Six Flags Great Adventure

Visited: May 27, 2021

Attending: Just Brian

In May of 2021, Great Adventure had a promotion called “Coaster Power Hours” on Thursday nights, where only the coasters would be open, as an attempt to draw enthusiasts back to the park. I kept to my decision not to go back to any park until I was fully vaccinated, and because of the date of my vaccination, that meant the only Power Hour I could attend was the very last one. But it was only $5 for passholders, and included free parking, so I figured it was worth the money to go. I couldn’t get anybody else to go with me on a weeknight, so I went by myself.

The weather was very pleasant, not too warm or humid. The evening light made for nice photography. However, the event ran from 4 to 9 pm, and it was late enough in the spring that there wouldn’t be any night rides. All the coasters were running that I saw, and most of them were running multiple trains. However, most of the employees were new and in the process of being trained, so the dispatches were somewhat slow.

This was also my first experience with COVID restrictions at a park, although many of them were already easing in this part of the country. I entered the park through a different entrance than usual, but there was no temperature screening, and security was a walk-through, even though I was carrying a bag. I went masked the whole time, and I’d say roughly a third to half of the guests I saw did the same. There were distancing markers in the queues, but they seemed to be mostly ignored, although guests were standing slightly further apart than in the past. Most of the rides I rode didn’t have long lines, so I didn’t really get to judge. They were using all rows of the coasters, but they weren’t mixing parties within a single row. That meant that as a single rider, I always had a row to myself, which felt a little awkward on the four-across B&M trains. Staff were also assigning rows, and since I knew I was locking out an entire row, I didn’t usually ask for special treatment.

Crowds were pretty light at the start of the event, before work let out, and although they increased throughout the evening, they never got to what I would call heavy. However, the attendees were concentrated at the coasters, since they were the only things open. There was some entertainment, a DJ by the fountain on the midway, but I don’t think anybody was paying attention to them. Although there was supposedly food for sale, I had a very hard time finding any restaurants that were open, so I just went without eating.

Bottom line, though, was that the experience felt a little different than it had in the past. Being solo wasn’t a very enjoyable experience, even though I’d been solo on several trips over the past three years. I did share photos on Twitter and got a good response, but it wasn’t really the same. Chatting with the other enthusiasts at Jersey Devil should have made me feel more of a sense of belonging, but the age gap just felt awkward to me. And although it was probably just being out of practice, the riding experience felt more physically difficult than it has in the past. I felt a little beat up, and didn’t really go for a ton of rides. I’m pretty sure that I would have enjoyed myself a lot more with company, but I was ready to leave after a few hours. As a result of this experience, I decided not to try to attend the preview days for Jersey Devil, and canceled my plans to attend CoasterCon, both of which I would have been doing on my own.

Nitro

I chose Nitro as my first coaster to ride post-quarantine, because it’s always been a favorite of mine, even if it’s not the highest-rated coaster in the park. Because of the row restrictions I mentioned above, I didn’t get to experience a back-row ride, but I did get three rides in quick succession, from near the back, near the front, and middle-ish. I felt a slight bit of trepidation as we climbed the lift hill, from having not been on a coaster in over a year, but that passed pretty quickly as I felt the familiar airtime sensations. Nitro was fully warmed up and running well, which made for a much better experience than my December 2019 rides. The airtime on the big hills was nice and sustained, and even the bunny-hops at the end were packing good airtime. I’ve never given much thought to the helix on this ride, but I did notice this time that it packs sustained positive G’s.

Jersey Devil

No, I didn’t get to ride Jersey Devil on this trip, but it’s near to Nitro, so I went over there to see how it looked. They were doing some test runs with water dummies, and put a second train on as I was watching. There were a handful of other enthusiasts there as well, and I nerded out with them for a bit. Apparently El Toro Ryan showed up just after I left, which is slightly amusing, because I went over to...

El Toro

I think it’s fair to say that El Toro is probably the objectively best ride in the park, from an enthusiast perspective, so that was the other thing I really wanted to get on. I was pleased that there was barely any line, even during an event ostensibly for enthusiasts. Because Toro has a long train, and two-across seating, I didn’t feel guilty asking for the back row, which I got. El Toro remains the monster that it’s always been, and the airtime over those first three hills was sweet. The Rolling Thunder hill tried to eject me out of the train, as it’s designed to do. The twister section pounded on me a little bit, which I again attributed to being out of condition. I went around again and got a second ride from row 3. Not sure if that’s a “magic seat” for this ride, but I did enjoy the difference in forces from the front. But there was enough pounding that I thought I’d be OK with two rides in quick succession.

Bizarro

From Toro, I went over to Medusa (or Bizarro, whatever), mostly out of a sense of not knowing what to do next. Again, because it’s a wider B&M ride, I wasn’t really picky about where in the train I ended up, so I didn’t get the back row. Although I’ve ridden Medusa well in the past, I’ve started to be really wary of head-banging on any B&M with the hard restraints, but this ride was pretty smooth. The flame-throwers on the dive loop were operating, which I hadn’t seen in a while. It’s not that they’re particularly scary, but it’s kind of fun to feel the heat bloom as you go by. I was OK through the corkscrews, so that went well. However, we did stack for quite a while on the brake run, again because of newbie operators, so I decided I didn’t need to go again.

Stuff I didn’t ride

While in line for El Toro, I looked at Kingda Ka a few times, and although it seemed to be running fairly well, I didn’t feel too enthusiastic about it. It’s a one-trick pony, and I’ve done that trick, so I didn’t feel a strong urge to go ride it. I went over to Superman: Ultimate Flight, but by that point the crowds had started to build, and even though it looked like Superman was running two trains, the poor operations that evening resulted in a line that looked to be about an hour long, which was more than I was willing to wait for that ride. I didn’t even consider Green Lantern, which is questionably enjoyable at the best of times. Since I wasn’t really feeling the groove, and it was starting to get late, I decided to just go home at that point.