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BOOM! Welcome to the world's largest collection of GADV Online members closeups. EVERYONE had a blast at Online Day this year, try and find someone who had a bad time, I dare you. I didn't really take pictures until the tour. So below are a few pics of before the tour. And then pics during the tour. And then pics of everyone waiting for the tour to start. ALSO, I will be posting a video on my Youtube in a couple of days, I'll post it here when it's up. Enjoy.

Sippin on some Coke in the Swelter Stopper near the Wagon and Best of the West. Music, air conditioning, and free coke...that's a win.


The cool interactive tweet board. Include the hashtag #SwelterStopper and your tweet will show up on the screen!


Rob stacking trains at Green Lantern and making all the girls pass out.


This is Chris. I don't think he's a member, but he operates Ka.


Transfer tracks.


Heading to the tower!


You can see the fear in their eyes when you're this close.


This is really blurry thanks to the humidity fogging my camera, but this is the old queue where it goes under the track.


Who are these people?


Do you know what this kinda looks like when you look at it from this angle?........Top Thrill Dragster


Kaiser and Rob attempting to post with Ka.








Internet meet Mike. Mike meet Internet. He just became a season pass holder yesterday.




Fun fact: Kingda Ka pees itself to cool the launch cable down. Something like that.


Group photo of everyone!


Robbie! The amazing photographer of group photos and the best tour guide ever.












Here's one for your computer wallpaper.


Looking up her skirt.


Twisties!


Weeee!!!!


Showing off her curves. Even though technically it's a he.


Everyone taking pics!


Just walk anywhere.


I was very tempted to hop in the elevator for a ride.


Looking straight up the center of the tower.








Or you can lay down and take pics. Whatever floats your boat!


Unfortunately there were no pictures inside the hydraulic room allowed, but trust me, it was definitely a sight to see.




Do you think a drop tower can go here?


Huddle discussion!


A spider next to Ka's track.


Ladies and gentlemen...Joshua Davidson!


And now for some pre-tour pics. Recognize any familiar faces?












Feel free to photoshop this. Best photoshopped pic gets a high five.


Josh and Jim!








That does it for me! Stay tuned for some awesome video of the tour. Thanks for reading! Give this post a + if you liked it!

I have been taking a much bigger step-back as far as these forums go now that I am at Ole Miss and pursuing my Engineering degree....but when I read this today on screamscape I nearly vomitted and felt the need to reply. I can only hope that these rumors that Mark Kane has moved up to the corporate offices are true.....however the suddeness of this all and the fact that the APP didn't mention what happened to Mark makes me think otherwise. Mark changed our park for the better I know many of our young members don't remember the late 90's and early 2000's but garbage was everywhere! Anybody who does remember these days and Sue I'm sure you can vouch for this as well would remember the "gum tree". There was a tree in the queue of Congo rapids that had literally collected sooo much gum it looked like it was meant to be that way! Cigarette butts were everywhere, trash cans were too few and far between, and when you did find them they were usually ugly looking, rusted and overflowing. Staff was not nearly as friendly as they are now....I had an issue in '98 where I was leaving the park 10 minutes to closing and literally EVERY bathroom except the one at the entrance was already closed for cleaning and the person cleaning at every bathroom was VERY rude about letting you know it was closed. Line-cutting was digustingly normal and security was never around nor cared to remedy the problem. Security felt like they owned the place....during a fright fest in 2001 my group got cut by another group....they literally just cut us and nobody else. Well my ex-gf wasn't having any of that and basically got into an arguement with them until the point that the kid revealed his SF security badge and said "This gives me the right to be ahead of you" (he was off-duty just their to have fun). We called over security (management security none the less) who basically stood behind what the kid did and told us "it was handled". How exactly had it been handled? The kid's group is still ahead of us! Lines for guest relations at the end of the day were ridiculous you'd think it was a line for a coaster.....I kid you not and all of those people were complaining!

This is what Mark himself was directly responsible for changing....its something I never thought I'd see at our park to be honest! Its that simple customer service aspect of the business that in fact just about every business (theme park or not theme park) in the country has lost focus on (including Disney to an extent) and is just now in the last few years trying to bring back again. Customer service no matter what business you are....and I literally mean EVERY business....should ALWAYS be the number one priority next to safety of course. But no one did such a great job bringing back good customer service like Mark Kane did at Great Adventure. And I truly believe the number one reason why he was able to do it so well was his great initiative to lead by example. It says a lot to an employee when your boss is walking around the park picking up trash and making a point to address the guests. So Mark on the off-chance you happen to be reading this I thank you so very much for bringing back such a great atmosphere to my beloved park and I wish you nothing but the best in your future endeavors however I know you don't need my luck because your destined to do well wherever it is you go.

