SFGAm, 06/22, "Here come the crowds".

Summer officially kicked off this weekend and the park was starting to show it.

After attending my father's wedding on Saturday as the best man and my daughter as the flower girl, we decided to hit the park on Sunday.

Arrived at the parking booth around 3:00 pm and noticed that the backlot was about 1/4 full with cars. Right there I knew we were in for a crowded park. After having no choice but to park in the backlot, we got through the metal detectors and headed into Hometown Square.

I told my daughter that we could do whatever she wanted. She decided on hitting some shows for a change of pace. Sounds good to me, so we made our way over to "Grand Music Hall". They had just started the new ice skating show this month called "Cold Fusion".

While I am not a big ice skating fan, I did enjoy this show. It was a solid 45 minutes of talented ice skaters switching to different themes and music while performing cool skating tricks. What made it even better were the female skaters dressed in skimpy outfits on some of the sets. Good eye-candy. :)

After the lights came on and we exited the Hall, we made our way over to the Southwest Ampitheatre for the new "Spanish" Circus. Some of the stunts were cool like the Extreme Wheel and the Swaying Poles, but the rest of the tricks were your basic traveling circus stunts.

Alright, after 2 shows, it was time to get on a coaster. We made our way to Raging Bull and saw that it was running 3 trains and the first switchback shelter was half full. Not that bad of a line at all. We proceed through the line, make it half-way up the stairs before the station house and BAM, the ride closes down. They start dispatching empty trains and finally all is quiet. We wait about 10 more minutes and Jasmine(my daughter), decides that she doesnt want to stick it out.

No problem, so we weave through the crowds of people and out the exit.

MUST GET ON A COASTER!!

The American Eagle should fix that remedy. Both sides were running with 2 trains on each side so the capacity was kicking booty. Chose backward blue and took a middle seat. I enjoy this giant woodie and going in reverse just adds to it. Big smiles all around when we got off.

Starting to feel some hunger pains so we stroll on into Moose Burger Lodge. I had a taste for nachos, so I ordered some down at the saloon. Asked the bartender for some jalepeno peppers, but he has none. Here is where I found out you can supersize your nachos for the price of regular nachos. You get the nachos at the saloon, then proceed up to the "Fixin's bar" for the hamburgers where they have chili, salsa, and peppers. You add those on to your nachos for free and voila!!! SUPER NACHOS!! :)

After that, we found a shop in Yukon Territory called "Cartoon Cabin". During KidsFest this week , all merchandise in this store is 25% off. This discount brings the prices down to normal retail value. I purchased a Six Flags Scooby Doo t-shirt which came to $9.50 with tax. Not to bad of a deal.

As we walked out of the store and watched my daughter put her brand spakin new shirt on, I overheard someone saying that the Parade was going to start at 8:00. COOL, they got the parade going. We started walking at a fast rate to get over to Hometown Square where the parade starts with a musical starring some of your lovable Looney Tunes characters including Bug's Bunny, Foghorn Leghorn, Daffy Duck, and Sylvester the cat. When the musical ended and a fireworks display followed, the parade started.

After the parade it was going on 8:30 pm and I we needed to head out.

I enjoyed this day even though it was short. We saw 2 shows that we havent seen before, I discovered a cheap way to supersize my nachos :), and we got to see the parade.

Only 1 coaster, but with the entertainment we got from the other offerings this park has, we left the park extremely pleased.

Thanks for reading.,,,,,
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Arena football has arrived in the Windy City. Go "Chicago Rush"
*** This post was edited by Chitown 6/24/2003 12:03:25 AM ***

Nice TR. I had to park in the backlot after coming back from lunch yesterday as well. I won't go into a full TR, but just make some sidenotes. I went into the early evening show of Espana Extreme, and saw the same stunts mentioned in Chitown's TR(apparently, this was one of two different shows). After that, it seemed Raging Bull just opened up(after being down, I supposed). Then, going clockwise, I noticed Viper was down now. So, I decided to head for S:UF. When I went on it during the morning, there was about a 15-20 minute delay with a temporary delay from the get-go. This time around, at around 6:20, S:UF was down again(some stated since 4:30, others said 5:45). The ride-ops said it would take hours, if at all, for S:UF to open. One of the ride-ops was telling a group about what was going on with Deja Vu, and he tried to 'answer' some questions. Well, I decided to stick around and S:UF finally opened at around 7pm(with a mad rush of line jumpers cutting lines and what not) and got in a first row flight. After hitting some flat-rides afterwards, I tried to get in another S:UF night flight. Just making it to the queue by 8:45, S:UF would suffer another temporary delay at around 9:15-9:20. The ride got going again shortly afterwards, and I got on S:UF at around 10pm(1 solid hour after park closing). The park was less crowded in the first few hours of park opening(got in 3 rides on Raging Bull with about 15 minute waits). All in all, I was expecting a smaller crowd, but it was a nice day in the end.

I was there too...with my company picnic. Funny that we never really did see the crowds except when in line on Superman.

Bought 5 fast passes. Used only 2 and gave the rest away to co-workers. (We had 4 people so we thought the more the better.)

Rode Whizzer first. Looked like 15-20 min wait. It broke down while in line. Everbody but 5-6 people in front of us left the line. By the time we got up to that point they fixed the ride. So for all practical purposes there was no wait. Waited 10-15 for Raging Bull thanks to the suberb crew running all 3 trains even though the line did not warrant it. Same for Eagle. Skipped Demon, Iron Wolf, Batman, and V2. Rode Superman which looked like a really long line of 2-3 hours but we waited only about an hour. Thanks to the superb crew running. We used the fast pass on Raging Rapids since the line was about 45 minutes and we wanted to cool off. Also used a fast pass to reride Whizzer even though the wait was no more than 30 minutes.

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Zero G Thrills - Moved and Improved

Congrats on the wedding. I prefer to got to SFGAm on tuesdays just to avoid these crowds. I haven't been a day this year when the overflow parking lot has even been used. Kids fest at SFGAm is always pretty lame it is like a few banners and a clown thats about it. The other two festivals Mardi Gras and Fiesta Del Sol where also pretty dull. One thing about Mardi Gras is that if you look around some of the trees in the park you can still see the metallic green, red, and blue confetti that were used last year. The Mardi Gras was just self littering on the part of the park. Nice TR and once again congrats,

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Assume The Position!
The flying position S:UF