The drive to Great America from my house is 426 miles. That's roughly equal to a round-trip to Kentucky Kingdom, mileage-wise. Time is another matter altogether. It took me 8:44 to make the trip, which works out to about 49 miles per hour. Except that doesn't tell the whole story. It was about 3:00 when I arrived at the IR-65/IR-80 interchange. Two and a half hours later, I was forking over $10 to park my car at Great America. Is there any road in the Chicago area which is not under construction? Does nobody in this city move when the light turns green? And doesn't anyone know how to merge?
So it would be a short visit to Great America. I entered through the me_al detector right around 6pm, and immediately headed to the left. Superman: Ultimate Flight had a full queue and then some. Ick. I sat in the test seat and verified that the ride should accommodate me easily even with the c*m*r* bag. Interesting thing about the test seat...it has a working latch on the shoulder bar, operated by a handle on the front. It's intended to allow us bigger people to verify that we can sit in the seat and latch the restraint properly. But small children can't resist climbing into it and giving it a try. Only thing is, some of them discover that once they get the bar down, their arms are too short to reach the release handle. Luckily there is usually another kid nearby who also wants to give it a try who will let him out...! Hmmm...Maybe they should put a row of these things in the station for "storing" underheight kids while their parents ride the ride... 8-)
Not wanting to immediately jump into a long line, I bypassed Superman for the moment and headed on around the corner. Batman also had a full queue, but the East River Crawler got my attention. The ride had not been operating when I visited last year...and I found myself trying to remember if this thing was even present last year, or if the space had been occupied by a non-operating Eyerly Monster on my last visit. The East River Crawler is a Schwarzkopf Polyp ride, five sweeps with five stub arms on each sweep. Each car looks like a single-seat Schwarzkopf Looping Speedracer coaster car, right down to the square seat cushions. Each car has a double-wide seat, with a double-wide lap bar that appears to (no surprise) use the same mechanism as the Schwarzkopf coasters, right down to the release button. Since this appears to be the same ride as the one down at Six Flags New Orleans, I looked at it and its operation pretty closely. I noticed that there was only one operator, but there are obvious duty stations for at least two more, roughly evenly spaced around the ride. I also noticed that at the end of the ride cycle as the hydraulic piston on the center starts to come down there is a revving noise, which I presume is the weight of the ride trying to drive the pump backwards.
Vertical Velocity had a full queue, and seeing it in the daylight I noticed how much its entrance sign resembles the one for X-Flight at Geauga Lake...and how much the main sign on the station resembles the one on Superman Ultimate Escape at Geauga. Different logo, but same position, size, and shape. I opted to skip it due to the long wait.
On around the park, a train was preparing to leave from the County Fair train ststion, so I climbed aboard. The train runs very slowly sort-of around the perimeter of the park...actually shortcutting across behind Hometown Square and Orleans Place. So Mariott [Footnote 1] didn't adopt the Disneyland/Adventureland/Magic Kingdom tactic of putting a train station above the front gate. But they kind of came close. Great America is laid out on a gigantic circle with a long, narrow service corridor down the middle. The train cuts across between the Carousel Plaza and the service corridor, with the station on the Hometown Square side. From the train I saw long lines for the American Eagle and for the Demon and even for the Viper. Here it was a Thursday night and the park is getting absolutely mobbed. As the train passed through the tunnel under the Demon, we passengers felt like passing out from the diesel fumes. It probably wasn't so bad with a steam engine, but with the diesel locomotive they really need an exhaust vent in that tunnel!
I exited train at the Hometown Square station, and as I stepped down the stairs, I was followed indirectly by a posse of r.r-c regulars. We exchanged greetings, ending with a hearty, "See you at Hillcrest!" and went our separate ways. They were heading for dinner. I headed for Superman: Ultimate Flight, resigned to a long wait. At the entrance I was handed a numbered ticket which had a message on it warning that it would be collected at the ride, and that we all had to board in sequence. I half-jokingly asked if that meant that if somebody bailed out of the line we all had to pass our tickets back to the next in line. It makes sense, though, as a means of discouraging queue jumping.
It turned out to be a little more than an hour before I reached the platform. Once there, I sat down, pulled the bar down, waited for the attendants to finish their preparations, then we were off. The cars swing back into a face-down position, eliciting surprised screams from a significant number of riders. It's not unlike the screams often heard when the platform drops on a Skycoaster...but oddly enough, usually NOT heard when the seats recline on X-Flight. My impression was that the face-down position is not the most pleasant way to sit in the station. For one thing I would have liked to have the lap bar down about another notch, as I could feel that my lower torso was flopping about a bit in the seat...in fact was completely off the seat and sliding down and forward, pushed along by the too-tight upper body restraint. So it was the same problem I had on my first X-Flight ride, except this time I was laying down instead of back, in what is, oddly enough, a more comfortable position. The train slid out of the station and headed up the lift. On the lift is where things get really strange because the seated-but-face-down position at this point actually feels somewhat natural, a regular prelude to flight. At the top, the train swoops downward in a graceful arc, heads back up, then goes through the strangest vertical loop ever designed...the inverted train enters at the top and loops through the bottom, essentially doing that impossible loop-on-the-bottom maneuver. Coming out of that element there is more "fly like Superman" maneuvering, and a quick flip-over element with track that looks like an inverted coaster inline twist. The ride ends with a typical brake run/transfer table, the seats still face-down until the train rolls into the station.
