The 90s were pretty much the decade coaster experiments and themed rides throughout the entire Six Flags chain. Also, I loved the commercials where they took shots at Disney.
Thank you so much for putting this series together! I was a season pass holder in the early 2000's as a young adult and now I am a pass holder again and enjoy visiting with my son. Learning more about the history and seeing the commercials that I remember from 'back in the day' is awesome!
The summer of 2000 was so frustrating as a child. The entire summer I was chomping at the bit to go to the new waterpark, but it just kept raining all the time. There was one time we were literally in the car on the way to Hurricane Harbor when the weather forecast on the radio changed to call for rain, and we ended up going to Blockbuster instead. At that age it was not easy to deal with 2 straight months of nonstop disappointment. At the very end of the summer we finally went, but even that day had an afternoon thunderstorm that made us leave early. I actually had a lot of fun at the waterpark, but we never went back. Mountain Creek became our waterpark of choice. Nitro was THE ride of my childhood. When I was finally tall enough to ride the big coasters, it became by far my favorite ride and the one ride I absolutely had to go on. If we went to Great Adventure and I didn't get on Nitro, it was a bad day no matter what else I did that day.
You have been knocking these episodes out of the park! This is our home park and has always been, and we're only a few years older than you - but you have brought some insight to the business side of things that we never knew! But these were the golden years, when we were teenagers and going almost every summer, so every new ride was an EVENT. I do remember all those new rides for 1999 were so exciting, but they were never all open at the same time, and half of them I never even saw run once. But the good outweighed the bad for sure, and these videos are stirring up some wonderful memories. Really great job on this series!
I wish I could convey what a big deal Batman the Ride was at the time. Nowadays, it's "Yawn, Batman clone, whatever; I've ridden half a dozen." But in its first season, it was mind-blowing. Unless you happened to have visited Great America, you'd never experienced forces like this before -- a zero-g roll while inverted! And cool theming, even -- it's usually a walk-on now, but that first time I rode, they used the whole queue, including all of that "Gotham park" area.
These videos are coming at just the right moment. The school term is about to begin for the district I work for, and these will be great to listen to while doing overtime.
This video covered the high point of my experience at SFGA. It was either in 2001 or 2002 that I got my one (and only) season pass for a summer. My biggest regret is never getting on Evolution during its time at SFGA; it was always down when I tried to ride it. Contrary to what others thoughts, I did like Viper. And Nitro remains my favorite coaster at SFGA.
@@Coyotek4 it was a great time! We had a brand new waterpark. We still had fresh Time Warner theming. We finally had a major coaster with zero inversions. We had Evolution, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Pendulum, Rodeo Stampede, Chaos and plenty of flat rides from the 1970’s. We had the Batman stunt show, the Dolphin and High Dive Shows, the Lethal Weapon stunt show, the Chinese acrobatics show, roaming street characters, nightly fireworks and concerts in the Northern Star Arena. The park had some of the best food of any major theme park. Why anyone would want to rid of all this greatness was beyond me. The park has been too coaster heavy for too long. I only had two rides on Evolution. One was at SFGADv and one at SFStl. What a weird sensation! Friends of mine called it ‘Mission Space on a stick.’ I almost had a 2nd ride on Evolution at GAdv, but a rain had set in. The ride didn’t operate in the rain and rain usually meant it was time to make a run for Rolling Thunder. Now that was a great ride in the rain! Racing in the rain was a special treat. That coaster had some of the best coaster crews I had experienced in any park for years, until around the installation of the seatbelts. Always enthusiastic, witty and efficient. RT and GASM can never be replaced. But hey, I hear they have a used stand up coaster 😬
Never been to Great Adventure, but love the history! It'll be interesting to see SFGAm and Valleyfair, if you choose to go that deep. Both hit 50 years in 2026.
