Six Flags Great America’s renewed popularity has brought with it an onslaught of weekend traffic headaches for drivers heading north to the Gurnee theme park and points beyond.
Great America is on pace to draw at least 3 million visitors, about 500,000 more than last year, according to Gurnee Village Administrator James Hayner. Great America hasn’t drawn 3 million patrons since 1999, he said.
It’s believed the new water park, Hurricane Harbor, is responsible for the surge.
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well its kinda obvious crap like this happens... but it has for years! There really is no good way of solving it... if you open the washington street entrance to the public its going to cause back ups there too..and that lil two lane road cant handle that much traffic. I think SF is doing the best they can right now... i drove by there the other day and they had five or six lanes across being used to get ppl into the park.... and more than likely a full staffed toll booth. The problem comes when you get retards who are visitng the park who stop and ask the toll booth attendents stupid questions
Timmy179 wrote:This is great. Wouldnt this make us the most attended seasonal SF park?
It would probably put SFGAm pretty close or passed SFMM. But SFGAdv. probably still draws more people a year....but it's also open more days then SFGAm is.
Yet I still feel that SF itself made a tragic mistake of giving away the gate. A waterpark will always bring in guest, because this a good size SF. There is really no waterpark in the Chicago area really, unless you want to travel much further about 3hrs. to another waterpark.
Plus there are some SF parks that include the waterpark with the season pass (ex. SFMW). This waterpark can easily stand alone and still bring in the same amount of guests easily. Look at all the SF Waterparks that stand alone. Obviously they are making money, because they wouldn't be standing alone.
2006 might get worse knowing the rumored Tornado is coming, and the line can easily about 3 to 4 hrs. SFA also received a revamped HH this year with Tornado and the waterpark has also been filled to capacity. It is rumored that SFA will get a phase II, because they didn't do nothing to the lazy river because its too small and didn't repaint the slides in that area. The Tornado slide at SFA is about a 2hr. wait.
A 28% jump in attendance for the park so far is just huge. And I think combining the parks into one is exactly what did it for them. If I'm a family I'm going to choose the big theme park and waterpark for one price over the waterpark only.
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