Chris T.
Yelp
I'll start with a positive: I never have to go again. Augh, it is such a shame; it could be so good. In summary, the rides at Six Flags are genuinely top-notch, providing thrill-seekers a significant adrenaline rush. However, the overall experience falls massively short due to gross operational inefficiencies.
What a tragic place. It's an old complaint of amusement parks: it takes an eternity for everything. Getting in, getting on a ride, getting a sandwich. Now, you might say waits are inevitable. That's true, but the thing with Six Flags (at least when we visited) is that it was completely avoidable.
When we visited, there weren't that many people. For example, I was in line for food with about 50 people. That may seem like a lot of people, but at Disney, that would be a snap. They'd attack that line like a well-trained F1 pit crew. They would have a bunch of cashiers and kitchen staff, all working in harmony to get people in and out in a few minutes.
At Six Flags, it took well over an hour. It took that long because they are so woefully understaffed and comically uncoordinated. They only had two people working!! Now, you might think it could be an anomaly, and perhaps we just got unlucky; maybe a few people called in sick on the day of our visit. This is unlikely because it was the case at every food vendor all over the park. Plus, you could tell by the staff's look that this was pretty standard operational procedure. They weren't the least bit flustered by the throngs of angry customers. Nope, they'd lived it on the daily.
And, of course, after you've endured the line and are thanking your lucky stars for not going viral for tossing your tray in the air and ranting against a backdrop of flying mac and cheese and BBQ tri-tip, the food is absolutely inedible. Like, so so wrong. I mean, mac and cheese that is grey and indistinguishable from the potato and gravy kinda bad.
Similarly, wait times for rides are loooooong. Again, it's not about the volume of folks in the standard line. In this instance, it's due to their "flash pass" system that offers different levels of line skipping. As a result, what looks like a relatively short line of regular ticket holders turns into 90-minute plus torturous wait. Again, it's about operational execution. It seems deciding how many regular line folks get in versus the flash pass holders is entirely arbitrary and at the whim of whoever is working the front of the line. It's hard to blame staff members. With three tiers of flash pass holders, it must be hard to keep things straight and far easier to go with whoever is screaming the loudest at the front of the line.
So, you may be wondering what warrants the three stars. Well, for thrill seekers, the rides are top-notch, like insane. The kinda good that gives you heart palpitations just watching from the ground as little bodies get flung around in every imaginable way 80 feet up the air. If you like speed, falling, twisting, and turning until your head is spinning and your insides are on the front of your t-shirt, then this is the place for you. However, you need to do yourself a HUGE favor and save up to spring for preferred parking and a platinum flash pass to skip the lines. Also, come with a full stomach and perhaps a sandwich and bag of chips strategically tucked into your underpants.