I visited the park two days last week. We had a great time. There was good and bad but mostly good, of course.
My crew included 8 adults and 13 kids of varying ages.
Homestead Pickers are a joy. Glad they are there to welcome people to the park. The entry was great and reasonable with reasonable people doing their jobs. The health check was a delay but done well and we get there early enough to not have to wait. Be there by 9 if you can.
Good stuff: First and foremost, the classics. Flooded Mine was looking and sounding great, except the “im gettin outta here...” line was still missing. But the ride looked good and I could hear the music. Gigs working, etc. Who cares about the guns.
-Fire In The Hole was not only there THANK GOD but it was good other than the very beginning and very end of the ride, which was bumpy.
-American Plunge is still fun, but we all know about the problems.
-Shops that were open were all good, especially leather shop and christmas and candy store. Taffy great, too.
-Bathrooms were clean.
-Food service was very good. They have a lot more on their plate now including sauces and they did a good job.
-FREE WATER. SDC deserves huge props for this. And the workers as well were giving big cups of ice water, with lids and straws too. Thats a small touch that has big benefits.
-Glad to see the Dockside still up and doing shows, hope the rumors of its demise are wrong.
-The new bridge down from the candy shop actually looks great, much better than expected. Also, to my relief, the horse sound is still used and the toll operator is still there. Great job SDC.
-The saloon show at the riverfront is a good move since the saloon is closed and they did a good job with it overall.
-Outlaw run really is a great ride, so is powder keg.
-Thunderation may have done the best job with the que.
-I’m really looking forward to the new mystic river falls ride. The theme is looking promising from what I can tell, so fingers crossed. Lake Silver is also still present. But the new area is awful (more on that below).
Now for the negative:
-Why on earth is the church closed? And grandfathers mansion? Seems dumb when some shops are open, I guess money talks. I expect those open next trip.
-New cinnamon bread store/bbq place look terrible. Ugh. The whole area is a serious downgrade other than the fact that its “new”. Im sure the food is good, but why did they decide to theme it like that? Makes no sense. And the music? Why get rid of cajun connection if you want to go for a jazz type theme, and the jazz they are using isn’t peppy at all. Sounds like a sleezy restaurant.
-Starbucks? Its like they are purposefully trying to ruin the old bakery when you combine that with loss of bread.
-Que operation was absolutely terrible at powder keg and fire in the hole. My goodness, what a fiasco. Powder keg needs two trains.
-a few workers on cell phones, but overall they were good.
-time traveler is still a big letdown for me. But others enjoy it so thats good. One thing that I think we all can agree upon though is that awful tick-tock sound that ruins the entire area around TT, TNT, bathrooms, christmas hollow, etc. That tick tock is so loud and annoying, they need to get rid of it. Also the aue at TT was very, very slow considering the shortness of the line. Not worth it. It was a waste of time to ride it.
Masks? Meh. About what I expected. Its impossible for people to wear masks constantly, but they did well. Loved the use of hand sanitizer and its prevalence everywhere. Thats more important than masks.
Overall a great trip, will be back late july.