Hi everybody,
My wife & I have decided to take a trip from the UK to the USA in 2016 to visit as many theme parks as we can and we are hoping to pick the brains & experience of all you lovely people to help ensure we have the best time possible and not miss out on anything amazing while we are there.
To make the trip fit with our work schedules & budget we'll by flying to New York on May 7th 2016 and starting our journey from there.
We'll then be visiting the following parks (in order);
1. Six Flags Great Adventure - (1 Day)
2. Hershey Park - (1 Day)
3. Kings Dominion - (1 Day)
4. Busch Gardens - (1 Day)
5. Kings Island - (1 Day)
6. Cedar Point - (2 Days)
7. Six Flags Great America - (1 Day)
8. Knott's Berry Farm - (1 Day)
9. Universal Studios Hollywood - (1 Day)
10. Six Flags Magic Mountain - (1 Day)
We've planned in a fair amount of rest days as well because there's quite a lot of driving to do and we would also like to take in some other less intense tourist attractions along the way.
We've already decided that we are going to film our trip so I'll definitely post it online when we get back along with what I imagine will be quite a hefty trip report.
Anyway, there are a couple of things I'm not sure about and was hoping that some of you guys would be able to help and maybe offer advice. Any information/tips would be very much appreciated.
So here goes with the questions....
1. Will one day at SFMM be enough or do you think we'll need two to fit everything in? We don't have any spare days in California but we're OK with dropping Universal Studios off the list to
save a day as we visited Universal when we were last in Florida.
2. Do you think we should budget for Fast Lane/Flash Passes in order to make sure we will get on all the attractions @ each park or will the month of May be quite enough to not require them? (Our itinerary has us at SFGA, Kings Island, SFMM & Universal Studios on weekend days.)
If it's a yes for passes, how far in advance do you think I will need to book them to ensure availability?
3. If it works out financially better to get Season Passes, are these available to pre-buy for Guests outside of the USA, or do we need to wait until we get to the first park to get them, (I can't seem to find this information on the park websites.)
4. Cedar Point opened on Sunday May 9th this year, is this the case every year or does the opening date fluctuate each year? Our itinerary has us getting to Cedar Point on May 16th & I would hate to finalise everything now and then find out that the park won't be open when we plan to be there.
5. Does anyone live near any of these theme parks that can give me a rough idea of what weather to expect when we are there in May?
6. Whilst we plan to try and experience everything we possibly can in each park, I'm sure there will be some things that will have to be overlooked due to us only having one day @ at each park (apart from 2 days at Cedar Point). So are there any hidden gems at these parks that you recommend as a "must do" (apart from all the big coasters obviously). I would hate to miss a great dark ride/haunted house ect on what will probably be a once in a life-time visit to these parks.
That's everything I can think of right now, but as I mentioned above, if anybody has any other information that they think would be useful for our trip, it would be very much appreciated. We can't wait to head over the USA and visit all these amazing parks. We visit all the UK parks regularly (I used to work at AT) & we've also been venturing further afield over the last few years and it's been amazing. This year we went to Europa Park which was mind blowing so I can only imagine how good the rides are going to be at all these parks in the USA, especially after reading all about them on here.
Thanks in advance,
Innovtech