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Postby UnclePennybags on June 11th, 2021, 4:27 am
Airboss wrote:Effective Friday, June 11 reservations will no longer be required prior to your visit.

And masks are no longer required in the park! This is from an email I received yesterday:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health and Safety Policy Update

Important Update Regarding Your Upcoming Visit to Six Flags Great America or Hurricane Harbor Chicago.

Dear Guest,

We look forward to seeing you on your upcoming visit to Six Flags Great America or Hurricane Harbor Chicago.

There have been updates to our health and safety guidelines since you made your reservation. As we continue to follow CDC guidelines, as well as federal and state regulations, effective Friday, June 11, guests and team members who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will no longer be required to wear masks while in the park.

In addition, we will also no longer conduct temperature screenings for guests or require advanced reservations to visit.

Per State of Illinois guidelines, we will continue to recommend masks for unvaccinated individuals, including guests and team members.

We look forward to seeing you in the park very soon!

Sincerely,

Mark Kupferman
SVP, Consumer & Guest Experience
Six Flags
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Postby Airboss on June 17th, 2021, 11:50 pm
Was there today. All water fountains are back and the (previously disabled) water bottle fillers are all on now. Plus, ride operators appear to be pairing single riders together on the rides with groupers. Maxx Force went down for a bit, as usual, but overall seemed to have a good day. The line for it was 25 minutes or less throughout the day.
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Postby JT2002 on June 19th, 2021, 6:05 pm
Looks like entertainment was getting some show stuff together on the hometown train station stage. The set looked kinda like the drum show they would have at fright fest but no clue what they're putting together
They say there isn't a spot in the park where rusting metal or peeling paint is at least 15 feet away from you.
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Postby ernstwhere on June 20th, 2021, 5:47 pm
Anybody know which coasters are problematic, unproblematic for larger guests? I've never had a problem but my cousin might. Looking forward to getting back to the park.
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Postby UnclePennybags on June 20th, 2021, 10:05 pm
ernstwhere wrote:Anybody know which coasters are problematic, unproblematic for larger guests? I've never had a problem but my cousin might. Looking forward to getting back to the park.

X-Flight, V2, Batman, and Giant Drop have a similar harness that can be a problem for dude pot bellies, but I've seen big women not having any issue with them.

Fortunately, you can test the seat harnesses outside most of these rides before getting into their respective queues.
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on June 21st, 2021, 12:14 pm
^ Row 4 on X-Flight can accommodate larger guests.
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Postby ernstwhere on June 21st, 2021, 6:51 pm
Thanks! That's very helpful, esp the X-Flight tip. Other chains seem to have seats to accommodate larger guests, it's not mentioned on SF website. I've seen riders asked to leave Goliath, although that's a tight squeeze for anyone. It's a big help to know it won't be a bummer day for us.
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Postby JT2002 on June 24th, 2021, 6:30 pm
I guess Demon is going to be down for a good while, saw on Facebook they're replacing the lift motor.
They say there isn't a spot in the park where rusting metal or peeling paint is at least 15 feet away from you.
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on June 24th, 2021, 10:32 pm
JT2002 wrote:I guess Demon is going to be down for a good while, saw on Facebook they're replacing the lift motor.


It was running 6/17 but today (6/24) it was down. Thanks for the info!
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Postby JaminOut on June 25th, 2021, 9:57 am
JT2002 wrote:I guess Demon is going to be down for a good while, saw on Facebook they're replacing the lift motor.
Wasn’t it running with Shockwave’s motor up until now? RIP.


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Postby sfgamnthemoon on June 26th, 2021, 2:06 pm
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Postby Jodon on June 28th, 2021, 4:25 pm
Flash Pass Questions:
1. On a busy day, how much of a time difference is there between a Gold and Platinum Flash Pass?
2. Maxx Force is only on the Platinum Flash pass, correct? Are there any other rides that are Platinum Flash pass exclusives?
3. Does anyone know if there are a limited number of Flash Pass uses on Maxx Force like the park used to do with Goliath?
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Postby UnclePennybags on June 28th, 2021, 7:09 pm
Jodon wrote:Flash Pass Questions:
1. On a busy day, how much of a time difference is there between a Gold and Platinum Flash Pass?

