Best and Worst Theme Parks

[tribar]

What are the best and worst theme parks you have ever been to.

For me
BEST
CP
SFGAm

WORST
I haven't to any park that was horrible
Magic Kingdom
Santa's Village

What about you

[Ilovthevu']

Best:
SFOT
SFMM
Dorney Park - I really like this park, but I must say that everytime I like a ride there, they keep taking them away. Sure, people might not care for that Dragon Coaster they had, but that ride was really fun. It reminded me of the Santa's Village one, and it's much better than the carnival's Dragon's Wagons wimpy version. Also, they took away Laser. If that park would have kept Laser, and the Dragon coaster, that might have been my #1 park. Great rides to me at that park if they would have kept those 2: 1. Revolution 2. Hydra 3. Tilt-A-Whirl 4.Laser 5. Their V2 6. Invertigo they are getting 7. Thunderhawk 8. That Balloon Race is much faster than ours - like Santa's Village. I don't know why they can't speed up ours - Big Easy Balloons 9. Dragon ride 10. Mouse Coaster --- BUT SADLY 2 of those rides are gone. 10 Great Rides is amazing to me to see in an amusement park.

Cedar Point - What I feel with Cedar Point is that it SHOULD be blowing out the other ones above. It has the most flats at an amusement park, and it's tied with SFMM for the most coasters, but it's even with them for me. And the reason why SFMM is not overtaking these other ones is because the flats aren't that great that they have in which they don't have many. Cedar Point probably has 3-4 times more flats than SFMM.

SFGAm can't be in the best for me because if it weren't for the waterpark, to me it doesn't have many great rides as these other parks, but it's best if the waterpark is included.

Worst:
EPCOT
Hollywood Studios
Regular Universal (IOA I like better!)

And Kentucky Kingdom would be on this list, but they are not open. Kentucky Kingdom would be the absolute worst park because now they have no Chang, and no Mouse Coaster which I thought were great rides.

[tribar]

Best:
Dorney Park - I really like this park,

It does look like a fun park V2 clone with a working holding brake (from what ive heard and seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vkXzQlWQyM
Theres a pause 36 seconds in
Steel Force Talon and Hydra look fun too. Also i kinda like the Dragon at Santa's Village

and it's tied with SFMM for the most coasters

untill tomorrow if (its an intamin) Green lantern opens

[monsterfan99]

Best:

EPCOT - Simply the best park I've ever been to. It's a park where I have went for 6 hours, did not ride a single ride and had an amazing day. Great rides, fun live entertainment, Food & Win Festival and (for my money) the best show in Orlando with IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth. 150 plus visits later, it still is just as enjoyable as my first visit.

Busch Gardens Tampa - My choice for best coaster collection for a park. Got most types of variety and not a horrible coaster in the park. The animal exhibits are well done with the kangaroo encounter being amazing. Well worth a full day visit if in the Orlando area.

Six Flags Over Georgia - SF STL was also considered for this, but Over Georgia has the better ride collection. Their non-wooden coaster collection is world class with Goliath being a standout. This park also gets huge marks for the amazing Monster Mansion dark ride that rivals any dark ride Disney have done in the last 20 years. The fact the park is also on the same road we took from IL to FL helps a ton as well.

Honorable mention - Universal Studios Orlando, Magic Kingdom, Kings Island

Worst

Mt. Olympus - I hate this place with a passion. All 5 adult coasters sucked and felt like they are being run until they collapse. The employees are the single worst I've met in any business. From sleeping in the back of a train during operating hours, to spraying the tracks with oil as guest are riding/under where it is being sprayed to not knowing basic first aid it was hell here. I paid only parking for 2 days here to get in and I felt ripped off.

Beech Bend Park - Outside of the Kentucky Rumbler and the Michael Jackson swinging ship, this park was crap. Almost everything was portable and it showed. Only the Rumbler being great saved this park from being my first regret of a visit.

Sea World Orlando - I will never get the love for this park. Manta and Kraken are great, but that's it on the rides front. Show wise, the Summer Nights shows are fantastic but not a big fan of the regular shows at all. The awful employees and even worse ride-ops drag this park down even further.

Honorable mention: Cedar Point, Michigan's Adventure, Six Flags Great America.

[BP317]

It's hard to say what the best theme park is considering how many different kinds of parks there are. My favorite seasonal parks are probably SFGAm, SFOG, and Kings Island. My favorite destination parks are Epcot, Disneyland, and IOA.