That being said Weber is really really killing me here. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt for awhile because I feel everyone should be given a chance to make light of their plans...and those take awhile to pan out at least two years IMO before I truly express my opinion on how they are doing. But I believe there are certain changes that shouldn't be made on a wim and I just really feel there have been two major changes that he has made in his 3 month reign that should've been given a lot more though. This is one of those and I still just don't see the logic in firing a guy who has done nothing but good for what he was directly responsible for and replace him with someone whom ran a promising park that ran itself into the ground in just two years! This just makes NO SENSE! What has Fitzgerald showcased to be able to prove he can operate the flagship park of SFI better than Mark Kane?!!! It worries me very much so I like the fact that Fitzgerald started his career here....but I still just do not believe he has showcased enough to get this calling!

The second was the decision to dismantle Great American Scream Machine. He had to make this decision no more than 2 weeks into his position! I understand the fact that he had to make a quick decision because progress had to start being made and I completely agree with his decision to cancel the 5D ride (trust me we didn't need another upcharge that was a terrible idea). I get the business decision to give us chang....that just makes the most sense! The idea of putting it at SFGAm never made sense from the get-go! Why are you going to give a park that already has a B&M stand-up....another B&M stand-up . So I get that and while I'm not overly crazy nor overly upset about getting chang I see why it was done from a business stand point and I completely believe it was 100% the right business decision to move chang here......

.....however, and here is where it gets choppy. I'm tired of hearing this statement, especially from my fellow members here "Well they had to do it you know they tried to fit it over by congo rapids but it would've cost too much money for the tree removal so it sucks but this was the cheapest option"....anyone here who believes that I ask you to please stop drinking the Weber Kool-aid cause your buying right into his hands.

(take this as if I'm directing it at Al Weber) I get that the congo rapids area would've cost too much, however don't insult my intelligence by trying to tell me that your cheapest option was to tear-down GASM. That is simply a lie. NEWSFLASH: Just 4 years ago Jackson planning board already approved the entire parking lot RIGHT NEXT to GASM, KK and SUF to be made into a hotel. The project got cancelled when red zone took-over but the fact remains you want me to believe that the cheapest option was to cart away the steel of GASM when in fact you had an entire parking lot you could've built chang on?! Not to mention the brake-run, station and lift-hill are all being built on said-parking lot and to get this approved by the board you brought up the fact that they had already previously approved for the entire parking lot to be used for the hotel.....so YOU KNEW THAT WAS AN OPTION!

Now don't get me wrong I don't think Weber tore down GASM just to tear-down GASM so let me present to you all my truth on this matter: The truth I believe is that while I am correct that the cheapest course of action was to physically build Chang entirely on said-parking lot Weber saw the potential to make some more money on this deal....how? By tearing down GASM and having it sold for scrap metal while also saving reusable parts and shipping them to SFMM to be used for later replacements and maintenance of Viper. The fact is thats the only reason that makes sense as to why they wouldn't have pursued building chang entirely on the parking lot. Its sad but GASM was torn down not because it had to be but because it was a way to bring in some more money!

That being said whats done is done and these are two changes that can not be taken back I can only hope that Weber has a good plan in action but just remember Weber's goal here is to post good numbers for the stockholders....however many times, especially in the theme park business, what works to make the stockholders happy in the short-run is not always good for the company in the long-run. Sorry for the rant I'll go back to disappearing again now

That's it.

The Fort's a park icon.

I dealt with the park slathering Kingda Ka's station with Karate Kid and hair gel ads. I dealt with El Toro's theme being messed up by Stride Flavor Changing Gum. But this is different. This is completely different. The Fort has been at the park since it first opened. The Fort represented that sense of spectacle that the park founders thought a theme park should have. And now its covered in ads for String Cheese -- not even REAL cheese!?

This is where I draw the line. For the first time ever, I will admit that I am embarrassed by the shamelessness of this establishment. Have they no class? Clearly not.

Here's hoping that the ads are no longer needed VERY SOON.

Lets first start with some very real news coming in that currently Rolling Thunder is listed as closed on the Six Flags site. Can anyone confirm it actually is?

