Trip report about SFA i read on another site

[Bob O]

Sure glad are park is run much better than this!! Found this report on rec arts.

So since we finished up a bit early at SFGAdv on Tuesday, we figured
why not hit SFA that evening. We were going to PKD the next morning
anyway.. and a little Superman, Joker and Roar could be fun.

Now look, I've been all over the place. I'm certainly not naive. I did
not go to SFA with huge expectations. I've been there before, and I
knew the park's operations are an abomination, but I figure, go in with
logo expectations and it won't be so bad. Right? Makes sense?


So we get there with less than two hours before park close - no big
deal - we both have season passes and that's more than enough time for
three coasters, four if we did Batwing too. After 6pm with an 8pm
close, they still charge $15 to park?? And wait- we pull up to the
booth, and the kid inside says "Um, you know we close in less than two
hours right?" and I said yup, we have season passes, it's cool. "Oh,
ok, then in that case, that'll be $15." What!


Ugh. Ok, it's Six Flags. Deal with it. Don't get angry. At least
there's some cool rides to hit before we go.


So we head to Joker first - since my friend couldn't get on Flight of
Fear on this trip, at least he could do one of them. Of course, Joker
is closed, obviously due to the Chiller incident. I can even excuse the
fact that the ride is sitting there with no one working on it, saying
it's after 6pm. Though I think we all know there's a very decent
reality that it probably hasn't had any work done on it in the entire
time it's been down. And before you say maintence might be working on
the trains, they were both sitting on the track - not off in some
maintence shed elsewhere.


So whatever. I can't say I was overly surprised about Joker. So we go
ride Superman... which is a lot rougher than it used to be and a lot
less comfortable with all those extra bars added to the restraints.
Still fun-ish... but not amazing like it used to be - clearly do to
poor maintence on the trains (Based on how it ran, I'd guess the wheels
were triangular!)


Batwing would be next. Except it's closed. So on the way out of Gotham
City, noticing that everything there except the Peguin Raft Ride was
closed, we headed towards Roar and Typhoon SeaCoaster. Typhoon
SeaCoaster was, of course, closed as well. Roar? Yeah, Roar's closed.
Even Shipwreck Falls was closed. So that's, more or less two entire
sections of the park closed.


So by this point, I'm really annoyed. We get charged $15 bucks to park
in a lot that's had no capital improvement what so ever after the price
increase, and now virtually everything we wanted to ride was
unavailable. So we're standing over by Shipwreck Falls trying to figure
out what to do... then I see this:


A park supervisor - with her nametag on, in the middle of the theme
park (not a back-of-house area), stops eating her ice cream bar and
tells her friend on her cell phone to hang on so she can stop an
employee to speak to him about having his shirt untucked. I mean, are
you for real? You have the nerve to tell this kid he's bad show when
YOU, the MANAGER are on your cell phone AND eating an ice cream bar in
a guest area with your name tag on?


Ok so we're going to Guest Relations. Real nice girl inside asks how
we're doing and we give her an honest response: Terrible. We give her a
run down of the situation, and let her know we're aggitated about
paying the $15 parking without being told that most of the major
attractions were closed. So she called a Guest Relations supervisor to
talk to us - as this was simply out of her hands in regards to a
solution. So Chris comes in and talks to us. We tell him the same
story, and then add that look, we both have season passes. We don't
want free tickets. We don't want front of line passes - just our
parking cost to be refunded because we are leaving, less than an hour
after being there.


Chris had no problem doing that for us, and for that I commend him.
That's putting the guest before the company, and that's good.
Unfortunately nothing else there seems to happen like that. So we're on
our way out and Chris asks us to stop. He wanted to make a few phone
calls to see if we can get on any of these rides - so he calls about
Batwing and Roar. In the process he finds out that Superman is now
closed, but Batwing and Roar are both open. So we thank him and walk
off to Roar.


