I went to SFOG on Saturday and wanted to make some notes.
-I was worried that going on a Saturday in October, notoriously the busiest days for seasonal parks, combined with the insanely cheap MVP pass sale, combined with a 12pm opening (seriously Six Flags??), and it being a big market park, was going to lead to a huge nightmare trying to get into the park. I admittedly went in with pretty low expectations of massive crowds, understaffing, and generally miserable experience (but I really wanted to get out of FL for a few days while I had a chance so we went anyway).
While Atlanta traffic exceeded every bad stereotype (took an hour to get to the park and we were like 15 minutes away), to my surprise once we got there, like right at opening time, there was no line to get through the toll plaza and barely any cars in the parking lot. Getting in was a breeze. While it did pick up as the day went on, it wasn't nearly as crowded as it should have been. Not a great sign for SF considering how insanely cheap the passes are.
-I will give Cedar Fairs management some credit in cleaning up the park a little bit. I have been to SFOG many times over the last 20 years as its my "home SF park" (though I live 7 hours away), and they have at least made an effort at making some improvements. They have made the walkways leading up to the park from the parking lots a little safer with new fencing, put in some rocks and a small fountain as you walk out of the parking lot and up to the parks entrance, and they put new security checks and entrance gates on both sides of the entrance plaza (if you are unfamiliar with SFOG's layout, it has parking lots on separate sides of the entrance, and it used to be one entrance, but now it has two). This has made getting into the park a lot more quick and efficient.
However, I would be remised to say that while this made getting into the park more efficient, it also completely eliminated the view of the facade as you enter the park (or at least from the side I was coming in on, the Batman side). SFOG does have a nice entrance facade and now you don't see it at all, you literally enter in the side of the entrance plaza. So while I think this renovation was well intended and makes things flow better, if they wanted to spend the money and do it right, they could have made it look much better. This to me just seems short sighted.
-On the same note the new color scheme on Goliath...wtf...like, why? Again its good that they are painting rides but the colors were great before and now it just looks BLAND AF. No character or personality whatsoever. Hate it.
-"Boo Fest" was kind of a bust. What they had was cute and not necessarily bad, but could easily be completed in like 20 minutes and was a very...very small section of the park (contained entirely to one little section). Obviously these seasonal parks make a huge deal of Fright Fest, put resources into it, and make a lot of money off of it...so I don't know why they wouldn't do the same for Boo Fest. I think Six Flags is just bad at appealing to families, like they don't know how to do it. Sea World and Busch Gardens make a killing off of their Sweetacular/Spooktacular events and I have no doubt that and the holidays are a big driver of pass sales. Atlanta is an absolutely huge market, relatively wealthy, has favorable weather, there is no reason the park shouldn't be slammed with families on weekends in October/December. But there is very little effort made to appeal to them and as a result there were very few families there for Boo Fest...and they cancelled Holiday in the Park. Just seems like they are leaving money on the table.
-Operations and day to day maintenance of the rides are still trash...easily one of the worst major parks in the country in regards to operations. Sometimes it seems like they are purposely trying to be as slow as possible. Dispatch times were pathetic.
The antique car ride, which had a loose Halloween overlay (so its going to get more riders than normal), had FOUR CARS running total. As a result it had like an hour wait. Are you kidding me? We were denied riding a horse on the Carousel because they said its minimum 42" to ride on a horse and anyone under that has to ride on a bench...that's not even one of the rides requirements, the requirement is those under 42" need an adult. This is literally the only Carousel I have ever seen with a rule like that. And I don't know if that's an actual rule or if that ride operator was just trained with inaccurate information which wouldn't surprise me.
-The train that runs around the park had just a few coaches on it (like half the train was missing...not entirely sure why, but based off the circumstances my assumption of course goes to maintenance budget). This was not an issue for us but if it were were busier it would be a major issue. And then on the train the speaker that plays the spiel was deafeningly loud. Like common sense should dictate that it shouldn't be blaring loudly in peoples ears.
And then the spiel itself while the train was going was very puzzling. The ride spiel (which was pre-recorded) kept saying over and over "in this spot used to be [x ride], and in this spot it used to be [y-ride], and then in this spot it used to be [z-ride]." It was just bizarre hearing what used to be in those spots over and over and over again...like...can you focus on something more positive? lol. Just a bizarre thing to focus on a family train.
So yeah, I know this review sounds overwhelmingly negative, but again its SFOG so I guess that shouldn't really be a surprise. At least it seemed like everything was open, they did some things to clean up the park a little bit, and it was easy to get in (once it picked up the lines did get excessively long though because of really slow operations).
I've been there too a few times, but I think the repaint of Goliath looks really good- It looks to me like the Cedar merger might finally bring some help to this place.
All regional parks are only open on weekends in the fall.
Thanks for posting - I went there once many years ago.
I was visiting Two friends in Bama that I served with and since I just got out - I went to visit them.
And we spent a day at SF GA. It was OK - a lot of rides but not much theming.
It looks like it is only open on weekends?