A Park to Visit

Hello,
This year my family have left me in charge of picking anywhere to go. I really want to go to a theme park but my parents dont want it to be more then a 5 hour drive. What do you think would be a good park to vist. It cant be more then 5 hours from windsor/detroit. It can be anywhere around there. My family vistes CP every year in august so not that. Can you help me try to find a park to vist for this trip?
Thanks for your help!

SFGAm - should be right about 5 hours (325 miles) from Detroit.

Kennywood is approx 300 miles from detroit.
Geauga Lake is about 200 miles.
CFKI(PKI)is about 260 miles away.

Michigan's Adventure is about Three Hours from Detroit and has the Best Roller Coaster. (Shivering Timbers) :) an Alternative is Indiana Beach (About a Five Hour Drive) Are you going for an Overnighter or a Day Trip? (If you are going for an Overnighter I suggest you do Indiana Beach on Day One and Michigan's Adventure on the Second Day.) ;)

Paramount's Canada's Wonderland is another possibility It's about 3.5 - 4 hours away.

The one question here is how long are the waits for border crossings in the Detroit area. This might have some effect upon whether to go here. *** Edited 6/27/2006 7:37:56 PM UTC by Arthur Bahl***

I'm with LG, go with SFGAm. It's an excellent park with a lot of great rides. You won't be bored, and your parents (if they ride) will also find things to do, as well as, a monster-sized Hurricane Harbor if they don't Raging Bull is the perfect family-oriented hyper due to all the brakes, and you've also got Whizzer, American Eagle, Ragin' Cajun, Viper for them to ride as well. You'll find the original Batman the Ride, Superman Ultimate Flight, Deja Vu, Iron Eagle and Vertical Velocity on the more extreme end of things, and a load of flat rides too. It's also very well-themed. The park is super easy to navigate due to it being a circle with an extension around 3 o'clock for The Southwest Territory and HH.

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^ Since when is Raging Bull a "family hyper"? Im sorry but Hypercoaster and Family dont work in the same sentence.

Who cares if its braked, Thats the way the ride was designed to be.

Anyway, Raging Bull is an excellent coaster with great air and speed.

Who far is SFGAV or the one in buffalo? *** Edited 6/27/2006 8:52:30 PM UTC by jkoaster***

If Will Koch can call the Voyage a "Family Coaster", anything can be called a family ride.

SFGAm definatly. Great coasters (which actually run, unlike most SF parks), great rides, a great waterpark. Definatly a must. Plus of all the SF parks its probably the second best out there next to Great Adventure.

How far of a ride is it to Great Adventure?

Great Adventure is 638 miles from Detroit.

Look into scoring a map program of some kind for quick access to this info - at the very least check out an online service like Mapquest, Google Maps or something similar - quick answers to simple things like distance questions.

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SkyRider7 said:
^ Since when is Raging Bull a "family hyper"? Im sorry but Hypercoaster and Family dont work in the same sentence.

Who cares if its braked, Thats the way the ride was designed to be.

Anyway, Raging Bull is an excellent coaster with great air and speed.

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Have you been to CP since MF opened? Ever since then I cant tell you how many times Ive seen little kids experience Magnum as their first "real" coaster.

Anyways, RB is a quality ride and the four across seating allows mommy and daddy to ride with jr.

Anyways back to the point at hand, since CP is your home park, my suggestion is to go to a park that is completly different. Kennywood, or Holiday World stikes me as a place near by that would provide you with a much different experience where there are some quality wood coasters, and something (very good flats in KW's case, HW has a fantastic water park) that CP just doesnt have.

But if your heart is set on a SF park, SFGAm is an excellent choice. *** Edited 6/27/2006 9:34:36 PM UTC by Touchdown***

Six Flags Great America is a must-visit for anyone who likes coasters. The ride arrangement is perfect for an average family.

^ Thats because SFGam is probably IMO the best large corprate park outside of Disney.

Touchdown, I have ridden MF as well, and I know im in the smallest minority here but, I think Raging Bull is a better coaster then MF,

In fact of all the Hyper Coasters that I have ridden, Raging Bull in my opinion tops them all.

This List Includes:

Titan, Goliath(SFMM), Phantom's Revenge, Magnum, Steel Force (Dorney) and Nitro as well as MF which of course is a Giga. Dont get me wrong, I loved all these rides, especially PR and Titan but they wherent even close to Raging Bull.... Maybe home park bias? perhaps. :)

The thing that really separates Raging Bull from the rest is that dip before the first drop, and the airtime you get on the camel backs too.

^RB is definalty up on my list too, but it is seriously in danger of loosing its title as best B&M hyper due to my rides on AC this year, if I experience another day where that ride is performing at its peak it may surpass RB which in my opinion doesnt seem to be aging as well (I swear that those fishing helixes used to be a whole lot faster. That being said it is a fantastic ride but I think the S:ROSs (SFDL and definalty SFNE) MF, Phantom's Revenge, Mamba and Magnum beat it out in the hyper department. If they only would turn off that break on the third hill...

But back to the subject at hand, I was talking about how Magnum has become a "break in" coaster for many families and I belive RB could too. For me a break in coaster has to be first fun, smooth and have something "scary" about it (ie. inversion or 200+ hill) so the person doesnt create a glass ceiling for coasters.

If you do choose SFGam, pick your days wisely. A Saturday or Sunday during the summer can be incredibly busy, and most of the coasters only run two trains (or less, in the case of the two shuttles). Raging Bull is the only real capacity monster there.

Most coasters at Great America only have 2 trains to run in the first place :)

Exactly, SkyRider7. And that limits the park's capacity. That's my biggest beef with SFGam. Why a park with huge attendance would install relatively low capacity rides has always bugged me. It hasn't stopped me from going - I've been going there for some 35 years. I've just learned how to work around it.

I do appreciate the fact that they run what they have to the fullest, unlike their sister in NJ.

^There is no way to run B:TR, Viper, and Superman with three trains because the rides are so short. There is no way to avoid stacking on those rides on three (there is even a little allready on two and thats with good ops.)