Quick Visit To Six Flags Great America, 28th September

Up front disclosure: I'm spoiled. Years of enthusiast events have left me generally un-enthused about visiting parks absent an event.

The theater I work at does a ticket trade each year with the park, so a woman I work with and I decided to visit the park. She was, for some reason, excited to 'get' to go to the park with me. I was curious to get her take on the park, as she'd only ever been to California's Great America, and her last visit was ten years ago.

The park was pleasantly not overly crowded during our visit. It was decked out for Fright Fest, mostly well done, though some of their props are looking a bit shabby...

Our first ride was Raging Bull, my favorite ride in the park. As always, the ride delivered and had me laughing the whole ride (the more I like a ride, the more I laugh). She loved it and said she was amazed how smooth it was.

I'd been looking forward to one of my favorite food guilty indulgences: chili cheese fries. When we got to the place selling that delectable treat, well, I wanted chili cheese fries, but I didn't ten dollars want chili cheese fries. We later shared an order of half fries/half onion rings at Johnny Rockets (and how fulfilling that order with already-fried fries and rings from a heating bin took almost ten minutes, I don't understand...).

We took a ride on the blue side of American Eagle; I laughed, she screamed, we had fun.

As we departed Eagle's area of the park, she pointed at Goliath and asked if it was like Grizzly. No, I said, it's nothing like Grizzly.

We flirted with X-Flight and Goliath but at 60 and 75 minute wait times, neither of us wished to make the commitment.

After a spin on Whirligig (staffed by possibly the most un-enthusiastic ride op ever), we queued up for Batman, only to have the ride go down when we were "thisclose" to the loading platform.

A few moments were spent enjoying watching creepy clowns terrorize teenage girls. We had a favorite clown who was, according to my companion (who is an actress), "Very present in her clown." Her constantly lowered head and bizarrely squeaky voice were very creepy.

As we made our second counter-clockwise sweep around the park, we hit Demon, which was advertising a "09" minute wait (they'd turned the "60" placard upside down and put in the wait time sign at the entrance). Parts of that ride are 40 years old, but it's still a fun ride.

As we passed X-Flight, we saw it had a 45 minute wait. We each took a deep breath and decided to do it....only to have the ride go down. We waited a bit and then abandoned our "mission."

We paused at Goliath, but it was still at 75 minutes, so we moved on.

Batman was back up, so we got in line. She shrieked, I laughed, she declared she loved the ride. She said she liked it much more than Top Gun (aka Flight Deck).

With that, we left the park, happy with our visit.