Six Flags is one of the largest amusement park chains in the world! Every summer they pick a day to announce all of their upcoming attractions for the following year. One of the best things about the Six Flags Company is that they have guaranteed that every single park will receive something new each year. This is important because not only does it keep the general public engaged, it’s also a great way for them to show that they care about the progress and growth of each of their parks.
Since there are so many Six Flags Parks in operation, we’ll roll through each addition park by park by giving a brief description and analysis of each attraction. So, let’s get started!

​So, overall, another great day for theme park announcements! We’re really pleased with the direction that Six Flags is going and the amount of time and care they’re putting into each of their parks. We would also like to mention to everyone that for the next 4 days, Six Flags will be running a special on their Gold Season Passes. These passes are usually around $200 each, but you can get them now for $65! We will definitely be purchasing passes since you can use them for the rest of 2017 as well as all of 2018! You can use these passes at any Six Flags park, and now that we know what all of the theme park additions will be for 2018, we can start making our vacation plans for next year! It’s gonna be a good one! 

Let us know in the comments what you think about all of the new Six Flags announcements!!

​This week we’re taking you deep into the mountains of Central Pennsylvania to a retro park that offers a nostalgic past for adults and new and exciting discoveries for kids. Knoebel’s is a classic amusement park that is home to some truly incredible old-school rides and attractions and is by far one of the coolest experiences you could ever have at a theme park. It is the largest operating free-admission park in the United States and has enough coasters, thrill rides, and family rides to keep you entertained throughout the day. As if the rides weren’t enough to keep you occupied, Knoebel’s also has free entertainment, multiple activities, and award-winning food. That’s right, AWARD-WINNING. This park has received the Golden Ticket award for best food almost every year since 1999.  In all honesty, Knoebel’s is one of the biggest reasons we decided to start a theme park food blog, because it is the perfect example of how great park food really can be. While many parks across the country suffer from lack of consistency and variation of food, Knoebel’s excels in creating quality and delicious options throughout their ENTIRE park. From pizza to pierogies to their famous fresh-cut french fries, no matter where you decide to dine in this park we guarantee you’ll love it and you’ll want to try it all! 

Before we get into some of our favorite food options, we want to take some time to tell you about some of the most iconic attractions in the world! Now, keep in mind, the park is full of unique rides and attractions so to cover everything that this park has to offer will take time. But, believe us, we’ll get to it all eventually. For now, we’ll focus on the two attractions that we enjoyed the most and where we spent the most amount of time on our past visit. 

First up: The Grand Carousel. I’m sure many people who are unfamiliar with Knoebel’s Amusement park are probably thinking that a carousel surely can’t be special enough to be included in a review of best park attractions. But trust us, it is! 

The Grand Carousel is a one-of-a-kind experience that offers two attractions in one! With the ride’s authentic German organ playing while you sit atop your hand-carved horse, it’s hard not to take in the vast amount of history that this ride carries. The carousel is over 100 years old and is one of the largest in the world. But, the best part, without a doubt, is that it is one of the few carousels left where you can still catch the brass ring! For anyone unfamiliar with classic carousels, many used to have an on-ride game, which encouraged riders to reach out from their horses (those sitting on the outter row) and stretch for an illusive brass ring. Every time your horse passes the claw arm dispensing rings, you try to reach out and grab one. It’s easy to grab a ring, but only one per ride is the special brass one! If you grab a brass ring you win a free ride (and bragging rights)!  Some of this may be hard to understand in words, so check out this video below of Brittany grabbing her first ring ever! 

​Also, not far from the Grand Carousel is the Knoebel’s Carousel Museum. This free-exhibit features original carousel horses, painted panels, and other memorabilia from carousels dating all the way back to the 1800’s! It’s a unique experience and it is certainly worth your time! 

Another experience in the park you don’t want to miss is Fascination! If you’re even the least bit competitive (which we are), you’ll love this skill challenge that is a cross between skee ball and bingo! It is so easy to spend hours in this building, spending quarter after quarter to play this unique game. Each person sits at their own machine and plays one synchronized game hosted by the Fascination announcer. Much like bingo, you are looking to get 5 in a row. It’s up to you to roll one ball at a time down a ramp and land in certain holes to make your board light up. It’s exciting, it’s a race, and it’s super fun! 

​Alright! Well, now that we’ve told you about some of our favorite attractions in the park, we want to share with you some of our favorite foods! Like we mentioned before, Knoebel’s is known for having the best theme-park food in the country, so narrowing down our favorites is tough. But, we’ll start with a Pennsylvania classic and fan-favorite: Pierogies. The park offers two varieties of pierogies at separate stands and, of course, we tried them both. Fans of the park seem to have a clear favorite when it comes to these two snacks, so we needed to taste each of them to see if we agreed. The first location is called The Roast Beef Stand. The pierogies at this stand are sautéed in butter and onions and more closely resemble the classic pierogies that many are familiar with. Park fans tend to favor these over the others, and we would definitely agree with them. We loved them so much that we considered ordering a second helping, but decided to try the other stand just in case. And, we’re glad we did. Even though we both favored the first batch, the second order found at The Round Stand were good as well. While the second order were not sautéed in butter, they did come with a side of sour cream, and we thoroughly enjoyed them. Just further proving that you can’t really order anything bad at Knoebel’s. 