Superman: Ultimate Flight brings up an interesting philosopical question, similar to a Great Unanswered Question about Millennium Force: Does Superman: Ultimate Flight include any inversions? Does it go upside-down? If so, where? How does one define "upside-down" or "rightside up" with a coaster in this configuration? Is it an inversion when the train dives headfirst down the first drop? When it goes through the bottom of the "loop" with riders on their backs? When it does that inline twist thingy? How should we describe the maneuvers on this thing?
For now, the question must remain unanswered, as night is falling fast. With only an hour or so to spare, I made for the Viper. Viper is Six Flags Great America's Cyclone-style wood coaster. Last year I had no idea what to expect and was utterly blown away by this thing, with several moments of explosive airtime. This time I waited far too long for a ride in the back seat. I sat down and pulled on the lap bar. "One...Two..." I counted off as I pulled hard, noting that the return spring is very stiff, and nothing had latched yet. "...Three." The lap bar clicked into place. I see this train has received the Thunder Run adjustment. I do hope that isn't really the first notch [Footnote 2]...but that's as far as it's gonna go for me. The train rolled out of the station and up the lift. At the top it slowed to a crawl. The first drop doesn't twist so much as it angles to the left, down the hill. The second hill is a banked turnaround, followed by another drop and rise, which sets up the double-down. I crossed my ankles under the seat in front of me, grabbed the grab bar with my left hand, and stuck my right hand through the checker-handle at the outboard corner of the lap bar, and lifted up. Moments later the train hit the double-down with a force that rivalled the Kennywood Jack Rabbit. Good Lord, where did the train go? I landed squarely on the seat, just in time to be tossed again more gently by two small hills. The ride profile on this thing is incredible, and it runs great, really spoiled only by terrible seats. I wish those rotten hard-as-a-rock urethane foam seat cushions weren't so durable; perhaps then parks could be convinced to use softer pads. Because really, that's the worst thing about this ride...those miserable seat backs. Viper is a tremendous ride, one which, like Thunder Run at Kentucky Kingdom, completely fails to live up to the stereotype of mediocre Six Flags wooden coasters.
When I got off, 10:00 was fast approaching. I had a decision to make, and I didn't know if I would be returning to the park. After all, it was Thursday night and the place was packed...the prospect of an even bigger crowd on Saturday was downright frightening. Where should I go for my last ride of the night? American Eagle, which I thought stunk last year? Raging Bull, the hypercoaster that does nothing? Iron Wolf, B&M's worst coaster? Another circuit on Viper? I thought a moment, and the answer became obvious.
I headed for the Whizzer.
I wasn't really surprised that the Whizzer was still around. Last year, you may recall, Great America had announced that they were removing the Whizzer to make room for their New-for-2003 roller coaster. I was suspicious last year when I visited, first that they were making a big deal about the removal of an obviously popular coaster; that they were planning to remove a wonderful Schwarzkopf classic when they have that B&M piece of garbage over in Yankee Harbor; and that while Shock Wave was down mechanical all day, nobody in the park seemed to notice. That evening I was told that the park would be making a "shocking" announcement the next day. Indeed, that same day I got the email advisory from Brian Plencner indicating that the Whizzer was staying and the Shock Wave would be going. So I had already taken my first and last ride on the Whizzer, it was nice to be able to ride it again.
The Whizzer is a Schwarzkopf Speedracer with a powered train (several powered trains, actually) which pull themselves up the spiral lift. At the top, the third rail runs out, the motors shut down, and from there on out, gravity does all the dirty work. It rides, understandably, like a Jumbo Jet, but the layout has a lot in common with the Arrow Runaway Train coasters, with lots of twists and turns through the woods. It scores over the Runaway Trains, though, by having better drops. Whizzer is also a good ride, a whole lot of fun, suitable for just about anybody, and a great way for me to end my evening. Well, my evening in the park, anyway. I still had to figure out how to get to my motel in Arlington Heights.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Footnote 1: You knew, of course, that Marriott developed Great America, then ultimately sold it to Six Flags, therefore design decisions that date back to the park's beginning are properly credited to or blamed on them... [Return to text]
Footnote 2: It has been revealed to me that on some trains there is a mechanism on the lap bar which prevents the bar from locking in the first detent, so the first notch where the bar will latch is really the second or third notch on the ratchet. That's nice to know, actually...! [Return to text]
--DCAjr
Next: Hillcrest Park 07/25/2003
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