5/21/08 TDK Opening

[rct2wizard360]

Got to the park at around 9:00 sharp, crap load of traffic.

After losing my wallet running to Dark Knight, a new friend had our spot in line saved for us. Around 15 minutes after, supervisors were preaching that they werent going to let us have a line now forming, so most of us went to the sides. There were a couple big arguments with some people but most of it was over pretty quickly. At around Noon they started telling us it would open soon. Curty and Salemi started dragging over guard rails, so there wouldnt be some mad mob running the the little queue. This is when we got cheated out of our first car spots though but no big deal. They ran us through the queue to the pre-show.
I'm not going to mention a lot so I don't spoil anything, but the pre-show was very good, I just wish they would pack a few more people into the room. The coaster itself was reallllly well. It was amazingly smooth, the lift was zippy, and the cars are REALLY comfortable. I saw Coasterdave said they are the most comfortable wild mouse cars ever and I COMPLETELY agree. They did a really nice job with the cars. Onto the theming. They did a really good job with what they have, I just didn't like some of the big open spaces. Some of it was also hard to see on your first time around, and you ended up seeing the back side of it. It exceeded my expectations, they werent very high, but expectations none the less.

Rest of the day we didn't end up doing much. Viper, Bull, Suf, thats pretty much it.
Really crowded with schools.

Dark Knight is good.
End of story.

[Becky O 33]

The exclusive ride time for early season pass holders went pretty awful in my opinion. First of all, at 4:00, there shouldn't have been anybody in the cue so we could have just gone up without a problem. We got there at 3:45 and said it was all right for us to start going. The house was about a little over half full of people who were there from when they cut off the line beforehand. After about a half hour in line, all of a sudden general public start coming through the line. That's when all of the early season pass holders were getting confused and angry. This was supposed to be an EXCLUSIVE ride even for only us, not anyone else. Then they filled the fast pass line with the early season pass holders, forgetting the people, including me, they left in the cues. We started getting angry because we were the first of the season pass holders in line and they were about to let the others on before us. So we went to talk to the management that was there, and they basically told us too bad go to the end of the season pass line. There was shouting from from the GP who wanted to go on (to relieve that problem they should have closed the line much sooner) and the season pass holders. Asking questions didn't help either because they just didn't even bother listening to us. So after waiting a half hour, we were forced to the back of the line to wait even longer because the ride was down. This whole event was just a disaster. Instead of making the early season pass holders happy with the ERT, they made things worse. There should have been no problem where we all would have been able to ride the ride at least a couple times, but instead just once. The park definitely could have handled that much better.

[themanoftheland8]

I was also there today (as you may have seen in the other post). Myself and my friends all agreed that it was better then expected. (We weren't expecting much though).

P.S. rct2wizard360... I really wish you'd stop makin me lose the game. I have a hard enough time winning without looking at your sig.

[rct2wizard360]

haha manoftheland Im pretty sure I did see you. Brown voyage shirt?

Becky, from how it was in the morning the ride wasn't even ready to be opened. They were putting up signs in the queue, and apparantley still adding a few finishing touches with paint. The park should have been a little more prepared in my opinion.

[BrianPlencner]

I had to work today, but arrived at the park around 3:45 PM. I knew that the season pass event started at 4, but I thought that maybe I could get a ride in before that started.

Upon arrival at the ride entrance, John Curty and a few other management were there, saying that the ride queue was closed to get ready for the event. I asked for confirmation that it was only for the people who purchased Season Passes at the end of the 2007 season, and he said that was the case. However, he also told me that, depending on the amount of people that showed up for the event, they may open the line up for all season pass members, or the general public. I figured I would stick around and see what may happen. Knowing I have a season pass, if I stood there for 2 hours and did not ride, I would not be upset, and just come back another day.

Not sure exactly what time it was, but I would say between 10 and 20 people with the lanyards had already gone in to the line. It was at that point that John dragged the event sign away from the entrance. It then became very clear to me (and everyone else standing out there) that the choice was made to open the line to everyone.

Upon entering the line area, there were lots of comments about "Where are their lanyards", and "how did they get in, this was suppose to be a private event".

Did I ride? Yes I did.
Do I feel the park should have handled this differently? You bet.

I think about 20 to 30 minutes later, the park re-closed the line and only allowed the Season Pass people with the lanyards in.

As Becky said, there was a lot of yelling in the queue, and it looked like things could turn bad if something was not done to correct the problem.

If the choice was made to allow either the GP, or any Season Pass holder in to the event, what the park should have done was put the people who the event was for originally into the fast past lane, and have everyone else wait in the normal line. It appeared near the end, this is what they did, but I think they should have done it a bit sooner, and had some better communication for those in the normal line that had the lanyards so they would move to the fast past lane.

The other thing would have been to leave the event as it was. Would I have been able to ride today if management did not do what they did? Nope. Would I be upset over it? Not at all. I knew full well going to the park today that the SP event was going to take place, and there was a 99.9% chance that I would not get to ride. However, that did not stop me from going to the park, as I know I would have 2 hours to ride the other rides, and then come back another day to ride TDK.

As far as the ride itself, and the pre-show area, the park did a good job on it, with the money and resources that they had. The ride is a lot of fun, and, as others have said, the trains are very comfortable. I'm glad I was able to ride it this evening, but I also feel bad for those that had the lanyards and their event did not go as planned.

