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Quietest you've ever seen a theme park?

Matt N

Matt N

CF Legend
Hi guys. I had an experience yesterday that prompted me to ask you all; what is the quietest you've ever seen a theme park? I know theme parks can often be crowded places, but have you ever been to a park that was particularly quiet?

The experience I was referring to was my visit to Oakwood yesterday. Our first ride, Creepy Crawler, only had a 1 train wait, but that was the longest wait of the day, as it would turn out. Megafobia was waiting for people to dispatch the train, as was Treetops, and at one point me and my mum were the only people in the Speed area besides the staff; we weren't even sure if it was open, but it was and the staff member let us go with only us on the train! I've been to Alton Towers when it's been reasonably quiet before, but that was certainly an experience yesterday!

Another particularly quiet park I've been to is Fun Spot Kissimmee; the staff on Mine Blower were waiting for people to dispatch the train!

But have you ever been to a quiet theme park before?
 
Thorpe Fright Night AP days back in like 2009-2011ish were heavenly; Thursday evenings, very few people, no queues for rides or mazes. That was always surreal.

My trip last year to Bellewaerde was obscenely quiet, along with my recent trip to Plohn (never saw any of their coasters with a full train). But equally the parks weren't dead, as you'd always see people about..just the same people.

The days at park where weather is really bad are usually ones where the parks are really quiet, but I guess you don't really appreciate that when you're soaking wet yourself..


Oh, I've also done Thorpe when there was only 150 people on park, but that was a press event so I guess doesn't *really* count..
 
A lot of totally dead Chinese parks, especially if they've been brand new and/or I've managed to be there on a weekday. Off the top of my head, Colourful Yunnan Paradise stands out, but it's far from the only one. I had the B&M wingrider and Blue Fire clone to myself for a couple of rides each.

Dragon Park in Vietnam was similar - coasters totally to myself - but that's because the park was supposed to be closed that day, but they decided at the last minute to open.
 
Last time I went to Flamingo Land it was dead, like uncomfortably quiet. Probably no more than 100 people on park. If you saw anyone it was someone you had seen before. Trouble is with smaller parks like that is that we did everything in the space of an hour. We went round the zoo, did a few re-rides and by 3 and half hours we were ready to leave.

When I last went to Busch Gardens Tampa everything was walk on, simular to Seaworld Orlando. I had an experience at the first Alton Towers scarefest where the park had walk on queues and was open until 9! Probably the best visit I've had there.

To be fair I am usually quite lucky now as I currently have the flexibility to go during mid week, so it's rare for me to see a busy park day, hopefully it stays that way.

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I visited Six Flags Over Georgia sometime between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve last year. My friend and I had Dare Devil Dive to ourselves (typically, it'd have a 60-90 minute line), and the longest line we waited in was for a food stand. Goliath, never a long line, was basically a walk-on, as was Mind Bender - in which my friend and I were half of the four on-board that train - and (shockingly) Twisted Cyclone, which never garnered more than a 3-train wait out of the two laps I did on it. Fortunately, the aforementioned good coasters were all open and had hardly any queues. For anyone traveling to the South in the winter season, absolutely come to Six Flags Over Georgia during the time that I did - you can get everything done in half a day, savor the holiday lights and go at a relaxed pace. :)
 
Couple of years ago me and @Sandman went on a pre-Ghosterforce warm up to Efteling and Toverland. Efteling was really quiet, most of the rides were walk-on for most of the day, which was lovely, but the following day at Toverland was ridiculously quiet. As in, like, it was literally me & him in the whole park! If I remember rightly we had 2 goes on the Roller Skater, 2 goes on Blitz Bahn, 3 goes on Booster Bike (2 front & 1 back), 3 goes on Dwervelwind (2 front & 1 back), and 2 goes on the rapids in the first 45 minutes and in that time I don't think we saw a single other person! If it wasn't for the fact that Troy didn't open til 12pm that day we could have smashed out the park in less than an hour. Great day it was! :)
Trip report here: https://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/eftoverling-pre-gf-warm-up.41758/
 
Nice topic idea.

