Hutch
Strata Poster
It’s been nearly a month since I did another weekend with the Buzzed Bars friends, this time hitting up the parks in the San Francisco Bay Area.
A NorCal trip always seemed like a nice idea for a long weekend (or added onto a larger trip), but it was never that high a priority for me. This trip specifically wasn’t actually planned that far ahead, but when word got out that California’s Great America was doing away with its seasonal events and painted a picture for its closure, we all knew we needed to snag it before it died (as we still await the official announcement).
I had a direct flight out Thursday evening, landing at SFO around 9 PM local time. I had rendezvoused with a few friends at the airport, eventually grabbing an Uber down to our hotel in Santa Clara (conveniently right next to CGA) and getting in kinda late. Of course I was jet lagged a few hours, so I was eager to get to bed.
The next morning we hitched a ride up to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, arriving pretty much right around opening. The parking lot is awkwardly separated from the park. At least the whole lot is covered in solar panels, so good on you Six Flags.
From the lot, it’s a bit of a walk to the entrance, but it’s actually kind of a cool approach.
This park has a lot of low capacity creds, making the cred run a little unclear. During the walk up, we did get visual confirmation of a second train on Joker, so we felt comfortable saving that (and the crap DC clones) for later. Instead, we ventured off in the opposite corner of the park for the spinner.
I had heard that SFDK wasn’t much more than an ugly park, so on our walk to the back, I don’t think any of us expected the park to look like this:
I’ll talk more about it later, but this was very nice, and easily made SFDK a contender for prettiest Six Flags park. Sounds wild saying that.
Anyway, the spinner hadn’t quite opened, but Boomerang was ready to go. The ops were waiting for us.
It wasn’t horrible. Good to get it out of the way I suppose. It does fit in nicely in this back area.
We grabbed a quick ride on the small swinging ship nearby, before checking Sidewinder Safari again, which had finally opened up. I thought this must’ve been a relocation, considering it’s just a typical Reverchon, but RCDB claims it’s actually brand new for 2022. The entrance itself did seem pretty modern. We barely got any spinning on this though, which I wasn’t against to be honest.
Not making much improvement, it was time for Kong. One train, but the park wasn’t that busy so it was easy (the switchbacks in the station look like they’d be abysmal to wait in).
It wasn't the worst of this model. But you know, still bad.
Time for something good. Medusa was also on one train, and they were taking their time with this one. Again, only a station wait, but it’d take them close to 5 minutes between each dispatch.
It was quite good though, especially considering floorless models aren’t something I find that exciting anymore. It had some nice forces between the bigger elements, a whippy zero g roll, and a forceful low turnaround at the very end.
What I like about this is that it takes the cookie cutter formula of the B&M looper an tweaks a few things. Straight drop instead of a curved decline, sea serpent instead of a cobra roll, corkscrews that don’t interlock. It was actually pretty cute.
What was also cute was Cobra, their Tivoli. Decent attempt at landscaping, though my mind immediately goes to the Tivolis at Plopsaland and Tripsdrill, which are just tangled with bushes and forestry.
Back to the other corner that had clearly been developed after Six Flags got their hands on the park. Oh yeah, this is familiar territory.
It’s a good thing Superman: Ultimate Flight didn’t have comfort collars, otherwise it’d probably be the worst of the SRII’s. It doesn’t help that I dislike these the more I keep riding them, but this was not good.
At least the ops did a decent job getting people on. Only had to wait about 10 minutes.
Grabbed some lunch, and it was time for Joker. The line seemed longer than it actually was, but of course Six Flags was doing the dumb thing of having a brain-dead staff hold up the line at an arbitrary spot, before letting in a train’s worth of people through at a time. Two trains allowed for minimal waits and some simple rerides.
Joker was pretty interesting. The consensus you hear was that it’s the worst RMC iron horse, which doesn’t seem fair considering they’re all great anyway. That said, I could see the reasoning as the layout had more turns and corners than usual, breaking up the airtime. But because of modest expectations, it ended up being pretty impressive in some spots.
RMC’s pre lift sections are mostly take it or leave it, but this is one of the better ones. The drive tires depart the train at a decent speed, so coming around that first decline and into a few hops is actually pretty fun.
This may be shocking to read, but I found this drop just as good if not better than Expedition GeForce’s (and certainly better than Kondaa’s). At least in the back row. It mostly came down to expectation, but there was a surprising lateral yank as it pulled you down. A moment that I had hoped the Intamins could do, but they weren’t quite there (but it’s a trade-off for the open seating for those ones).
It left me surprised going through the first roll, and next thing I knew I was some good positive g forces coming around the corner. A rare moment on an RMC. Combine these elements with a floaty stall, and you got a great start to the ride.
Sadly it kind of peaks there, and the flow is lost a bit afterward. This step up into the turnaround is banked outside a little too much, limiting the amount of airtime while also requiring more rotation to the right, making for an awkward transition.