Depends on how busy is "busy". If you're talking Fright Fest busy, then the difference between Gold and Platinum is significant. On any given Wednesday, however, I usually didn't see a difference between the two.

Jodon wrote:2. Maxx Force is only on the Platinum Flash pass, correct? Are there any other rides that are Platinum Flash pass exclusives?

I don't know about 2021, but in 2020, Maxx Force was supposed to be the only ride that required a Platinum Flash Pass.

Jodon wrote:3. Does anyone know if there are a limited number of Flash Pass uses on Maxx Force like the park used to do with Goliath?

Again, I haven't seen anything for 2021, but in 2020, there were no repeat ride restrictions for Maxx Force.
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Postby Jodon on June 28th, 2021, 7:42 pm
UnclePennybags wrote:
Jodon wrote:Flash Pass Questions:
1. On a busy day, how much of a time difference is there between a Gold and Platinum Flash Pass?

Depends on how busy is "busy". If you're talking Fright Fest busy, then the difference between Gold and Platinum is significant. On any given Wednesday, however, I usually didn't see a difference between the two.


Not certain of the date yet, but it will likely be a Sunday in late July.
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Postby UnclePennybags on June 28th, 2021, 10:56 pm
Jodon wrote:
UnclePennybags wrote:
Jodon wrote:Flash Pass Questions:
1. On a busy day, how much of a time difference is there between a Gold and Platinum Flash Pass?

Depends on how busy is "busy". If you're talking Fright Fest busy, then the difference between Gold and Platinum is significant. On any given Wednesday, however, I usually didn't see a difference between the two.

Not certain of the date yet, but it will likely be a Sunday in late July.

The Gold cuts your wait by 60%, the Platinum by 90%. The "wait" being cut is the time you'd spend in the ride queue up until the point you reach the grouper (just before going up to the station). You still have to contend with the line going to the station and the individual queues for each row of the trains.

As an example, let's say I have a Gold Flash Pass, I've reserved my time for Raging Bull, and I intend to ride X-Flight next. I've found that if I make a reservation for X-Flight immediately after getting past the Raging Bull grouper, by the time I exit Raging Bull and walk over to X-Flight, the grouper there will immediately send me up to the X-Flight station. This is true for most days I go.

The Platinum Flash Pass came in handy during a very, very busy Fright Fest in 2019. I was able to hit Raging Bull, Justice League, X-Flight, Superman, Maxx Force, and Whizzer over a 2.5 hour period, which included a 30 minute downtime for X-Flight and a 20 minute wait in the Maxx Force Flash Pass queue. Just walking the entire park to get from ride to ride probably consumed another 40 minutes, which means I was able to do those six rides in about 60 minutes.

However, whenever I've had a Platinum Flash Pass, I've never been able to move fast enough to get to my next reservation on time (assuming I'm reserving my next ride immediately after getting past the grouper for my current ride). It's a step up from the Gold, but the real reason I got it in 2019 was to reduce my wait time for Maxx Force. Otherwise, the Gold would probably be sufficient for my purposes, even during Fright Fest.

So, for a Sunday in late July, assuming decent weather, I'd expect that you could benefit from a Platinum Flash Pass, but this is largely dependent on how quickly you can move from ride to ride. It would also be worth getting if Maxx Force is on your radar as no other Flash Pass is accepted for this ride.
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Postby coasterfanatic on June 30th, 2021, 11:56 pm
Briefly stopped in the park today while I was in the Gurnee area. The train was being tested (and I’m assuming they were doing some training too). I’d imagine it won’t be long before it opens. Here’s a look at the refurbished cars. They only had 3 cars on it. Not sure if the others are still be refurbished.

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Postby DejaVu2001 on July 1st, 2021, 6:56 am
Scenic Railroad is scheduled to open today. As mentioned above, it will only be running 3 coaches. As a reminder since it's been a while, Railroad opens at 12:00 and closes at 8:00.
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on July 2nd, 2021, 2:16 pm
^ Will both stations be open for loading/unloading ?
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Postby ernstwhere on July 2nd, 2021, 9:14 pm
Yes, I was there yesterday. The train is operating one-way trips only, stopping at both stations. It seemed like Hometown Station was spruced up and the music playing was Ragtime, Scott Joplin which was a nice Marriott era touch. Period music! The new coaches look great and the speakers/audio was replaced with a recorded tour and the Great America commercial song from the 70s (maybe a great day is just what you need this year).

