Six Flags Great America: Meeting again for the first time

One of the reasons I left my job was that I was sick of the unsociable hours that I had to do. I wouldn't have minded so much if there was so consistency, but working some days at 6AM, and finishing others at midnight when you have other things that you love doing in life can only go so far. So how ironic it was that I had to wake up at 3.30AM on Friday 22nd May to catch a flight to Chicago when I was trying to get away from early starts.

But at least this was for something I whole heartedly wanted to do, for two reasons. Firstly, I'd wanted to go back to Six Flags Great America since they'd installed Goliath in 2014 - a wooden rollercoaster which along with its sister ride in Silver Dollar City, redefines what a wooden coaster is able to do. Goliath has the tallest and steepest drop of any wooden coaster anywhere, and as a result, is also the fastest, at 72 miles per hour. But more importantly, it features two inversions on a scale normally associated with the latest steel monsters. I simply had to ride it.

Goliath's lift hill

Some of the supports may be steel, but the track is all wooden.

But this park trip wasn't just about meeting a new ride, it was meeting an old friend who I hadn't seen in 10 years. I started chatting with Deidre on the internet wonder that was the MSN chat rooms. She got me in to Def Leppard, and I got her in to The Smiths. We sent each other letters and mixtapes for many years - but the first time we met up in 2005, neither of us were in the best place. But after reconnecting through Facebook several years later, and after I found out she moved to Chicago from Portland, Oregon, we decided to meet up and spend a day at Great America. And at 8AM that Friday morning, I met her and her boyfriend Tristan in the baggage area of O'Hare International Airport. Me with a couple of heavy suitcases, and her with a coffee for me so I wasn't going to fall asleep any time soon!

With a head full of caffeine, Deidre, Tristan and myself headed for the the car rental desk to pick up my rental car. I'd asked for a Ford Focus sized car, because I didn't need anything ridiculously big. What I got was a BMW X5. And whilst I couldn't complain, it is like upgrading from a rubber dinghy to a Supertanker.

It's HUGE!!!

But after this was presented to me, we hit the road, got straight in to Great America, and headed straight for the Goliath queue. Once in the queue, we were given a ticket with a number which ensured that no-one could jump the line ahead of us - like a sequenced boarding pass at a low-cost airline. It's a strange way of ensuring that no-one jumps ahead in line (seems that Six Flags don't trust their guests to be completely honest, and they may have a point), but it works. Interestingly, it isn't the first time Six Flags had tried this system, as the tickets given to us had a former ride on the ticket stub (which now belongs elsewhere in the chain of parks)!

Deidre, Tristan & I in line for Goliath

The boarding pass!

After handing our boarding cards to a security guard (yes, it was taken that seriously), we made our way in to the station, and we lined up for the back of the train.

Where, it promptly broke down. Given how far I'd travelled, and how unfortunate I was to miss Kingda Ka with the weather, I wasn't about to give up my place lightly. So we waited for nearly an hour till they'd fixed the fault, and we finally boarded the train. My cred anxiety (this is the nervous feeling an enthusiast gets when they're really anxious to get on a new coaster so they can add it to their coaster count) was going through the roof until we crested the lift hill. And after just one ride, I was blown away. It was fast, smooth, the inversions were incredible, and I came off laughing my head off. There's not many rides that can do that to me after you ride as many as I do, but Goliath was in a different league.

Between the massive wooden structure, that train is upside down, You'll have to take my word for it!

We decided to give it another go at the end of the day when the lines would be shorter. So in the meantime, we went to ride some of the other coasters in the park. Next door to Goliath was American Eagle, a large racing wooden coaster like the Grand National at Blackpool. It was a lot smoother than I remembered, and whilst they don't race the trains any more (bit daft when it's a racing rollercoaster), it was still a fast and fun ride, Sadly, I neglected to take a picture as I was still gobsmacked from Goliath!

But I did remember to take pictures of the next ride. X-Flight, a Bolliger & Mabillard Wing Coaster (like Swarm at Thorpe Park) was also a fun ride, especially on the front row where we all got a ride.

