The Interpreter

It'll be okay. Beast DID run today. DragonLord, among others, rode it! http://www.pkicentral.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7210

Not only that, but even they say that though it may storm in the morning, the afternoon looks pretty darn good:

If it only rains, most rides will stay open. If there is lightning, then the rides will close. They will reopen after the storm passes, though; so long as there is at least a reasonable number of people in the park.

Paramount's Great America opens Wednesday. We'll see how that goes... Paramount Canada's Wonderland opens Sunday, May 7.

I am not about to wait over an hour to fill out a card. There were tons and tons of people complaining Friday and Saturday. And Wonderland is a wonderful park I need to get back to SOON! PCW is used way too often around here. Some people use it when they mean Carowinds, others mean Wonderland. For that reason, many use PCWi and PCWo. Much less confusing!

You may well be right. I was amazed at how wonderful Carowinds opening was (if you mean PCWi). And the park was spotless and service was great. I do have a question, though. Does Carowinds also have the no early opening policy this year? On the other hand, PKD was truly terrible at opening, as many others have also observed. And a chain WILL be judged by its weakest park. People remember that it is a Paramount Park. The typical PKI customer will never go to Carowinds. Most don't even know where it is. Also, don't judge Six Flags now by the Six Flags you used to know. There have been major changes at Six Flags, and they show.

Uh....Craig Ross IS gone, moved to corporate. Tim Fisher is back. You and I may be the only ones who think this is a major improvement. Sometimes the bosses that everyone loves are not the ones who make everything work well. That all being said, I don't see major improvements in the Paramount Parks until ownership changes. And yes, I, too, hope to be in Georgia soon. Perhaps as soon as this weekend, if I can arrange such with my job... More than once on Friday and Saturday, I kept asking myself, "What is this world coming to when Six Flags seems to care about the customer so much more than Paramount Parks?" It was never thus before. The most amazing sight to me was the long line of people STILL trying to get season passes processed Friday night as the park closed. All because they didn't even offer off-season processing.

1982. Next?

Heavier than expected crowds? Puh-leeze. The marketing department didn't know it had given out tons and tons of free tickets for prize winners at radio stations? And the crowd Friday was NOT that heavy. As for Italian Job, no, no new effects. And no, the speakers didn't work. And, oh, yeah. Two trains. Count them. Two.

To be fair, PKD is even worse. A double slice of pizza at PKI is $5.49. A single slice at PKD (and that slice is about HALF the size of the single slices at PKI) is $3.99. A double slice would be double that: $7.98...making Six Flags' Papa Johns at $6.99 a slice for pan pizza--the only kind offered at the parks--look a little less ludicrous...Not much, but a little. And the pizza at PKD is, without exception, burned, based on my experience. PKD is also a park where a person on a low carb diet will have a very difficult time finding ANYTHING to eat. ANYTHING at all. I have pointed this out to that park many times. No response. At least at PKI, there are many food choices. The new side salads at the International Street restaurants (both LaRosa's and Skyline) are a welcome addition.

They no longer have five ways. A large four way is $6.49, if memory serves. A cheese coney is $1.89. Small drinks (20 oz) are $3.29. A large (32 oz.) is $3.49. So: A large four way: $6.49. Two cheese coneys: $3.78. A drink (small to be fair): $3.29. Tax: about 95 cents. Total: $14.51. Embarassed by that? The park must be. You do NOT get an itemized receipt. Wonder why? And for all this, they didn't even have ANY napkins! Can you imagine? I asked for sugar or artificial sweetener. They didn't have any. The crowning glory was they had NO forks or spoons. Sigh. (I walked to LaRosa's and got my own...something none of the workers seem to have enough gumption to do...or more likely, they weren't allowed to leave the stand). You haven't mentioned where they really seem to hit you hard. Salads and desserts. They apparently are somewhere between 2.99 and 4.99. I don't know. Nowhere is the price listed. For all I know, the employee misrang every single thing I got. You can't see the prices as they are rung up. And ANY Skyline outside the park that was as slow as Skyline was Friday or Saturday would have given me the food and apologized for the lousy service.

Uh huh. Six Flags in New Jersey has been open for the TWO weekends before this weekend. And on opening day, virtually everything was open and working, except for the wooden roller coaster (which is being modified for the new coaster being installed). Six Flags Over Georgia has been open for six weeks. Paramount's Carowinds in Charlotte opened without all these ... issues. Paramount's Kings Dominion on opening day was far, far worse than Paramount's Kings Island. That all being said, the issues here are quite simple, and mostly a matter of budget. To me, by far the worst is the not opening the parks AT ALL before 10 (10:30 at PKD) (for anyone other than ACERs <at PKI> or people eating breakfast with the characters). That can be fixed. It needs to be. Soon.

And coming very soon? The Jetsons, the movie. What wonderful timing...

Uh huh. I guess that is why Cedar Fair LOWERED admission prices this year. And is selling cotton candy at 25 cents. When your customers are having trouble coming up with enough money to pay admission, raise prices. Yep, that'll work.

There were actually LARGE bumblebees around and IN the International Street Skyline.

No, it's not normal for opening day. This year they had no dry run day. That's affected a lot of things. So has, apparently, reduced budgets. The employees, God bless them, are doing the best they can under some very trying circumstances. It is not their fault(s). Be nice to them. They deserve it.

Only in one side. The other has the HB. Over the weekend, they have been rotating which side is open. Don't despair!

