My day at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom yesterday pretty much took the cake for worst ever day at a theme park in my life. I knew I was taking a risk going on a Saturday but I heard with all the pandemic crap going on that the weekend/weekday difference isn't as strong as it once was and it's really hard to get back from the park to my house on week days because of bad traffic around park closing. Anyways I get there about mid-day and it's SLAMMED.
Go to Medusa which takes about 45 minutes and the queue starts with children SHOVING each other, getting in and out of line, and wacking each other with sticks. Yea...not a great start. So I'm just going to get on my soap box right now, this park and I feel like a lot of parks have a REAL line-jumping problem. We'll get back to this issue later on in the report, but suffice to say in the 45 minutes I was in line I counted at least ten instances of people pushing ahead of me to "catch up with their parties". Now if it's a little kid that had to go to the bathroom or something I'm completely okay with that and used to stuff like that happening in Disney queues. I draw the freaking line at grown- adults using this practice and of course the ever-present groups of rude couldn't care less teenagers.
After I got off Medusa the lines were just really bad. Kong (easily the worst coaster in the park) was over an hour all day with single train operations. Sky Screamer was down. V2 was down. Quiet a few major flat rides are down and have been for months. I don't know if Tasmanian Devil has been open at all since Wonder Woman opened a couple years ago. I can't remember the last time either of the water rides ran. For once, the animal exhibits weren't the most sad thing in this park...the ridiculous state of the attractions were. Joker was a single train. All day. The line completely filled up the queue. Were talking like at least two hours IF it doesn't break down which is a big If. Even Medusa was going down throughout the day when that ride is usually the park's resident workhorse. Boomerang? Forget about it, line all the way out into the walkway. Were talking each coaster and major flat ride having endless seas of switchbacks PLUS extending out into walkways.
I took about an hour to check out some animal stuff which I'll admit was probably the nicest part of my day by comparison. After waiting for a solid 40 minutes for mini donuts I attempted to catch the dolphin show but abandoned ship like five minutes in because so many people kept flooding into the stadium that it was messing with my anxiety and peripheral vision. Decided to suck it up and wait about 45 minutes for the stupid Larson Loop and it was actually a pretty decent hit for me because while those rides are definite one trick ponies they might have some of the most insane hang-time you can get anywhere. I LOVE the feeling of your butt lifting out of your seat completely upside down, being at the mercy of the shoulder restraints. That's the kind of intensity I'm craving lately haha.
After taking a break to walk to a gas station across the street to hydrate without having to take out a small loan ( 6$ bottles of water. Nothing new, but still...) I was actually somewhat optimistic that when I was headed back in a ton of people seemed to be spilling out. I really got my hopes up that I'd have a few hours of actually decent crowds. Haha, NOPE. Went back to the DC area, PACKED as ever. Over an hour for the S&S Freespin which is absolutely not worth it. Wonder Woman extended all the way back to the Superman queue and was just BEGGING for line-jumpers to trigger my anxiety. Joker as I said was a one-train ops madhouse that I wasn't going to touch with a ten foot pole. Oh did I mention Superman the third biggest coaster in the park was down too?!?!?! So I wave up the white flag at this point, call my dad to come pick me up, and start walking around trying to find something to eat.
ALL THE FOOD CARTS IN THE PARK ARE STARTING TO FREAKING CLOSE AT THIS POINT. There was also an ERT event for anyone who bought their gross looking mac n cheese hot dog and for the SECOND trip in a row I felt some serious communication issues on when the park was actually closing. The website listed 10PM but with all the food stalls rapidly shutting down and people leaving the park I really couldn't make heads or tails on if the ERT was happening before or after the scheduled 10PM closing. Wandered over to Medusa and it looked a lot less packed than when I was there earlier. Great! I thought. One last solid ride at least. NOPE.
I swear, from the second I entered the line the line-jumpers just came out of the wood work like crazy. Basically the queue set-up for Medusa is similar to Ghost Rider in that most of it takes place in a two story building with a bunch of switch backs. Essentially there were a TON of people at the start of the first level of switchbacks who were trying to do the whole "meet up with your party already in the line" thing. At this point I was about ready to pick a damn fight with someone over this so instead I got out of line and did an angry vlog instead. Vlog will come later today and you can TRULY see my frustration in it. To top it all off I had a pretty major communication issue with my dad over where to pick me up that pretty much resulted in a full on panic attack. I know this sounds melodramatic, but I was practically in tears by the time I got home I was just so over everything. All in all I got on Medusa, the Larson Loop, and the teacups once a piece. That was it. Everything else was virtually inaccessible given the queue set-ups.
My god, can someone please just share my frustration with the line-jumping? I'd REALLY like to know some stress-relief resources for how to handle it. I'm really not one to go all "Karen" over it happening once or twice, but it was like OPEN SEASON in the Medusa queue both times I was in there. The lack of empathy and basic common politeness on display today was staggering. What's worse is it was mostly a family crowd today and not the usual situation where it's packed to the gils with unruly teenagers. If anything I saw several instances where teens I was close in the line to complained just as much as I did about the line-jumping happening.
It truly makes me TERRIFIED for Dollywood
@D Hulk can you quell my anxieties? How do you deal with this nonsense?