Otherwise, many rides were closed (FF, Rev, HFM, YC, LR, MGH, Demon, BB, Eagle Red only)as well as shops and restaurants. Seems like they are having the same staff problems as other parks, and as a consequence, the lines were at least an hour for all the coasters.

It was great to be back.
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Postby RobSFGAm on July 4th, 2021, 8:24 am
I posted a video of the full circle of the train if you are interested.
The recorded audio did not come out well, but I believe that is because I had the camera (mic) out sideways facing the park. I overdubbed music at parts where there was not much happening.
One thing I noticed is that the trees and shrubs have really grown in. You cannot see many ride on the HT to CF station part especially.

https://youtu.be/q5Kg1cXWpXU
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Postby UnclePennybags on July 4th, 2021, 5:43 pm
RobSFGAm wrote:I posted a video of the full circle of the train if you are interested...One thing I noticed is that the trees and shrubs have really grown in. You cannot see many ride on the HT to CF station part especially.

Funny. Like you said, the track from Hometown to County runs through overgrown vegetation, but the train's audio track is going on and on about what you should be seeing, if everything wasn't overgrown. Reminds me of the Dinosaur tour in Jurassic Park:

http://youtu.be/LZrUOQnv8xk?t=6
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Postby UnclePennybags on July 5th, 2021, 11:57 pm
Went to the park today. It was my first visit since Fright Fest 2019. The water and dry parks were both really busy.

Because this was our first visit of the year, we had several administrative tasks that needed to be completed (e.g. buying a season sport bottle, tweaking our season pass add-ons, etc.). These tasks were accomplished by 11:30 AM, and after finishing our first meal, we headed over to Hurricane Harbor (HH) at 1:00 PM to cool off (it got up to 97 degrees in the dry park today). We didn't get far. By 1:00 PM, HH had reached full capacity, so we couldn't get in.

So, we decided to lap the park in a clockwise direction. I had wanted to hit a water ride because I was so hot, but Roaring Rapids is down for the season and Yankee Clipper was down today. Logger's Run was available, but it went down just as we were being sent to one of the logs in the station. Bad timing.

It was just too hot in the dry park today, so we decided to leave at about 4:00 PM. Exiting the park, I was surprised to see lines to get into HH that were almost as long as the morning lines. Why would hundreds of people willingly stand in a 45+ minute queue at 4:00 PM, under a hot sun, to get into a waterpark that was set to close at 6:00 PM? Crazy.

Here's a list of rides that were known to be down today:

Buccaneer Battle
Demon
Giant Drop
Hometown Fun Machine
Mardi Gras Hangover
Roaring Rapids
Sky Trek Tower
Whirligig
Yahoo River
Yankee Clipper

As far as restaurants go, Mooseburger Lodge was closed, but most others were open. The new Taphouse was nice, but they should sell Pretzels to go with their beer.

If I could have a do-over, I wouldn't have gone to the park today. It was too hot for the dry park, and too busy for the waterpark. I hadn't thought that the July 4 crowd would still be around on July 5, which was a sorry lapse in judgement on my part.

Overall, however, I was very, very happy to be in the park again. It felt good. If only I would've known that HH would close off, I could have gotten over there sooner and spent the day in cool water instead of on hot tar.
Last edited by UnclePennybags on July 6th, 2021, 2:22 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Postby coasterfanatic on July 6th, 2021, 12:04 am
UnclePennybags wrote:Went to the park today. It was my first visit since Fright Fest 2019. The water and dry parks were both really busy.

Because this was our first visit of the year, we had several administrative tasks that needed to be completed (e.g. buying a season sport bottle, tweaking our season pass add-ons, etc.). These tasks were accomplished by 11:30 AM, and after finishing our first meal, we headed over to Hurricane Harbor (HH) at 1:00 PM to cool off (it got up to 96 degrees in the dry park today). We didn't get far. By 1:00 PM, HH had reached full capacity, so we couldn't get in.

So, we decided to lap the park in a clockwise direction. I had wanted to hit a water ride because I was so hot, but Roaring Rapids is down for the season and Yankee Clipper was down today. Logger's Run was available, but it went down just as we were being sent to one of the logs in the station. Bad timing.

