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SIX FLAGS GREAT ADVENTURE
& Six Flags Hurricane Harbor
Jackson, New Jersey
Six Flags Theme Parks
 Park News - (9/6/2024) Screamscape was sent a little bit of anonymous info regarding the closure of the Skyride at the park this season. While the general speculation was that the closure of the attraction may have been a budget cut move encouraged by the pre-merger Six Flags CEO, Selim Bassoul, our source claims the issue may be more serious.
Despite the fact that the Skyride under-went a major refurbishment a few seasons ago, I’m hearing that during pre-season inspections, some “rust” issues were detected with the top of a few of the ropeway’s towers, leading to a failed safety inspection, thus the Skyride was has not been cleared to operate. Given that we’ve seen zero reports all season of any kind of maintenance efforts taking place on the towers, we can only assume that nothing has changed with the operational status of the ride thus far in 2024.
The only hope now is that the newly merged Six Flags / Cedar Fair will show some love to the Six Flags Great Adventure attraction and restore it to operational condition. All Von Roll parts are readily available from Doppelmayr, and in addition to the mega-chain’s existing crew in New Jersey, Cedar Fair has maintenance teams who also work on Von Roll ropeways at Cedar Point and California’s Great America to call upon for expertise when needed. There is no reason to let this extremely rare attraction be shut down or removed.
While I don’t know how effectual this is, there is a Change.org petition up right now to “Save the Skyride”, and at the very least signing it will hopefully show the park that their guests want to keep this unique aerial gondola attraction for the future. While the Six Flags of old was content with letting all their old Von Roll skyrides pass into the scrap-heap, Cedar Fair’s parks have been able to take good care of the versions at their parks thus far.
(9/2/2024) Six Flags Great Adventure is the latest Six Flags park to announce a new Chaperone Policy will be put into effect during Fright Fest events. All guests age 15 and under must be accompanied by a Chaperone at least 21 years old to remain in the park after 5pm. Underage guests in the park will be asked to leave or ejected from the park at that time.
(8/31/2024) Fright Fest Extreme will open at Six Flags Great Adventure on September 13th (aka: Friday the 13th!) and continue on over 32 select nights between then and November 3rd. The list of this year’s haunts includes: The SAW Franchise, The Conjuring Universe, Stranger Things, Army of the Dead, Trick ‘r Treat and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
That isn’t all however, as there are many more haunted attractions in store for you to experience this year, including Big Top Terror, Asylum, The Witches Reflection, Exile Canyon, CarnEvil, The Bloody Fountain, Curse of Blackbeard’s Bounty, Demon District, Unleashed, Dead Man’s Party, Blade Drummers, and Freak Show.
(8/8/2024) According to an update posted by a local radio station, the SkyRide at Six Flags Great Adventure is not closed for good. According to a Six Flags official who spoke with them, the aerial gondola attraction is only ‘temporarily closed”. No details were given as to why it has been closed, or when it might reopen, but at least they are confirming that it is not closed for good.
(7/28/2024) A Screamscape source has sent in a rumor that the Skyride may be in trouble at Six Flags Great Adventure. While the Sky Ride has not run all season, this wouldn’t be the first time the ride has gone down for an extended period of time only to be revived a year or two later. The disheartening thing this year however is that the Skyride is said to have been removed from the park website, app and even the map, or at least the cable and tower lines, as the buildings for each station are still there. It is also worth mentioning that I’ve been told that the directional signage around the park has also removed any reference to it.
The curious thing is that the Sky Ride was just refurbished a few years ago, complete with the replacement of the main cable, so it doesn’t make sense to suddenly close it now, unless there is something more serious wrong. The ride also had a sponsorship deal with M&M that started back in 2011 I believe, so it also may be possible that the sponsorship deal was not renewed, and with it the park may have also been forced to axe the maintenance budget for the 2024 season.
As you might expect, this is another famous Von Roll “Sky Ride” system, but the one at Great adventure is fairly unique as it features two sets of cables running side by side instead of the one cable-way. The history of the ride is fairly unique as well, as the creation of the ride at the park is actually the combination of two separate ride systems, incorporating drive and cars built for the New York World’s Fair (1964-1965) system with the unique double-line towers taken from the failed Freedomland USA park in New York (1960-1964) to create the version at Great Adventure. It’s worth mentioning that today’s construction standards in the US now actually prevent the relocation of these rides. While the cars and station parts can be reused and sent to other Von Roll rides, the towers themselves are prevented from being re-purposed and re-built at another location within the United States. They can be sold out of the country however, as the pieces of the Tulsa Sky Ride that was removed last year were purchased by a foreign used ride company who indicated they planned to relocate to an unknown location somewhere in the UAE.
