Six Flags Great America- one great park

Sir Willow · #1 06-10-2002, 08:28 PM

Almost done with all of these. Once again a reminder (as much for copyright purposes as anything) that this is a copy of a post I made on the roller coaster email list that I'm a member of. Enjoy!

Almost done with all of these!!! Only one left after this one from my big trip! So I'll jump right in with the details.

Days- Sunday night, June 2nd, and Monday morning/afternoon June 3rd.
The People: me, Josh, Jeremy D, Brian (Aflac!), and Nate. Cameron S also met us there Sunday night.
The weather- great while we were at the park. Rain overnight and in the morning.
Crowds- non-existant Sunday night. Monday was a "school trip" day, so while not heavy it wasnt light either.
Scoring- my good ol 1-10 job.

Overview notes:
As a kid I grew up pretty near Mariott's Great America in CA, now PGA, which at the time was a twin sister to this park. We started attending there from the first summer it opened and were there at least once a year after that. So being the twin, this park has a lot of memories for me, and feels almost as much like my "home" park as any others could attempt to. In a huge number of ways I felt like I was stepping back in time 20-25 years and reliving some of those great memories.

But it also meant that I was going nuts almost as soon as I had walked into the park relieving, comparing, pointing out, etc., etc. I had warned the guys in advance some, but I think I still caught them offgaurd with how much blabbing I was doing. Enough that I'm sure I overdid it some. (sorry guys) But I was having such a good time being there, well, you get the idea. But I will strive to keep that to a minimum in this TR lest it get ridiculously long.

But because of that this may well have been my most anticipated park of the trip. When we were planning it, I was real hesitant because the original plan was for us to only be there for 2-3 hours on a Sunday, and I knew that if I went I'd want a lot more time than that just to experience it all again. Even with Monday I still didn't get to do a lot of what I had hoped, but I left satisfied with what we did see and do. Thanks for allowing me to do that guys.

On to the park....

We arrived at the park Sunday evening a couple of hours before closing. We all piled into Nate's car since he had a parking pass, drove in, and headed on into the park. We walked past the entry pool framing the Colombia double decker carousel (which was looking at least as good as I ever remember it looking) and headed on through Hometown Square (memories!) and on into Southwest Territory, where we met up with Cameron.

Southwest Territory is the one land addition that Six Flags has made to the park, and one that would be impossible to make at the CA park due to land restrictions. And I have to say that SF did an incredible job on it. Not only does the land fit into the overall theme of the park, but they did a fantastic job on themeing the area and everything in it. I was very pleased with what I had seen so far.

Our first drop was Viper, a Cy-clone that had been built in house, meaning that it had a layout very similar to Psyclone out here at SFMM. But other than a similar layout, there was nothing else similar about these 2 coasters. Viper is a masterpiece of a coaster, smooth, with g's kicking in right where they should. And airtime up the wazoo!! I can't believe that this coaster doesn't have seatbelts, cause they are going to loose someone. Josh and I dared a 2 click ride at one point (sneaking it past the ops) and I think both of us were wishing for another click or two during the ride as both of us at a couple points were scrambling to grab on and save our lives. On a separate ride (I don't remember if it was that night or the next day) Brian actually looked like a rodeo cowboy going past the station, holding on with one hand, other hand in the air and flying out of his seat! It just doesn't get much better than this. Viper gets at least a 9 in my book, though I'm sure it'll also hit 10 range on some days depending on my mood. My biggest regret about it was not getting more rides. Brian than split off from us to go meet some friends, but we caught him as the park closed.

From there we walked onto the Raging Bull (yes, we actually walked on) and hopped in the back seat. This was my first B&M hyper and the last I needed to have riden a hyper from every major company. The minimal restraints and open seats did give me a bit of a nervous feeling as I went up the lift, even causing me to wonder if I'd tightened the restraint enough since i left my normal inch or two of room. I didn't need to worry. Raging Bull has some great speed, and if very smooth, but other than that there wasn't much to it. Put it this way, this is a great family hyper coaster. My daughter would love it, and I'd have no worries about her on it. It's fun, but if you're looking for air, lats, positive g's, or anything like that, they're not here. Score- 6.5

We were then also able to catch a quick ride on their Giant Drop, and Intiman second generation that is in a ver different place than PGA's, and themed much better, but otherwise pretty similar. If you like these, you'll like this one. If you don't, you won't. Me? I did. :-)

We then made our way back into the "old" park and hit up the American Eagle. They were only running one side- the backwards one, so we popped on into the train. AE has these strange barriers on the upper sides of the trains. I don't know if they are to keep you from seeing out the side, reaching out to slap hands with the other train, or what, but they're plenty ugly (you ugly, you ugly, your momma says you ugly... ah, nevermind). But running on AE, and with all my experience on the ride, it felt like a shadow of it's former self. It wasn't particularly fast, speedy, or much of anything else. The best part was not having any clue what we were going to do next since we were going backwards and I'd never been on it before. But not a lot of airtime as I recall. And the helix was fun, sort of, but would have been better if taken a bit faster and if we had been racing. Score, a 4.

