Six Flags boasts high turnout

Last Friday, the fifth annual Georgia Tech Night at Six Flags saw record attendance with approximately 7500 Tech students, faculty, staff and guests in attendance. The SGA sponsored event, which is a part of the Ramblin' Nights event series, has become increasingly popular each year due to a highly publicized marketing strategy.

Mark Ladisch, a fifth-year Industrial Engineering major, and Erika Via, a fourth-year Biology major, coordinated this year's Six Flags event and worked closely with SGA and other students.

"We sent out two mega emails, we put flyers out, we also put up a couple of signs at the box office in the Student Center," Ladisch said.

According to terms of the contract with the park, Tech needs at least 5,000 attendees to reserve the theme park. Funding was provided by SGA. Over $11,000 was petitioned through GSS last week for transportation, tickets and other expenses.

Transportation was easily accessible for students who did not have independent means of transportation. Students were given free time slots to travel in buses starting from 4:45 p.m. Ladisch said that over 50 percent of students took the Stingers, while the rest drove or carpooled to the event.

Jonathon Edwards, a second-year Chemical Engineering major, stated that traffic was okay this year and parking was easy to find. However, since the event was so popular the parking lots were full by 8 p.m.

Security was placed as normal on the park grounds and there were no contracts signed regarding student liability or capacity of rides.

"As far as the liability goes, that all is under Six Flags and does not fall back on to the hands of Georgia Tech. Six Flags does a good job managing with normal security precautions. Usually metal detectors are in place and Six Flags has their own security team, we left it up to them [to handle security screenings]," Edwards said.

"In attendance we also had Buzz and we had WREK radio providing some music before the GT band arrived," Ladisch said.

Twenty-five marching band members came to entertain students. Many Tech students brought friends from other universities such as Georgia State, UGA, Emory and Clayton University.

The high attendance numbers did come with some apparent drawbacks. Students had to wait in long lines for rides such as Batman, Superman and The Goliath. Sometimes lines were over an hour and a half long.

"I did not hear of any issues for any of the rides. All of the lines kept moving and everybody was able to enjoy the rides... the longest wait I say would be 40 minutes for the Goliath at the peak hours. But that is not nearly as bad as a three-hour wait on a normal working day," Ladisch said.

"The most popular rides were the Goliath; the Deja Vu was open, which was a surprise because it was closed to the general public for a while, [and] the Acrophobia was popular," Ladisch said.

In past years, the date of the Six Flags trip was early in September. However this year the event was planned in late September, a week before fall break. Organizers of the event are unable to say whether this impacted the attendance.

"We only had a few mishaps with people picking up the tickets. They were able to pick up the ticket, but it was a really minor issue," Via said.

"I was very impressed with the turnout. We probably had more than two thousand more people this year than last year, and I was really happy with the results," Via said.