After a bit of a break, we took another visit to the wonderful Six Flags Discovery Kingdom on a crowded Sunday afternoon. There’s quite a lot going on during the busy summer season, including, Joker operations, V2 reopening, and various other park news, so please enjoy the following update!
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It was a very busy day at the park today, and when we arrived at 11:00, it took about 30 mins to park despite all booths being open. When we finally entered the lot at around 12:00 it was almost full already.
But we manage to get in 😛 And were welcomed by the park’s awesome main plaza fountain.
As well as a live band in the entrance plaza providing music, which was a nice atmospheric touch.
Despite the insane crowds, there were certain areas of the park that people hadn’t quite made it to, namely the back. Before walking on Pacific Rim, we noticed the new additions to the sign including the I-werks logo and some text exclaiming “Now Playing Here”!
Boomerang was also a walk on early in the day, and was actually running pretty smoothly for us.
As a side note, despite having paid for their elephants to be transferred to a large open space sanctuary in Oregon, the park is still offering elephant rides from animals that are on loan from a third party. We understand the popularity of this attraction, but it may be time to let it go.
Unfortunately, Whitewater Safari has suffered a lot of downtime these past few years and is closed once again.
Speaking of rides that have suffered downtime, Voodoo remains closed. Very reminiscent of Riptide down South, it will be interesting to see if a removal is in the near future.
And speaking of removal, Thrilla Gorilla of course is closed. No major work has been done yet, but I’m sure we will start to see the ride taken apart and the area cleared in the near future. The park will host special events in its space in the future. 
There is some apparent construction near the back of Sea Lion stadium. We don’t take pictures behind fences, but it’s pretty clear that it’s a pump for a large pump system for the tank.
On the other end of the spectrum, V2 has finally reopened after a lengthy closure, and no, it’s not Batman. We got to chance to ride it and it was running great. The train has been extensively refurbished including replaced wheels and restrains, and it shows. Too bad that Twix wrap is still there.
The Penguin has received a bit of extra theming. The queue has received some clever shading, a series of large umbrellas, which are of course a staple of the character. They killed two birds with one stone by adding shade while also contributing to the rides new theme.
Of course, just across the midway is the all new Joker. Unfortunately, The Joker is still plagued with problems. Although it was running two trains, it was closed just about as much as it was open during our visit due to constant breakdowns (Thus the trainless shots). Most of the issues seem to be stemming from the purple train, which as a result is often left out of operation.
On the flip side, we finally stuck out the hour plus wait to ride it again, and it was flying. The Joker has really come into its own and warmed up a LOT. It navigates the course with the kind of speed I had personally always imagined delivering a faster paced ride with insane airtime and laterals. It’s good to see Joker finally warming up.
Superman: Ultimate Flight of course also had a full queue all day. Believe or not, I hardly ride it in the summer, unless I arrive at the park very early. The low capacity and high demand just make it a mission to ride in the crowded summer months.
On the other side of the park though Medusa was eating up crowds like it always does. Around it’s sweet spot at about 1:00 pm and it was a station wait despite the overflow crowds.
Kong on the other hand had quite the wait despite being back up to two trains, mostly due to slower dispatches,
As we were leaving we noticed the overflow parking at the fairgrounds had been implemented (no surprise there). There were still large crowds streaming over to the park from across the street when we left in the late afternoon. Looks like the park is doing quite well for themselves.
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