Now I know a few folks in the enthusiast community who have a bit of a downer on some wing coasters because they're not as forceful as they (the enthusiasts) think the rides could be. But how intense and forceful a ride is isn't always a sign of greatness or superiority. I'll get on to this in another blog post, because there's so many questions to answer, but when the penny drops, they're great looking rides, incredibly graceful, with a seating position which gets your Joe Public rider very excited, and rightly so.

X-Flight's first drop is just like that of The Swarm at Thorpe Park

Threading the eye of the needle

Coming out of the second inversion.

The park also has some other attractions which complete a very well-rounded line up of coasters and rides. Vertical Velocity, an Impulse Coaster made by Intamin launches you forwards and backwards a total of 5 times up giant vertical spikes. 

The twisted spike on Vertical Velocity.

Nearby is a ride which has been responsible for some of the greatest rides ever made. Batman: The Ride was the very first B&M Inverted Coaster ever built, and its likeness has been copied and replicated around the world from LA to Japan. Without this ride, Nemesis at Alton Towers may never have happened. It's punchy, powerful and still pretty smooth after 23 years of turning people upside down.

Batman: The Original Ride

The park also has a Superman: Ultimate Flight clone which opened in 2003, and still gets big lines every day due to aforementioned reasons (the flying position, the Superman brand, etc etc.).

Superman: Ultimate Flight

Even with all these relatively new rides with insane drops, breakneck speed and enormous loops. Great America does have a soft spot for a few classic rides. The Little Dipper was saved from another amusement park in the Chicago area a few years ago when it closed down. The impressive double decker carousel has been with the park ever since it opened, and the Whizzer rollercoaster is still running strong after nearly 40 years of operation.

The Little Dipper

The impressive looking Carousel

The Whizzer, built in 1976 and still thrilling families today.

 But after the nostalgia tour, we had to head back to Goliath for one more ride. This time, Tristan sat it out (the first ride hasd taken its toll on him) so Deidre and I got in line for the front row as the day came to a close. This time, there were no breakdowns, no stoppages, and no less excitement. The first ride at the back had placed it firmly in my favourite rides ever. The front row ride made it my new Number 1 coaster on the planet. It's not the longest ride, but it does everything really well, from first drop to the brake run. And more importantly, I came off laughing and cheering, which is what every good ride should do.

And with that, it was time to call it a night. Without doubt one of my favourite theme park days I've ever had. Great rides, great friends, Great America.

Six Flags Great Adventure: It's raining creds!

With a spring in my step, I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed for the first amusement park of the trip: Six Flags Great Adventure, near Jackson, New Jersey. However, as the Crowded House song goes, I took the weather with me, all the way from from Manchester, and I ended up at a overcast and drizzly skyline of impressive looking rollercoasters.

As a result, my first park report doesn't include many photos, but I will be going back to Great Adventure later on this trip to re-ride a few of the coasters which are worth it, and to do a better trip report in nicer weather. Oh, and to try and ride Kingda Ka. The tallest rollercoaster in the world.

Because today, it was closed. Very closed. And as disappointing as it was, you simply can't run a ride which launches its riders at nearly 130 miles per hour into even a light rain, because it will be seriously uncomfortable, let alone numerous other issues that the other elements could have on such a complex ride.

Kingda Ka. At 456 feet, the tallest closed rollercoaster in the world.

So Kingda Ka became Kingda Kan't. And to add insult to injury, Zumanjaro, the world's tallest drop tower at 415 feet tall, which is built on to the tower of the rollercoaster was closed for maintenance that day - but it should be ready in good time before I revisit. But fortunately, all the other rides were able to operate. So in order, here's the rest of Six Flags Great Adventure.

First up was Superman: Ultimate Flight. A flying rollercoaster like Air at Alton Towers (and built by the same company), which has one great loop in the shape of a pretzel (where you enter at the top, go through it on your back and come out at the top again), but not much else round the rest of the course to hold my interest. But the flying position still gets people excited, the pretzel loop is extremely forceful, and the lines are always long for it. Even more so today, as the park were only running one train out of the two they can use, so I was glad to ride it before the queue became excessive.

