Local promotion turns into gridlock at SFOG

April 5, 2007, 9:49 PM · This occurred on Thursday morning, April 5th. A radio station promotion for free tickets at Six Flags Over Georgia led the park to close its gates after heavy traffic, which started building at 3:30 am, shut down Interstate 20.

This week is Spring Break week for most metro Atlanta school systems (Six Flags is open daily this week). Not sure who is more to blame, SFOG or the local radio station which sponsored the promotion.

http://wsbradio.com/news/040507sixflags.html

Replies (5)

Derek Potter

April 6, 2007 at 7:03 AM · If Six Flags wants to give away the gate for a day to draw visitors, than good for them. It's their business to do with as they please. Unfortunately someone at the park or radio station forgot to think this out and prepare for a lot of people. 6 to 9 is rush hour. Think about the amount of traffic a town like Atlanta generates on a highway during rush hour, then think about how many cars a full theme park parking lot has. That's a lot of cars. I've been on Interstate 20 a few times during non rush hour, and it's pretty busy anyway. Reports said that people were there as early as 3:30 (they were the smart ones this time), and that kids got out of parents cars and were walking down the freeway to get there...only to be turned away because they "weren't in a vehicle" (hey they had to get at least a couple bucks for parking to pay their employees for the day). This is where you can fault the people for not paying attention to the conditions of the admission, or perhaps the radio station for not emphasizing the fact that you had to pay for parking. In the future, it wouldn't be a bad idea to coordinate this kind of event with the DOT, or police, or someone who can control traffic lanes. In the end, it doesn't look like it turned out to be the positive thing it was meant to be.

Once again, an "A" for effort to SFOG for extending their hand out to the city with free admission, but this is a lesson. Never underestimate the power of free stuff in this country. In this case though, and as it is usually, it wasn't worth it...not if you had to wait in that mess and put up with all of the genuine idiots and morons that gridlock seems to generate. Now the season pass doesn't look so bad now does it.