I've had an empty day at Flamingoland too, it was scorching hot but we had a few laps on Kumali and Velocity with a train all to ourselves. Similarly at Legendia I rode Lech and some of the flats with only me on the ride, weirdly that was on a weekend. Like others have said it's a fun novelty but it means you complete the park quicker than you'd like to.

My fave empty park moment was in Abu Dhabi. I had one day to visit Warner Bros and Ferrari World so I hit up WB first in the morning. For a UAE park it was pretty busy, some queues were up to half an hour so by the time I left at 4 I'd only managed one lap of the park and a Knight Flight re-ride. I was disappointed as I wanted to try most of the rides again but it was time to move on. Anyway, I arrived at Ferrari World next door and it was dead, I was so pleasantly surprised. In the last two hours of opening I saw barely any guests around the park and finished my holiday by lapping Flying Aces as the sun set. By the time it got fully dark I was the only one left on the coaster so I ended the night with three front row rides in the dark as the sole rider on the train, it was an incredible experience. The only downside was I had to walk back round the queue each time which was pretty spooky by yourself.
 
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Benenen said:
Can't believe you dropped that cliffhanger on us Howie and never told us about your scary Clinic experience ;)
Click to expand...

Hurgh... busted! Ok that's a fair cop, I never got round to writing up the Walibi day. Bad goon. :(
But here's a quick recap: It was hugely crowded, Goliath & Lost Gravity were great, all the other creds were meh, and The Clinic... oh man, The Clinic is hands down one of the best things I've ever experienced in a theme park. Twisted, perverse, wholly original and very, very clever. And utterly terrifying.
Oh, and we very nearly missed our flight home cos the queue for the boomerang took an hour. :eek:
Hope that goes some way to addressing the cliffhanger issue dude. ;)
 
As has been said, nice topic idea!

This was an easy one for me. It was a Saturday night at Universal Studios Hollywood. The whole day had been very quiet, as there were pretty consistent light showers. Nothing bothersome to me, but it sure as hell scared off the locals. The park was open until about 10 pm, and from 7 pm to closing I didn't ride anything with another soul. At Transformers and Harry Potter, they opened up a door at the exit to let me get back on, as there was literally no one else there. I got stuck on Jurassic Park, completely alone, for a solid 15 minutes. Stuck in front of those dinos jumping out and spraying water then stuck on top of the lift, with those sirens going crazy. It got even creepier when they turned off the sirens, with those big T Rex animatronics, eerily still. It's not a particularly creepy ride when going through it regularly, but, being alone in this massive show building, quite the creepy experience. They even gave me something to say to employees to skip lines after the ride, although it obviously wasn't needed.
 
Hmmm in the back of my head I'm sure we had a ridiculously quiet day somewhere in Europe...I recall having to wait for people to join the queue at Parque Warner Madrid for each coaster.
 
Thorpe Park Love Island Lates. The only ride with a queue was colossus which was still only 20 mins but this was earlier on in the event. By 7:00, the park was absolutely dead. I was able to stay on inferno for 2 consecutive goes in front and back row without queuing at all. I did 4 rides on depth charge in 15 minutes and likewise for swarm. The only reason I didn't do more swarm rides was because every time I changed sides of the station. Stealth front row queue was under 10 minutes while the rest of the train was walk on. Saw was incredibly creepy with me and my brother being the only ones in the queue and station, with the exception of one staff member. To basically sum the evening up, swarm island had more security guards than actual guests. It was truly an amazing night for ride count!
 
I went to Efteling this year on a random Tuesday in February. I was in Amsterdam and had nothing planned for the day, and had no idea that Efteling was even open all year round until the night before. I was a bit worried that the weather would turn and close the major rides, but I got seriously lucky. All of the rides (apart from those down for seasonal maintenance) were open with no downtime. Every single ride was walk on for the entire day, and often the train would roll into an empty station and we'd be allowed to stay on. I was completely alone on Symbolica and there wasn't another soul to be seen, which was insanely eerie. Even though I had to leave 2 hours before park close to get back to Amsterdam in time for a gig I was attending, I racked up a serious ride count and fully fell in love with the place!

