Fun ain't cheap
Written: Jul 03 '02 (Updated Jul 03 '02)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Great roller coasters
Cons: Expensive; too many "alternate" expenses
The Bottom Line: Not for a family with children, and certainly not for anyone without a lot of money to spend. Not worth the time or expense.
|
|
|
| en7489's Full Review: Six Flags Over Georgia |
I visited Six Flags over Georgia a couple days ago, and I have to say that it was disappointing at best. Even though I purchased reduced rate tickets through my military travel office, I still feel that my $120 for a family of four was too much.
The park does have some good rides for thrill-seekers, but little else for the in-between aged children. My daughter is a roller coaster fan and we had a blast trying out all of the coasters. Unfortunately, we had to miss the newest one, the "Superman" coaster, it was shut down for some reason (we never learned why) after we had been in line for over 30 minutes. But the Ninja and Scorcher were great, along with the older wooden coasters. What did bother me about the roller coasters was the shortness of the rides. Maybe I just had a warped sense of time when I was a kid, but roller coasters seemed to be much, much longer back then. While we stood in line for the Scorcher for over 45 minutes, I timed the ride duration - 1 min, 50 seconds from the time it started to the time it stopped. 45 minutes of waiting for less than two minutes of fun.
The few water rides they had were OK, Thunder River was fun and the Log Flume, though fun, was nothing more than once up, once down, in a big oval. Not much to it other than making a big splash once and getting off. They have a bridge over the log flume where you can watch others come down the chute and you'll get plenty soaked, that was almost as fun as the ride itself.
Other than that, there were a couple other smaller rides, but nothing much for the less adventurous, but wanting-to-ride kids. This left my wife and son standing around for 30-45 minutes waiting for my daughter and I to ride the roller coasters.
Most disappointing about Six Flags was the additional costs. We assumed that paying the park fees would cover all of the rides and adventures - how wrong we were. We wanted to go on the go-karts, but at an additional $6 per kid and $8 per adult, we decided to pass. There were a couple of rides that looked like haunted house rides (the kind that you get in a cart and ride through, or walk through), but after finding out there were additional costs, we decided to skip them. They had a racing type ride where the kids got to get in a NASCAR mockup and drive (like a large video game that moves), but the cost was something like 5.75 for the driver and 3.75 for the passenger - we gave in to this one just so my son could ride something other than the water rides. The kicker to all of this was that they had a virtual reality video game where 20 or so people can sit in a theater-like stadium and play a game against each other - $5 per person. How ridiculous. I finally asked a lady that worked for the park why there were additional costs for some of these rides and she told me that those rides didn't belong to six-flags, they were basically contracted rides and charged their own prices. I was mad - for $120 for a family of four, I felt that I had every right to expect that all rides would be free.
Even worse, there are some arcade games and games of chance (basketball throws, ring toss, etc) similar to carnival games. While my daughter and I were waiting for the roller coasters, my wife and son were checking these out. They also were ridiculously overpriced. My wife paid three dollars for ONE DART at a dart-throw game. I remember not too long ago paying 2 dollars for three darts at a carnival.
We made another costly mistake here - we didn't bring our own lunch or drinks. A 20 ounce coke out of the machine cost $2.75. We ate lunch at McDonalds (in the park) - $6 for a quarter-pounder meal. And it sure wasn't real McDonalds - it was one of those cheapy franchise places. We couldn't even tell them "no onions" for my son's burger - your choices are "regular" (with everything), or "plain" (just the burger and ketchup/mustard).
Overall, I was very, very disappointed with Six Flags. Disappointed enough to know that I will NEVER visit them again, regardless where it is located. Busch Gardens will get my business from now on, even though it is an additional 3 hours of driving just to get there. I will pay the extra cost for a hotel room just to make the trip. I've been to both Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Busch Gardens Tampa and they beat Six Flags hands down. Busch Gardens seems to recognize the value of "Family Fun"; Six Flags seems to recognize only the "Almighty Dollar".
Oh, did I mention that parking here is between $10 - $12?
If you wonder why I gave Six Flags one star, well, there was no other option - you can't give zero stars! But, it did earn the one star, the roller coasters were fun. The water rides were decent. It's everything else that sucked.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
en7489
|
|
Location: Massachusetts
Reviews written: 61
Trusted by: 6 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.