There are positives and negatives to every park I think that makes it very difficult to say which one is best. I think SFMM has by far the best coaster collection and its a pretty park with nice terrain, the problem with SFMM is if you go there when the park is not busy it's probably one of the best theme parks in the world, if you go there when it's busy it's not enjoyable at all because when it comes to handling crowds...well they need some serious help. SFGADV has one of the best coaster collections in the world but it is ugly and not really well maintained.

Anyway, for the most part I enjoy all the parks with few exceptions and am happy that America has by far the biggest and most thriving theme park industry for us to enjoy. The only parks I absolutely hated were probably Mt Olympus and SFGADV (first visit).

[tribar]

What about this
http://www.sfgamworld.com/forum/trip-reports/topic10934.html
DId you hate KD or just the pathetic capacity issues

[BP317]

KD is not ran very well, but at the time Mt Olympus and GADV were in their own league.

[Coaster Justin]

Worst
- Conneaut Lake Park
- Santa's Village
- Mount Olympus Bad Water & No Theme Park

[RBull4life]

Oh great!! Is Mt Olympus that bad? We are heading there in a few weeks. We decided there because we only have a weekend, and it satsified both a water park for the kids, and a few coasters for me, and the kids.

[monsterfan99]

^ Expect the worst and hope for the best. Maybe something, anything, has changed in the year since my visit.

If all goes bad, salvage the weekend by hitting Timber Falls

[BP317]

Mt Olympus used to be worth it because they have some good tracks and Cyclops/Hades were great wooden coasters, among the best anywhere. But now that the park has jacked up all prices and the coasters are neglected and extremely rough to the point where they are almost un-rideable, I think many people find it not worth the time and money. Of course you should go if you have never been, you'll never know if you like a park unless you try it, but unless they do major track work on Hades and/or Zeus I don't think it's worth the money to go back. I mean really, if you've already been on all the rides who wants to pay $40 to get the shit kicked out of you on the coasters and get treated like crap by all of their employees that don't speak english.

While in the Dells if you have never been you must go to Timber Falls and ride Avalanche/Hellcat. It's right down the street from Mt Olympus no more than a miles and is a freakin' awesome little coaster. Back when they used to allow unlimited rides with wristbands Dan and I rode it over 60x, went back to Mt Olympus to get a night ride on Hades (when it was good, but 1 train op and always having a line makes it impossible to marathon), then went back to Timber Falls and kept riding Avalanche. Unfortunately now they have a 5 ride limit to keep the maintenance costs down so Timber Falls has gone from a half day park to a few hours unless you do some mini-golfing.

I will say that Mt Olympus is one of my favorite parks to take pictures at though because of how many funny things you see





The normal ride operator chill position after they send a train and wait for it to come back



No fences around any of their rides so you can easily walk on the coaster track if you want. Gotta love a park that lets natural selection take its course.



Hopefully nobody presses the go button when they are checking the lapbars



Random station gates for a car that doesn't exist



Operator taking a nap while the rides running



The two employees sitting on the bench telling people the rides closed

[RBull4life]

Thank you everyone for making my weekend look even better now LOL.
I have the three day pass thing that was included in my stay, so hopefully, just hopefully things wont be THAT bad. Any other coasters in the area besides what was already mentioned?

Back on topic.
Best: Kennywood
Cedar Point
Six flags St. Louis.

Worse:
Santas Village

[Cole]

I admit. Mt Olympus is a super crappy park. But I agree with Brad, its worth it if u havent been. I dont mind roughness on coasters so I enjoy Hades and Zeus.

[Galvan]

Worst Parks:

Six Flags AstroWorld: I went there in 2005, got my credits and got out of that god forsaken hellhole as quickly as possible, Houston as a whole is a cesspool, thank god this terrible park closed. Nothing was good about that park.

Indiana Beach: This park has gone down hill fast and is a very close second to AstroWorld, the fact that no one has died at this park yet is astonishing.... Oh wait never mind that happened this past weekend... nevermind.

AstroWorld has terrible rides, terrible employees, terrible food, terrible everything
Indiana Beach has if nothing else charm, but after about 30 minutes, that fades away.

Dis-Honorable Mention: Six Flags Over Georgia:

I love the ride selection, I love the atmosphere but the park operations SUCK!

Holiday World: This is the most over rated park in the history of over rated parks.


Best Parks:

Six Flags Fiesta Texas/Six Flags over Texas: The Best parks in the SF chain that aren't Great America, especially Over Texas, an awesome ride selection, great employees and some seriously good Texas food at both. Texas should be proud.

