Having fortified myself with a giant omelet with bread, meat, and a carrot salad for starters, I gathered the strength to continue my story about the USA. Thankfully, my aching tooth calmed down a bit after devouring a terrifying amount of antibiotics and painkillers and having a temporary filling put in by the doctor.
Demon.
Not as scary as it looks.
So, together with my sister's boyfriend Alejandro, we rolled out to the Six Flags amusement park, located near Chicago in the town of Gurnee. The town is also known for its huge collection of stores called Gurnee Mall, but I didn't make it there. Six Flags is, obviously, a chain, and strangely enough, it is 11% owned by Bill Gates (which I had heard before). The Illinois branch is called Six Flags Great America. Interestingly, business for Six Flags has been doing poorly over the last ten years; it's losing hundreds of millions a year, and to cover the losses, it periodically sells off its most unpopular parks, which, however, Great America is not one of.
The wooden American Eagle
We were at the park on a weekday, the weather was so-so - it rained periodically and lightning was striking. Still, it was more or less warm anyway. Visitors, used to this kind of weather in this part of the US, don't mind the rain at all and are still dressed in shorts and t-shirts, usually even without umbrellas. However, because of the thunderstorm, the park's main rides sometimes didn't work - mostly the ones we call "American slides" (roller coasters), but Americans just call them "roller coaster", which literally translates to "vessel on little wheels" or, more funnily, "wheelchair", and not at all "Russian slides", as you understand.
Iron Wolf. You ride it standing up. It was one of the toughest ones for me.
What unpleasantly surprised me was the fact that you usually have to stand in line for every ride for at least 30 minutes, on weekends it can be over an hour, and for popular ones it can get up to an hour and a half. In principle, it's logical, but having paid 40 bucks (or slightly less by craftily getting a coupon on www.retailmenot.com) you'd want to actually ride, and not just strain your legs in artificial mazes made of shiny metal pipes. The mazes, in case anyone hasn't guessed, are needed so that the queue strictly follows order and doesn't get tangled up, because breaking the queue order, aka line jumping, is punishable by immediate eviction from the park. However, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others - if you buy a special electronic pass called FlashPass, you have to wait ten times less, or even not at all. Interestingly, the front seats are especially popular and have a separate line for them: one and a half to two times longer than the regular one.
Raging Bull. It's a hypercoaster where the focus is on speed and height, not loop-the-loops. Nice one.
Now about the feelings: we rode almost all the extreme rides. Except for one - the one where you fall down experiencing zero gravity (drop tower) - it just looked way too scary. At first, I felt very uneasy, but then I got used to it, figured out how to behave, and after that experienced only positive feelings. Not counting the anxiety that my glasses would fly off my nose from the loop-the-loops, which never happened anyway. So let me list some tips for those who haven't been to such parks yet.
Superman. Here you don't sit, but hang. I don't recommend it to those afraid of heights.
Firstly, during the upside-down inversions and accelerations, you will naturally experience G-forces. I saw two options for action: either hold onto the restraining harnesses and resist the acceleration - then you will feel like you're doing pull-ups on a bar. Or relax - you are still firmly held by the restraining harnesses and the worst that threatens you is that you'll flop around like a certain something in an ice hole and get minor bruises in the places where you'll be pressed against the harnesses. The second option is clearly more fun - after all, you didn't come to a gym to work out, but to get thrills, so enjoy them.
Vertical Velocity - looks like a terror, but in reality it's very fun and not scary.
Secondly, if you wear glasses, bring a case with you and take them off before the start - but I'm warning you, you need deep pockets or zippered pockets. Another option is a special strap, so that the flying glasses don't kill an unfortunate passerby with their frantic acceleration, but remain dangling on your chest.
Thirdly, if you really want to have fun - either buy a FlashPass, or mentally prepare yourself to stand in line for 20-40 minutes before every ride - and then make sure to go on a weekday, moreover from morning till evening, so that you have enough time for everything.
Yours truly in a fresh Al Capone t-shirt and his sister Alina
Overall there is a lot of stuff in the park - some canopies where you have to toss coins into bottles, or shoot a gun at a target, or throw a ball at a bear, but almost everything costs extra money. There are stores where you can buy merchandise aka branded souvenirs. There is a train with a crossing, there are remote-controlled cars and boats, there is an observation tower and a classic kids' carousel; a very big one, though. Employees walk around the park with professional cameras and take photos for money. Later we met a young Russian guy named Vadim, he was very nervous because it was his first day working. It was also funny how a man in a suit and tie was sweeping the street (usually employees in uniform do that). There are also drinking and eating establishments in the park. In one of those, we bought a fajita, but I'll write about Mexican food separately. Also, when we bought it, a passing big mama with her "kiddos" was vividly interested in what it was called. Found the right people to ask, of course, but Alejandro was nearby and authentically pronounced the word in Spanish.
Alina with boyfriend Alejandro waiting for the terrifying Vertical Velocity
Smoking in the park is prohibited everywhere except in specially designated areas; they are stylized as blacksmith shops and the like. A rare case when Americans did something with taste and a bit of fun, and not just to please mass marketing. Curiously, the trash cans say: "Keep the park clean, my family comes here too". Whose family - the trash can's, or what?
Building a ride costs anywhere from a few million to tens of millions of dollars. Moreover, one of the most famous companies is the Swiss Intamin AG, which was the first to use a motor with linear electromagnetic acceleration, used to accelerate Vertical Velocity riders from a standstill to 70 mph. The seats, by the way, hover at the top for a few seconds so that you can feel how you are about to plummet down at breakneck speed.
Two superwomen: in the foreground and in the background
Wooden coasters, strangely enough, are still popular to this day, even though they can't be made very curvy and scary, and they shake terribly. Perhaps the latter is what explains their popularity - the shaking is scarier than the loop-the-loops, because it feels like the ride is about to fall apart.
The park is largely stylized for kids: Alejandro against the backdrop of the Batmobile, i.e., Batman's car
What can be said in closing? Roller coasters are quite scary, but not as much as it seems when looking at the photos. Those afraid of heights will have a hard time on some of them, but it's bearable - my sister managed it, after all. But during the ride it's fun, the adrenaline kicks in, and later there will be something to remember too. I myself am quite nervous and easily spooked, but I managed to go on almost everything. The main thing here, as everywhere else, is to make up your mind and not back down.
The heroes conquered almost everything