It was just too hot in the dry park today, so we decided to leave at about 4:00 PM. Leaving the park, I was surprised to see lines to get into HH that were almost as long as the morning lines. I've never seen such long lines going to HH before. Crazy.

Here's a list of rides that were known to be down today:

Buccaneer Battle
Demon
Giant Drop
Hometown Fun Machine
Mardi Gras Hangover
Roaring Rapids
Sky Trek Tower
Whirligig
Yahoo River
Yankee Clipper

As far as restaurants go, Mooseburger Lodge was closed, but most others were open. The new Taphouse was nice, but they should sell Pretzels to go with their beer.

If I could have a do-over, I wouldn't have gone to the park today. It was too hot for the dry park, and too busy for the waterpark. I hadn't thought that the July 4 crowd would still be around on July 5, which was a sorry lapse in reasoning on my part.

Overall, however, I was very, very happy to be in the park again. It felt good. If only I would've known that HH would close off, I could have gotten over there sooner and spent the day in cool water instead of on hot tar.
You didn’t miss much in the water park. A lot of stuff is closed due to staffing issues. Unless it opened this weekend, the lazy River and tornado have been closed all season

Where did Loggers line extend to? They can’t use the queue lines because the roof is falling down because a tree is growing out of the top of it

Also, I’d imagine July 5th typically isn’t too crazy. But since July 4th fell on a Sunday and things were closed today, that left a lot of people available to go to the park since they didn’t have to work and stuff. Thus the increased business.


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Postby UnclePennybags on July 6th, 2021, 7:04 am
coasterfanatic wrote:You didn’t miss much in the water park. A lot of stuff is closed due to staffing issues. Unless it opened this weekend, the lazy River and tornado have been closed all season

Where did Loggers line extend to? They can’t use the queue lines because the roof is falling down because a tree is growing out of the top of it

Also, I’d imagine July 5th typically isn’t too crazy. But since July 4th fell on a Sunday and things were closed today, that left a lot of people available to go to the park since they didn’t have to work and stuff. Thus the increased business.

1) We parked close to the waterpark entrance. As we were heading off towards the dry park at 10:45 AM, we heard announcements coming from Hurricane Harbor saying that, aside from Tsunami Surge, all the attractions in Riptide Bay would be down. This included Dive Bomber, Mega Wedgie, Monsoon Lagoon, and Wipeout. I found out later that mechanicals servicing this area went down around 4:00 PM on July 4.

2) We also heard that Castaway Creek (CC) is down for *both* maintenance and a shortage of lifeguards. Apparently, there's a section of CC that needs to be resurfaced due to a few guests receiving minor injuries in this area.

3) The queue for Logger's Run extended out past Maw & Paws.
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Postby CoasterRiderSC on July 6th, 2021, 11:35 am
Uncle - I was at the park (dry side) on 7/5. I too was quite surprised to see how crowded it was. My thinking was that everyone would be in HH to ride Tsunami since it was going to be a very hot day.

As for Giant Drop, it was running early in the day. During my 2 rides on it, it appeared to me that HH wasn't very busy around noon or 1230. 2 rides on Raging Bull and an early day ride on Viper also gave me the same vantage point of HH not being busy.

In the afternoon, I saw the line for Logger's Run go all the way towards Goliath (at one point) and then I came back later and the line was going the other direction towards those noisy go carts.

Goliath line was absolutely packed both times I went by so I skipped it (2nd time in a row that I skipped it due to line length). I really wish they would have put better seat belts and lapbars on Goliath (like the kind that Maxx has). I think those 2 items are a huge reason why Goliath operations is so inefficient.

Meanwhile Viper, was like a 10 minute wait on the 3 separate times I rode it (2 of them were back to back waits in line). I'm starting to like the ride again when the line isn't crazy. Raging Bull was a 45 minute wait even with 3 trains running! I got on Maxx first thing in the day and wait was only 45 minutes.

They really need to solve their staffing issues to get as many rides running and food shops open as they can.
That chicken place by Eagle hasn't been open on any day I've gone (5 total trips this year!), and the nachos/funnel cake place across from Demon hasn't been open either.


I managed to get on 20 total rides, mostly because I rerode rides where the line wasn't bad (Batman, Viper, Giant Drop, X-Flight).
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