Six Flags: Where Young People Go To Die
You ever go to a casino and notice old people staring deathly into the eyes of the slot machine, the marathon runner who never smiles, never sleeps and never gives up on sucking the life out of its victims. Old people will sit there for hours and just keep pulling the arm of Mr. Slot Machine until one day, they’re gone and Mr. Slot Machine move’s on to it’s next victim.
Well, Six Flags is no different for young people. The cigarettes in the casino are all the fried, unhealthy, expensive food at Six Flags. The alcohol in a casino is the sugary drinks you can get everywhere in Six Flags with the all you can drink soda containers costing $35. The slot machine equivalent is admission to the park and all the extra rides that don’t come with general admission. You can easily spend $1000+ for the day on a family of four with their prices soaring to $75 for a general admission ticket on the weekend + $40 for a one day dining plan and drink all day bottle + $190 for Flash Pass + $30 for food brings the grand total to $307 for one person. If you multiply that by 4, $1228.
Oh and if you want to buy the Flash Pass watch you can put down an extra $85 deposit which you get back as long as you don’t break the watch, scratch it or walk out of the park with it which was what I did forgetting it was on my wrist.
Next topic in this hell hole, here is the most significant event that stood out to me: I was about to go on the rollercoaster X2 which sometimes has a 4 hour wait time and out of the corner of my eye, I see this little girl begin to say to her friends, “I have been waiting two and a half hours for this ride and now I can’t believe I can finally ride it.” That struck my core. I said to her, “Are you kidding, you could have been doing so much more with your little life.” Her friends say, they should have gotten the flash pass and I reply, it’s not worth it and explain why. As soon as I finish my explanation, one of my friends Chase has just finished his ride and starts walking toward me. I ask the little girl if she wants to ride with me or ride with her friends as they will have to wait for the next round but she will not. She says she will wait for her friends so I look to Chase and say, are you ready for round 2? He says of course and just like that, he rides back to back making that a 5 hour wait time normally. What would 5 hours have been worth to this little girl. What would 5 hours be worth to any little girl.
Next up, the infamous Flash Pass. It took us 30 minutes waiting on line to get the Flash Pass. My first thought, why the F are we waiting on line to not wait on line. I get to the cashier and ask him the options. There are three: The Regular where you wait virtually for your favorite rides, the Gold which reduces your wait time up to %50 and the Platinum which reduces your wait time up to %90. My friends and I have money but couldn’t justify paying for the Platinum. We get the Gold and also put an additional $85 down for the watch they give you that is very difficult to use. I am a techie and am like, how does this work?!?!! It was a nightmare.
Here is how the Flash Pass works. You have a list of all the rides working currently on your smart watch, many were out of service which we found out later, and you book your ride. We pick the longest wait time ride which was X2 at 120 minute wait. That means that the actual wait for the ride was 4 hours since we got the package that is supposed to reduce wait time by %50. After you click reserve, you cannot reserve any other ride. We are shocked, why do we still have to wait 2 hours if we just bought the Flash Pass. So we go to another ride while we wait and that line is 45 minutes long. You can only choose one ride at a time on your watch to wait for and can only go to that ride once the wait time has expired. There were a lot of only 1 more minute to wait before we could be let on the ride which was incredibly annoying. I tried to bribe the attendants but none took my offer.
Are we thieves?:
Onto our next attraction, the food! We spent some time waiting on line to get terrible food. As we were waiting with our ordered food in our hand to pay, we realized the line wasn’t moving. We were waiting and waiting and finally, my friend just goes off the line to eat his food. Noone said anything. I did the same as I was sick of waiting for yet another line. A third friend did as well and 20 minutes later, the line to pay started moving. Noone even noticed that we didn’t pay and no one cared. The staff seemed like prisoners working to collect their freedom, heads down just timing when their shift was done.
The above scenario also happened at a clothing store in the park. A friend was sweating in pants that she was wearing and wanted to change to shorts. She went into a store and brought out a pair of shorts to show us asking our opinion about whether she should buy them. Noone followed her out of the store or was anywhere near any of the exits. There was actually no one around period that worked in the store. She looked and said, I guess this is mine now. We are not the type of people to act this way in any form but, it seemed to be a dead zone out here. Only young people worked the stores and they just didn’t care about anything.
Overall, my opinion of Six Flags is avoid it at all costs. The food is garbage, the rides are pretty awesome but not worth the wait, you will walk miles to get onto any ride, and the cost to entry is entirely too high to make it worthwhile. If you’re young and want to waste away, this is the perfect place for you otherwise, go read a book or go to the beach.
