Although I probably went more than twice in my life, I have two main memories of Six Flags Great Adventure from when I was a kid. The first was driving through the safari in the family station wagon. The second was going in high school for “Physics Day”, where we had to complete a worksheet with questions that applied physics principles to the rides in the park.
The latter was memorable mostly for the novelty of going to an amusement park for a school field trip. The former was memorable because a monkey jumped on the hood of our car and tried to pull the windshield wipers off. As an adult now, I look back on that family trip with great gratitude and appreciation for my father. I know now that driving his own car through a drive-through safari had to have been his worst nightmare. I’m guessing the smells from the animals and their paw prints on the hood and roof of the car lasted for weeks. My neat and tidy dad’s post-traumatic stress probably lasted much longer.
Naturally I wanted to relive this experience with my own kids. Since we always fly for our NJ visits, I knew I could not in good conscience ask my dad to sacrifice his car to the cause again. So I was really happy to learn that they had converted the safari to a “ride”, where you no longer drive your own cars but ride through on jeeps driven by guides. Win win!
We got to the park a little before 11 and headed straight to the safari. The line wasn’t long and we were able to board our jeep pretty quickly. The attraction is similar to Kilimanjaro Safari in Disney’s Animal Kingdom but it has a unique twist. The tour is broken up into two parts and you make a stop in the middle at Camp Aventura, a small zoo-like area where you can walk around and see some smaller animals up close and even feed the giraffes. You can stay as long as you’d like at the camp and then just hop on the next jeep to continue your journey through the safari. It takes about 45 minutes for the jeep part of the experience, as you travel across the 350 acres that are home to 1200 animals.
While in the jeep we saw everything from buffalos and bears to elephants and rhinos. They have an impressive collection of animals roaming free over wide areas, with gates separating the different habitats.
The jeep ride was enjoyable and educational but the highlight of the trip was the stop at Camp Aventura. When the park stopped allowing cars to drive through in 2012, public opinion was split on the change. Many applauded the new model as safer for the animals (and the cars!), but many others lamented the loss of the family adventure and the ability to go at your own pace when driving your own car through. The creation of Camp Aventura was a brilliant attempt to appease both sides. The stop allows you to amble through on your own schedule and enjoy close-up interactions with many animals.
After exiting the jeep, you must walk through the reptile house. Here you can view and even touch some snakes and reptiles. They also have a small gift shop and sell tickets to the zipline and to feed the giraffes. Note that each person who wants to go into the area where they feed the giraffes must have their own ticket. Your kids will not be able to share the food and take turns feeding the giraffes.
Exiting out the back of the reptile house, you enter the main area of the camp. They have several enclosures with different types of animals – some birds, some small mammals, and usually a baby animal or two that are waiting to be big enough to be introduced to the main safari. By far the animal that fascinated our group the most was the anteater. What a bizarre looking creature! JB must have spent 20 minutes talking to the keeper, peppering her with questions about the animal.
After exploring the different animals in the enclosures, we went to feed the giraffes. Each ticket holder received an ice cream cone filled with carrot sticks. The boys loved holding the sticks out and seeing the giraffe’s long, purplish tongue come out and wrap around the food.
When we finished feeding the giraffes the carrot sticks (and the ice cream cone!) we headed back to hop on the next jeep (they come approximately every 5 minutes). On our way out we noticed a playful bear cub in his enclosure. We watched in amusement as he sat in a big plastic tub (presumably a pool or bath to cool down in) and flipped himself over and rolled all around, doing somersaults while adeptly still remaining in the tub. He was quite entertaining and seemed to enjoy his audience.
All told, we spent over two hours on the safari and it was the highlight of our visit. We only went on a handful of rides after that. I found the park layout with 10 different lands to be somewhat confusing because there was no centralized area for kids rides. Several of the lands (like Adventure Seaport and Frontier Adventures) had their own kids areas with a group of rides for the younger set, but it would have been easier if there had been one single land with all the little kid rides together in one place. We hit a few rides and then gave up on navigating all over the park to get to more, and the kids were totally fine with that. Since we had kids of varying ages (we were there with cousins) and varying ride experience, it was for the best that nobody was especially interested in rides.
On the way out of the park, we had to make one last stop for some prime character interaction. Looney Tunes is definitely not in my kid’s regular TV rotation and in fact they only knew who the characters were at all because they had watched Space Jam at basketball camp earlier in the summer. But JB underwent a complete transformation while on our Disney cruise and is now obsessed with any character he can meet. We found Wile E Coyote and Porky Pig hanging out on Main Street. JB immediately started joking around with them and then Wile E Coyote took RB’s stuffed zebra and balanced it on his nose. The characters were really interactive and fun and did a great job entertaining the kids.
Wile E and Porky were called away for a show in front of the fountain but JB wasn’t letting them off that easy. He immediately joined in and sang and danced around with the characters. He broke off for a moment, asked me if I would buy him a Wile E Coyote stuffed animal, ran into the store to get it, and then ran back outside to show it to Wile E. It was so sweet. Wile E was excited – he took it from JB to check it out and then gave it back to him, grabbed his hands and showed him the dance steps so they could dance the macarena together. Watching the pure joy on his face as he interacted with characters he barely knew, I immediately began plotting a trip to Disney World again to capture this stage one more time before he outgrew it. Stay tuned… But for now…