Next door to Superman was Green Lantern. This is a stand up rollercoaster, 154 feet tall, with 5 inversions, including a 121 foot vertical loop. I'd already ridden this rollercoaster a few years ago when it existed at another park in Kentucky (which I'll be checking out later this trip), and despite losing a bit of its smoothness in the 8 years since my last rides, it still had a kick to it.

The next rollercoaster was El Toro. A monstrous wooden coaster 181 feet tall, and one of my most anticipated rides of the whole trip. The company who designed it, Intamin, are renowned in the coaster fraternity for making some of the most extreme and thrilling rides going, so I had high hopes as I jumped on the back row. Sadly, and as much as it pains me to say it, the ride fell short of my expectations. It was very fast and had some great airtime, but the train was very bouncy through the course, and this detracted a lot from everything else. But I'm not giving up on El Toro, and I'll be giving it a few more rides later this summer, and I'll reserve final judgement after a few more goes.

El Toro (pictured front). Lots of airtime, but a bouncy ride.

After a quick ride on the Runaway Mine Train (the end of which you can see at the bottom right of the picture above), I hit up Bizarro, the park's floorless coaster. This was the first floorless coaster ever built in 1999, and was previously called Medusa, until a recent retheme to tie in with the Superman franchise transformed the ride into Bizarro, one of Superman's many foes. The ride itself is showing its age and is a bit rough around the edges, but it's still forceful and has 7 great inversions, including a vertical loop, dive loop, zero-G roll, cobra roll and interlocking corkscrews.

Bizarro's Cobra Roll.

After Bizarro, the weather got worse. So I quickly went over a couple of the smaller rides which would stay open. Blackbeard's Lost Treasure Train is a small double figure of eight coaster, today being operated by Pitbull's Dad. He was by far and away the best ride op of the day!

 It's about to go down with Mr Worldwide Sr!

With even more rain happening, I ran to the Skull Mountain coaster next door, and got out of the rain to ride an indoor coaster with twists, turns and a skull with flashing eyes. There's not really much more to say about it, but at least it was protected against the elements.

After that, it was a race against time to get the other rides in before I ended up looking like a drowned rat. There was a Batman: The Ride clone nearby, which was very forceful (they all are), Nitro, a 200+ foot tall hyper coaster similar in scale to the Big One at Blackpool (but much, much better!), and then the Dark Knight Coaster (not like Batman: The Ride, but under cover with a great pre-show section with the Joker taking over a TV broadcast before you board subway train themed cars and are sent through a well themed wild mouse style ride). The whole ride was well themed, which marked a departure from a lot of Six Flags rides which don't rely on theming and a story line. I'll get more pictures on a brighter day, and a few more rides on Nitro, which was probably my favourite ride of the day.

The final ride was a tiny kids coaster called Road Runner Railway, which some basic theming to the Warner Bros. character of the same name.By now, it was like a typical day in Manchester, so I asked for just one lap so I could get the cred, and get off  so I could get dry again.

Sadly, I couldn't take the umbrella home because it belonged a staff member.

Overall, the park has a good selection of coasters, with Nitro being my personal favourite. But by now, the time was 3pm, and I was bored of getting wet, so I called it a day, and went back to my lodging to dry off and get some rest before the next day, which involved a 3.30am start for a flight to Chicago, and a meeting with an old friend...

...more to come very soon!

What's a cred? And what's with all the Batman rides? A few answers to some questions you might have...

Before I put up my first trip report, it occurred to me that a lot of you reading this might not have a clue what I'm talking about, as there's a lot of references to coaster terminology and such, which is only really known in the coaster community. There's also a few other things you might notice that you'll be unsure of which I'm going to touch on here to give you a few pointers.