There may be a silver lining to this however in the form of the merger between Cedar Fair and Six Flags. While Six Flags has been content to close and remove the Sky Rides from all the rest of the parks they control over the years (SF Over Georgia, Over Texas, Astroworld, New England, Great America, St. Louis, Magic Mountain and La Ronde) Cedar Fair has been keeping the versions running at their parks at California’s Great America and Cedar Point running. I think the only Von Roll Cedar Fair closed was the one that used to run at Worlds of Fun, which closed back in the late 80’s. Keeping that in mind, including that Cedar Fair just refurbished their entire gondola fleet for the 2024 season, there is hope that the new Six Flags management may also restore the Great Adventure ride to service, especially since it does a good job transporting guests from one side of the park to the other.
(11/25/2023) For fans of Six Flags Great Adventure over the years, the park has a special offering right now to purchase 50th Anniversary Bricks that will be used to create the refurbished Dream Street Pathway at the park. The bricks feature one of four different designs and a custom inscription, and you will also receive a “mini replica brick” and certificate to put on display at home.
The mini bricks to keep at home are a nice touch, and the design options include the choice of one of three different logos the park has used over the years, as well as a Wild Safari logo. HOWEVER… the final price is going to hit you with a bit of sticker shock. You have to follow the link to an outside company to design the brick, and only at the end are you presented with the price of $149.99. The bricks do turn out nice though, as Six Flags Fiesta Texas used the same group for their own memorial walkway a couple of years ago to celebrate that park’s 30th Anniversary.
2024 - The Flash: Vertical Velocity & Savannah Sunset Resort and Spa / Safari Off Road Adventure Returns, Log Flume Makeover - (8/14/2024) To the disapointment of many, Six Flags has now officially delayed the opening of the new The Flash: Vertical Velocity roller coaster until the 2025 season.
(8/3/2024) Well, August is here and Flash: Vertical Velocity at Six Flags Great Adventure is still not open. There is some great irony in the fact that a ride themed to the world's fastest superhero has had one of the slowest construction paces of all time.
A new construction update video posted this weekend (see below) shows off the current status of the ride. While the coaster track itself has been physically installed for some time now, there apparently is no station structure in place and workers have been busy installed the Flash icon logo at the top of the central tower. For the most part a lot of the landscaping and fencing around the ride has been put into place, but otherwise there still seems to be a lot left to do as progress is moving at the proverbial “snail’s pace” for some reason.
So with all that in mind, I’d forget about seeing this ride open anytime this month, and focus more on it being something extra at the park during Fright Fest season in September or October most likely.
(7/1/2024) A new construction update for Flash: Vertical Velocity at Six Flags Great Adventure can be seen below. As previously mentioned, track construction is complete and they appear to be finalizing the installation of the rest of the ride’s electrical work for the various launch systems and prepping things for any final concrete pours ahead of future ride testing.
(5/31/2024) So what’s going on with the new Flash coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure? According to various reports the track is now fully installed as of this week, so the park is waiting to install the cars onto the track and for clearance to begin testing soon. Unfortunately, this will still take several more weeks, so you may not want to expect to see The Flash: Vertical Velocity ready to open until sometime in July at this point. Stay tuned!
(5/27/2024) The local news has posted a preview video of the new Savannah Sunset Resort & Spa experience opening this summer at Six Flags Great Adventure on June 14th.
(5/21/2024) Construction on The Flash: Vertical Velocity at Six Flags Great Adventure has picked up the pace based on the trip report video below. In fact, from the look of things, the track install actually looks to be getting very close to being complete.
(3/21/2024) The new animation with some POV footage of The Flash: Vertical Velocity has been posted by Six Flags Great Adventure. Check it out below.
(2/25/2024) Six Flags Great Adventure has announced that their new Savannah Sunset Resort & Spa “glamping” experience will be ready to open to guests starting on June 14th. Reservations are now being accepted on the resorts new official website page.