“Premier saw Great Adventure as the chain’s flagship park”. Premier were the only ones who got it. Before the two California parks started year round operations, Great Adventure was the most profitable park in the chain. Premier was ready to turn the park into a destination like Cedar Point. It’s a shame that never came to fruition.
I mean they needed footage of a coaster in the chain that looked similar, and the only B&M hyper in the chain before Nitro was Raging Bull, so they had to get creative by using Goliath as well since Giovanola track is similar to B&M track
Great video! It was fun learning about these roller coaster openings in this section of Great Adventures history! Looking forward to hearing about the opening of the strata coaster Kingda Ka next week as well as I guess El Toro as well. I really enjoyed watching this!
There were two war on lines. 1 was in ‘99 when they added the 25 new rides. The other was caused by the way the park has been managed in the past 15 years.
Premier Parks idea of “build wild rides, and people will come” just wasn’t a smart idea across all of their parks. Geauga Lake & Adventure World specifically. Trying to get their smaller parks up to par with the bigger ones, while also keeping the bigger ones in competition was unrealistic.
can't help but feel a little sad watching this, considering it's the last real period in which Six Flags actually cared about their northern parks instead of just spoiling the sunbelt every year.
@@jimmy3people0 do you not realize the insane additions they added in 2005 and 2006 yk the years where they had a huge shift in management and the whole "let's calm down on spending an insane amount of fuckin money on 40 parks" because we were very surprised to see that would fail.
@@jimmy3people0 yeah it is but uh they started to realize we dont have to add expensive coasters anymore to get insane attendance people will still come cause of what we have and now they have started the investments for coasters again
Thats what happens when your park is a sandwhich with 2 of the top 5 most populous cities in the U.S and also right in the middle of one of most densely populated states in The U.S
Before watching I just want to say that the “war on lines” is ironic now with Great Adventure running one train on many of their rides including Medusa, which is one of the main coasters for that “war”
@@ryanfrieman733 I remember the hour and a half+ wait. I don’t remember my 1st ride, but that 1st drop and the inverted dive will never be forgotten. I preferred this ride over Medusa and Superman, but I’m sure I was alone.
yeah I thought about talking about the Cyclone but it was pretty much 1 newspaper article and that's it, no explanation for what it was or why it never happened. Almost like it was just a journalist mistake
The "stupid money" decisions Six Flags made in 2000 killed Geauga Lake. I'm happy for Great Adventure fans that similarly stupid decisions didn't cause such huge problems here.
Cedar Fair killed geauga lake. When six flags ran it as a one price amusement and water park plus the sea world animal side it was amazing. When cedar Fair closed sea world and shipped all the animals out, and that was by far the most popular and family friendly section of the park, that started the death spiral of the next decade.
Next episode's title should probably be called "Boom and Bust", given how it took only two years for Six Flags to go from top of the coaster world to bankruptcy. Guess that what happens when you don't take your foot off the gas for several years.
In 2005 the coaster community mourned and lamented at the loss of Viper. It was a coaster enthusiast favorite ride. Six Flags removed a well maintained coaster which was also smooth and reliable in favor of a primitive wooden coaster lacking any airtime or forces the following year 😊
0:29 Answer the call...to BATMAN: The Ride! 11:43 It's not the flu...It's BATMAN & ROBIN: The Chiller! 16:49 MEDUSA rears it's ugly head, Just don't look down...you cou'd turn to stone! 21:59 Ignite your senses with NITRO! 27:49 Only a one-of-a-kind experience this powerful, this spectacular is worth of the name: SUPERMAN Ultimate Flight!
It was on Great Adventure History but a lot of their videos stopped working a few weeks ago. I was able to grab what I needed shortly before that thankfully
8:15 that's me and my brother in the front row of Viper....as you can tell I loved it as a kid 😂 It was my first upside down ride
It's nice of Great Adventure to install a replica of the Airtime Thrills logo, all the way back in the 90's😬
they were true visionaries
@@AirtimeThrills Oh, so those camelbacks are from Nitro?
