Six Flags Great America

Welcome to Six Flags Great America

The Columbia Carousel welcomes guests to the park

The upper level features only horses and the lower level features a menagerie of different animals

Condor.  These Huss rides are becoming rare and its always fun to find one still in operation.

Superman Ultimate Flight is the park's B&M flying coaster.  This coaster is a lot of fun even if the loading situation takes forever.

The Dark Knight Coaster is a fun indoor themed mouse coaster.

This coaster would probably be pretty boring outside.  However, this one is indoors and has several great thematic elements that create a fun ride experience.

The Joker is a S&S Freestyle coaster.  These coasters are starting to really pop up all of the place.  They are so much fun and are have a high re-rideability.  

Vertical Velocity is a blast.

Whirligig is a wonderful swing ride located in Yankee Harbor

Batman the Ride is the original B&M inverted rollercoaster.

Goliath is the park's RMC wooden coaster.

This is really one of the best rides in the park

The park has a great bit of nostalgia in the Little Dipper.  This wooden coaster used to operate at Kiddieland which is a now defunct park in the Chicago area. 

Sprocket Rocket is the park's kiddie coaster.  It actually packs a punch for a kiddie ride.

A giant wall of white wood dominates one side of the park.  It is the imposing structure of American Eagle, a pair of racing wooden coasters.

X-Flight is the B&M wing coaster.  It has a couple of "near miss" key holes that the coaster navigates during its course.

Demon is the park's Arrow looper.  It has some fun thematic elements along the course.

Justice League: Battle for Metropolis is the park's indoor dark ride.

Ricochet is a fun flat ride.  It really produces some amazing G-forces

The Giant Drop is the park's drop tower.  It really offers some great visuals from the top... before you drop.

Chubasco is the park's themed tea cup ride.  I really like the setting

Still the king of the park.  Raging Bull, the park's B&M megacoaster, towers over everything.

Viper is the park's twisted wooden coaster.  A modified clone version of the Coney Island Cyclone, it provides plenty of airtime.

Whizzer is the park's historic Schwarzkopf coaster.  I love coasters like this because it reminds me of the Zambezi Zinger, which was one of my first coasters.

The park has a new coaster coming later this summer - Maxx Force

This coaster might have an extremely short layout, but it will have a high level of thrill to it.

I guess we'll just have to ride it next time.  It was promising that they were actually testing it while we are there.  It's just too bad that Six Flags cannot open their rides on schedule.

Phoenix (Adventureland)

Today's photo update is courtesy of Jeremy Bingaman.  They've made a lot of progress on the detailing of Phoenix since our last update

For instance, a new Oriental theme is emerging for the station.  Looks like they will even have a red "clay" shingle roof.  You can see that starting under the smaller roof structure.

Crew members are starting to paint the lower foundation areas of the buildings.

It appears they are getting ready to put in a perimeter fence here as the supports are now in place.

More work on the support poles for the new fence.

This control building for the ride still needs siding put on its walls.

The ride itself looks to be complete.

Testing is scheduled to start next week.

Mystic River Falls (SDC)

Time for another update on Mystic River Falls.  We are going to start today with the pump house. That is the building there on the right with the 4 big round openings.

It is really hard to get a good idea of just how big these openings are from so far away.  Use the porta-john for a reference to get an idea of the scale.

From the backside you can see that the building just continues to grow.

Still back behind, but now on the other side, you can see on that wall that they have installed some major electric components.

Still looking at the same building.  You can get an idea of just how deep the building is using the orange loader as a way to measure scale.

Still looking at that same building, it appears that they are getting ready to build another wall as rebar is already in place.  It also looks like there is a new trough section and maybe concrete foundations for a conveyor lift.

Same general area that we've been looking at.  You can see the trough there in the middle and then that concrete foundation that might be for a conveyor lift on the right.

Moving on, we are now going to focus on this area near the Giant Barn Swing.  It is really a massive structure.  You'll notice how they keep carving into that hill that the Giant Barn Swing sits on.

Here's a different view of that carving of the hill below the Swing.  The pump house is the structure you see there on the right.

To get a better idea of how wide the structure is there by the Swing, here's a look across from where the Ribhouse will be located.

So back to the view from the Swing of that structure.  You'll notice something that might be a trough there on the lower right.  This could be where that elevator lift might hook up with the ride.

Moving on, there's some additional mysterious new cement structures in the construction lot.

For instance, these new cement walls have popped up in the middle of the entire area.

You can see they aren't far from the completed trough sections.

So it'll be interesting to see what these walls grow into over the next few weeks.

One last photo of that area.  You can see the foundation for Ribhouse has started to be laid there on the right.

 

Now let's move on to the completed trough section, which has seen some attention since our last update, in the way of landscaping and thematic elements.

A new section of sluice has appeared on the "island" in between the two completed sections of trough

It appears that it will connect soon to the sluice that just stopped at the new dining patio across from Crossroads Pizza.

Here you can get a better idea of what is going on with the sluices.

It is exciting to report that they are adding trees already to the "island" and that even more trees have been added to the banks near the restrooms and walkway to Wilson's Farm

Here's a new vantage point of the completed trough area and landscaping going in.  Honestly this makes us extremely happy to see new trees being planted in this area.

One last look at the sluices from outside the construction area.  It is great to see the tradition of water sluices in this area will continue with the new Riverfront.