Next up was Iron Wolf, their B&M standup coaster (being my 3rd standup on this trip and 5th or 6th overall). Iron Wolf hit the middle of the ranking- not being anywhere near as bad as Mantis, but also not as good as Chang. My biggest problem with Iron Wolf is that they kept pulling the seats up, so for me to have any comfort room I had to put one foot on the outside step of the car and one on the lip of the floor in front of me- not very comfortable on the feet. Why don't parks with standups realize that having the seats right up in your crotch is not comfortable, and I'm quite sure it's not necessarily the safest way to ride. Give us an inch or two of comfort space below- please!

All that said, Iron Wolf was overall not bad. There was some definate bumping and banging along, but it was tolerable, and didn't hurt like Mantis does. Knowing it was an older B&M, it also gives some hints about how B&M's age, and boys and girls, I feel pretty secure guessing that they aren't going to fare any better than Arrow in the roughness category as they age. Overall score- a 5.

Jogging our way over to V2, I got a good look at some of the rest of the park, and drooled over riding Fiddler's Fling (a calypso ride) since it looked like they still run it full out on insane mode, but that was to wait until the next day. Instead we hopped on my second impulse, and the one that probably became my favorite of the 3 I rode on this trip. SFGrAm has this one elevated, and in a very picturesque part of teh park in front of, and between, the two flume rides (yeah! they kept them both here!) Because of the elevation, when you go up you feel like you really go up! I also enjoyed the straight back hang time on this version better than the non-stop twisting on WT. Why? I dunno, and would love to get another shot at WT just to see if I was normal that morning. But as is, this scores an easy 9.

Sir Willow · #2 06-10-2002, 08:29 PM

We then took a brief split in party order here, with the other guys wanting to ride Batman since some of them had never been on one before. Me? I dashed over to Demon in our swiftly dwindling time, because as memory suits me the Demon was awesome at night! I hopped in the last seat of the train, hoping that it would end soon enough that I'd be able to get on Deja Vu before the park closed. We headed out, and memories kicked in a bit. Please indulge as I "flashback" a bit.

The Demon's station seemed to be half missing- with the unload side now uncovered. It also didn't seem as black and dark as I remembered it, though it also wasn't fully dark yet. I definately missed the old op uniforms of all black with a red stripe up the side and a red-lined black cloak. As we started off into the tunnel, the screams of those lost in the tunnel resounded from the walls (no misters though. [:-(] ) then we began the ascent up the lift hill. I quick dip, turn around, and it was into the standing drop that led immediately to two vertical loops (a little bumping at the bottom of the first one) and dodging your head around the rocks in the second loop. Coming out of the loops you immediately dive into a mulitcolored lighted tunnel with sirens going off all around you (used to be all red that lit up progressively as you went through) Then you come up, slow down and hit the midcourse (I don't remember it that slow), and turn towards a skull like mountain with glowing red eyes. You enter a corkscrew looping section through it's mouth and exit the first screw over a lake right behind the rock (used to be blood red, with a waterfall on the side, and would shoot a few little fountains towards you from the surface below), finish up the corkscrews, and head into the station having survived the Demon!

Big Kudos to Six Flags for having as many of the effects working as they did. Much better than PGA, who doesn't have much of anything working on theirs outside of the coaster itself. And the headbanging/ roughness that you hear about was pretty minimal, at least for me. And still definately a fun ride. It still gets a good 6.5 from me, even with all the more modern stuff out there.
Deja Vu then beckoned me with it's still open entrance right accross from Demon's exit, so I gladly obliged and hopped in line. The others caught up with me there a few minutes later, and we all managed to grab the last ride of the night on DV, and from the back seat to! I really like SFGrAm's boarding procedure here better than SFMM's, as if you want to wait for the front or last rows, there are places for you to be able to do that. You also have the choice of any open row when you're allowed up to the loading gates, as opposed to SFMM which assigns every seat . We hopped on and enjoyed a great, closing night ride on DV, with Josh saying the whole time that he hoped we would valley. I love the backwards pull into the drop, and the speed through the boomerand was just about perfect to eliminate headbanging. Score? a very good 9.