(9/4/2023) While nothing was mentioned during the big Six Flags announcement day, guests to Six Flags Great Adventure have noticed a new banner is up at the park’s Log Flume ride claiming that the ride is currently closed “as it undergoes a makeover for our 50th Anniversary” and will reopen in Summer 2024.
Don’t look for this to be anything as dramatic as what is happening at Six Flags over Texas, but perhaps it will be more than just your typical off-season refurbishment as well. A little added themeing couldn’t hurt. Stay tuned!
(8/31/2023) Six Flags Great Adventure has confirmed that the park’s Safari Off Road Adventure is returning in 2024. When COVID-19 struck and the theme park was closed for months, Six Flags was able to reopen the animal section under the former self drive-thru tour concept from the years before as the Wild Safari Drive-Thru Adventure. While the self-driven animal attraction is still open now, I suspect this year will be the last for it once the large Safari Off Road Adventure trucks return to service in 2024, so be sure to get your last run through now while you can.
Meanwhile Six Flags Great Adventure has also updated the details about the new Savannah Sunset Resort & Spa concept, which will be a Glamping style experience within the animal exhibit space. “Spend a night inside a custom luxury canvas tent that brings opulence to the open savannah. Relax and unwind at our state-of-the-art spa and experience find dining in the wild at our restaurant.” I suspect this will temporary set-up, but for those interested, you’ll want to book your stay for this one-of-a-kind experience when they are made available, because I have a feeling they will sell out quickly.
(8/30/2023) Six Flags Great Adventure has announced two new additions for 2024: The Flash: Vertical Velocity and the Savannah Sunset Resort and Spa. The Flash: Vertical Velocity will indeed be a Vekoma Super Boomerang style roller coaster, the first-of-its-kind in North America, and feature a new train design inspired by The Flash’s speed suit.
Currently the website announcement for the Savannah Sunset Resort and Spa page is incomplete, showing just the logo and text announcing “Spend the night inside a custom luxury canvas tent that brings opulence to the open savanna.” Meanwhile the rest of the text on the actual page is a copy of the text for the new roller coaster instead, but I imagine they’ll fix it before too long.
(8/13/2023) Six Flags Great Adventure seems to be teasing something via an odd math problem on their social media: “4+50+48+15+24+10+436=”
Oh boy, I knew those bad grades in my high school math class might bite me in the ass someday, but I figured that had more to do with always thinking that 42 was the ultimate answer to Life, The Universe and Everything! (Props to those fans who get that reference)
Obviously basic addition isn’t going to solve this riddle., but some numbers do stand out with some potentially obvious meanings.
50 = 2024 will be Six Flags Great Adventure’s 50th Anniversary
48 = A very common height limit for many roller coasters
15 = If this is a roller coaster, this would be the 15th roller coaster for the park.
24 = Could be indicative of a lot of things, but 24 is also a very common number of seats on a roller coaster train if it has 6 cars.
As for the rest… they’re more unknown and may have more to do with the ride itself, such as the number “4” could represent the number of launches, or the number of inversions. In similiar fashion, the number “10” could also represent the number of inversions, or seconds of weightlessness, or number of negative-G moments. “436” is a bit harder a number ot chew, because I double the park is building anything only 436 feet long, and definitely not 436 feet high. This begs the question… is 436 a metric measurement, which would 436 would translate into 1430.4 feet, which starts to feel more appropriate for a coaster’s length.
As luck would have it, a new roller coaster design has been in the news this year that is actually advertised as being exactly 436 meters / 1430.4 feet in length. This would be the brand new Vekoma Super Boomerang, which also stands 52.5 meters tall, but height is always adjustable to a point, so that number could also sub in for the 50 or 48 in the equation. As a shuttle-coaster, it also delivers a total of 4 inversions (2 forwards, 2 backwards) and based on a POV video of the prototype that just opened in China under the name “Cloud Shuttle” it does appear to offer potentially 10 moments of negative-Gs. Oh, at Vekoma coaster trains routinely have a 48 inch height limits, and the prototype does have trains that seat 24 riders.
This is all just guest work, and a lot of others have come to similar conclusions as well, most likely because when you google “436 meter coaster” the first three search entries that pop-up all point to articles about the new Vekoma Super Boomerang coaster design. So just a thought to keep in mind.
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