Any experienced ride enthusiast can tell you that it’s near impossible to visit a theme park and not spend chunks of your day waiting frustratedly on long lines. Six Flags Great Adventure, located in Jackson New Jersey is well known for its’ great thrill rides and notorious for the long waits to ride them. Fortunately, there are some tips which can help one avoid these painstakingly long waits.
Flash Pass – This has been mentioned in other articles under this heading and by far it is the best way to avoid the lines. It’s pretty expensive, but definitely worth it. With the Flash Pass, the user goes to the entrance of a ride and inserts the pass into a slot. The pass will read a time for which the users ride is then reserved. When the time comes, the user returns to the ride and enters a separate queue for the ride, which is normally quite short. In the interim, the rider can use valuable time too enjoy other rides, eat, or do just about anything else one can do in an amusement park. The first year Kingda Ka opened, the wait times were over three hours. With the Flash Pass, I waited only ten minutes!
Join a Roller Coaster Club – I’ve been a card-carrying member of American Coaster Enthusiasts (ACE) for years and this is another great way to visit amusement parks and get maximum ride time on your favorite roller coasters. Usually once a year, theme parks across the country (including Six Flags) host an ACE Day. On these special days, club members get all sorts of benefits, including free food, goodies, and most notably Exclusive Ride Time, or ERT. During ERT, normally granted early in the day or later in the evening, club members have exclusive access to pre-determined rides within the park, usually for one or two hour blocks of time. For true enthusiasts, the availability of this benefit is by far the best reason to join ACE or any other coaster club. (Another notable club is Coaster Zombies!)
Timing – Though not fool-proof, timing can help theme park visitors get more out of their visit. During the warmer months, Tuesdays are the best day to go. Whether you go on a Tuesday or any other day and you’re not planning on employing the Flash Pass, the best advice here would be to get to the park early and head out towards the more popular rides early. The park doesn’t usually reach peak capacity until around 11:30 AM, so heading over to Kingda Ka and El Toro from opening until then is the best bet for riding these rides with minimum wait.
Hopefully, these simple tips will offer help to readers who wish to spend more time riding roller coasters than waiting to ride them.
