This review is based upon visiting on Friday, 8/17/24. The weather was beautiful.

Going to an amusement park means you are going to spend a good amount of money. Anyone should expect that these days. What I am going to demonstrate below is that the amount paid to have a good experience at Six Flags New England is not worth it.

As a family of eight, we do what we can to cut costs. We were able to park for $15 outside the park in a private lot with a short walk, much better than paying $30-50 the park charges.

It was our mistake to miss that getting into the water park would cost us an additional $96 for our eight people. I actually think that was worth it, but wish we had known ahead of time.

Expect to pay $18-25 per person per meal (not including drinks) inside the park. Depending on your desires, it might be worth paying $45 for the unlimited food. But if you're adding it all up, the best you're going to do per person for an all-day, all-park experience is $100+, much more than the $29.99 price you see on the website. No, you can't bring your own food. There's not even free water in the park. So unless you plan on not drinking or eating all day, "$29.99" means nothing (if you can even find a day that has that price, which isn't easy).

That said, we've happily paid hundreds for other parks, right? Disney, no problem. Of course I don't expect Six Flags to be Disney, but I would expect a few things if we're paying over $100 per person:

• The park looks terrible in a lot of places. It wouldn't cost that much to add more landscaping. Just look under the Riddler - weeds, dirt, and overgrown mess.
• The park closes at 8:00. I assume they're saving even more money by not paying employees beyond that time? But beware: significant other parts of the park close even earlier. The water park is only open six hours total, closing at 6:00 PM. Most of the kids rides close down by 7:00. Why so early? It puts a rush on the rides that do stay open, creating longer lines.
• The bathrooms should be much cleaner.
• There should be water fountains and filling stations. I would be much more likely to come back. (I'm of the opinion that water shouldn't cost anymore than using the bathroom does.)
• I despise the concept of paying more to get to the front of lines. Yes, I know Disney does it, too. Don't like it there, either.

Also, the bugs were very bad with thousands of bees throughout the day. You couldn't really escape them, though none of us was stung, thankfully. Then around 6:00, black flies swarmed as well. I'm not completely sure how much the park can do about the latter, but they could probably do something about the bees.

Some positives: The water park was fun, except that a good portion of it was closed and appears to have been for a while with concrete planters separating those slides off. The tall green slide (that requires no tube) scratched our teens' backs and we saw others complain as well.

The wave pools and other water activities were pretty good, probably our kids' favorites.

Superman is still a phenomenal roller coaster. And there are definitely more roller coasters per capita than Canobie Lake. That is a plus.

There were some happy staff, more so toward the beginning of the day who made great effort to be friendly, waving to us on rides, and toying with our little ones (particularly at the gate). "Matt," who was running the small kids coaster in the Looney Tunes section was a great guy - made the experience more fun for our two younger kids (6 & 8). There was also a lifeguard in the activity pool who clearly loved his job while also being very responsible and keeping an eye on things. He danced his head side to side to the music as he scanned for trouble.

The food, while terribly priced, was actually not all that bad.

But all-in-all, we will pay more to go to Canobie Lake Park next time. Despite the frugality in me that surely you can sense if you've made it this far, I don't mind paying more if the experience is worth it. Six Flags, as it currently stands at the writing of this review, ain't it.