From there we were politely shooed out by security (what, they want to go home? the nerve! ), went out and got some Chicago style pizza at Uno's (I'll let all the single guys talk about their attempts on the waitress), and headed to our $50 hotel room- at the Hilton! Woohoo! Got a good nights sleep, got up the next morning, and headed back to the park, arriving just a bit after opening only to see lots of school busses, and signs up saying that Whizzer and Deja Vu wouldn't be open that day because of the weather (it was raining lightly). Whizzer being the one coaster I most wanted to ride since my very first big coaster was it's west coast counterpart, I was a bit disappointed, but that's ok.

We headed in, and my order of riding may be a bit mixed up here at this point, but we'll shoot anyways. Took in another ride or two on V2 (whose biggest problem is it doesn't fit the theme of where it sits) and then jumped over to Batman: the Ride, which was the first of these to be built. This one has a nice park like feel under the coaster, as opposed to the street/ trench feel of the one at SFMM. It also seemed a bit slower and not as intense. I'm used to getting off the back row with my feet numb, and here I didn't even have a slight tingle. It was also odd that on one of their 2 trains they were running it without the wheelcovers on, which looked a bit strange. Score- a 7, because I missed that intensity.

Somewhere in here we stopped at SFGrAm's version of Mooseburger, which is set up more of a buffet style as opposed to the table service at SFMM's. There was also only one moose that talked when you pushed a button, as opposed to a fully animated one with his four animated moose friends on the wall like at SFMM. However Brian, Jeremy, and Nate were very generous and all treated me to the ribs, which are no longer served at SFMM, for which I was most appreciated. Boy were they good.

Shortly after this, and getting rejected at teh kids area when we tried to ride Spacely's Sprocket Rockets because we didn't have any kids with us (hey, what am I?) most of us jumped on the Fiddler's Fling while Brian took a sit break. Something strange happened here as well, as I had an absolute blast on the ride, while the others all started to look a bit pale (Nate I thought even turned a bit green). Kinda feel bad after they treated me, but man did I have fun on it!

Then came the great Shockwave debate. Shockwave was the next ride we took, and we all hopped in the back of the train. Being an Arrow megalooper, I knew it was similar to Viper at SFMM. I was also prepared for all the horror stories about this coaster and other Arrow loopers that I'd heard about but had somehow missed experiencing thus far on the trip (with Vortex at PKI being the one exception). Fast, intense, and with only a couple of spots of bumping (not banging or bashing), this was nowhere near what I was expecting. It was much better. But most of the others swore they were getting banged around horrendously. It was almost comical looking at the on-ride pictures- I had a big huge grin and a couple of them looked like they were in torture devices. But it didn't end there. After a ride on the Condor flat ride (which is very similar to the one in Bogota that I rode, but with narrower cars and no reverse cycle on the program), I was told that I had missed the worst part of teh coaster by not riding the front. Ok, so lets do it again! Guess what? Same results! I honestly don't get it. Unless people are ignoring those signs that say to keep your head back, I don't understand how so many get their heads banged and I don't. And on the same ride and at the same time. Or maybe I'm just not as much as a wimp as they are. (JK!) Anyways, Shockwave gets a very respectable 6 from me.

We bypassed rides on American Eagle and Raging Bull because of the lines, and caught Demon for those who hadn't riden it yet (and it still didn't bang!) and, I think, another one on Viper, though my memory could be getting me on that one. Then, lo and behold, they opened the Whizzer!!!! Dancing a jig on Jeremy's back in my excitement, we jumped into line and did a takeover of the back half of the train. Whizzer is still a great fun family coaster, and one that is also good for getting close to someone you want to get close to. I didn't want to get that close to any of our group though, so we all rode by ourselves. While it's not as fast or thrilling as I remember (childhood memories being what they are), it was still a lot of fun. I would have liked time for another couple of rides, but it had a decent line, and time being what it was, we moved on.

Good omens continued to follow us as we came accross Deja Vu just as it began to do test runs. With no line gathered as of yet, we hopped into the rapidly growing mob that had also noticed the test runs and proceeded to wait it out and see if they opened it or not. After a 20 minutes wait, sure enough they opened and we were able to follow the employee walking the line back and get fairly quick front row rides, also noting the well over 1 hour line waiting to ride as we got off.

That was pretty much the end of our visit, as we still had a long drive ahead of us back to Wadsworth, OH, and lots of tolls and gas to pay for on the trip home. But I was very pleased with SFGrAm. The staff was great from all accounts that I saw. The park looked awesome, and it very quickly moved into my top tier of parks. Honestly, if I had to make a choice between this park and SFMM, I don't know which one I would choose, depending on what mood hit me. It is one nice park, and a big star in Six Flag's cap!