The other surprise is how borderline painful the airtime is. There are other RMCs with stronger airtime, but the padding of the restraints felt a bit harder than what I could recall on others, and I reacted uncomfortably on some of the hills. A price to pay for the ride’s intensity.
Otherwise, the layout is an awkward sequence of airtime, corner, airtime, corner, inversion, corner, etc. Whereas later hybrid conversions do a better job deviating from the original layout, this one still follows the GCI path, resulting in lots of turnarounds and corners. GCIs perform great with laterals, but the heavily banked corners on this RMC just aren’t that exciting.
In the context of being a lower-tier RMC, it’s still an excellent ride. I’d still put it above the raptors and a couple of the other hybrid models. The fantastic start and violent airtime save it.
Somehow this park has yet another clone. Thankfully Batman: The Ride was limited on the gross discomfort, but the fear of such still makes it a chore to endure.
Last cred was Roadrunner Express, the usual Zamperla +1 offering.
Spot the sexy @Snoo in the back:
Some rerides were had on Joker and Medusa, and in between I made sure to take another slow stroll by the back of the park, which is really pleasant (especially after spending a decent amount of time in the ugly DC area).
Couldn’t quite get park completion, with the bastardized Intamin Impulse being SBNO for quite some time. The vertical spike looks hilariously short, but I do appreciate how the twisted spike hovers over the park entrance. Would’ve been nice to get on for the uniqueness (didn’t look particularly good otherwise).
Honestly, very pleasantly surprised by this park. The big thing is that their coaster lineup leaves much to be desired. Outside Joker and Medusa (which were both better than expected), everything else is a clone, and not a good one at that. Their ops were also pretty questionable on some of the rides as well (shoutout to one of the Joker ops whom, upon being asked by a kid what time the park closed, threw his hands on his face, sighed, and answered “I don’t know.” Poor dude did NOT want to be there lol).
But for the most part, the park’s presentation is quite nice, especially in the back half of the park. I just was not expecting a nice and quiet lakeside view at the back, filled with trees in between. Obviously Six Flags made some f***-ups with that disgusting DC Area (seriously one of the worst-looking areas in any park), but everything else was solid.
I think the park has a lot of potential to be genuinely good. Replace some of the crap with better/unique rides. Touch up on the operations. Oh, and they really gotta do something about those animals. We didn’t focus on the habitats at all but some of the enclosures seemed pretty miserable.
We spent the evening grabbing a few drinks at a couple breweries in Berkeley, before eventually winding up at a dive bar in San Jose. Pretty tiring day if you ask me.
A NorCal trip always seemed like a nice idea for a long weekend (or added onto a larger trip), but it was never that high a priority for me. This trip specifically wasn’t actually planned that far ahead, but when word got out that California’s Great America was doing away with its seasonal events and painted a picture for its closure, we all knew we needed to snag it before it died (as we still await the official announcement).
I had a direct flight out Thursday evening, landing at SFO around 9 PM local time. I had rendezvoused with a few friends at the airport, eventually grabbing an Uber down to our hotel in Santa Clara (conveniently right next to CGA) and getting in kinda late. Of course I was jet lagged a few hours, so I was eager to get to bed.
The next morning we hitched a ride up to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, arriving pretty much right around opening. The parking lot is awkwardly separated from the park. At least the whole lot is covered in solar panels, so good on you Six Flags.
From the lot, it’s a bit of a walk to the entrance, but it’s actually kind of a cool approach.
This park has a lot of low capacity creds, making the cred run a little unclear. During the walk up, we did get visual confirmation of a second train on Joker, so we felt comfortable saving that (and the crap DC clones) for later. Instead, we ventured off in the opposite corner of the park for the spinner.
I had heard that SFDK wasn’t much more than an ugly park, so on our walk to the back, I don’t think any of us expected the park to look like this:
I’ll talk more about it later, but this was very nice, and easily made SFDK a contender for prettiest Six Flags park. Sounds wild saying that.
Anyway, the spinner hadn’t quite opened, but Boomerang was ready to go. The ops were waiting for us.
It wasn’t horrible. Good to get it out of the way I suppose. It does fit in nicely in this back area.
We grabbed a quick ride on the small swinging ship nearby, before checking Sidewinder Safari again, which had finally opened up. I thought this must’ve been a relocation, considering it’s just a typical Reverchon, but RCDB claims it’s actually brand new for 2022. The entrance itself did seem pretty modern. We barely got any spinning on this though, which I wasn’t against to be honest.
Not making much improvement, it was time for Kong. One train, but the park wasn’t that busy so it was easy (the switchbacks in the station look like they’d be abysmal to wait in).
It wasn't the worst of this model. But you know, still bad.
Time for something good. Medusa was also on one train, and they were taking their time with this one. Again, only a station wait, but it’d take them close to 5 minutes between each dispatch.
