GAcoaster

Yes-- so once again the "rumors" all need to be taken with a grain of salt. 

Today, May 11th, marks the fortieth anniversary of the worst day in the history of Great Adventure. On this day the Haunted Castle caught fire and eight teenage guests lost their lives. This tragic event changed the park and the entire theme park industry forever.

In the wake of the fire Six Flags spent more than $5 million implementing fire safety systems throughout the park with advanced fire detection and sprinkler systems retrofit into every structure. Parks all over the country and around the world followed suit to ensure a tragic event like this could never happen again.

If you follow our Facebook or Instagram you'll see I turned off comments on the posts simply because I didn't want to have to constantly moderate the comments. The fire has always been controversial and there is a "documentary film" that often surfaces when the subject comes up. I have never watched it in its entirety, but I found the assertions and conspiracies put forward by the film maker to be a stretch of the facts and I really didn't feel like debating with people on a day when there are the families of eight people who still feel the pain of their loss. There is also a constant call for the park to add a memorial of some sort, but that's not something we have any say in and they have chosen not to do it. 

Every year we always debate whether or not to acknowledge the event, but this year as we look back at the history of the park it's sometimes necessary to address the bad along with the good. 

Harry and I have always planned to do a spotlight on the Haunted Mansion but we have never been able to pull enough material together to really do it justice. 

I assume the current lion (reproduction of the sign) was just delayed and that one was a placeholder. 

The park has always been one of the top earners in the chain, there's no way they sell it unless they either get a great offer or are somehow forced to. I think (hope) things turn around when the merger is complete and Cedar Fair management is running things. Great Adventure always was on par with Cedar Point for attendance and there's no reason why it shouldn't be again with proper investment and maintenance. We should see a similar strategy with Great Adventure as Cedar Point/Kings Island/Canada's Wonderland since all four parks should draw about 3.5 +/- guests a year, and if anything Great Adventure has more growth potential since the area has only had population growth over the past 50 years. Under Time Warner Great Adventure was drawing around 4 million guests a year, there's no reason why it can't again with proper investment, marketing, and maintenance. 

While I get people are disappointed with the 50th so far, it's still what they consider the "shoulder season" and the true 50th plans are set to kick off for the peak summer season in June. I get the frustrations with single train operations and things not being ready to open or open yet, but it is always a trade off. Great Adventure is now open 9 months of the year, so as a passholder you're getting a bonus 3 months of pass use. Would you rather have the season of Dorney or Cedar Point where the park is open May-October but all the rides are running from opening day of the season to closing day? Current management has to contend with the decisions of the past-- adding two coasters (KK and ET) that eat up the bulk of the maintenance budget, only having two trains for several coasters so when one is in rehab it only leaves one available to run since there's no spare. If things are still in this state by the peak of summer (end of June) then it's a valid complaint, but for the price of passes that Six Flags has charged you have to set your expectations accordingly. I fully expect that this will be the last year for those bargain basement passes with the whole company moving to the Cedar Fair "if you want more than one park, you'll be paying $300 a pass" instead of the $69-99 Six Flags passes. 

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted through the site's Facebook page by someone whose father worked on the park's opening in 1974. Her father had recently passed and she wanted to share his photos of the park under construction. These photos are undated but appear to be from approximately mid May, almost exactly 50 years ago today.

Be sure to check them all out: https://greatadventurehistory.com/ConstructionSpotlightWS.htm

Here are a couple of highlights from the 17 photos we received:

Thanks again for sharing with us! 

Thank you so much for posting these! I'm looking forward to seeing it in person in a few weeks. 

12 hours ago, harry2004 said:

I told them, this is why village roadshow should takeover six flags instead of having six flags merged with cedar fair

The merger hasn't happened yet, so this is a purely Six Flags decision nothing to do with Cedar Fair. 

I'm guessing attendance has been below expectations and revenue is down. They'll be posting their quarterly numbers soon and we'll know more. 

5 hours ago, Flyin Phil said:

Below is a link to Aerial Photos I shot on Thursday (5/2) of FLASH's construction progress...It's coming along nicely !

 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cyQ4tYrr0LYqFuAwB0SZ9OwuIWaFz-qs?usp=sharing

 

Enjoy !

Thank you so much for sharing with us Phil! It's great to see the park from above like this. 

1 hour ago, harry2004 said:

so, the area for medusa & safari off road adventure is closed for repairs, and also, have you seen the markers on the trees in the safari off road adventure road

I've been seeing a lot of speculation about that area being redeveloped, but my feeling is it may be more about reconfiguring the Safari road than anything. I just have a feeling there's a lot of stuff "up in the air" right now with the merger and any plans they may have made could quickly change post merger in a month or so. 

I got a surprise in the mail today, and I have no idea who to thank for it:

Looking forward to visiting in a few weeks to see it and the other bricks for Harry in person. 

I think I'm most interested in the fried Krimpets the restaurant there will be selling-- the MOST Pennsylvania thing ever. 

It ran its first test run on Saturday and has begun testing. 

Flash finally has gone vertical:

He was planning on purchasing one for Great Adventure History, I'm not sure if he did or not. I'd guess he did since he was planning it when they went on sale. 

13 hours ago, Great Adventurer said:

From all accounts it looks like Iron Menace enjoyed a wonderful media day/soft opening.

 

Look at those awesome ride ops uniforms!

 

 

 

I wonder if those are the actual uniforms are were they just for the media event?

I know they SHOULD have more trains running on the coasters, but unless they purchase additional trains for some of them, there will have to be single train operations at some points with such a short off-season. They used to have 5 months of downtime, but since they started Holiday in the Park and chose to open earlier in the year than they used to, there just isn't enough downtime for the rebuilds/preventative maintenance. They SHOULD purchase additional trains for Superman and Batman so they each have two in operation with a third getting maintenance at all times (SFFT did this with their dive coaster), but not all parks have the budget for that, especially with Kingda Ka and El Toro eating up so much of the maintenance budget each year. We could have better operations (like Dorney) but have a season that runs May to October instead of March to January... 

I saw someone said they placed the last track piece yesterday. This will be fairly quick to get up and running.

They seem to be one of the few things S&S makes that people (parks and guests) like. 

I just saw that the new restaurant being added with Iron Menace is going to have fried Butterscotch Krimpets-- the most Pennsylvania thing ever...

While I am hopeful that Great Adventure's current park president is a good fit and lasts, I always hope that Jeff Seibert can make his way to Great Adventure as GM one day. He does so much great stuff with that park. 

It was kind of disappointing here in Orlando-- we had ~70% coverage and it really wasn't much to see. 

Yes, they'll still be holding media days, and the site should still receive invitations to them. I'm 1000 miles away so I may not be able to attend, but I'm hoping I can send someone to cover them for the website if I can't be there. 

Apparently it happened as the park opened and they held guests at the Fountain. They quickly went over the rides to assure there was no damage and opened them as they completed inspections. 

Thank you for posting, great to be able to see it all. 

It looks like many positive changes happening around the park-- progress, even if it's slow is still progress.