Great Adventure is no longer great

I came back today from Great Adventure having had ridden ONE single ride the entire day. Yes that is right, what was thought to be impossible was possible. From 12PM till 5PM (when my friend and I called it quits) we rode only one ride.

(Luckily, it was HSBC family and friends day at Great Adventure and our tickets were subsidized by good ol' HSBC.)

The last time I went to Six Flags Great Adventure was probably 2 years ago. Seems so much has changed since then. And for the worst.

Here are the reasons why today was probably the last time I will go to Great Adventure for a long time.

1) There just aren't any good rides. There is only one ride that is ever worth going on at Great Adventure and that is Nitro. Hands down the best ride ever at Six Flags and one of the best rides I've ever ridden on in the world!

But after that everything is just shit.

You have the recent rides, KingdaKa, El Toro, and the new one, the Dark Knight Adventures, but all of them kinda suck. My friend and I didn't even wait 10 minutes on the Dark Knight Adventures when we heard some kids exiting from the ride saying "It's not worth your time. Get off the line." That was enough to convince my friend and I. El Toro is like the Coney Island rickety Cyclone coaster (still no where near as frightening). And KingdaKa is great--when it's working! Which brings me to my next reason.

2) The shit is always broken. Part of the reason why we ended up only getting on 1 ride was because EVERYTHING ELSE WAS BROKEN! We went to Kingda Ka, it was broken. Okay, let's try Superman the ride. Oh shit that's broken too. And get this, the attendant there has the nerve to say I know 5 other rides that are broken today. Probably "because of the weather".

HOLD ON!

First you said 5 other rides? How the heck is that acceptable? People are paying $60 to get in and over 50% of the thrill rides are down.

Second, they broke down because of the weather? You mean it was too hot? Dude, it's hot but it's gonna get hotter during the Summer. These machines better ship shape up or else you will see customer attendance drop faster than civilians in a drive-by-shooting.

3) SCEEVY WAYS OF GETTING YOUR MONEY. So there was a tiff just as we were about to board our only ride of the day Nitro. Apparently you can't leave bags on the exit side of the ride anymore. This used to be OK several years ago because they had cubby holes. You ride your ride and when you're done (hopefully if your bag is there) you can pick it up.

Okay so you can't do that anymore. Where can you put it? Well, the customer antagonizing geniuses at Six Flags decided to create lockers at the base of the ride for which you have to PAY $1 FUCKING DOLLAR! So you change your policy, in such a way that forces us to pay you?

That is just wrong. So bring someone that hates rides and pay them to watch your stuff if you ever go.

4) Lack of innovation. I know you can't make things happen without money but in the 3 or 4 years I've been to great adventure I've never seen really anything that gets updated around anything except for the (crappy) rides. Why doesn't someone make line waiting more pleasant? Is there nothing that people can do while they wait?

If anything they've been taking away things. For instance, the Freefall, which I think was one of the best rides ever was replaced by a picnic area! And also the gimongous boat water ride where you get soaked plenty was taken away. Why? Never again will I ever experience getting splashed with a wall of water while standing on that bridge.

I'm sure it's getting more and more expensive to run places like Great Adventure but at this rate if they don't do something to make this place better I can see less and less people going.

Or perhaps I'm too old for this place? Maybe.

Well in any case, I'll wait for the next biggest thing to come to this place before coming back.