Six Flags St. Louis Opening Weekend Trip Report

[Galvan]

The trip started in cold and wet Joliet, at 3:30 am on Friday, Dave,Tom and I headed south on I-55 towards St. Louis for what for me is the start of a new springtime tradition....

The opening day at Six Flags St. Louis.

We arrived and checked into our hotel at about a quarter to nine and headed to the park at 9:30 am.

Needless to say, with the temperatures around 45 degrees the park was anything but crowded.

A rather annoying thing happened upon entering the park however, Apperently My Six Flags Season Pass from Great America, was not being excepted at the gates, the even more annoying was the fact that the gate attendants would not even scan our season passes.

Anyway, this weekend, Six Flags St. Louis had a special ECT type event going on, most rides with the exception of Mr. Freeze had a special, double ride event, which was pretty cool, but made what little lines there where at the park a little bit longer.

Anyway, our first ride was Batman, St. Louis's BTR is pretty weak and slower then SFGAM's except in the very front row in which case the ride is as amazing as any of the BTR's that i have been on. (SFGAM,SFMM,SFSTL)

Next it was off to Mr. Freeze, Last year i didnt ride this ride, and didnt get to experince this ride, but 2005 was different and we quickly headed to the last row of this ride.

Mr. Freeze for those who dont know, is a Premier LIM launch coaster that rockets you out of the station at nearly 70 MPH, you go through a top-hat, over and over banked turn, then you assend a 218 foot tall tower, and then back down through the course again backwards.

Mr. Freeze altough a decent ride, does experience at time some periods of downtime, and Today was no exception, the ride misparked several times when coming back into the station, however since there where at my estimation like around 3500 people if that in the park it didnt effect lines at all.

Next it was off to Boss, Boss would be a great ride if it wherent for the trains on it, The ride features some awesome speed, and decent air time, but is extremely rough at points.

Screamin' Eagle the parks second wooden coaster was stuck on the lift hill and then evacuated and was closed all day Friday.

Ninja is the parks Vekoma looper and is in my opinion a fairly rough ride, I didnt care for this ride that much either as my chin and neck got slammed into the OTSRs


All in all both days were walkon city, even with the double ride times.

On the second day, we power rode Screamin' Eagle 6 consecutive times and Mr. Freeze at least 4 times back to back.


Ratings:

Boss: Very Fast, Very Rough, but isnt that what wooden coasters are supposed to be? 7/10

Mr. Freeze: Thank god this ride doesnt have OTSRs, awesome airtime! 8/10

Screamin' Eagle: Track work over the offseason really paid off, This ride is awesome! 9/10

Ninja: Rough at Times, great headchopper action. 6/10

Batman the Ride: Ride this B&M up front, awesome in row one, average at best anywhere else: 7/10


Overall Ratings:
Employees: 8/10 Most employees where very friendly and welcomeing
Crowds: 10/10 id estimate about 3500 people in the park on Friday maybe 5,000 on Saturday
Cleanliness: 10/10 It was however opening day
Weather: 3/10 Very cold on the second day, at least it wasnt raining.
Park Atmosphere: 10/10 Six Flags St. Louis impressed me on my weekend there. Alot better then pervious trips.

Overall Rating: 7/10 Six Flags is definately trying in the customer relations area, this rating would be a little higher had it not been for the season pass snafu on Friday, other then that, I had alot better time this time around then i did in July of 04.


View my Six Flags St. Louis Pics here

[Ilovthevu']

Thanks for writing a Trip Report. Did you ride the mine train? Did you ride any flats? I can understand broken rides on opening day. It's necessarily the mechanics, but rather just rides not working for quite a bit of time. Yes, they do test rides, but that's not nearly a long day.

[punkbunny24242]

So I assume that they let you in with your Great America pass and you didn't have problems on Fri or Sat? What was their reasoning? I only ask because I am going on the 8th also

Thanks!

[Galvan]

Yeah, i did ride the Mine Train, forgot about that one, lol

Anyway the issues with the season passes where more along the lines of the person scanning the passes wouldnt scan them, I know Dave had that problem.

Me and Tom waited in line at Customer Relations and after about 15 minutes they issued us this slip of paper allowing us into the park.

If i where you, id just go to the gate like you'd normally do and just try it that way.

[ihauntu2]

Mr. Freeze altough a decent ride, does experience at time some periods of downtime, and Today was no exception, the ride misparked several times when coming back into the station, however since there where at my estimation like around 3500 people if that in the park it didnt effect lines at all.

How could you tell when there was a mispark? I've been riding that thing for a while now & have never seen one of these.

I do have to agree with your comments on Eagle. Friday was my daughters first ride on it( She is only 4, just barely 42"). We sat front row for back to back rides. I was worried that it might be too rough, but man did that old bird fly. That was the fastest and smoothest I have ever seen it run. The new wood & retracking really did wonders. When we pulled into the station between rides, the operators asked my little girl how she liked it, she gave them two thumbs up with a smile. On the way home, she was asking when we could go back & ride it again. I think I'll be using our season passes more this year than I did last year.

[Galvan]

Well, you'd have to ask Dave for the official explaination because im not as knowledgeable in that Department. But, basically what happened was maintence workers had to actually push the train backwards once we came back into the station.

Also, there was a very werid burning type smell that could clearly be smelt on the train itself.

[twixmix0303]

What are the drive wheels like? Iron Wolf's or Raging Bull's? If like Iron Wolf I wouldn't be suprised if there was burning.

[CoasterDave316]

ihauntu2, you were the guy we met on the train right?

Well I called it a mispark because it did what Deja Vu does. Basically the train ended up stopping a inch further back then it was supposed to so they weren't able to move the track over to unload. They called the ride down, maintence came and released the brakes and one guy pushed the whole train up a inch. Then they closed the brakes again and they were able to move the track back over to the platform. This happened alot on Friday, almost every half hour in the morning. I got stuck on it twice while it happened and was in the station a few times when it happened. Saturday however it ran much better and I only saw it break down once, and I was on it when it did it again.

And to answer your question twixmix0303, Mr. Freeze does not have drive wheels it uses LIM's to move the train like V2.

[ihauntu2]

Yes, I'm the guy from the train.

Its weird that Mr. Freeze kept acting up like that, usually the only downtime it suffers it when someone gets stuck in a restraint or is too large to ride in the first place.

I guess it was a weird day for coasters on Friday though. Screamin Eagle ended up down because of a "computer problem". Supposedly this is what caused the delay in the morning, and the train to get stuck on the lift hill in the afternoon.

It sounds like most of the bugs got worked out by Saturday. Something else to consider is that the opening weekend is when new ride ops get their certification in each ride, so human error could have possibly played a part as well.

[LAFFfan4lyfe]

Sounds like you had a lot of fun. Shorter lines are always great. I've never been up to SFSTL, but since I have my driver's liscense, so I hope to take a drive up there this summer. Great report!