I go to Great Adventure to experience the tallest VR ride in the world… and the park is dead.

I saw many signs that this was going to be a good day at Great Adventure. The day after was Bring a Friend day. The Wawa outside the park was empty.

The parking lot was empty. The security plaza was empty.

I arrived at about 10:10 and as soon as the passholder gates opened at 10:20… I realized my mistake. While I picked a short entry line, the large group ahead of me was activating Season Pass cards which they should have been doing in the activation line, not the processed line.

My main goal was to ride the new Virtual Reality on Zumanjaro Drop of Doom.

2841.

That is how many feet it takes to walk from the front entrance to Zumanjaro’s station. It is a looonnnggg walk. Thankfully (or not thankfully) that walk was broken up by the fact that while I arrived at Zumanjaro’s entrance at 10:30, it didn’t open until 10:50.

During that time I got to see El Toro do it’s morning tests and see Kingda Ka run with riders… once.

Today Kingda Ka had lots of difficulties however I’ll save my story for later in the report.

At 10:50 the park finally opened the queue for Zumanjaro. And then we walked… and walked… and walked. Zumanjaro always takes forever to get too, and with the anticipation of a “brand new” experience, it seemed to take even longer to get back there.

Unfortunately, my favorite part of the Zumanjaro experience, the single rider line was no more, as it was replaced by the Virtual Reality line. Now all guests (except Flashpass) go up the regular line and can choose a VR line or the regular line. They split where the single rider entrance is. I like this because if you don’t care for VR you don’t necessarily have to wait very long. However, I’m concerned how many regular guests will be let in for every VR guest.

These custom signs are pretty cool.

Finally, we get to the front of the line and we wait… and wait… and wait. Well, it wasn’t that long but after a twenty-minute wait for the ride to open left me patient. FINALLY, they start giving the headsets out and I manage to be on the third gondola. I immediately put on my headset and… IT WORKED! Haza! A Six Flags VR headset that worked as soon as I put it on!

But, in true Six Flags fashion, it seemed as if no one else’s headset worked as it took about 10 minutes from me sitting down to the ride actually dispatching.

Be warned, spoilers ahead… if you actually care about that stuff

Wow. It was actually pretty good. For my full review, watch my review video below.

Spoilers over

By the time I finished at Zumanjaro it was 11:10, 40 minutes after I got in line. I’ll give it a pass since it is a brand new experience but I won’t wait for it ever again.

Next was two straight walk-on rides on Toro, one in the back and one in row 2. On my second ride, we climbed the cable lift hill and stopped at the top since the other train hadn’t yet made it back into the station. We stopped for about 10 seconds and then proceeded to rollback a few inches until the anti-rollbacks caught us. It was a little scary but we immediately continued throughout the course and had an excellent ride (like always). I rode both trains A and B and didn’t notice much of a difference between the two. And of course, I got an infamous $1 El Toro locker. The El Toro loose article security guard was friendly and helpful unlike the Kingda Ka security guard… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Next, I moved over to Bizzaro and I waited one cycle for the back row. Bizzaro was running just as great as it always does and I would have ridden again if it wasn’t triple stacking. The lightning fast operations I saw a few weeks ago on Good Friday have returned to its normal stacking.

Then, to get to my favorite food spot Macho Nacho in Movietown, I caught the Skyway across the park.

You know it’s empty when Joker’s line is this short

Getting off the Skyway, I headed straight to Macho Nacho, only to find it closed. If I had known I would have eaten at the Plaza Del Carnival location. So I set off on a quest for food.

Eventually, I settled with the pulled pork sandwich at the Main Street Pub. While I didn’t expect much, it was one of the better food items I’ve had at the park. I would get that sandwich again.

Once I was finished with my meal, I walked straight on to Skull Mountain. That crazy ejector was apparent in the middle of the train and the ride was glass smooth throughout plus the operators were getting the trains out before the other even arrived on the break run. To top that off, there was a person on the train screaming hilariously and didn’t stop until the restraints unlocked in the station.

I grabbed a second-row walk-on ride on Nitro. Every time I ride this coaster my opinion of it shrinks. While I got more airtime than my ride on it a few weeks ago, it was matched with a violent rattle at the bottom of each airtime hill.

Then it was over to one of my favorites, Batman The Ride. Even though it appeared to be a one train wait, a new employee was being trained so it took a few extra minutes. I selected the back row and sitting next to me was another coaster enthusiast who was visiting the park for his first time. I talked to him on the lift hill and while we were stacking on the break run.

It was at this time I checked my phone to see what the other wait times around the park were. According to the Six Flags App, Kingda Ka only had a 15 minute wait. So I walked all the way over to the other side of the park to find out. Unfortunately the ride was closed however soon after a test train was successfully launched.

Dark Blue train waits for a test launch

Then I ran into Eddie the Security Guard.

I get it.

He stands outside, all day, telling people to put their stuff in lockers. The job sucks, I know.

But he has no excuse for being so rude to people who are unfamiliar with the park’s policy. He especially has no excuse considering that the Security Guard outside of El Toro was being helpful and polite to guests. These people paid good money to come to Six Flags Great Adventure, the last thing that should happen to them is a park employee yelling at them for them unknowingly breaking the rules. While I didn’t have time to visit guest services to complain, I will complain on the email survey.

Anyway after the test launch I walked straight into the station and sat right down in row two. Even though the station was relatively empty, the ride was still running it’s normal three trains. While I was glad it was doing so, it wasn’t saving any time since the computer was not letting the crew dispatch the train due to no one volunteering to sit in the back of the train. A new policy I was not aware of is that all Kingda Ka and El Toro guests must put their glasses in a bin on the platform. While this policy was not enforced at El Toro, a Kingda Ka team member asked me to place my glasses in the bin.

The ride was very smooth and a lot of fun. Because of how well well it was running I exited, ran back around the photo booth and into the entrance. A few moments later I was back in the station and in line for row 5. I waited about a minute behind the gates and quickly hopped on filling a single rider seat and I put my glasses in the designated bin.

We rolled out and stopped on the transfer, as the train ahead had not launched yet. I assumed we would be waiting for Zumanjaro but I did not see the gondolas rise.

So we waited and I noticed that no new guests were entering the station, so I assumed that the entrance had closed.

After about 5 minutes, our train was reversed back into the main station and as it was doing so, I noticed a mechanic inspecting the magnetic break fins. The train ahead of us was reversed into the left side of the station, so I got to see them manually park the train and the merge switch in action. So we waited and waited, but since I had nothing else to do I decided to give the ride 15 minutes. During that time I struck up some conversation, and the man I was originally riding with bailed.

I was about to bail, but I saw the crew checking the restraints on the train in the left station and dispatch it. It successfully launched and the guests who were reversed into the left station started to fill our train. However, since quite a few of them bailed and they couldn’t fill the train, I sat down in the back row of the train and braced for death. Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised as it was even smoother than my front row ride on the coaster a few weeks before.

When we arrived back into the station I exited and ran back around grabbing a seat in the middle of the train. Again, it was quite smooth and even though I wanted to ride again I decided I wanted to ride Toro a few more times.

Over at Toro it was slightly more crowded than Kingda Ka, but every row except for the front had a one train or less wait. I proceeded to walk all the way to row 18 and stay on the KIA Soul Train for two consecutive rides. Then, I ran back around to the entrance and sat in row 4 for one last ride.

After that, I needed to leave the park due to other plans. I wish I was able to stay longer and take advantage of the low crowds. It’s days like these that make me love Great Adventure, as the park was dead but still had decent operations.