You say that as you did not pay more than forty dollars to get in (per person), plus ten dollars to park. Also, Racer did NOT operate all day. It was closed more than once during the day. If the park is not going to have a dry run day, and guests are to expect issues, then the park needs to reduce the price of early season admissions. Guests who pay full freight have a right to expect a full performance. And that includes shows, properly operating food stands (the Skyline on International Street had the slowest operation of any food service stand in any park I have EVER visited. When I was there Friday, they didn't even have basic condiments in stock, such as sugar, cutlery and napkins. Yes, napkins. And the employees had a "just accept it" attitude. I'm sorry, but for sixteen dollars for a lunch, I expect both a napkin and something to eat the food with. I'm funny that way). I wish I could say Saturday was better at that stand. It was not. The lack of a dry run day has really hurt that place. Still, I suspect major staff cuts have hurt more. If Paramount doesn't think the guests notice, they are wrong. If they don't care, that's even worse.

Those cars are used to this day at parks like Paramount's Kings Dominion, Six Flags over Georgia and even Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom. They are worth many, many thousands of dollars each. They won't be disposing of them for free to anybody. They might DONATE one to a group to be sold for charity, if that. As for the park benches, that's about the same story, though they of course are not worth quite so much...but...since they are unique, who knows? You might even see them at Jungle Jim's some day. They'd be cool with a monorail!

Maintenance on Hurler this year and Grizzly last year was also the implied reason. Yet, in every season before 2oo5, PKD had managed to have existing coasters rehabbed BEFORE the season. It's all in what you want to do and have the money to do. The individual parks aren't the ones making these decisions. Is there any reason whatever they are doing to Son of Beast, for example, wouldn't be done by now, if it really was a priority to them? Probably not.

Yeah. Besides, only kids and a few silly adults ride it. They can ride Racer and Avatar. May as well close Beast in the early season, too. It takes too many people to run and the maintenance is expensive. No one will notice. (At PKD, Hurler is closed til late May, as Grizzly was last year. Their FOF is closed for the year. Coincidence? Or a trend?)

One would think. But this foolishness has been going on at Carowinds and Dominion this year since they opened. Then again, PKI is much larger than either and has more season passholders percentagewise than any other North American park. I can't imagine that even season passholders are amused by this. There is no separate line for them. And with the new biometric passes that PKI is now selling, confirmation of the pass at the gate will now take 10 seconds or more per pass, if the Carowinds experience is applicable, further lengthening those long lines to get into the park. Mad customers at entry does not make for a happy day in the park, nor for repeat visits. I actually worry more about the effects on the Paramount Parks NEXT year. This year's passes have mostly been bought. This year's (in many case single) trip(s) to the park has already been planned. Next year, there are other choices. Some people may go to Florida rather than put up with that hassle. Even if Paramount wises up and fixes it now, many people will never find that out...They will know how bad it was when THEY went in 2oo6. And remember. And the longer this goes on, the more people will have that sour taste in their mouth. People talk to each other. A lot. And that talk is far more powerful than any paid advertising. I have never taken as long to get in Disney or Universal on the busiest of days than I did to get in Paramount's Kings Dominion on opening day this year. And many people waited a lot longer than I did. What's worse is if you get tired of waiting, you can't even get your parking money back and leave without waiting in Guest Relations, which doesn't open til 10. How nice.

And as I posted in a reply post to another thread, the re-entry line for people with handstamps is back this year (after it had been eliminated [unwisely, in my opinion] last year)

a. You are exactly right...but that's the old Six Flags logic, not the people and the company it is today. b. With all this cost cutting going on, PKI should do what Dorney does (and yes, I am serious). Since much of the park either doesn't operate or operates at reduced staffing and capacity levels at Dorney on early and late weekends, they cut the admission price. I'd have no problem with only one side of the Action Theater running, with the train being closed, with Delirium being iffy, etc., if the park passed along its savings to the daily admission buyer. Like that's going to happen!

Don't worry. Paramount's Kings Dominion has that one, easily. Opening day there this year made the old days at Six Flags Great Adventure look absolutely like operational successes. And heaven knows, that's hard to do! All things considered, things went pretty well at Paramount's Kings Island opening day, ridewise. It was in the admissions and parking areas that the AVERAGE guest was absolutely infuriated. Let's see...first you take ten dollars from the guest to park (and have only ONE set of toll booths operating, NO one in the parking lot to direct you to an empty space, NO trams operating), then the guest stands in front of a metal detector for up to an hour, with NO restrooms available other than in the secured area. (You could and many did BEG to go to the restroom and some of the security people let people go, others didn't). Worse, the first half hour, there was NO ONE to even see that people not enter the so-called secure area. People who had tickets for Breakfast with the Characters were NOT nicely directed to the proper lines on Saturday, unless they had some idea what was going on. These are among the park's best customers. Also, many of those guests waiting in front of the metal detectors did NOT have their tickets yet, thinking they would buy them from the old ticket booths just inside the detectors. Little did they know, (and there were no announcements that I heard), that those booths were no longer in use. Then, at 10, they opened the metal detectors (shortly before 10 on Sunday). The line slowly proceeded into the park. Guest relations didn't open til 10, either. So, I guess if you have a season pass from another Paramount Park, you have to wait for guest relations to open, then go to the back of the now huge line to get into the park. Compare the old days, when these same people would have been inside the park, on International Street, with restrooms and the possibility of spending money for that hour. An hour so profitable many parks call it the "Golden Hour." Over at season pass processing, since no passes were processed during the winter, the line quickly built up to over two and a half hours. When the park closed on Saturday night, it appeared there was still at least an hour line waiting to get a pass processed. Paramount used to have the very best season pass processing. What happened? Budget cuts. Cuts in departments that produce the money that runs the park. How stupid is that? The area outside the gate was a total fiasco both days. I am surprised there wasn't more fighting and minor mayhem than there were. And there was some. Oh, yeah. They did something else. Something right, but confusing. The re-entry line for people with handstamps is back. And this is the way that CBS is treating its best customers at Paramount Parks this year. If they were going to do this anyway, I, for one, am glad that CBS is selling.