​Another fan favorite at this park is the freshly made Kettle Korn. While this treat is more of a classic amusement park option, no one beats Knoebel’s when it comes to this salty-sweet snack. Sold in large bags for $6, Kettle Korn is the perfect snack to grab and share with your group while walking through the park. Or, heading out of the park for the ride home! However you choose to enjoy this snack, we’re sure that once you get to the bottom of the bag, you’ll be wishing you bought just one more! 

​By only covering two attractions and food options, we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface on all that this park has to offer. Knoebel’s is a fun and totally different experience than many park-goers are probably used to, but it is so worth it to check out. The park has so much heart and nostalgia that it’s impossible not to fall in love as soon as you walk in. We look forward to returning and to covering more of our favorites soon! 

Happy National Roller Coaster Day! At least to everyone reading this on Wednesday night. If you're not reading this until Thursday, which will probably be most people, then you may have heard that several of the biggest parks in the country made their announcements for their 2018 additions! This week we wanted our blog post to recap all of the announcements as well as share our thoughts and opinions on them. So, let's get started!

The first major announcement of the day came from King's Dominion in Richmond, Virginia. Unsurprisingly, information about this park's new coaster leaked a bit early, and the majority of theme park enthusiasts were left feeling underwhelmed with a reveal that they already knew by name. However, don't let that take away from the fact that KD's new addition will definitely be a wild ride. Twisted Timbers, a Rocky Mountain Construction revamp of Hurler, a previously existing wooden coaster, will feature the coaster's original wooden structure with an all new steel track. It will feature 3 inversions and travel along over 3,000 ft of track. 
We're also very excited to see the addition of WinterFest, the park's new holiday event! This festival is something that we've seen being added to many of the Cedar Fair parks over the years, and King's Dominion was next in line. The event will allow guests to experience some of the most popular attractions, holiday shows, and everyone's favorite man: Santa Claus! 
Overall, these were some great choices for King's Dominion. Cedar Fair has done a great job of improving not only King's Dominion's Roller Coaster line-up, but also the entire atmosphere of the park. 

Next up today was Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri. While every single park had their own unique live-stream announcement videos, this park's was HANDS DOWN the best. They did a great job with theming, and had a fun and engaging video to publicize their new roller coaster: Time Traveler. This coaster is an epic addition to this park, breaking a ridiculous amount of records. Time Traveler will be the fastest, steepest, and tallest spinning roller coaster ever created! A Product of MACK, this coaster will cost a whopping $26 million to build. But, from the looks of it, it will be worth it. This ride is definitely not for the faint of heart, but also may just be impossible to pass up. Make sure not to eat too much park food before getting on this one! :p 
Time Traveler will be Silver Dollar City's 4th major roller coaster, and just like King's Dominion, this park has made strides towards being one of the top coaster parks in the country. 

 At the same time as SDC's announcement, the roller coaster capitol of the world, Cedar Point, was making their record-breaking coaster announcement! 
Over a year ago, we saw Mean Streak (once the tallest wooden roller coaster in the world) close and rumors began swirling of Cedar Fair finally working with Rocky Mountain Construction Co. Today, all of the speculation was finally answered with the announcement of Steel Vengeance. This coaster is RMC's largest project ever attempted and it is only fitting that it will be part of Cedar Point's already epic line-up of record-breaking roller coasters. Steel Vengeance will be the world's first hyper hybrid coaster meaning this bad boy will reach 205 ft and feature both wooden supports and steel tracks. This ride will also take the record for most air-time on any coaster, which will add to the thrill of weaving through the wooden structure. 
As always, Cedar Point continues its streak of world-class, record-breaking rides and we can't wait to ride Steel Vengeance!

The last two park announcements for the day were on the West Coast. First was California's Great America, an up-and-coming park located right outside of San Francisco. This park has seen many additions over the last few years and is quickly becoming one of Cedar Fair's most well-funded locations. CGA faces the struggle of not having as much space as some of their sister parks, so Cedar Fair has had to get creative in keeping the park innovative in their coaster line-up. The company has transferred rides to other parks, revamped a roller coaster, added a GCI wooden coaster, and announced Rail Blazer as their newest addition. Rail Blazer is a product of RMC. It is a single-rail style track as opposed to the hybrid coasters that we previously mentioned. It may look familiar, especially to all the San Antonio natives out there, because it is a clone coaster of the recently announced Wonder Woman roller coaster at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. This is not necessarily a bad thing for California's Great America, considering how far away from each other these coasters are, and that Rail Blazer appears to have better theming. Its compact design will feature 3 inversions and be perfect for a park looking to save some space.

The last announcement of the night came from Knott's Berry Farm in California just 2 hours ago. Not unlike its fellow Cedar Fair parks, Knott's made the announcement of a new roller coaster that ultimately replaced an existing coaster in the park. Hang Time, the park's new dive coaster, will stand at a staggering 150-feet and feature 5 gravity-defying inversions. The coaster train will stop just after the lift hill at the highest point on the track and hold riders for a few seconds before releasing them down the beyond-vertical drop. 
Hang Time will be located in the newest section of Knott's Berry Farm: The Boardwalk. It will be a welcomed addition next to some of the park's other newer attractions, and will feature colorful nighttime track chase lighting to really help bring that cool boardwalk feel to the area. 

Overall, this may have been the biggest roller coaster announcement day that we have ever seen. Today, we saw the additions of 5 new coasters for 2018, and these are only SOME of the parks that have made announcements this year. It's definitely looking like 2018 will be a great year for theme parks, and we couldn't be more thrilled.