First up, below is a glossary of terms that you'll see mentioned in my blog, compiled by the folks over at CoasterForce.com:

http://www.coasterforce.com/coasters/glossary

Also, you'll notice a lot of rides named after Superman, Batman and the like at the parks owned by the Six Flags chain of parks. This is down to brand recognition. Simply put, names like Superman and Batman are iconic, and are used to great effect to advertise and sell a ride to the public. Some of the rides are identical, some are completely different. But the selling points remain the same. This also goes for some of the parks owned by Cedar Fair, which are licensed to use the Peanuts characters such as Snoopy, Charlie Brown, etc etc, Six Flags has 12 parks in North America, and Cedar Fair also has 12, so there's lots of identical or similar rides with shared or similar names.

Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Great America, has been replicated in five other Six Flags properties. And the name has been used on other attractions in other parks in the Six Flags chain.

Superman; Ultimate Flight opened at Six Flags Over Georgia in 2002, and was replicated (with some modifications to the ride's loading station) at Six Flags Great America and Six Flags Great Adventure. (Six Flags Great America ride pictured).

Finally, you'll hear me mentioning loads of manufacturers on this trip. I'll touch on these as we go along, but you'll learn fairly quickly who, in my opinion, makes good rides and who doesn't. Whilst maintenance also plays a big factor, especially as a ride ages, there are some companies which do a better job than others.

But enough talk. On to the rides... coming up very soon!

Liftoffs to lodgings: Thoughts on a flight

First up, thanks to all the support so far. It means a lot to have people appreciate all the thoughts inside my head. Hopefully this next post won't suffer from second album syndrome and you'll still be reading it at the end!

If you're reading this for the first time, my name is Tom Hardwick, 30 years, loves theme parks, rollercoasters, music, DJing and driving. And I've just quit my job to ride rollercocasters in the States for 2 months (as most of the world knows by now, because I've been banging on about it constantly for the last week).

Introduction over - let's cut to Wednesday 20th May, 9am in the morning, and after successful packing session the night before, it was time to settle some really boring business before jetting off. Car insurance and pensions are, let's face it - as boring as hell. So I was overjoyed when I sorted the works pension plan out and renewed my car insurance in 20 minutes flat. So if you want a generic tip for life that's been said a million times before - if it's boring but got to be done, smash through it, then enjoy the things which aren't boring. Such as flying to New York.

Now I know some people can get itchy feet on planes (through boredom or thrombosis), but if there's a decent selection of entertainment, then I'm usually pretty much happy to sit back and chill out watching a good film. The only reason I'd leave my seat is if nature calls, or the plane has crashed and I'm somehow not dead yet. For the record I watched three films I'd somehow never seen: The Grand Budapest Hotel, Frozen, and Big Hero 6. I'm sorry to those for those of you who would think it sacrilege that I haven't watched them till now. I'm not sorry for crying my eyes out when Baymax saves Hiro at the end. And I'm not sorry for spoiling that if you haven't watched Big Hero 6 yet.

Entertainment aside, it's always nice to have good company on a long haul, even if you've just met them as they sit next to you. I've had nice families, travellers like myself, and a fitness instructor on a plane to Abu Dhabi who I clicked with really well - I'll never forgive myself for not getting her contact details, but the odds of seeing her even again are less than zero.

This time, the luck of the Irish was with me. On my short hop from Manchester to Amsterdam, I got a middle-aged gentleman named Patrick who was flying out to Thailand to see his son who lives there (I did think it was a cover at first, but his photos of his family were legit, and I stopped being an awful person). The conversation was topped off by talking about his friend who caught his (friend's) wife cheating by tracking her smartphone, which led to a rather awkward confrontation in the bedroom. Not quite Trapped In The Closet, but you can picture the aftermath.

Back to the flying, the long haul from Schiphol to JFK was next a young lad called Nathan, who was flying to see his friends on Long Island. It was his first big flight, and he couldn't believe that all the food and drink was part of the service. Needless to say we have several tins of Heineken to make the most of the cabin crew's generosity. By the time we landed in JFK, we were a bit merry, but happy to be there to carry on our respective journeys.

To get to my room in Elizabeth, New Jersey, I had to take 2 buses through the heart of the city, as well as dealing with one of those people who lived in New York and he thought he had a divine right to be a bellend to our first bus driver because the radio kept playing static. Despite the best efforts of Grumpy McGee, I was still in awe of the skyline and going through the heart of Manhattan past Grand Central, the Empire State Building and Times Square. But the first thing that really got me was this...

