Six Flags Great America, IL

Total Timber Tour 2 Blog Day 12

Welcome all again to, what seems like, our never-ending story. If this is your first day reading about our travels, you can catch up so far by paging through the days listed below.

So, last night we arrived at the hotel at midnight and were back on the road at 7.15am to get to today’s park, Six Flags Great America, in Gurnee, Il for around 9.30am, giving us plenty of time to park up and sort ourselves out for opening at 10am. Well that was the plan but the nice commuters of Chicago had different ideas and we arrived at the entrance bang on 10am. 40 minutes later we were still queuing to get into the car park! Yes, the park is busy, but the faffing around at the booths where you pay for the parking was ridiculous. The attendant in our lane had all the time in the world to get the pleasantries out the way, and then go on to talk about our tour and explain all about some zip line thing we must try out. So, time we parked, walked, got searched etc. we were 1½ hours late.

Did this matter? Well no, not at all. Apart from Waterville, this is the only park that is common to this trip and the 2008 attempt, and we didn’t get to Waterville as you well know. It’s always busy here – the park is massive and has a lot of attractions. Just to remind you, we added this to the tour quite late to ride the newly relocated junior wooden coaster Little Dipper and we did this with grace within minutes of entering. It must be said Six Flags have done a fantastic job making this coaster look like new again.

The remainder of the day could have easily become a queuing exercise had it not been for our commitment to the Six Flags share dividends fund by means of a Platinum Flash Pass – the same as the type used in La Ronde last week. It’s all similar here except, for some reason, the two big woodies aren’t included and we had to wait with the “common people” for these. Otherwise, straight on what you choose and 2 circuits for the price of one, except for V2 where only one ride is allowed (we’ll it’s not a circuit is it!). For the most part the ride ops were Ok at managing waiting guests for the second go and we only had one occurrence of the next riders not being pre-warned we going around again.

The two large woodies then. Viper was superb and smooth with more airtime over every hill than either of us remembers. They weren’t racing American Eagle, only running the blue side today, despite the queues. This has developed a very strange vibration on the train that is similar in effect to those feet massage chairs they have at parks, except this was applied to the whole body throughout the ride! The park food must also get a mention, quality, quantity and choice was faultless.

A very busy park then, but we did what we came to do and quite a bit more besides.

Until tomorrow....