Yesterday, my family and I decided to brave the heat and crowds to celebrate the 4th Great America style. We arrived at 2 PM, hoping to beat some of the mid-day heat, but the heat seemed to last all day. Within 10 minutes of getting through the gates, we were all sweating profusely. This was our 10th trip of the season, so we didn't really have much of a plan and were just going to wing it.
We ended up mostly riding the flat rides... Hometown Fun Machine (3x), Triple play(3x), Buccaneer Battle(2x)(normally not a huge fan, but felt good in the heat), Revolution (2x), Fiddlers Fling, River Rocker, Ricochet, Whirligig, Rue Le Dodge, etc. Why are these rides forgotten by the GP? Most were a walk-on, or 1-2 ride wait max. Only coaster we rode was X-Flight, though most lines seemed manageable. We were going to ride Batman, but it closed down for a bit... It seemed that everything closed for 30-45 minutes, around 5pm. Not sure if this was intentional, or coincidence.
The crowds were pretty manageable until HH closed, (it was at capacity all day). Then, moving through the park became pretty crazy. So we took a ride on the GA Railroad, it was doing full laps of the park and not stopping at Hometown Station, but we were just killing time until the light parade and fireworks. We found a good spot for the light parade, and then hurried to the parking lot for an excellent view of the fireworks. The fireworks were pretty good, and there was definitely a lot of them. Grand Finally was excellent.
Overall, A pretty good day at the park.
