he LOOKED ME DEAD IN THE EYES, SMILED AND SAID, “Enjoy your ride” and I swear I did not hear him saying this to anyone else!!! Of course, he killed the mood when he tacked on “ma’am” at the end, but I will take it.
The park was now in the final hour by this point. Since we were already over by this side, I suggested that we ride that damn Joker freespin coaster again and Chooch was SHOCKED but the line was almost non-existent so I thought WHY THE HELL NOT. Turns out, we had a REALLY good ride and even though it was fucking horrifying, I got off the thing and admitted that maybe I was coming around to the concept of the 4D freespins.
People change. It’s called GROWTH, ya’ll.
Also got one last walk-on on Batman, and then made it to the carousel IN THE NICK OF TIME. Chooch was super thrilled.
Then we were tasked with the long walk back to the parking lot, where some young guy (19? 20?) was raging against his two friends over some incident that apparently occurred and he kept trying to push his one friend into a fence and the friend was trying furiously to restrain him in return. It was actually really scary to witness especially when the friend had to flat out bodyslam the guy in the middle of the parking lot to get him to stop trying to fight and the other friend (a girl) was screaming THAT’S ENOUGH and then walked away. The Mad Guy kept screaming about something that happened and how “no one there gave a shit” so was it work-related? School-related? I don’t know but I hope that nothing escalated later or the next day.
It was actually scary.
On the way out, Chooch was like I AM DOING A MOBILE TACO BELL ORDER and Henry was like “ok great” and then they fought over which Taco Bell location he should use, which is always fun. Then we got to the Taco Bell and there were like 8 cars in front of us, and I swear to god it was a longer wait than any coaster we rode that day at Six Flags. Like an hour. An actual hour sitting in a drive-thru, and then the order was all jacked up because it was two fucking stoners working in there alone and they gave Chooch all meat-items in his whatever-box and by this point, I was starving too but it was almost 10PM so I did my pouty baby sulking thing where I was like “JUST FORGET IT, IT’S TOO LATE TO EAT, I’LL JUST GO TO BED.”
Ugh, it was so annoying. Fucking Taco Bell.
The end.