If you have been following the blog this summer you know that my oldest son who is ten has been bitten by the roller coaster bug, For his 10th birthday instead of a party we decided to take him to Six Flags America. Six Flags is located in Marlboro, MD near Washington DC.
One of the missions behind Vacation Maybe is to share the best places for family vacations and adventure. We are also here to share when we think a place is not the best choice for families to spend their time and hard earned vacation budgets. Sadly I have to tell you that Six Flags America is not an amusement park I would recommend for families. Let me tell you why.
Lack of Family Friendly Rides
The park does not have many ride options for the whole family to enjoy together. We have a 10 yr old and a 5 yr old. While I completely understand and expect that there will be more rides for my 10 yr old than for my 5 yr old since after all amusement parks aim to have the biggest and best thrills, we are also looking for family fun. Thjat means rides that we can all go on together. Six Flags America also had a nice variety of rides for the younger park goers what they really lack in though is rides for the family. We want to be able to make memories together and there were very few rides that all, four of us could ride together. As a result we spent our time split, one parent with each child, for most of the day.
Customer Service could use some improvement
We ate dinner at the Johnny Rockets. Six Flags does offer a great deal on a family meal that included a burger, fries, and drink for all of us without breaking the bank. However, the cashiers were less the friendly and not concerned with delivering great service. Additionally many of the places to stop and grab treats were closed so we had to search for open ones.
No SHADE and not many places to duck in to cool off
There were very few trees in the park. For a park as old and established as Six Flags America you would expect plenty of big trees providing lots of shade but it just isn’t the case. If it had been any hotter on the day of our visit we would have been miserable. There were also very few places inside the park that actually had air conditioning. All of the shows were on outside stages or in the streets and there was only one restaurant with air conditioning. Families that spend all day at the park need to be able to sit down in the shade or air conditioning and cool off. Ever spent the entire day hot and sticky and miserable with hot and sticky kids? It isn’t pretty. It is so important for parks to offer places where folks can sit and really cool down.
Many Outdated rides
I would say that overall we were disappointed with the rides at Six Flags America. It just seemed like they have not done much to keep the rides fresh and modern.
On a positive note, the park was not all bad and we did have a ton of fun. The weather was perfect, we got lucky with a sunny warm day during Labor Day weekend. The park was empty and when I mean empty I mean it was sad. We were fully expecting the park to be very busy on the last holiday weekend of summer. Fortunately for us we never had to wait in line for more than a few minutes. My thrill, seeking son loved being able to ride all the big coasters without the painfully long wait in line. In fact, if you have older children who love coasters you may have a really great time at Six Flags America. If you have a mix of big kids and little kids I would say skip this park until everyone is tall enough to ride the big rides and don’t go during the hottest days of summer.
