Six Flags Great Adventure

This centrally-located East Coast amusement park is currently the world’s second largest. Its 510 acres can easily take a day or more to roam and includes more than 50 water, coaster and

carnival rides as well as the chance to go on safari through enclosures home to 1,200 animals from around the world.

The park is divided into seven sections with shopping and dining in each. Many of the popular coasters and rides are located directly to the right and left of the entrance, though you’ll have to wander down ‘Main Street’ to get to their connecting thoroughfares. The Safari Park is accessed in the back of ‘Frontier Adventures’ in the rear left corner of the park. And the park’s two water rides, refreshing in summer, are in ‘Frontier Adventures’ and ‘Adventure Seaport’ home of the Nitro Coaster to the far right of the park entrance.

As with many amusement parks these days, crazy long lines are standard for Six Flags Great Adventure’s most popular rides: The 415-foot drop tower of Zumanjaro: Drop of Doom; the

Kingda Ka coaster, which zooms to 128 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds; the loopy Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and Nitro coasters; and the rickety El Toro track with the world’s steepest wooden coaster drop. To beat the lines, head to those spots first thing in the morning or after the daytime rush around 6 p.m. And, even better – visit on weekdays in the summer or any open day in spring, early summer and September. If that’s not an option, you can pay to avoid long waits: Three levels of FLASH Passes, ranging in cost from $30 to $90 for families up to five, allow visitors to check in with rides and spend their line doing other things – an alert notifies them when it’s their turn to ride. A mobile app sharing ride wait times is still in the beta phase.