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News & Rumors
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California’s Great America
San Jose / Santa Clara, CA
Cedar Fair Entertainment
See our WinterFest 2017 Report Here
 Park News - (12/20/2024) Things are changing at California’s Great America in 2025. According to an official newsletter sent out to passholders today, the park’s 2025 season will begin on April 5 and only run through to late October 2025. The letter also announced that for the 2025 season the park will focus on their “coasters, beloved family attractions and kid-friendly experience” however, the park will not be hosting any of the seasonal special events that they have in the past.
Currently the park is still open for WinterFest, but based on next year’s schedule, this will likely be the LAST WinterFest ever for the park, so if you haven’t gone, you’ve still got a few days left to see it.
It goes without saying that this is a huge step in the unwinding of California’s Great America ahead of the eventual closure of the entire park. With the merger of Cedar Fair and Six Flags now complete, I’d also wager that we will instead see all of the major season special events taking place to the North at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in 2025, since it is now free of competition with GCA.
With the land under CGA sold off, the previous agreement set 2033 as the longest possible year that the park MIGHT remain open. From what I understand however, the actual lease to continue to run the park only guarantees that CGA will remain open up to the 2028 season, and at that point, if the new land owners are not yet ready to redevelop the property Six Flags will be given the opportunity to purchase a 5-year extension, which is where that 2033 date comes from.
Without the extension, the hard truth is that there may only be 4 more seasons left for California’s Great America to continue to operate. So I’ve got to wonder just how long it will be before we see any rides retired or “moved” out of the park as they start to wind things down.
(11/17/2024) A reader sent in an interesting email this week that got me thinking. While the announcement from Six Flags leaked several plans they have for their parks in 2026, one item does have a bit of an impact for one other park in the chain. Six Flags Great America was announced to be hosting a celebration for the park’s 50th Anniversary in 2026… but you also have to remember that California's Great America is the TWIN to Six Flags Great America. Both parks were built at the same time by the Marriott hotel chain, and both opened in 1976… with the California property actually opening a couple of months before the Chicago area park.
And yet… while California’s Great America will also turn 50 in 2026, there was no mention of this fact. Of course the fact that Cedar Fair sold the land under the park to a new owner a few years back and that they said that CGA will only survive until 2033 at the latest is a bit of a downer. The new owners are able to set a date as to when they are ready to take control of the property, which I’m sure has a built in countdown timer (12 months? 18? 24?) in which they have to salvage anything of value from the park that they want to keep and level the rest to the ground.
So while the long separated twin parks are finally reunited under one owner for the time being, it is only a matter of time before there will only be one “Great America” theme park once again. I’m fairly confident that the California park will definitely make it to the 50th anniversary, beyond that, I think the ticking clock will be a little more evident and we may start to see a few rides removed if they want to save them and sent them to new homes.
This leads me to my final thought today… and keep in mind there is absolutely no rumor behind this at all. This is just pure speculation on my park only… but if you’re visiting CGA, I’d keep a close eye on Patriot. In fact, if your a fan of Patriot, I’d get as many rides in on it as you can… while you can.
Patriot started out as Vortex in 1991, a stand-up roller coaster that was also the world’s second ever roller coaster built by B&M, following the debut of Iron Wolf at CGA’s twin park in 1990. Vortex ran as designed until 2016 when it was shut down part-way through the season to undergo a conversion process that saw it reopen in 2017 as a B&M Floorless style roller coaster. This involved replacing the original Stand-Up trains with brand new Floorless trains and re-outfitting and engineering the station to accommodate the required hardware for loading B&M’s Floorless roller coaster trains.
While the layout of Patriot (Vortex) will likely be determined to be something none of the current Six Flags parks has an interest in saving, the B&M Floorless trains from 2017 are going to be worth something for sure to another park. While these could be used to replacing aging hardless on another Floorless coaster in the chain, I had another more interesting idea that would involve the conversion of another B&M Stand-Up coaster. One by the name of Green Lantern that was just announced to be coming down and removed from Six Flags Great Adventure.
Green Lantern started out life with another name (Chang) at another non Six Flags branded park (Kentucky Kingdom) back in 1997 where it ran until 2009. At the time, Six Flags had bought Kentucky Kingdom and knowing they were planning on closing that park, removed Chang and sent it to the New Jersey park to be re-branded as Green Lantern for the 2011 season. Unlike Patriot that features a very short layout (1920 ft) and 2 small inversions, Green Lantern (Chang) is more than twice as long (4155 ft), with an impressive 154 ft drop and 5 inversions. In fact, Chang was designed to be Kentucky Kingdom’s “1-Up” coaster to Cedar Point’s Mantis Stand-Up coaster. Fun fact… Mantis was converted by Cedar Fair into a B&M Floorless coaster as well in 2015, the year before Patriot, and then renamed Rougarou and is still running to this day.
