saw that some of the parks do a preview day for season pass holders the weekend before the public opening for a new ride. Has Six Flags Great America done this in the past / have you heard any rumblings of the possibility of it?
It would be cool to get to ride it sooner then the opening for a couple hours.
Riptide Bay was supposed to have one. Not exclusive to pass holders, but only 100 people could get in. Something like this would probably work better for X Flight.
The Season Pass has become so affordable that it really wouldn't make a difference. Its really lost its "exclusive" feeling. I can see them raffling off 250 or whatever passes, but I feel like well need to wait til memorial day weekend for it to open so might as well open it to the GP instead of an "exclusive" night when the park is already open.
^Yeah, your right. A season pass appreciation day doesn't mean a lot anymore when you have so many season pass holders because it's just so cheap to have a season pass. It's probably $5 -$10 more than a 1 day admission without discounts. To gain more exclusiveness to a season pass event, I think maybe they would better off doing last letters of your name (from A - M) & (N-Z), but if they did something like that, if people have friends of different last letter names, they would be mad. It's just become so hard to me to say for season pass holders to get something exclusive in which they don't have to wait in line that long for anymore because of so many season pass people. So, for X-Flight if they have a season pass preview day, expect to wait in line longer. I doubt it will be a walk-on for season pass holders preview day.
For Riptide Bay, I thought they cancelled that PR "preview" day, and said something like news outlets could come another day and speak with the PR person. And than on facebook, people were mad because they were getting free tickets for the day, but than they cancelled it, and said what happened to their free tickets. The park wants people in the waterpark in order to show for the camera that they are having fun at Riptide Bay. If the news outlet aren't going to be there that day, you don't need the 100 people / families to be at the park, so thus why would those people get free tickets? I don't know if they did give them the tickets or not, but I'm just saying that's the real reason they were getting free tickets - to be part of the "show".
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They could do something for those who bought there pass for next year BEFORE closing day this year. But there would have been something announced about that by now.
I think the only thing they would do along those lines is have contest winners like that attend media day, or do a mass invite.
Historically SFGAm has not really done anything for new rides. I think realistically the best you could hope for is a soft open which happens from time to time if the ride is done and certified ahead of schedule. V2 opened almost a week before it was supposed to.
Also, for Raging Bull back in 1999 the ride was not done opening weekend, then the following week on Friday there was Q101 night which was the first time the GP got to ride. And the only reason I say GP is because tickets could be bought by anyone ahead of time, and I think they were even selling them at the gate. Ended up being the only day I've ever seen where RB did not use any of the trims, the following day, the trims were on. Also the whole night it had roughly a 20 min line with no assigned seating, which if anyone remembers for the first few years, seating was usually very strictly assigned.
Favorite Wood Coasters: The Voyage, Ravine Flyer II, Thunderhead, Balder Favorite Steel: Voltron Nevera, Steel Vengeance, Expedition GeForce, Olympia Looping Parks visited: 232, Coasters Ridden: Steel: 894, Wood: 179, Total: 1073
While not exactly a preview day, they did have an event on the opening day for Dark Knight for pass holders. The ride opened to everyone, and then at about 6pm, they had it open only to passholders who had bought their passes before a certain date. I was hoping they would do this with X-Flight, but no.
At SFGAm's media previews it's normally a 5 minute speech at a podium and the ride runs for a few hours for media filming. In regard to TDK's opening day where it ran for season passholders that night, it was originally supposed to be a preview for season passholders before the ride opened but the rides opening day was delayed a month and wasn't ready until literally that day so instead they went with closing it early for SP holders. If they haven't announced a special SP preview by now they probably won't have one considering the whole point of that is to pre-sell season passes for next season.
Eeek. If something like this DOES happen I would highly recommend gurnee police and security be there for the crazy coaster people...just like what happened on Wolfie's last day. I am gonna try and make this event if they do end up having it. Hopefully someone here or the site or somewhere it will be advertised.