Six Flags Great America: I love my home park, and the employees, atmosphere and decent ride selection make me proud to have SFGAm as my home park.

Kings Island: Although Cedar Fair has knocked this park down some in the customer service/charm areas KI, is still an amazing park. and Diamondback is well worth the CF b.s.

Honorable Mentions: Six Flags St. Louis:

SFSTL, is a decent little park, but has little to offer in the rides department. BTR there is weak, and slow. Boss is there, American Thunder is amazing ride, but add Mr. Freeze to that and the coaster line up is still very sub-standard at best.

I have been to 27 parks across the US in total.

[w00dland]

Favorite Parks:

Busch Gardens Williamsburg: Great theming, and each of their coasters are very very reridable. I could spend 3 days at that park and not get bored. They've got shows, good food, and a solid atmosphere. My favorite "seasonal" park.

Disneyland: Need to go there to understand why I like it better than WDW Magic Kingdom. Just has a different feel to it, and Indiana Jones will blow your mind.

Dollywood: Good rides, amazing food, and the greatest employees you will find anywhere on the planet. Yes, better than Disney's castmembers.

Notable others for me are IOA, SFGAm, and Kings Island.

Least favorite:

Worlds of Fun: Talk about a park with absolutely no charm. Rides were cookie cutter and boring with the exception (sort of) of Patriot. Bad operations the day I went meant I rode all the coasters and left within two hours.

Knotts Berry Farm: I went on a Wednesday in March, but the fact that the entire back 20% of the park was just shut down for the day because of staffing budgets with the rest of the park running one train on everything, my day sucked. The rides weren't good (I didn't go on Xcelerator) and lines were much longer than they should have been. An awful day due to awful operations.

Most other parks I've been to I've atleast enjoyed myself enough to want to come back again sometime.


And for everyone touting SFMM as a great theme park: It's coasters may give it an aura for coaster dorks like us, but for me I'd far more into the experience than the rides. How I'm treated as a guest, and what a park offers other than the coasters is important too. SFMM fails at everything except coasters (and Apocolypse has been running on train because of "rehab" since I moved here in late February). I honestly don't plan on visiting again before I leave in a couple of months. It sucks because I can't ride X2, but at least if I save my money on one final trip to Disney I'll come home happier.

[CoasterDude12-2]

Wow, Mt. Olympus sure has taken a nosedive since I've been there.

I have to disagree with Galvan on Astroworld. It's coaster selection was sub-par, but not horrible. If nothing else it had the Tidal Wave and the Texas Cyclone was fun. It wasn't a great park but I'd take my experience there over Magic Mountain any day. That said, Magic Mountain has apparently gotten a lot better since I've been there. Indiana Beach is nice too, but again I haven't been there this year so perhaps it's also gone downhill since.

But for me I love the small parks with fewer lines and more charm. Holiday World is probably my favorite park with Lagoon, Cedar Point, Knoebels, Fiesta Texas, and Great America up there as well.

[rct2wizard360]

Best Parks:

Dollywood - I had just as much fun walking around as I did on their rides. With next years big addition, you'll be sure to find me back there. Food is excellent and their coasters are great.

Busch Gardens Europe/Williamsburg - Another park where you could walk around looking at everything and enjoy the park. Everything about this park is gorgeous. I could sit and watch a train go through the last half of Alpengeist all day. Everything about this park is great.

Kings Island - I spent two and a half days at this park Memorial Day weekend 2007 when Firehawk opened. I'll never forget waiting three hours for Firehawk because of downtime and they had the "First Rider" that they gave to first batch of riders that day waiting for us as compensation for the downtime. Everything in the park is rerideable and it's really just a solid park. I'm heading back there Labor Day weekend so I can finally add Diamondback to my list.

Islands of Adventure - Wizarding World fanboy. 'nuff said.

Worst Parks:

Mt. Olympus - I think every single point has been covered.

Cedar Point - An unpopular opinion, I know. I find myself riding Dragster, Millenium Force, Maverick and Magnum every time I go. I don't enjoy any of the other coaster very much and the only flat I enjoy is MaXair. Maybe when a new coaster comes around I'll head out that way again but until then I have no need.

Animal Kingdom - Maybe another unpopular opinion? My family does Disney parks like no other. We finished all four parks (to our liking) in two and a half days. Everest and the safari (to me at least) is all this park really has to offer. I just don't find any reason for a person to spend more than four to five hours here on their first visit. Maybe that's just me.