Blog 2: The Beginning of A Great Adventure
Wow! Our first ever real blog post! As we teased about a week or two ago, we had a Great Adventure planned…at Six Flags! This was my first time being at Great Adventure in a while (the last time I was there Green Lantern and Kingda Ka were still around…RIP). With that in mind, I didn’t really know what the day would bring, but I was determined to have a good time! A little background for myself, while I do enjoy the overall vibes of any theme park (I’m a pretty big Disney Parks fan, but you’ll learn more about that in due time), I’m not exactly as much of a thrillseeker as my counterpart J is. Hence, I haven’t gone back to Six Flags in a bit because of that. But, even without some big roller coasters, there are still many fun ways to explore Great Adventure! Even if some of the rides were…interesting to say the least.
Our first ride of the day was Justice League: Battle for Metropolis. It’s essentially a dark ride shooter style where you have to fight off Lex Luthor’s robots in order to save the city. It was a walk on because many park goers started their day off riding the newest attraction: THE FLASH: Vertical Velocity (Which we’ll talk about in a bit). I would say that this ride was…alright. I felt that the game was over too soon, and both my and J’s guns were not calibrated at all lol. (This did not stop me from winning) I do like a good competitive attraction, though, so if you need to fill up a small chunk of time in your day and like some friendly competition, check it out!
After that, we decided to ride THE DARK KNIGHT, which J…already has some mixed feelings about. I had never ridden it before, but from what I heard it wasn’t that great. You first start off by getting loaded into a preshow room. The preshow itself was…underwhelming to say the least. It starts off with a press conference with Harvey Dent, until all of a sudden the Joker cuts the broadcast and edits the footage to include a cryptic message. Woooowww so scarryyy. The whole preshow is about four and a half minutes long and is really drawn out, which doesn’t help when you consider the actual ride is about a minute and a half. The coaster itself was…meh. It’s just a Wild Mouse coaster with a few Joker/Batman touches here and there. The most baffling thing about the whole experience was that people clapped for the preshow. Clapping…for a preshow??? For a prerecorded video??? In all my time going to theme parks I have never once seen someone clap for a preshow. I think we just ended with the type of people that clap when the plane lands. Whatever.
After THE DARK KNIGHT™ Coaster, we saw that THE FLASH™: Vertical Velocity only had a 15 minute wait according to the app! Surely this will be a totally accurate wait time… right? As S said herself, she’s not as much of a thrillseeker as I am, so I went to enter the Speed Force all on my own. From the outside point of view the queue did not look that long. As you wait in the first part of the queue, you will occasionally hear an audio track giving some lore about the ride, which is basically stating that it an experiment that allows you to enter the Speed Force (as well as the safety information about leaving loose valuables off the ride at the provided dual-side locker or with a non-rider). After the lockers, there is a second part of the queue, which is hard to see from outside of the ride… it is here where most of my wait time actually occurred. What was stated to be a 15 minute wait turned out to be about an hour! (Sorry about that S). The actual ride itself was really cool! I had heard tales of the zero-g roll, but actually experiencing it felt amazing. You spend a good amount of time out of your seat. Overall I really enjoyed it, and personally would rate it at the top of A tier of my roller coaster tier list (yes, I have a tier list). After the ride, I reunited with S and then proceeded to have lunch.
After lunch at Granny’s Chicken, we decided to take it slow at the Giant Wheel. The wait time was not that long, as we only had to wait for one full ride cycle before we were able to get on the ride ourselves. If you have rode any Ferris wheel, you already know how they work, and this one is no different. With a height of 150 feet, you can see the majority of the park. We were able to see the paths we have walked, as well as many of the roller coasters on the side of the park we were on, such as The Flash, Batman, Nitro, and the Jersey Devil! We were also able to get a glimpse of the other side of the park, where we saw El Toro, Medusa, a tiny bit of Runaway Mine Train, as well as construction for Six Flags Great Adventure’s next coaster, Project Purple. If you like great views, or just Ferris wheels in general, be sure to ride this one. Oh, and if you ever go to the park at night, you should also ride the Giant Wheel. A lot of the rides have lights on them, so the view is very pretty at night!
After the wheel, we decided to adventure on over to the Runaway Mine Train, which is the oldest roller coaster at the park, debuting when the park opened in 1974! We luckily did not have much of a wait time at all our first time riding this coaster, where we sat near the front of the train and got on in less than 10 minutes! The first half of the ride is nice and smooth, as you go down a spiral. After which you go through some hills which will surprise you with a good amount of airtime if you are not prepared for it. This is especially evident with the drop near the lake! This is a very fun coaster if you want a coaster with some thrills, but not over the top like other coasters at the park!
After going on the wildest ride in the wilderness (no not that one), we headed out on the Off-Road Safari! This was actually one of the highlights of my day, as I wasn’t expecting the variety of animals they had! There were lions, tigers, and even bears! It was incredible to also see how active a lot of the animals were in their zones, we got to see lots of them in action, such as some elephants cooling off in a pond. The experience was around 30 minutes in total, and honestly I would do it again. It does close early at around 4PM, so make sure you stop by early to get a chance to experience it.
The rest of the day was pretty lax. We got to ride Runaway Mine Train again, rode the Enchanted Tea Cups, and topped it off with a ride on the Carousel. We also made sure to stop by the merchandise shops at the front to grab a souvenir or two (Because nothing ends a day like spending even more money!). I grabbed some cool magnets of Nitro and El Toro, which were then used to make fun of me because I did not ride them yet (I will someday…maybe if this blog gets enough views…). Me and J also both picked up a Save An Icon Pin, dedicated to the wildlife safari animals at Great Adventure. All proceeds of the pins go to the Wildlife Conservation Network, so it felt good to get a souvenir that was also helping all those adorable animals we saw.
Even though we did not thrill max our day at Great Adventure, there was still plenty of fun to be had! I think this goes to show that even if you're not a big fan of coasters (or aren’t brave enough to ride them yet), there’s still lots to explore at any theme park, even at Six Flags..
Well, that’s all folks! Stay tuned for our even more in-depth video on our time at Great Adventure, and for even more theme park visits in the future. Bye for now!
-Voyagers S + J