Trip Report from Six Flags Great America
Six Flags Great America: It was a busy day at the Chicagoland theme park.
It was VERY BUSY TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
I arrived at the park right around 900am and found the gates open to the parking lot and it parked right up from next to the perferred parking.
As i waited in the season pass area to get into the park the crowds didnt seem to bad(people talking during national anthem is very upsetting and big kudo's to SFGAM to start the day this way, im not aware of other parks doing it).
Made my way to the rope drop for Raging Bull and was able to keep up with the teens(glad they watch tv/play video games and dont exerciase like they should) and was able to get on the first ride of the day on Raging Bull. Was very glad to see 3 train operation right away(not the norm in my experience )and thought it was a good sign. After a very good ride i got back in line again and after about a 15 minute wait rode in the back a second time. And this is when i spotted trouble!!! The right lane on the freeway going north was backed up for at least a half a mile(likely with people trying to exit so they could get into the park) and a long line of cars waiting to pay for parking.
I then went to The Giant Drop for 2 quick drop rides with only a one to two drop wait and no letup in cars entering the parking lot or the freeway backup.
I then headed to Viper and as i walked into the que line people were exiting and saying the ride broke down. Being postive i went to the back row and waited abput 5 minutes till maintence showed up and got the ride working again and no test runs were even done. So i waited 2 trains and rode in the back till i again exited and rode agin with about a 15 minute wait and the backup on the freeway was still there so i knew things would not be good.
I then went to American Eagle and rode blue/backwards and had a very good ride with pops of air and olnly waited for about 3 trains for the front row of the ride. As i goy off i saw that the wait got much longer.
I then went to batman and saw that the wait extended out to almost the whole park area with all que lines open. I finally rode the ride after a 50 minute wait(which was made much worse by fastlane guests).
At this time i met up with wife and kids and as we made are way around the park we saw THAT EVERY ride had a very long line. Went to the Sky tower which usually has a short line if any at all in my experience and the line had 3 que lines being used. Once on the Sky Tower we had a great view and saw Chicago in the background much better than usual and also saw that over half of the far northern parking lot was full with more cars stil coming in.
At this time we took a nice stroll around the park to people watch and see the lines which were long for every ride.
Whizzer had every line open with them all filled and the line extending out of the que. Even American Eagle was using que lines under the tent. Iron Wolf was using both sets of que area's as was Batman as they were full and the line extended out of that area. Superman's waits also had all que lines being used the the wait outside the line extnded to the Rest.
It was so busy even Stargate had a long line outside. It must have been the great weather because i have never seen the park this busy on a week day and im glad im a season passholder as we left around 230pm due to the crowds and had a excellant meal ay Max And Erma's across from Gurnee Mills till we drove home.
A very good day for SFGAM but not for people who wanted to ride rides and im glad i didnt pay full admission or near it as today you werent going to get on alot of rides.
This is my first trip report so i hope it wasnt too bad.
And has it been this busy or very busy at your local theme park??
Robert,
I went to Six Flags America earlier this year and it was not busy at all. Part of the reason for that was there was a threat of rain. Also, I did go on a Sunday, which is usually a little less hectic than a Friday or Saturday.
I have several questions. How does Six Flags Great America compare to the other theme parks you have visited? In particular if you have visited other Six Flags parks how does Great America stack up against them? I know that in general some of the complaints about Six Flags Theme Parks is there not particularly clean, food is expensive and mediocre at best, rides tend to have more down time when compared to the Busch, Cedar Fair, Disney and Universal Theme Parks, and the employees are not the friendliest.
Also, if you have ever ridden Nitro (all time favorite coaster) and/or Apollo's Chariot, how does it compare to those two B&M masterpieces?
I was at SFGAm on Sunday the 8th of August.
We live in Southern CA, and it was our last stop on a trip that included Michigan's Adventure and Cedar Point.
I am all too familiar with the problems at SF Magic Mountain, and was not expecting much at SFGAm. I was pleasantly surprised, although the park WAS busy.
