Associated parks:
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WOW! What a day! I woke up early in the morning to discover clouds, thunder and RAIN RAIN RAIN in the morning hitting the Chicagoland area. I checked the Weather Channel which mentioned that there was to be rain and severe storms all afternoon throughout the area. Of course, being the natural crazy coaster enthusiast that I am, I decided to go with a friend anyways to SFGAM.
Pretty decent traffic getting up there, and little rain on the way provided a pleasent trip. When we arrived into the parking lot, the sun had come out. Crowds were pretty light at this point in time. After buying our tickets, and waiting a deathly long time for those metal detectors, we finally get in and head over to Viper. I will use my ranking system on a letter grade system. I apologize for any confusion.
Viper: 2 rides- NO wait. WHOA, what a surprise! I have never experienced so much airtime over many of those hills! The laterals on the curves also were simply amazing. They slammed me into the side of the train so hard that I now have a bruise. I LOVED IT! Grade: An A in my book. What has SFGAM done to this thing!! Its running great.
Raging Bull- 2 rides- 15 min wait each. Pretty decent ride. Rode the back half of the train both times. The lift you get off that first drop is awesome, and the smoothness of this ride is something to be reckoned with! My only complaint here was the trim brake on the hill after the first turnaround which seemed to slow things up somewhat for the last part of the ride. Nevertheless a great ride overall! Grade: B+
Demon: 2 rides- 5 min wait each. There was actually a small wait for this one which was quite a surprise. Usually I get it as a walk-on. Good ride.. Though I am not sure what the music that was playing in the tunnel was. It sounded like banshees shreaking. A little bit of a head banger though the corkscrews as well. But that didn't damage a fun little ride. Grade: B-
We next headed over to the American Eagle to find only the backwards side open. The backwards side was ONLY RUNNING ONE TRAIN!!!!! GRRRRR! So with the almost hour long wait there we decided to skip it and head to the Wolf.
Iron Wolf- One ride- 10 min. wait. This one has gotten A LOT smoother. I barely even hit my head on the restraints and throughly enjoyed my ride! SFGAM must have done some work to it over the offseason, because it is riding better that it has in a while. Grade: B+
We went to V2 next:
V2- One ride- 22 min wait. Still the same V2, with a great launch that gives you a nice rush. My fav part is still the stop on the back spike. Grade: A-
Batman- This ride finally opened at 1 PM after being closed for the morning. Still the same great, short, and intense ride. Nothing too new here. Grade: B
Shockwave: One ride, NO wait. I can see why there was no wait for this one. This ride seems to get rougher every year. My head flew around so much, that I came off with a large headache. Would someone please explain to me why my head flew around and hit the OSTR"S in the MIDDLE of a vertical loop?? OUCH! Grade: D
Then it was to lunch which was home packed at the car in the parking lot. We did not want to pay the huge park prices for food.
When we came back in we decided to wait for Deja Vu.
Deja Vu- One ride- 1 Hr. and 15 Min wait. The line was ridiculous as this was the only place that I had encountered line jumpers all day. It was pretty crazy. The ride was awesome though. Getting carried up those 90 degree towers while facing down is a most shocking experience that I will never forget! The ride was a bit rough but was very intense and provided great thrills. Grade: A-
What surprised me the most here was that DV had very few problems during the day. It was down a couple of times, but for no more than like ten minutes. The ride crew was also very efficient in getting the train cycling very well. This was quite a surprise, from hearing about all of the problems it was having.
The rest of the day was pretty much spend re-riding coasters over again, plus with a ride on the soaking Roaring Rapids.
Today the park looked very great and was noticeably clean. There were not too many teenagers around. In fact, I mostly saw a lot of families which was different for a weekday. Ride capacities and cycling were very good with the exception of the American Eagle in the morning. They did open up the Red side later in the afternoon and I noticed that part of the second train on the blue side was missing, Anyone know why??
Overall great day: A-
It was just REALLY hot! I have sunburn on my face and neck as a result.
Thanks for reading!
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Off to CP in August, first to IB in July though!! YEA!!!! :-D It will be a good summer!
Questions:
smles@ilstu.edu
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http://sixflagsthrills.tripod.com/sixflagsthrills visit for some great thrills!
"enough is enough"-?
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