New Jersey
Six Flags Great Adventure
El Toro, Nitro and the empty sky where Kingda Ka stood — the Northeast's biggest coaster park, an hour from Manhattan.
7 attractions6 height limits3 tracked snacks
Jackson, New Jersey
New Jersey
El Toro, Nitro and the ghost of Kingda Ka — the Northeast's biggest coaster park, an hour from Manhattan.
Six Flags Great Adventure is the park people mean when they say the New York area has real coasters. El Toro, opened 2006, is routinely ranked among the best wooden coasters in the world — it is fast, abrupt and airtime-heavy in a way wooden coasters are not supposed to be. Nitro is the B&M hypercoaster that anchors the lakefront, and Superman and Batman fill out a genuinely deep lineup.
The park's most famous ride is no longer there. Kingda Ka, the 456-foot accelerator that was the tallest roller coaster in the world for its entire life, closed with the 2024 season along with Zumanjaro, the drop ride sharing its tower. The announcement was one of the biggest park stories of the decade, and the space is the park's next-chapter question. Visitors still arrive asking for it, which is why this site lists it as closed rather than pretending it never existed.
Great Adventure is a big, flat, spread-out park that eats crowds in summer and turns pleasant in September and October, when Fright Fest takes over the weekends. It is roughly an hour from Manhattan by car, longer on a summer Friday, and the safari drive-through next door is a separate ticket that pairs well with a short park day.
The practical bits
- Getting there
- Newark (EWR) is the sensible airport; the park is in Jackson, about an hour south of Manhattan and 75 minutes from Philadelphia depending on shore traffic. A car is close to mandatory.
- Getting around
- One park, one enormous parking lot. The internal flats between the front gate and the lakefront are a real walk; the skyline is deceptive and the park is bigger than it photographs.
- How many days
- One full day covers the coasters with re-rides on a weekday. Summer Saturdays with Fright Fest season overlapping can justify a second day plus the safari.
- When to go
- September and early October weekdays are the sweet spot: full operation, thin crowds, Fright Fest on weekends. July and August Saturdays are the region's busiest single-park days.
The 1 parks
The question everyone asks first
Height requirements across the resort
Every ride at New Jersey with a minimum height, shortest first. Sort any column.
| Attraction | Park | Height | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Toro | Great Adventure | 48" · 122cm | Roller coaster |
| Jersey Devil Coaster | Great Adventure | 48" · 122cm | Roller coaster |
| The Dark Knight Coaster | Great Adventure | 48" · 122cm | Roller coaster |
| Batman: The Ride | Great Adventure | 54" · 137cm | Roller coaster |
| Nitro | Great Adventure | 54" · 137cm | Roller coaster |
| Superman: Ultimate Flight | Great Adventure | 54" · 137cm | Roller coaster |
line-skip passes here
THE FLASH Pass covers the coaster lineup here at tiered prices — see the line-skip guide for what it costs as of July 2026 and which rides it skips best.