The queues were a mess due to the Fast Lane people, something I disapprove of since it creates two classes of parkgoers, and the exits were jammed with allegedly "handicapped" people and their extremely large parties waiting to bypass the lines to ride. This was especially bad on Raging Bull.
The food was pretty good, darn near gourmet quality compared to SFMM. But then so is a rendering bin compared to SFMM.
Having been to two Cedar Fair parks, and being an Annual Passholder to Knott's, I can safely say that Six Flags still needs to do some work to get their parks up to Cedar Fair standards. But they need to start at Magic Mountain.
Jeff B-Jeff the day i went was on a thursday which usually isnt busy, i never go on ZFri./Sat due to crowds and have found Sundays to be a very good day to visit, escpecially late in the year when football starts.
I have found SFGAM to be the best SF park of the chain that i have visited, compared to most SF parks it is clean and well run with most coasters run to capacity/and good employee's. I found it better than SFA/SF STL,SFKK, and SFMM. I would rate the rides at SFGAM better than PKI but overall due to PKI having a water park/better kid's area's i would give the nod to PKI. And while BGW doesnt have as many coasters as SFGAM i would rate that park better due to the overall combo of rides/food/atmopshere(also the times i have visited it isnt anywhere as busy as sfgam).
I havent ridden Nitro but have ridden both Raging Bull and Apollo's Chariot and i would rate Apollo's Chariot a little better due to the end portion of the ride where you have little hills that provide some good airtime over Raging Bull's twisting end which i think was done doe to the amount of land they had to workwith.
If anyone is in the area it is well worth the visit and better than the experience you will get at most SF parks.
From Bob Smith
Posted July 25, 2005 at 12:10 PM
I've ridden both Raging Bull and Apollo's Chariot, and I have to say I like Raging Bull a lot more. So, the endind may not be good, but it's a surprise cuz u can't see that part from the park.
I thought your review was very good! It is rare to find a review about theme parks outside of the "heavy hitters" of Universal and Disney. I did, however, feel that you could have spoken more about the overall look of the park, being from Chicago myself. Not bad review though. Will give a good idea about this great, but overlooked park!
Do you have any comments on the price of admission as well as the food costs?
HI,
I have been going to Six Flags in Gurnee for years, and I would have to say my recent experience there was anything but pleasent. In fact it down right sucked!!! Parking Lines were so back up it took an hour just to get into the pack. That is not even the bad part. My boyfriend an I were only at the park for an hour when a security guard informed us we were smoking in a non designated smoking area. We very politely put our of cigarettes and asked were the neares smoking area was. The security guard told us we weren't going anywhere except to leave the park. Needless to say we were in shock. Not a warning or a "I better not see you doing it again." We explained it was just a mistake and we would make sure not to let it happen again, but the wanna be cop told us we still had to leave. We were informed that Six Flags has a zero tollerance rule for this, and apparently honest mistakes mean nothing to these people. After several minutes of trying to reason with the guy, he called more wanna be cops to come assist who brought a actually cop with them. The cop understood 100% where we were comming from and I knew he felt bad, but he said there was nothing he could do becuase it's private property. Throughout the whole ordeal we were treated like criminals. They even ran our drivers license to make sure we weren't wanted!! In the end we wasted about four hours of our time and $100, and we are banded from Six Flags for life! All because we lit a cigarette in the wrong place. Six Flags sucks!!!
wow! Its been a while since we went to six flags over georgia.{i know the neame is probley diffrent now}However every summer it was our thing to do..Back then it was dirty and over priced.This year we opted to do to wdw instead that way our 3 year old could have fun as well..Cig thing omg im checking wdw policy we are smokers not proud but everyone has an addiction..
From d m
Posted September 5, 2010 at 12:50 PM
six flags great amarica dose sucks there mean rude to evey one there i dont even want any loser to ever give them money dont even
From d m
Posted September 5, 2010 at 12:54 PM
anyone that been herssment by six flags me or anyone been banned or herssment by the loser just come with me on a date protast on there ass have signs yell to every car gose by
D M,
If you're going to re-animate a post that's been dead more than two years, try to spell at least one word right, or at least include one real sentence, okay? Much obliged. Thank you so much. Bye, now.
Is that English?
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