I’m sure you can guess where I’m going with this. Green Lantern's track + Patriot's trains and station hardware could quite possibly be combined into a new Frankenstein creation at another park elsewhere in the chain. And if not for Green Lantern, there are three other B&M stand-ups out there in the chain still running: Vortex at Carowinds, Georgia Scorcher at Six Flags over Georgia and Riddler’s Revenge at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Don’t bother with Riddler however, as that park already has a B&M Floorless coaster (Scream!), but the other two could also be very viable candidates for conversion.
Just something to think about….
(8/7/2024) Has California Great America already decided to remove one of their waterslides? I’m told that during the 2023 season the South Bay Shores waterpark closed down the two Reef Racers slides for the rest of the season. At the time there was a sign saying that they would reopen in 2024, but this has not happened, and now if you look at the official website the Reef Racers are no longer listed as attractions, though you can still find them on the park map.
Pre-dating the South Bay Shores re-branding of the waterpark, the Reef Racers were added in 2005 under the Paramount Parks banner as an expansion of the Boomerang Bay waterpark that itself opened just the previous year. The slides were not new at the time however, and instead were said to have been relocated from the Manteca Waterslides park that closed down in 2004.
(7/27/2024) While there are still a good number of years left in the park, it is sad to realize that when California’s Great America does close for good, the world will also lose one more classic Von Roll Skyride. This is one of many Von Roll skyways that were very popular across California’s parks and attractions, with the CGA version opening back in 1976.
Other similar Von Roll Skyways still operate to the south in San Diego at SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo, with two more having been retired in the Los Angeles area that used to run at Six Flags Magic Mountain and Disneyland.
Check out a video below that was shot this past week showcasing the ride experience from the park.
(10/25/2023) Cedar Fair has changed their mind about offering year-round operations at three of their parks after just switching over to weekend operations during the colder months just last year. This list would include Carowinds, California’s Great America and Kings Dominion.
The official word would seem to be that all three parks failed to attract enough attendance on those new dates, which are mostly weekends in January, February and some of March. However, based on guest reactions from those who did attend on those dates, guests frequently reported encountering those parks with what appeared to be a limited staff, a good number of rides unable to operate (due to a mix of limited staffing or maintenance closures) and a couple of days where the weather was just too iffy and the parks opted to close early for the day.
Of course, all of these reasons were also anticipated to happen when Cedar Fair first announced that these parks would be switching to year-round operations, so I’m not entirely surprised by this move. After all, even in Los Angeles where competitor Six Flags operates Magic Mountain year-round, but only on weekends in the colder months of the year, that park also suffers from many of these same issues, but in an environment that typically offers better weather.
Now if any Cedar Fair park was going to have a good go at it, I’d give the nod to California’s Great America, but the park’s attendance numbers have always been a little limited, and some potential guests may be less likely to visit with a pending permanent closure looming by 2033, limiting the number of new attractions we might see added there. Carowinds stood a chance as well of making it happen, but as I live in the region, the off-season weather can be a little fickle… sunny and warm one day and freezing cold, feeling like snow is about to fall the next. So the success of off-season weekends at Carowinds would definitely be something that varied from year to year. Kings Dominion in Virginia is a bit further North and East from Carowinds, so I’d expect even colder weather with a greater possibility of snow.
So according to the park schedules posted for the months after WinterFest, look for Carowinds to open for the 2024 season on March 9 where it will begin Fri/Sat/Sunday operations, and California’s Great America and Kings Dominion will begin weekend operations two weeks later on March 23rd.
2024 - Nothing is known at this time...
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Track Record
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California’s Great America
San Jose / Santa Clara, CA
Cedar Fair Entertainment
Abbreviation: CGA
(formerly: PGA)
CAGreatAmerica.com
californiasgreatamerica.com
Newest Developments:
2023 - Pacific Gliders
2022 - Liberty Twirler
2021 - South Bay Shores
2018 - Railblazer
2017 - Patriot
2016 - Mass Effect: New Earth
2015 - Planet Snoopy Expan.
2013 - Gold Striker
2010 - Planet Snoopy
2008 - Firefall
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