Hi all.

 

Got a big birthday coming up, and thinking about taking some long service leave and going to the states to do some theme parks.  

 

The ones I am currently thinking of are Cedar Point, Six Flags Great Adventure, Busch Gardens (Williamsburg), Dollywood, Carowinds, Kings Dominion and Canada's Wonderland.  Most likely won't do them all, those are just ones that I can think of at the moment.

 

Just wondering if anyone here has been to any or all of these?  Are there any others in that general area that would be better than any of these ones?

 

Not looking at doing Disney, I have a young son who won't be accompanying us on this trip and we will take him to Disney when he is old enough to enjoy it

 

Thanks 

 

Basically the major parks tend to be in clusters with each 2-3h apart. Try www.coast2coaster.eu , and set the slider to the 4-18 coaster range to get a map of all the majors.

If you were seeing parks around Cedar Point, you could also do Canadas Wonderland, Darien Lake, Kennywood, Waldameer, Cedar Point, King's Island, Kentucky Kingdom, Holiday World.

If you were going to Dollywood then Carowinds and SF Over Georgia are nearby.

There are a lot of parks clustered in the Northeast, starting with Busch Williamsburg, Kings Dominion, SF America, Hersheypark, Knoebels, Dorney Park, SF Great Adventure, Coney Island, Lake Compounce and SF New England.

If you're flying through LAX probably get yourself down to SFMM. Even if doing Cedar point, there's some messed up shit at Magic Mountain that everyone should ride. 

Agree with djrappa in saying Magic Mountain should be done if going via LAX. Next year I am looking at Cedar Point, Kings Island, Kentucky Kingdom and Holiday World as a start. Only thing I can really suggest is checking the operating schedule for the parks as some start to wind down the opening hours heading into September/October (Eg. Cedar Point moves to Friday - Sunday operation)

I did a road trip back in 2011 where I did Six Flags Great America, Cedar Point, Six Flags Great Adventure, Six Flags America, and Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Have a look at my ancient, rubbish blog here for loads of info and photos, but basically:

• Cedar Point - we somehow managed to do it all in a day, but make sure you spend two there. Great park, absolutely loads of stuff, but the queues at the bigger coasters (Maverick, Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster) can be quite long.
• Six Flags Great Adventure - El Toro is worth it alone. But there's still a fair amount of stuff. We did everything comfortably in a day (this was at the beginning of July), and got some hefty use out of the cable car to take us from one side of the park to another.
• Busch Gardens Williamsburg - did not like. Were we theme-park-ed out? Maybe. We felt that it had a poor selection of rides compared to the other parks. Definitely looks very, very pretty, but we arrived late, did what we wanted (a fair few rides on Griffin, then once on everything else as the park was either too busy or things had broken - looking at you, Apollo's Chariot) and left early.

Thanks, some good tips there.

I never even thought that we would probably have to fly through LAX, so thanks for that heads up, will add Magic Mountain to the want list

The other major entry point to the US is usually Dallas - there are some noteworthy parks in Tx, but I believe most are a bit of a hike from Ft Worth.

Basically your options are.

San Fran....Air NZ and Qantas go there

L.A....Everyone.

Dallas Fort Worth....Just Qantas.

Vancouver also has direct flights from Aus, but no worthwhile parks are there.

SF over texas is not that far from DFW.... both the airport and the park are halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth.

4.5h south in San Antonio is SF fiesta texas and SW San Antonio...im visiting both parks next weekend so ill let you know how they are.

Yeah it's pretty easy to get from Dallas Airport to SF Over Texas by Airport Shuttle, there's accommodation right by the park. Also they have the Cowboys Stadium Tour (I did it, great) and Texas Ranger Stadium near the park.

Fiesta Texas and San Antonio in general are worth visiting.