Now onto site news. As has been obvious this whole year we have been facing issues with the site all culminating in the driver error that saw the forums down for an entire week a few weeks ago. We have really begun hitting this hard since June and first off I want to thank Matt Kaiser for his work on the issues. Kaiser has spent numerous hours sometimes full days delving into our ftp to find the issues going on and I am happy to say the issue has been found. The problem is that its going to take some time to fix. I have always been very transparent when it comes to our issues and what was happening and is happening that is causing our malware warnings is that some code has been added to our site that saves everyones IP address into a folder on the site's CP. We have no idea how this happened or why it is happening. Please note your IP address is something we have always had access to anyway from the forums since this is how we go about banning members if need be and that your IP address information was not used in any adverse way or given to any 3rd parties. Its not the fact that we have your IP address information that was causing the malware it was the way in which the code was taking it that made google feel it was suspicious but ultimately its harmless information. The issue that is taking awhile for us to fix it is that it has somehow found a way to post itself to EVERY page of the website! We pretty much have the choice of two things: 1. going to each individual page and deleting the code (could literally take all year). 2. backing up all of our files deleting the code from what appears important making a new file with just the important stuff and deleting everything else. We are or I should say Kaiser is in the middle of doing #2 but this will take some time as well so we appreciate your patience.

Furthermore I was very upfront with our clerical issues of almost everything still being in Peyton's name from the old Great Adventure Source site, we are making progress in this field as well. The first thing was the Invision license for the board I have purchased a new license and spoke to inivision to have the forums put under my license so the boards are no longer licensed to Peyton. We are also reaching out to the host of our website to hopefully work out the clerical problems with the website side of the boards. Our issues here have never been members or even staff you guys are awesome and we are doing all of this to ensure the continued success and future integrity of the community. Once again a big thanks to Matt Kaiser for all of his work without him its very likely the forums would still not be up. If anyone has any questions or concerns please let us know we thank you for continuing to be apart of our community you are what makes us great!

- Great Adventure Online Team

Hi Everyone,

This is my last 2012 operating season update before we get into the winter construction updates I generally provide. There's not that many pictures this time, but nonetheless, I hope you find them appealing. You can find them on my BLOG HERE

I hope you enjoy !!!

As soon as 13 days until opening day comes around, i'll be posting videos and photos celebrating our 13 roller coasters here at Six Flags Great Adventure, to get everyone ready for the new and exciting 2012 season. Please stay tuned for the updates and enjoy.
Photos courtesy of RCDB. Videos courtesy of woodencoasterfan and Coasterforce.

Somebody bought it? Good lord I hope they asked for the Carfax first.

These are the quick sketches I drew up between homework. The top image would be Safari Discoveries transformed to house the sea lions and dolphins. In the back is the exit to the current theater, to the left you see the sea lion exhibit and to the right the dolphin tank both a with pits to serve as underwater viewing areas. On the bottom right is the entrance to the area (or the current exit) and the bottom middle is a small enclosed grass area, maybe for the really cute piglet that they already have in there. The walkway to the bottom left would lead to the rest of the animal exhibits. The bottom image shows what would have been the path around the tiger enclosure and the glass viewing panels. With the tigers out; however, you'd be able to see the dolphins walking along the path.

I've had some free time since my first year of college ended so I have been working on this project to script into NoLimits 2

 

You Know Who Really Grinds My Gears?

\

ThemeParkReview is a great site (for the most part). But this guy (or should I say manchild) just makes us coaster enthusiasts look like immature little pricks. No wonder he got banned from ACE.

Make sure you check out the Overly Enthusiastic Ride Operator at Bizarro...KEVIN! Aka Coasterfreak96

so they don't stop mid course.

I'm sure that was a common problem at Green Lantern.

Hey guys! I know you have been itching to hear about our trip (Sfnekid12), so let's get started!

Participants:
-Rob CL Chin
-Kevin
-Kaiser
-Jason/Samantha
-Caitlyn Storm
-Josh (Our supreme overlord)
-Brandon(Chop Dog Studios)
-Josh(Chop Dog Studios)
-Tersa

The day started at the Main Street Fountain. We all met around 10:30 am. Josh was already in the park with his Chop Dog buddies. He went to Guest Relations to pick up a media slip for the Fright Fest Attractions. He was able to skip the line of the Terror Trails, but unfortunately, he was only able to take 4 people with him. Kaiser, Kevin, and I bought a TT Season Pass later on in the day, but we'll get to that later. The crew stated it's day at Movietown! Jason and Caitlyn weren't with us at the time, and actually did their own thing for most of the day.

We had no wait for Nitro in the back row! It was a great way to start the day. After that ride on N20, we went on Batman: The Ride! I had my addiction once, and it gave me a huge headache! I love B:TR, but I can't do it more than twice in a given time. The crew went over to the Dark Knight after. It was a nice little way to work off that headache... sort of. lol We finally got off and on our way back to the Nitro lockers, we found Jason and Caitlyn! They took our route (Nitro-B:TR-TDK) after we caught up for a bit.

