We visited Six Flags Great America in Illinois on June 6. The park was spotlessly clean, the staff were really friendly and despite being a surprisingly busy midweek day we managed to ride everything we wanted and a few extras too.
Here are our highlights:
Goliath - what a way to start the day, a brilliant experience featuring the longest and steepest wooden roller coaster drop in the world. The impressive ride from RMC delivers two intense inversions and a thrilling course of exciting maneuvers. It's also super speedy, in fact until Lightning Rod at Dollywood opened this year it was also the fastest wooden roller coaster in the world, and boy does it feel it. We only wish it could have been a bit longer.
Raging Bull - this somewhat underrated 208ft B&M hyper coaster is packed with bursts of airtime and pulls some decent Gs. It's ultra smooth, has moments of great speed but some lovely pauses, and you get a lot of ride time.
X Flight - another wonderfully smooth ride from B&M, this 120ft wing coaster is well themed and has a neat letterbox element as it passes through the air traffic control tower.
American Eagle - the tallest and fastest racing wooden coaster in the world, but only running the blue train on our visit so we missed out on the racing bit. It's pretty rickety in parts but we loved it, a lot of fun.
BATMAN The Ride - a signature Six Flags ride that was the world's first inverted roller coaster when it opened in 1992. The B&M ride is fast and intense, packed with inversions and also has a well themed entrance, queue and station.
SUPERMAN Ultimate Flight - the B&M flying roller coaster, with a show stopping pretzel loop that delivers a very unusual sensation and strong Gs. The flying position is perfectly matched with the theme, which is well executed and still looks fresh.
THE DARK KNIGHT Coaster - random cartoons were playing in the pre-ride area, the pre-show wasn't running and ultimately it's just a standard wild mouse in a warehouse with some basic sets. The franchise deserved better.
JUSTICE LEAGUE: Battle for Metropolis - this brand new interactive 4D dark ride from Sally Corp premiered at two other Six Flags parks last year and scooped an award for the world's best new ride. It didn't disappoint, fusing the motion based ride, real set and 3D screen type experience offered at Universal's parks in their Spider-Man and Transformers rides with the laser shooter type interactivity of rides like Men in Black. The implementation is superb, you really feel part of the experience with your actions having an immediate impact on what you see. We did have to endure a grueling 2 hour 20 minute queue, with capacity limited to just 6 riders per car, that's only half of what Universal's rides can handle. The outdoor queue is also one of the worst we've seen, which is a shame because once you eventually get inside the building it has been really well done, so on busier days the queue could prove to be the downfall of an otherwise excellent addition to the park.