@@Ryzohm0141 yep
@@AirtimeThrills great choice I thought for the longest time those were makos hills
Amazing work :)
The 90s were pretty much the decade coaster experiments and themed rides throughout the entire Six Flags chain.
Also, I loved the commercials where they took shots at Disney.
Medusa is still the only roller coaster I've been on where it feels like I'm legitimately flying in the air.
Plus the inversions are incredible.
Thank you so much for putting this series together! I was a season pass holder in the early 2000's as a young adult and now I am a pass holder again and enjoy visiting with my son. Learning more about the history and seeing the commercials that I remember from 'back in the day' is awesome!
Man I was on so many of the rides from this generation. Batman and Robin was amazing.
Really loving this documentary on my home park. Man when batman came out then chiller came out we were on top of the world!
The summer of 2000 was so frustrating as a child. The entire summer I was chomping at the bit to go to the new waterpark, but it just kept raining all the time. There was one time we were literally in the car on the way to Hurricane Harbor when the weather forecast on the radio changed to call for rain, and we ended up going to Blockbuster instead. At that age it was not easy to deal with 2 straight months of nonstop disappointment. At the very end of the summer we finally went, but even that day had an afternoon thunderstorm that made us leave early. I actually had a lot of fun at the waterpark, but we never went back. Mountain Creek became our waterpark of choice.
Nitro was THE ride of my childhood. When I was finally tall enough to ride the big coasters, it became by far my favorite ride and the one ride I absolutely had to go on. If we went to Great Adventure and I didn't get on Nitro, it was a bad day no matter what else I did that day.
oh yeah, Mountain Creek, otherwise known as "Action Park after cutting their hair and getting a job at their dad's law firm"
You have been knocking these episodes out of the park! This is our home park and has always been, and we're only a few years older than you - but you have brought some insight to the business side of things that we never knew! But these were the golden years, when we were teenagers and going almost every summer, so every new ride was an EVENT. I do remember all those new rides for 1999 were so exciting, but they were never all open at the same time, and half of them I never even saw run once. But the good outweighed the bad for sure, and these videos are stirring up some wonderful memories. Really great job on this series!
Thanks! I can't even wrap my head around 25 new rides (a lot of those were in the kids area but still)
I wish I could convey what a big deal Batman the Ride was at the time. Nowadays, it's "Yawn, Batman clone, whatever; I've ridden half a dozen." But in its first season, it was mind-blowing. Unless you happened to have visited Great America, you'd never experienced forces like this before -- a zero-g roll while inverted! And cool theming, even -- it's usually a walk-on now, but that first time I rode, they used the whole queue, including all of that "Gotham park" area.
These videos are coming at just the right moment. The school term is about to begin for the district I work for, and these will be great to listen to while doing overtime.
Medusa is still one of the best coasters in the park. Never disappoints. Even when they rebranded it bizarro
These are always fantastic. Hope Kings Dominion is next year for the 50th anniversary
These documentaries are amazing!
I like how the footage in the NITRO commercial was of Goliath, lol
I love the intro music, hooked me immediately (I was going to watch it anyway but still). I love these videos, please keep making them!
This video covered the high point of my experience at SFGA. It was either in 2001 or 2002 that I got my one (and only) season pass for a summer.
My biggest regret is never getting on Evolution during its time at SFGA; it was always down when I tried to ride it.
Contrary to what others thoughts, I did like Viper. And Nitro remains my favorite coaster at SFGA.
@@Coyotek4 it was a great time! We had a brand new waterpark. We still had fresh Time Warner theming. We finally had a major coaster with zero inversions. We had Evolution, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Pendulum, Rodeo Stampede, Chaos and plenty of flat rides from the 1970’s. We had the Batman stunt show, the Dolphin and High Dive Shows, the Lethal Weapon stunt show, the Chinese acrobatics show, roaming street characters, nightly fireworks and concerts in the Northern Star Arena. The park had some of the best food of any major theme park. Why anyone would want to rid of all this greatness was beyond me. The park has been too coaster heavy for too long.
