I took a quick trip to Great Adventure this past Sunday to check out their Fright Fest festivities. I arrived at about 6pm and was met by moderate crowds, nothing too bad. I headed for El Toro first only to see that the line extended halfway through the nearest switchback; I decided to skip it for the time being. Bizarro also had a full queue line, at which point I got a bit worried that the park was munch more crowded than I originally thought!
I decided to just head for the other side of the park, passing through Frontier Adventures which had been transformed into ‘Bone Butcher Territory’ for Fright Fest. Didn’t see too many ghouls running around, but it wasn’t fully dark yet so that may have been the reason. Over in Movietown, which was transformed into Movietown for FF…I got in line for Batman: the Ride and found a stairway wait. While waiting in the stairway someone farted of course, making an already cramped, smelly stairway even worse. Luckily the trains were being loaded pretty fast, amount to a 10-15 minute wait in total.
Afterwards I headed to Skull Mountain and found pretty much a walk on…which was surprising. Next I checked out Dead Man’s Party, a big show performed on a stage set up in front of the Ferris Wheel. It’s pretty good with some decent choreography and pyro. It didn’t seem to change from last year however, with all the same songs I believe.
After the 20 or so minute show, I took a spin on Fantasy Fling, the parks Round Up. It’s not a bad flatride and being one of the parks few adult flatrides, I guess it’s better than nothing. Next I walked over to Bizarro and saw that the wait had shrunk to about half the size of before, so I just got in line. It was probably about a 15-20 minute wait and I took a seat in the last row.
Heading over to El Toro, I saw that the line was also half what it was earlier. This wait was about 15 minutes but it was an annoying 15 minutes since they only let a certain amount of people into the station at time before stopping the line. Once in the station, I made my way to the back which, as usual, had much fewer people waiting around than in the front of the station. A similar occurrence used to happen on Superman until they changed the stairway configuration going into the station, spreading people out more. Anyway, El Toro flew that night and the dude who jumped into the seat next to me was having a completely over the top blast, making the ride even more entertaining.
I decided to check out Kingda Ka next which, to my complete surprise, had nary a line at all! Both sides were sending out trains so I walked over the bridge to the left side of the station and literally had a walk on. That is an absolute first. I actually could have taken a re-ride since a couple of rows weren’t filled on the next cycle, but decided against it for no real reason.
Instead I headed to Twister and was treated to a pretty pitiful cycle. Towards the beginning of the season, this ride would do five or six flips in a row at the start of the cycle, now it seems to have reverted back to its barely one flip cycle. Finally I walked down the graveyard terror trail, which was all right. I didn’t get jumped by too many ghouls wielding cans with coins in them however, poor me. I left at around 9:30pm amidst the start of the parking lot rush. prior to the 10pm closing.
No photos with this TR unfortunately, instead I made a short video of it!