--Brian

[sixflagsgurneeboy]

rct2wizard360, i think we may have been very close to each other in the line. I was in carousel plaza at the chain drop into orleans place around ten minutes to ten with in the mob of people. Then when they let us through and we were running like crazy to TDK almost getting shoved to the site by some people forming a human chain to keep up with each other,once we got to the ride...the sups were shaking thier heads and looking at us like what are you doing? So after so long they told us that its not up and advised us to ride other rides. So the majority of us were like "yeah right, i leave and then it opens as soon I leave the line!" So, the majority of us just stood there because didnt mind waiting (saw some lanyard holders in the line as well). At this point i was like right in the area by the fence to the pizza shop and i am like, i have a good place right now and i dont want to give it up.

After a while after numerous attempts from park employees to ride something else not to "waste our time" waiting, i started to get skeptical. Then i decided to go stroll around in the orleans place and mardi gras to keep within close distance just to past time away as other did the same thing. Then i saw the line try to build back up a little so i walked over then like a previous poster said, one of the sups said"We are not letting a line form at this time" and next thing i know there was security present, so i just decided to just enjoy the rest of the park and then, at around 12:30 i came back into the area were TDK was and then they had the fences up like mentioned earlier and then saw that they started to let people in , so i was like.."Yes! finally"so we got in the inside queue and was finally able to ride. After i left TDK, i just hung around the rest of the park, so i didnt get to experience the confrontations that some of the other riders did with the event and season pass holders. Like the others said, it could have been handled differntly...

[themanoftheland8]

Yeah, I had the brown voyage shirt on... Probably about 15 people behind you.

And as far as the park's situation goes, I would agree they should have handled it differently. However, I think no matter what, knowing people today, people would get mad. If they would have closed off the line at 3:00 or so for the season passholders, the GP would have gotten mad. Overall, I think the event did what it was supposed to do. I got back to TDK at 4:45, and I still got 3 rides in by 6:00, so I'm not complaining.

As far as the ride goes, I thought the pre-show was great, but inside of the queue itself, I was not impressed at all. I thought there would be more than just signs. Oh well, I probably will not be waiting too much in there anyways.

Oh, and for those who were there, what is the point of the last sign before you enter the pre-show? It has a sign with some colored lines, and they are labeled by their color. (Example, A yellow line, with "Yellow Line" printed below it). Is this a sign for the colorblind?

[BrianPlencner]

^ Do you mean this sign?

http://www.sfgamworld.com/construction/ ... LINE9.html

If that is the one you are talking about, it shows the names of the rail lines for the City of Gothem.

What is interesting about this is that 5 of these rail line names match L lines in Chicago!

--Brian

[jm2775]

Thanks for the info about the 4pm-6pm ERT Brian. I live in Gurnee, and was going to take the chance and go there, but I couldn't get there until around 5:40 after work, so I passed.

I think the way the park could of handled it differently would of been to have ERT at a time when the park was not open. Have it an hour before opening? Have it from 7pm to 8pm? When I passed the park last night at 7:15 or so, buses were still coming out. If you promoted a special event, have an hour put on the side for it. With it being the first day, why screw the GP and have it only opened from 12:30 - 4?

Just my 2 cents...

[themanoftheland8]

^ Do you mean this sign?

http://www.sfgamworld.com/construction/ ... LINE9.html

If that is the one you are talking about, it shows the names of the rail lines for the City of Gothem.

What is interesting about this is that 5 of these rail line names match L lines in Chicago!

--Brian

Yeah, I know what it's supposed to mean. It just gave me a chuckle. Some real creative names they came up with.

[Bob O]

I was at the park yesterday, and with all of the school kids it was extremely busy.
As for TDK, it is a very enjoyable ride and the theming was OK, good for a SF park, but alot of it was just darkness, but little else. I hope as time goes by they will add more lighting effects to improve upon what they have done so far. It is a very good mouse coaster and gives a very good ride for thay style. A very good addition to the park. So big kudo's for SFGAM for the new ride!!!

As for how the park handled the ERT time for early seasonpassholders, it as typical SF awful!!!! They should have done this either before the park opened, or after it had closed so you wouldnt treat the lanyard season passholders like crap, or treat the other park guests like crap. It seemed that the park made no plans ahead of time how they were going tro handle this, otherwise you shouldnt have let lanyard people in the general que, and then in the flash pass line, so the flashpass people skipped ahead, even though they got into line later, and then when other guests were being skipped, needless to say they weren happy. so all the park did was piss off everyone involved. Speaking to people who had been waiting I spoke to many ACE members who were well aware of what ERT means, and this event sure wasnt it.

From reading Brian' P's post its sad that SFGAM management apparently doesnt care that they promote a ERT time for a ride, both on the lanyard and web site and use this as a promo to get people to buy season pass's months in advance, then on the day of the event they royally screw it up. And with proper planning this easily could have been avoided, and then most of the management people there had a total "i dont give a sh#t attitude", except for a female who was very apologetic for what took place. Exclusive ride time is a very easy concept, and that means between 400-600pm if one didint have a lanyard, then you dont ride, no matter how few or how many of us were there. So as a result of being let into the line at 3:40pm and being passed up be large amounts of people who were let in the flas pass line I only was able to ride one time between 3:40pm and 5:05 pm when we finally exited the line and I had to leave the park as I had to work last night.
Its just disappointing that what should have been a good event with promised ERT time turned into a fisaco that could have been avoided with proper planning /

So overall the ride is a very good/excellant addition to the park, and BIG KUDO'S to the ride op's on TDK who I thought did a great time trying to move thru as many people as they could in a safe and timely manner!!