The World's Fair towers/spaceships from Men In Black!

From behind a bus window, it certainly retains the evocative aura from which its reputation is garnered on. I'll reserve final judgement till I actually walk around NYC later in this trip, but I still hope it's as special as the moment when Kevin McAllister reunites with his mother in front of the Rockefeller Centre (sic).

Eventually, I made it to my lodging for the next 2 days. Booked over AirBnb, the place I had was a nice sized room with great transport links and good food and bars nearby. A little noisy perhaps, but I can sleep through a large earthquake when I'm that tired.

Now that I'd settled in for the night, it's a good time to leave this story till the next day, when I'll be hoping to ride the tallest rollercoaster...in the world!

"The good thing about flying solo is it's never boring". - Steve Fossett, American businessman and  record-setting aviator, sailor, and adventurer

An end has a start: Foreword

Welcome to my blog.

I'm gonna save the introduction about myself for the next entry, so please forgive me if this entry is a bit personal. But I need to give a bit of perspective about what I'm doing and why.

I'm writing this on the eve of my last day in the job I've occupied for the last 10 years. A whole multitude of things have been coursing through my body since I handed my notice in. The usual unanswerable questions that are forced in to your psyche from high school age have reared their ugly head again, topped as always with the most unanswerable one of them all:

"What are you going to do with your life?"

I've been trying to figure this out for a good 17 years when, at the ages of 13/14, you are compelled to choose which path of education you are going to follow for your GSCEs. In my case, it was Geography or History, French, German or Spanish, and Business Studies or Music.

Picking History, Business Studies and French weren't bad choices looking back. With the benefit of hindsight I'm sure now that I'd have taken Music over Business Studies, complete with its now bitterly ironic case study for the GSCE exam: The Tesco Success Story. That said, I'd love to see a case study which shows where it all went wrong. In the end, I got an A, 7 Bs and a C. Could have been worse.

Two years later, after what I would consider cocking up my A-Levels (getting four D grades wasn't my best day), somehow I still got accepted into Staffordshire University to study Journalism. I'm not entirely sure why I picked Journalism (or why Staffordshire Uni let me in). Perhaps I felt compelled to do something I had a partial interest in to show to others that I was at least making an effort to do something with my life.

Another two years later, it was all over. I dropped out of college, and went home to my parents in floods of tears, convinced that I was going to be disowned and cast out. But I owe it to them for not holding it against me and giving me a place to stay while I found work in a petrol station so I could try and support myself.

After 9 months of this, I figured out that I needed to at least aim a bit higher, which brings me to March 2005, when thanks once again my Mum & Dad, I applied for a job at RAC. I got accepted, and on the 9th May 2005, I started working on the breakdown team taking calls of people unlucky enough to have a non functioning car.

This job paid the bills (but certainly didn't fulfil me) for just over two years. I needed a new challenge, so I applied and was accepted for the role for which I have inhabited until last weekend; dispatching and managing breakdowns. It was comfortable - relatively good money for a job which perhaps wasn't the most challenging, but still required a modicon of common sense to do. It's one of the reasons that I stayed doing it for nearly 8 years, until on Saturday 9th May 2015, a decade to the day I started at the company, I resigned.

Looking back on this short resumé, it would be pretty easy to get depressed about what I did (or rather didn't do) since picking my GCSE options. And yes, I have been driven to complete despair on several occasions. I've often hid it, pretended it wasn't that bad. But for those of you who know me well, you'll have seen it written on my face even when I said I was fine.

But it's not all doom and gloom. And whilst I'm a shining example of someone who doesn't take heed of their own advice, the simple fact of the matter is that if I hadn't have made the decisions I did, I probably wouldn't be sitting here writing this little piece of catharsis.

