BobFunland
Posts: 7962
Registered: 8/9/2001
Rank: Site Moderator
|
 7/16/2006 2:09:02 AM
OK, only 8 weeks late, but here we go:
Day: May 16, 2006 (2)
Park: Six Flags Great America (Gurnee, IL)
Well, originally I had planned on just doing the two major Indiana parks, but with time to kill, weather issues adn the proximity to the area, I opted to go ahead and squeeze in Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, IL - a little less than an hour north of Chicago and about 2.5 hrs from ym hotel in Lafayette, IN.
After arriving right at 10AM for opening (the time change gave me an extra hour of sleep, yay, and traffic wasn't that bad!), I headed into the park and picked up a map. A circle looked easy, so I headed to Whizzer first.
I am a huge fan of Schwarzkopf roller coasters, and Whizzer has a devoted following. Well, quite frankly, I was let down. It was a good coaster indeed, I wouldn't have minded for that to be my first coaster, but not quite as thrilling as described. Also, the operating procedures were a bummer since they didnt seem to want to dispatch until the second train was on the final brakes. I can't imagine them running 3 or 4 trains on the track like I *think* is possible.
Oh well, still fun, off to Viper. Viper is an in-house woodie modeled after the Coney Cyclone, or more closely for us, the Georgia Cyclone. It has a slightly different layout, but oh my goodness it delivers!! The airtime in the back was just incredible, GA Cyclone-style ejector without the painful ride. It ran splendidly over the course of the day in which I racked up about 6 rides in various rows of the 3-bench PTC's back car. Just incredible, it beat all of Holiday World's woodies in my mind and only Cornball prevented it from being my favorite on the trip.
After that, I checked out the line for Raging Bull. The longest line of the day, yes, but still only 15 minutes due to the park running 2 trains on everything that could handle it, way to go guys. At this point, I began to catch on to the idea that the park has some awesome operations. That, coupled with the obvious attention to preserving the park's theme, and I was picking up on the reason why people love it so much. Anyways, on to the Bull. I chose the back row for my first ride, and ended up riding back there all three laps through the day. I had heard some negative things about the ride, specifically dealing with the trim, and it ended up being all too true in my mind. The air produced very little good air - the first drop is my favorite of the 4 stateside B&M hypers and the tirld hill COULD be insane. Ejector like no other B&M, but no.. the trim makes it very weak floater, not even the cool floater like what GOLIATH or Apollo's has. The rest of the ride delivered very little air, just a couple sweet bunny hops into a painfully drawn-out, yet kinda cool low-level ending. Overall.. yes it was fun, but probably not worth more than a 7 or 8 in my quest for equal distribution. It is somewhere in my top 50, for whatever that's worth.
OK, moving along I took my lap on Demon and was somehwat pleasantly suprised. The beginning sequence was quality, but the midcourse stunk since there was no drop immediately after it to get going agian. You just kinda crawled forward into the corkscrews... oh well. I would have liked to ride Deja Vu, but I missed out on it since it was closed. With dummies in the trains, I didn't expect to ride it. Hey, I've been to Magic Mountain 4 times since they got their Deja Vu, why would I be able to get this one on the first shot? Oh well, American Eagle called.
I really wanted to like American Eagle - I sure love the clothing company, and I have a beautiful technical drawing of it framed on my wall at home.. but, alas, it didn't deliver much to me. My first Intamin woodie, I was left unimpressed with the earlier rendition of IntaWood. A little air, a fairly smooth ride.. nothing too bad but nothing great either. Sadly, I only got one ride, and only one track was open. That would be the<
Message updated 5/11/2012 12:09:39 AM by BobFunland
|
Animan1
Posts: 5394
Registered: 5/14/2003
Rank: Platinum Critic
|
 7/17/2006 7:38:56 PM
While your comments about SFGAm's overall coaster collection were taken by me as almost personal attacks ( ), you still had a great TR regardless. I'm glad that it is your favorite SF park, it is mine as well. It's also good to hear from someone who's opinion I put a fair amount of stock in that they too were impressed by the operations and theming throughout the park, and for it to beat SFOG is impressive indeed. Nice TR, man, and next time, no surprise visits so that I can actually meet up with you.
|