I only had two rides on Evolution. One was at SFGADv and one at SFStl. What a weird sensation! Friends of mine called it ‘Mission Space on a stick.’ I almost had a 2nd ride on Evolution at GAdv, but a rain had set in. The ride didn’t operate in the rain and rain usually meant it was time to make a run for Rolling Thunder. Now that was a great ride in the rain! Racing in the rain was a special treat. That coaster had some of the best coaster crews I had experienced in any park for years, until around the installation of the seatbelts. Always enthusiastic, witty and efficient. RT and GASM can never be replaced. But hey, I hear they have a used stand up coaster 😬
LOVING THIS! Been going to this park since the 80’s.
Never been to Great Adventure, but love the history!
It'll be interesting to see SFGAm and Valleyfair, if you choose to go that deep. Both hit 50 years in 2026.
Awesome As Always! Cant Wait For The Rest👍
I love Nitro!! I got my grandma on it! My dad went on it too one good memory with him! He died in 2020.
Didn’t even watch it yet and I know it’s a banger
I was so surprised that you mentioned Ed McInerney..chillforce Ed. I rode many rides with him..
“Premier saw Great Adventure as the chain’s flagship park”.
Premier were the only ones who got it.
Before the two California parks started year round operations, Great Adventure was the most profitable park in the chain. Premier was ready to turn the park into a destination like Cedar Point. It’s a shame that never came to fruition.
In 1999, Great Adventure got a new park’s worth of rides along with three coasters
Another awesome video
ANOTHER VIDEO!!! thanks for another banger vid! 3 mins left!
I like how most of the shots in the nitro ad is Goliath
They needed footage of a coaster
That always rubbed me the wrong way
I mean they needed footage of a coaster in the chain that looked similar, and the only B&M hyper in the chain before Nitro was Raging Bull, so they had to get creative by using Goliath as well since Giovanola track is similar to B&M track
Babe wake up Airtime Thrills dropped part 3 of the Great Adventure doc
This was the era of six flags I grew up going to
Great video! It was fun learning about these roller coaster openings in this section of Great Adventures history! Looking forward to hearing about the opening of the strata coaster Kingda Ka next week as well as I guess El Toro as well. I really enjoyed watching this!
There were two war on lines. 1 was in ‘99 when they added the 25 new rides. The other was caused by the way the park has been managed in the past 15 years.
OMG, I love how SFGA worked with Magic Johnson for HIV/AIDS awareness. It sounds like the Roll-AIDS program was a Slam Dunk
Premier Parks idea of “build wild rides, and people will come” just wasn’t a smart idea across all of their parks. Geauga Lake & Adventure World specifically.
Trying to get their smaller parks up to par with the bigger ones, while also keeping the bigger ones in competition was unrealistic.
I'm so grateful u make these documentaries so thank you ❤
Thank you so much for making these, they're so cool!
can't help but feel a little sad watching this, considering it's the last real period in which Six Flags actually cared about their northern parks instead of just spoiling the sunbelt every year.
@@jimmy3people0 do you not realize the insane additions they added in 2005 and 2006 yk the years where they had a huge shift in management and the whole "let's calm down on spending an insane amount of fuckin money on 40 parks" because we were very surprised to see that would fail.
@omarfaruq9233 as far as I'm concerned, everything from the Premier acquisition to their bankruptcy is part of the same era.
@@jimmy3people0 yeah it is but uh they started to realize we dont have to add expensive coasters anymore to get insane attendance people will still come cause of what we have and now they have started the investments for coasters again
Thats what happens when your park is a sandwhich with 2 of the top 5 most populous cities in the U.S and also right in the middle of one of most densely populated states in The U.S
New Jersey is the most densely populated state though.