It was quite good though, especially considering floorless models aren’t something I find that exciting anymore. It had some nice forces between the bigger elements, a whippy zero g roll, and a forceful low turnaround at the very end.
What I like about this is that it takes the cookie cutter formula of the B&M looper an tweaks a few things. Straight drop instead of a curved decline, sea serpent instead of a cobra roll, corkscrews that don’t interlock. It was actually pretty cute.
What was also cute was Cobra, their Tivoli. Decent attempt at landscaping, though my mind immediately goes to the Tivolis at Plopsaland and Tripsdrill, which are just tangled with bushes and forestry.
Back to the other corner that had clearly been developed after Six Flags got their hands on the park. Oh yeah, this is familiar territory.
It’s a good thing Superman: Ultimate Flight didn’t have comfort collars, otherwise it’d probably be the worst of the SRII’s. It doesn’t help that I dislike these the more I keep riding them, but this was not good.
At least the ops did a decent job getting people on. Only had to wait about 10 minutes.
Grabbed some lunch, and it was time for Joker. The line seemed longer than it actually was, but of course Six Flags was doing the dumb thing of having a brain-dead staff hold up the line at an arbitrary spot, before letting in a train’s worth of people through at a time. Two trains allowed for minimal waits and some simple rerides.
Joker was pretty interesting. The consensus you hear was that it’s the worst RMC iron horse, which doesn’t seem fair considering they’re all great anyway. That said, I could see the reasoning as the layout had more turns and corners than usual, breaking up the airtime. But because of modest expectations, it ended up being pretty impressive in some spots.
RMC’s pre lift sections are mostly take it or leave it, but this is one of the better ones. The drive tires depart the train at a decent speed, so coming around that first decline and into a few hops is actually pretty fun.
This may be shocking to read, but I found this drop just as good if not better than Expedition GeForce’s (and certainly better than Kondaa’s). At least in the back row. It mostly came down to expectation, but there was a surprising lateral yank as it pulled you down. A moment that I had hoped the Intamins could do, but they weren’t quite there (but it’s a trade-off for the open seating for those ones).
It left me surprised going through the first roll, and next thing I knew I was some good positive g forces coming around the corner. A rare moment on an RMC. Combine these elements with a floaty stall, and you got a great start to the ride.
Sadly it kind of peaks there, and the flow is lost a bit afterward. This step up into the turnaround is banked outside a little too much, limiting the amount of airtime while also requiring more rotation to the right, making for an awkward transition.
The other surprise is how borderline painful the airtime is. There are other RMCs with stronger airtime, but the padding of the restraints felt a bit harder than what I could recall on others, and I reacted uncomfortably on some of the hills. A price to pay for the ride’s intensity.
Otherwise, the layout is an awkward sequence of airtime, corner, airtime, corner, inversion, corner, etc. Whereas later hybrid conversions do a better job deviating from the original layout, this one still follows the GCI path, resulting in lots of turnarounds and corners. GCIs perform great with laterals, but the heavily banked corners on this RMC just aren’t that exciting.
In the context of being a lower-tier RMC, it’s still an excellent ride. I’d still put it above the raptors and a couple of the other hybrid models. The fantastic start and violent airtime save it.
Somehow this park has yet another clone. Thankfully Batman: The Ride was limited on the gross discomfort, but the fear of such still makes it a chore to endure.
Last cred was Roadrunner Express, the usual Zamperla +1 offering.
Spot the sexy @Snoo in the back:
Some rerides were had on Joker and Medusa, and in between I made sure to take another slow stroll by the back of the park, which is really pleasant (especially after spending a decent amount of time in the ugly DC area).
Couldn’t quite get park completion, with the bastardized Intamin Impulse being SBNO for quite some time. The vertical spike looks hilariously short, but I do appreciate how the twisted spike hovers over the park entrance. Would’ve been nice to get on for the uniqueness (didn’t look particularly good otherwise).
Honestly, very pleasantly surprised by this park. The big thing is that their coaster lineup leaves much to be desired. Outside Joker and Medusa (which were both better than expected), everything else is a clone, and not a good one at that. Their ops were also pretty questionable on some of the rides as well (shoutout to one of the Joker ops whom, upon being asked by a kid what time the park closed, threw his hands on his face, sighed, and answered “I don’t know.” Poor dude did NOT want to be there lol).
But for the most part, the park’s presentation is quite nice, especially in the back half of the park. I just was not expecting a nice and quiet lakeside view at the back, filled with trees in between. Obviously Six Flags made some f***-ups with that disgusting DC Area (seriously one of the worst-looking areas in any park), but everything else was solid.
I think the park has a lot of potential to be genuinely good. Replace some of the crap with better/unique rides. Touch up on the operations. Oh, and they really gotta do something about those animals. We didn’t focus on the habitats at all but some of the enclosures seemed pretty miserable.
We spent the evening grabbing a few drinks at a couple breweries in Berkeley, before eventually winding up at a dive bar in San Jose. Pretty tiring day if you ask me.