Our group decided to travel over to the Boardwalk to eat lunch. We got Itchiban chinese food! It was really good! Kevin didn't feel like having Chinese, so he had Totally Kickin Chicken! We lazily got up and walked over to Plaza del Carnival to ride... ROLLING THUNDER! We chose the right side. It had a 5 minute wait. I rode with Josh in front row with kevin behind us, and the rest in the middle of the train. I'm loving Rolling Thunder! It wasn't as rough as I remember.

After our ride on Blunder, we went over to see the SEA LION SHOW! Those sea lions were pretty cute. I wanted to see some cool TRICKS...I mean behaviors, but it was very bland and boring. They barely got into the pool. I guess it didn't help that the sun was beating down on us. After the show, it was about 2:45 pm. We went over to buy the TT passes. Kaiser, Kevin, and I bought the season pass for TT and went to the 'Haunted' Wagon Trails.

We got to see many characters on our way, including FRANKENSTEIN...some witches..Taylor Swift...Dorthy...and FRANKENSTEIN again! haha After the hay ride, we went over to Skull Mountain to see Shelby! She was so happy to see us. Skull had about a 20 minute wait. After Pumpkin Mountain, we made our way over to the Showcase Theatre to see Ghoul Master's Ghosts! I thought it was a pretty neat show, but according to Jason, "IT WAS HORRIBLE!" I'll let him explain all the reasons why it was bad. lol I thought the dancing was amazing, and the special effects just added to the show. After, it was time for the Awakening to start! We were all excited to get Fright Fested (New term that I created....WHAT!).

The new Fright Fest Stage was beautiful! I'm really excited for this new layout and area for the show. Movietown allows more people to watch the show, and it brings more foot traffic to the rest of the rides in the area, including the Fright Fest Trails. (I'm not going to rant about Fright Fest on this trip report, but if you want to read what I said about it, go here.

After the Awakening/DMP opening acts, we went over to the Wasteland Terror Trail. When we got in, we met up with Harry from GreatAdventureHistory! He protected us from the ghoulish frights and scares. Wasteland was a pretty interesting trail. I love how they morphed the trail into something of a theme. There were radioactive waste barrels all over the trail. These deformed humans were transformed by the radiation. Some characters were blended in with the trees. I was walking, and there was somebody right in front of me. The trail ended with the corn maze into Looney Tunes Seaport!

The crew and I went right over to see Circus Psycho. I'm just going to say, they should have rethought the single path of the midway. The actors were the best, as always, but they need some more room to run around. We went over to check out the Voodoo Island Trail and Bob The Butcher Territory. Voodo Island had over an hour wait, so we decided to skip to see the ghouls in Bone Butcher. There were literally 2 people. Again, if you want to see the rants go to this page.

The Manor Terror Trail was next. It was pretty scary. One of the scariest trails I've ever been in. Insanity: Gears of the mind was the scariest. As soon as you open that door to the manor, you are greeted by zombies. Everywhere you go, there was somebody there to scare you. There was one part that scared the crap out of me. There was this huge black parachute that was inflated. We were all stuck in there, feeling the panic closing in. There was somebody at the end of the path to scare us. It was quite creepy. Nothing compared to the Insanity Terror Trail though. Oh jesus. lol

After the Manor trail, it started to rain. We were worried we weren't going to be able to see the original DMP, and unfortunately, we weren't able to. We were able to see the last viewing of the Ghoulmaster's Ghosts show. Jason was so proud of his Norma Nova poster!


We all left around 10:30, since the park was rained out. There is a video on Facebook that shows how we ended the night! *Spoilers-It has the music for the Ghoulmaster's Ghosts show!*

We had a great time! Hopefully, we meet up 2-3 more times before the season ends!

Rides:
-x1 Nitro
-x1 B:TR
-x1 TDK
-x1 Rolling Thunder
-x2 Skull Mountain

Total: 6

Shows:
-1x Sea lion Show
-1x The Awakening
-1x Dead Man's Party
-2x Ghoulmaster's Ghosts

Total: 5

Fright Fest Terror Trails:
-1x Wasteland
-1x Manor

Total: 2

Grand Total: 13

Here are some photos!

Kevin, Josh, and I!


Josh knocked me out! Ouch! lol


Awakening/DMP Pics!




















Group photo before the last Ghoulmaster's Ghosts!