…When they do things right
Before watching I just want to say that the “war on lines” is ironic now with Great Adventure running one train on many of their rides including Medusa, which is one of the main coasters for that “war”
haha yeah well when i was there only Medusa had the 1 train problem
@@AirtimeThrills when I was there Superman, Jersey Devil, and for Sunday Kingda Ka were also on one train
I went opening year of Viper. It was amazing...never been on anything like that before.
@@ryanfrieman733 I remember the hour and a half+ wait. I don’t remember my 1st ride, but that 1st drop and the inverted dive will never be forgotten. I preferred this ride over Medusa and Superman, but I’m sure I was alone.
@@darkridedan1 I like it much better than Medusa and superman too!!
I was one of those bussed-in employees. Worst job I ever had.
The original concept for Batman And Robin the Chiller looked awesome surprised you didn’t mention it and the Cyclone Coaster
yeah I thought about talking about the Cyclone but it was pretty much 1 newspaper article and that's it, no explanation for what it was or why it never happened. Almost like it was just a journalist mistake
The "stupid money" decisions Six Flags made in 2000 killed Geauga Lake. I'm happy for Great Adventure fans that similarly stupid decisions didn't cause such huge problems here.
GADV was big enough to take it
Cedar Fair killed geauga lake. When six flags ran it as a one price amusement and water park plus the sea world animal side it was amazing. When cedar Fair closed sea world and shipped all the animals out, and that was by far the most popular and family friendly section of the park, that started the death spiral of the next decade.
We're already at episode 3, nice!
Those prices, I wish inflation progressed way slower
Next episode's title should probably be called "Boom and Bust", given how it took only two years for Six Flags to go from top of the coaster world to bankruptcy. Guess that what happens when you don't take your foot off the gas for several years.
Next episode is called "Record Highs and Shocking Lows"
The Proclaimers performed at Great Adventure? Man I woulda walked 500 miles to see that.
Hey im 52 so its a dad joke.
I appreciate the dad jokes
Love to see it
In 2005 the coaster community mourned and lamented at the loss of Viper. It was a coaster enthusiast favorite ride. Six Flags removed a well maintained coaster which was also smooth and reliable in favor of a primitive wooden coaster lacking any airtime or forces the following year 😊
I guess that's your opinion. I can't say much honestly because it closed 7 years before I was born.
But I think el toro is forceful and has good ejector airtime
@@ThoosiesCorner the similarities of Viper and Windjammer was that they were both unreliable Togo coasters that were replaced with Intimans
nice sarcasm
its rare for every single word in a sentence to be false
please do kd next for its 50 anniversary
0:29 Answer the call...to BATMAN: The Ride!
11:43 It's not the flu...It's BATMAN & ROBIN: The Chiller!
16:49 MEDUSA rears it's ugly head, Just don't look down...you cou'd turn to stone!
21:59 Ignite your senses with NITRO!
27:49 Only a one-of-a-kind experience this powerful, this spectacular is worth of the name: SUPERMAN Ultimate Flight!
buy or sell: action zone at kings island gets a dc retheme by 2030
5:56 wait, does that mean they didn't have one before? was it all just porto-potties?
Im guessing they had a septic tank situation
THEIR TWO INSANE RAVED ABOUTS ARE COMING NEXT
YEAAAH
Damn, I was 49 seconds too late to say FIRST! 😁
Not six flags using Goliath footage to advertise Nitro 😂
LETS GOOOOO
Where can you find that vintage animated video of Superman Ultimate Flight
It was on Great Adventure History but a lot of their videos stopped working a few weeks ago. I was able to grab what I needed shortly before that thankfully
can you do one on six over georgia
maybe down the line. i have a few more lined up
They used Goliath to promote Nitro?!
they didnt even try to hide it
Day 1 of asking for a decent park in New York
@@Mini_V4 not gonna happen
New York's got way too many parks from adjacent states that are top tier. A theme park in New York nowadays wouldn't stand a chance.
Day 26 of asking for best coaster in each country
Trump 2024