We get to Roar and get stopped by security "Ride's Closed" is all she
said. So I said, "Please get me a rides supervisor. We just came from
Guest Relations who called to check the status of this ride in front of
us, who ensured it was open." So she calls down a ride op, as there
was no supervisor to be found (She was likely still eating her ice
cream bar somewhere out in the park.)


So this guy comes down without a name tag. And in between chopping his
french fries in my face, he says "yo, what's the problem." I actually
couldn't help but to laugh. I mean, you're kidding right? You're not
wearing a name tag, and you're eating french fries a foot from a guests
face, and you still have the nerd to throw out attitude? So I just tell
him that I'd like a supervisor. So he shouts up to a girl, another ride
op, on the platform. Tells her to come talk to us, and then he says to
me "She'll deal with you." and walks off to - get this - get more
french fries from his friend standing by the entrance!


So the girl comes down - she was friendly enough but still not a
supervisor, so I thanked her for her time, got the guy's name and went
back to guest relations. On the way by, french fry boy stops me and
says "you still want a supervisor??" ... I let him know that I'm going
to guest relations to deal with this there, to which he replies,
literally shouting back at me "Yo, it's not my problem the ride's not
running!" No, but it *is* your problem that you're eating in front of
guests *while* being excessively rude to them. His response was
priceless "What are you talking about? I didn't eat french fries in
front of no guest!" The best part about it is I NEVER mentioned french
fries - simply "eating"... so he dug himself even deeper with that one.


So back to Guest Relations to see Chris again, who starts off
immediately by saying "Oh no. Don't tell me you walked all the way to
Batwing and it was closed." No... Roar, actually, but there's a lot
more you should know.


Will this experience prevent me from getting a Six Flags season pass in
2007? No. They still have other parks that are better run, but you can
better believe I will not be going to SFA again. It's simply shocking
that the majority of that staff feels so comfortable treating guests as
poorly as they do - running rides as unefficiently as they do - and
this isn't even getting into the massive amounts of *really offensive*
graffti everywhere, and the trash in the ride queues and on most of the
midways.


SFA was truly the worst experience we had of the 18 parks we went to on
this road trip. It leaves no wonder to me why one park is called "Six
Flags Great America" and the other is "Six Flags America".... one
little adjective makes a big difference in experience.


-C

[Juparis]

Wow--I've never had that poor a time. It makes me appreciate SFGA a lot more, despite my anger over the food, which is 3x the normal price (and no consistent price throughout the park either). Still, it's a lot better than SFA, apparently.

I feel a sudden urge to go on a road trip... Hm..

[RBull4life]

That is simply amazing, but I guess it is not far from the truth on how SFA is run. I have seen nothing but negative trip reports on this park. It seems like SFA is falling behind Shaprio's dream for the chain.

[EagleFan344]

Its run much better, but on a steady decline from last year...

[Director_Guy]

Where is SFA?

[Bob O]

SFA is a park outside of Washington DC, in Maryland.
I went there a couple of years ago, luckily it was on a sunday in early June and the park wasnt that busy so things went well and SROS was GREAT!!!
But the park had alot of teenagers running wild, alot worse than i have ever seen at SFGAM with line jumping/profanity etc and it seemed the park went to every gold's gym to get the biggest muscleheads for security which made the park feel unsafe and gave it no atmosphere at all.
The park had some decent rides but SFGAM blew it away in all catagories and i wouldnt want to be at the park on busy days.

[Bob O]

SFA is a park outside of Washington DC, in Maryland.
I went there a couple of years ago, luckily it was on a sunday in early June and the park wasnt that busy so things went well and SROS was GREAT!!!
But the park had alot of teenagers running wild, alot worse than i have ever seen at SFGAM with line jumping/profanity etc and it seemed the park went to every gold's gym to get the biggest muscleheads for security which made the park feel unsafe and gave it no atmosphere at all.
The park had some decent rides but SFGAM blew it away in all catagories and i wouldnt want to be at the park on busy days.