Friday while I was in Atlanta, JH texted me about going over to Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey since I had never been there before. An opportunity to travel to a new place, you bet I was going! It doesn't hurt being a season pass holder either.
Saturday Morning we drove up to New Jersey and got there soon after the park opened. We started out by riding Blackbeard's Treasure Train because I need the coaster credits, and JH wanted to start with smaller rollercoasters just to make sure the g-forces weren't going to bother his nose. It's a nice coaster for the kids and their parents.
Next was Skull Mountain, which was alright, especially for an inside coaster. We moved onward to Nitro, which I ended up enjoying the ride. Afterwards was Batman The Ride, which is a clone of the Batman The Ride at Magic Mountain. I last rode that one eight years ago, and it was just like I remembered it, which is that the ride is too freaking short. You get into some good turns and thrills and then bang! It's over.
Onward to Medusa, which freaking rocked, we would ride the coaster once more over the weekend. I love it when the coasters go fast and space their elements so that you're not being thrown all over the place. Definitely one of the best steel coasters I have ever been on.
We got over to El Toro, which was finally when we hit the point where lines took a while. I had gotten used to waiting 10-15 mins at the most to get on, but in this case it would take almost 2 hours. Did I mention that there was a cheerleading competition at the park, so it was basically overrun with the kids and their stage parents? At one point they tried to bring on a second train to handle the crowd, but it was taken off, so I think it had flunked a safety check. Yeah, I got bitchy about that, which was over the line for me, oh well.
Afterwards we tried to get food, and that was another line from hell thanks to the larger than normal crowds for the weekend and lack of staff. I should have just jumped to another restaurant, but I was foolish enough not to; lesson learned for next time.
By the time lunch was over, it was actually late in the afternoon, so we headed over to our hotel to rest for a while. JH got in touch with some family in the area, and we visited them for dinner. I like his cousin, she's raunchy, and can dish it out as well as take it, much like JH.
JH at one point made a spontaneous suggestion to go up to Coney Island to ride the Cyclone since I had never been there. I got in touch with a friend of mine in the area, KS. The story about KS and I is that she saw that I belonged to a fan group for Sirius Radio on MySpace, and we had gone to college in the same area (She went to NMSU in Las Cruces, I went to WNMU in Silver City) so we started E-mailing back and forth and cultivated a friendship. She happened to move to NYC from LA for her career so it was just perfect timing that we could finally meet. JH and I drove into the city and met near Times Square before walking over to a local cafe for brunch. It went well, we had fun, and as JH joked, he now has a lesbian friend!
After brunch JH and I headed towards Coney Island, and the Google Maps directions did not make sense, but we were able to find an alternate route that got us over to where we needed to be. After parking it was off to hit Coney Island and the Cyclone.
At the Cyclone, I ended up in the back car, which was fine. JH warned me the ride was going to be rough, but what happened next was unexpected. While the seats were padded, there was a weak spot in my seat that I paid the price for. There was a bar below the padding, and after we went over the hill and I came up and back down into the seat (a lap bar can only hold you so well) my tailbone smacked right into the bar. I ended up doing that again on the next hill, so I spent the rest of the ride scooting as far forward as possible so I wouldn't land on it again. I basically broke my ass on that ride. When we pulled into the station, they offered to let us go again for a discount price, there was no way in hell I was doing it right then. Hell, I'm still not completely healed from it, but that could be because I aggravated it the next weekend at SFNE. The next time I ever ride that, I'm not sitting in the very back car.
JH and I got chili cheese dogs at Nathan's because then we could say we had them at the original place. Afterwards it was time to head out of the city and head back to SFGA for another go-round of the rollercoasters.
The first coaster we hit was The Great American Scream Machine (AKA Greta), which for being an older steel coaster, was still fun to ride, especially because it had one of my favorite elements from Viper at Magic Mountain, which was a butterfly turn. As I would recently learn, Viper is actually the sister coaster of Greta, which explained why the ride reminded me so much of being on Viper. Next was Superman: Ultimate Flight, which was one of the best flying coasters I have been on to date. I liked it better because instead of laying flat on your back, you were laying as if you were flying like Superman.
Next was Kingda Ka, which is billed as the world's tallest and fastest coaster. Unfortunately I would not get to ride it because right as we were 2 people away from riding, it broke down. Normally I can deal with things breaking down, but the workers there hit on a pet peeve of mine so I basically ended up bailing after 20 mins of waiting. Despite what JH may have said, he was ready to bail as well. Here's the thing, stuff breaks down, it happens, whatever, but if I see two ride operators and two maintenance workers standing at the control booth and it looks like they're just screwing around rather than doing their jobs (they looked like they were laughing and joking around) then I'm just going to get really pissed off.
We bailed and headed over to El Toro, which had a quicker wait. I have to say that riding in the front was so much better than riding in the back, definitely go for the front if you can. It has to be the best wooden roller coaster I have ridden at this point.
We rode Medusa again and then headed towards Greta because I wanted another ride. Along the way JH and I saw a Porky Pig character, and JH said "MMMMMMM! Bacon!" to which the person inside the costume proceeded to give us the middle finger. We laughed at it, though JH wanted to report him for unprofessionalism later. I gotta admit that sometimes you do forget where you are and will throw up the middle finger without thinking about it when you should really put it away. At my old job in college, I was in a training with all of my co-workers and bosses, and one of my co-workers said something mildly insulting to me, and I gave him the finger, which basically shocked everyone in the room. I basically did it without thinking about it, my bad.
So we rode Greta again, along with Nitro, Batman, and Skull Mountain before we did some shopping and drove allllllll the way back to Maryland. That was a great trip, and there should be a few more.
Once again, if you managed to make it this far, click the picture at the top to see the pictures from the trip.
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