When I was at WDW last summer, I shelled out a small fortune for the after hours event at Magic Kingdom. As expected, I was treated to an evening of a completely desolate park, and the only rides with queues were the Snow White mine train, and space mountain. Even then, the queues were no longer than 5 or so mins. I had a log to myself on splash mountain, and me and my partner had a stretching room in the haunted mansion entirely to ourselves. It was a great experience, and for me was definitely worth the price. The longest I had to queue was for the complimentary refreshments!

I was also completely surprised by how dead Disneyland Paris got in the evening too when I visited earlier this month. For the last hour of the day, almost everything apart from Peter pan's flight was walk on, and I racked up 3 or 4 rides on big thunder mountain in about half an hour, before sprinting to phantom manor for one last ride of the night 2 minutes before close. Worth it for sure!
 
A few off of the top of my mind:

Four years ago, @Snoo and I made a quick stop at Waldameer during a break in the rain on the way back from SFNE, Lake Compounce, and Quassy. We parked, bought enough points to ride Ravine Flyer twice, and then ran back to the car before the rain started again. If I remember correctly, we saw maybe a dozen other people during that sequence and they were all park employees.

Two summers ago, @tomahawk and I were at Kentucky Kingdom when the remnants of Hurricane Harvey were blowing up through the midwest United States. Lightning Run was a two train wait and we essentially had Storm Chaser to ourselves during our dozen or so rides that day.

Last summer, @Youngster Joey, @Hixee, and I were dodging some rain at Seabreeze. The park wasn't a ghost town, but we still managed to grab all the creds in 15 minutes before the rain struck.


Apparently all you need is a bit of rain :p
 
My day at Freestyle Music Park? OWA, too?

I've also been in Epcot and Magic Kingdom ridiculously late after the parks have cleared of all day guests and it's just third shift custodial skeleton crew.
Been on Main Street where all the auxiliary lights have turned off, including the castle lights itself, and no in park audio. Not another CM to be seen on Main Street (or town square)
 
Howie said:
Couple of years ago me and @Sandman went on a pre-Ghosterforce warm up to Efteling and Toverland. Efteling was really quiet, most of the rides were walk-on for most of the day, which was lovely, but the following day at Toverland was ridiculously quiet. As in, like, it was literally me & him in the whole park! If I remember rightly we had 2 goes on the Roller Skater, 2 goes on Blitz Bahn, 3 goes on Booster Bike (2 front & 1 back), 3 goes on Dwervelwind (2 front & 1 back), and 2 goes on the rapids in the first 45 minutes and in that time I don't think we saw a single other person! If it wasn't for the fact that Troy didn't open til 12pm that day we could have smashed out the park in less than an hour. Great day it was! :)
Trip report here: https://coasterforce.com/forums/threads/eftoverling-pre-gf-warm-up.41758/
Click to expand...

Loved those quiet park days, take me back!

I've had Pleasure Beach completely dead as well a few times, most notable 2006 when I managed 33 rides on Wild Mouse without leaving my seat (and somehow survived!).
 
I've had quite a few days at Cedar Point where it was walk-on literally everything. If you waited longer then 1 train wait on even Dragster, MF, or Maverick, it was a surprise. Those days tallied double digit rides on all the big coasters with ease.

Outside of the day with @Antinos, I did have days at Waldy where I could ride every single seat on their drop tower (some 25 rides without leaving the station) and RFII where they just let you sit down in another seat if you had a wristband.

Also, the fabled Geauga Lake, one of the craziest days was where I rode Dominator in every single seat without leaving the station. Not only was it a hot day but it was Geauga Lake during the year it closed. The best time for marathoning.
 
97 and 98 at American Adventure, which was then my home park, and visited at least twice a week. We obviously got to know the ride staff that well they’d let us just stay in the same seats. Especially Rob and Mark on the missile (Vekoma Boomerang,) If you are still interested in the industry and happen to be reading this, thanks for those treasured memories lads, and Rob, you still owe me a ciggie and a chewing gum ;)

Now then, can anybody tell me why I could sit on a Boomerang for 3 to 4 hours none stop back then, but can’t handle 5 rides in a row on a Gerstlauer... Roughness never bothered me, and still doesn’t, I can handle head banging. But that vibration from a gerst just gives me a right banging headache!!!
 
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