Photo TR: SFGAm opening day!

M_Force_4_ever · May 2, 2005

Six Flags Great America

Opening Day (04-30-05)

I arrived at the park at about 9:00 with Eric and Nick and we waited at the morning season pass line until around 9:30 when they started admitting people. We walked to the chain at Hometown Square and saw Déjà vu testing so we decided we would run to it. Nick and I got to ride row 1A on the second train of the season! 1A was a whole new ride, it was great. After Déjà vu we walked over to Raging Bull and decided to ride front row. Bull was running amazing as usual. After Raging Bull I rode Giant Drop for the first time, and it was pretty fun.

After riding Giant Drop we walked to Viper and mini-marathon-ed and ended up getting 4 consecutive rides all in the last car. We then walked over to pass-processing and I got my parking pass for this season. After pass processing we all headed to Whizzer to enjoy this Schwarzkopf classic. Eric and I rode the Demon shortly after, though Nick opted out. After that we headed to Eagle to get our rides in on the park’s oldest woodie, I rode in the second row while Nick and Eric were in the front row. Eric and I rode Iron Wolf after Eagle and Nick again opted out. After Wolf we went to Camp cartoon network to ride the parks resident Vekoma roller skater; Spacely’s Sprocket Rockets, which was a fun 30 second ride. We then headed toV2 to catch some Intamin goodness, I rode in row 2 with Nick while Eric was abusing being a single rider as he got about 4 rides in while Nick only got 2 and I got 1. We then hopped in the queue for Batman: the Ride, but after some poor dude puked and the power went out at the ride we decided to leave the line. After riding V2 we headed to Superman-Ultimate Flight, which had a short wait so we went for the back seat, and the pretzel loop almost made me black out. We then headed out of the park to get a quick lunch.

We all stopped to grab our cameras after lunch to get some filming and photos. We re-entered the park and made our way to Déjà vu to get some footage. While Eric rode Nick and I entered the queue to get some neat angles on the cobra roll. We then headed into Southwest Territory to get some shots of Bull. Eric stopped to ride Giant Drop again but Nick and I stayed back to get shots of Demon. After Eric got off Giant Drop we got some corkscrew shots of Demon and headed to re-ride eagle. Nick and I queued 2 trains for the front row while Eric rode so we could give him our cameras while we rode. After we got off Eric decided to re-ride so I decided to ride Revolution while he was on Eagle (poor Nick had 4 cams on him). After my ride on Revolution Eric and I re-rode Iron Wolf while Nick stayed by the station and tapped. Eric and I waited 1 train for the front row while the rest of the station was completely empty. After our train dispatched it got about 2 feet and out of nowhere stopped, and sat there for about 30 seconds! That was quite a strange experience. After Iron Wolf (which was running fairly smoothly) we went into Looney Toons National Park to go into the large ball play area and chase each other around like morons, which was quite fun . After we ran around like idiots we headed to V2 to catch another ride. Nick and I queued for the front 2 trains while Eric went in the middle than in the back then again (while we were on it) then he and Nick went again! I stayed on the Exit path and just filmed.

Afterwards Eric and I headed to Batman to finally get our ride for the day; we got in line and found the station completely empty other than a 1 train wait for the first row. We rode first row than rode second row without leaving. We than caught up with Nick and headed to ride Ragin’ Cajun but Eric opted out and went back to V2. Nick and I rode Cajun with a 15 minute wait and got off dizzy. We than headed towards Southwest Territory but stopped when I saw the parks last DDR machine and decided to play a quick round before our last rides of the night.

We finally got to Southwest Territory to find Giant Drop closed but Bull open and with a 1 train wait! Bull was surprisingly rough on the overbanks but it still had great airtime. After our ride on Bull Nick had to go so Eric and I decided to close the night with a few rides on Viper. We got in the station to find the site of Ride-ops and absolutely nothing else, not a rider in sight! So we went for front row and I got my first ever 1 click ride! I was quite scared but enjoying myself at the same time. We got back to the station to hop to the back of the train to get the last ride of the night and I got another 1 click ride which was again pretty scary. We returned to the station and almost got to ride again when we noticed a P.R. representative in the station and we were denied another ride.

Overall it was an amazing day. It looks to be an awesome season for SFGAm. Hope this TR wasn’t too long!