Going to uni in Stoke meant nights out at the Sugarmill, where I met some awesome people who let me hang out with them when I felt like I was staring in to the abyss. I also got an idea of what it meant to be a DJ, thanks to Eddie Kerr and Lewis Bloor letting me watch what they did and how they did it. And when it wasn't the Sugarmill, it was Dave Buck playing tunes that only I would dance to, Dave Buck putting on bands in the Glebe, and I'm sure he was also responsible for the awesome all dayer where Send More Paramedics tore up the top floor of the Albion pub.

Being in Stoke On Trent also fuelled my enthusiasm for theme parks, with Alton Towers being a cheap bus ride away. That in turn led to a suggestion on a coaster enthusiast website which went along the lines of; "Why don't we all meet up?" 12 years later, Coasterforce Live events are still going strong. They've resulted in friendships being made, and even partly responsible for people getting married. But most importantly, some of the most memorable times I've had with some amazing people. I'm very proud of this, and even though I'm not as involved as I once was, I have to tip my hat to Ian Bell and the rest of the team for keeping it going in their own time, just for the love of it.

When I moved back to Manchester, working jobs with weird shifts meant I could go out to Jilly's, Satan's, the Cockpit in Leeds and Corporation in Sheffield. On these nights, I met the girl who has done all my tattoos, met the people that to this day I DJ with, and met people with whom I have danced my heart out to our favourite songs, and still do even this day when we all get the chance. A midweek day off led to a chance encounter with the man who runs a clubnight called Pop Bubble Rock, which became a big part of my life for four years, and gave me the chance to travel around the country to DJ in London, Bristol, Sheffield, and of course the night's spiritual home in Manchester. Polly Thompson, Ben Hiard and Ian Stockdale are three people who have had a big part in making me who I am today, and through all the good times, bad times, blood, sweat and tears, you've had a lasting impact that I won't ever forget.

The weird hours also gave the chance to see the bands I love, and meet the people who made those gigs happen. I'll never forget Marios going crazy when Ensign covered Underdog at the Star & Garter, and the amazing day at Jabez Clegg when Kam ran the Pig Destroyer show, and I helped out by getting the rider, and looked after the band. It's great that they're still both doing what they love doing, and without whom, the music scene in Manchester would have been a much poorer place.

And thanks to all those midweek days off, I was able to fly out to Europe whenever I could and visit some amazing (and as it turns out, some awful) theme parks.

The car journeys which were necessary for all of this were also amazing. Whether it was dropping mates off after a night out in Manchester, driving over the Snake Pass with a mixtape of Warren G, Celine Dion and Roxette (to name a few) for awesome Monday nights in Corp, late night stops at Hartshead Moor on the way back from Juvi Hall or Slam Dunk in Leeds, right up to the marathon tours across Europe and the USA to visit theme parks with fellow enthusiast goons. Those memories are pretty special to say the least. (And I'll explain the term "goon" in the near future).

In fact, there's so many memories, I couldn't possibly list them all at once. If it looks like I've left something or someone out here, believe me, I haven't. The good times will always stay dear to me, whoever, wherever, whatever they were.

Which brings me back to today, and why I've quit my job. I've said it before and I'll say it again, as so many other people have done and will keep saying. Life is too short to sit back and just be content. And while some people's idea of happiness differs from other peoples, I'm now more certain than ever about what I love doing, even if I don't quite know how I'm going to do it yet. If you want something badly enough, you will do whatever it takes to make it happen, and you will get what you really want in life.

I'm fully aware that this first entry is no doubt full of cliché, and I'm sure in the eyes of some experts, rather badly written. But I really couldn't care less about that. This first entry is about cleansing, purging what's been in my head for longer than I'd like to admit. But at the very top of it all, it's about not forgetting the brilliant times I've had in life, and the little fragments pieced together that have made me who I am, and ultimately where I'm going.

So, on Wednesday 20th May, I depart my home city of Manchester for the Big Apple for what is easily the biggest thing I've ever done.

Two months.
Four hire cars.
Sixty theme parks.
Three hundred rollercoasters.
One trip of a lifetime.

"Glory or insanity awaits" - Arnold Rimmer, from "Holoship", Red Dwarf, Series 5 Ep 1.