Eleven days down, five to go. This has been one crazy journey. You do realize my kids are 7 & 3. Just a quick shout out to my little man for doing as well as he has so far. Not too many three years olds could handle 16 days on the road, let alone on an amusement park tour, but he's holding his own with little exception. Also a congrats to my daughter for passing the 150 coaster mark this afternoon. I can't name too many seven year olds with that kind of track record.

The thing is we haven't been credit whoring at all. In fact, we're doing just the opposite. The idea going in was that this wasn't meant to be a roller coaster tour, but rather an amusement park tour. Riding the coasters takes backseat to enjoying the parks. Hell, today we only bagged 5 of Great America's 12 coasters but has a great time. To me, that's what it's all about.

We got to the park at 10:30-ish and were a bit taken with the sheer number of cars waiting to get in. It's been quite a while since we've had to wait to park. Soon we surrendered our $10 for a place to leave the car and headed in.

Entry was easy with the simple pass scan (even with passes from a different park) and fearing the crowds we immediately sought out some sort of fastlane dealy-o. No electronic virtual queue at Great America - just good old fashioned line skipping. We sprung for two fastlane passes good for a total of 8 rides and useable by all of us in any combination possible.

We circled the park to check things out. In the back we found walk-on rides on both sides of American Eagle so my daughter and I quickly popped off both a forward and backwards lap. Continuing in a counter-clockwise direction we came across Camp Cartoon Planet and took a quick run on Spacely's Sprocket Rockets. The crowds were thickening and the temperature rising so were went into default mode. Mom & the kids do the waterpark while Dad explores, forms a general plan and snags some photos (which I might add turned out VERY nice today)

Great America is a pretty big park. I spent almost three hours doing my thing before returning to the others who were just about waterparked out when I got there. As they packed it in, lightning flashed in the distance and an announcement was made to clear the water areas. So now we're fighting this mass exodus of Hurricane Harbor to exit the area. The mob spilled into the park making things kind of ugly for a while. On top of this rain started falling (but never hard) and most rides went down for a time. Tons of people on the midways with nothing to do made for more of a mess than my limited patience could handle effectively. No real issues, just multiple minor annoyances.

We ended up scoring some pizza in Orleans Place and sitting under cover to wait out the rain. After some time it stopped and rides went up again. It was now just after 6pm and we had just two hours to use the Fastlane tickets. Off to Batman.

We went up the Fastlane entrance but found the line actually shorter than were the Fastlane users slipped in. The girl let us through without using up two of our 'credits' and we got a quick lap with minimal wait. I've ridden the clones of this ride at Great Adventure and Magic Mountain and thought they were so-so. For some reason I found myself liking this ride more than the others. No idea why. I just did. I'd like to give the others a chance again sometime.

My wife is a big fan of the impulse coasters and was hoping to give V2 a spin. However, the line was nuts, people were everywhere and she just decided to pass with the option of swing back if time permitted. Still no Fastlane credits used.

I was hoping to sample Iron Wolf and no one else wanted to. Perfect chance to for a Fastlane use. The problem here was that my son wants to do whatever he's looking at and he wants to do it now. Just as we got near Iron Wolf the cenic Railway rolled into the station. Pass up a train? Not with my little boy nearby. I sighed and we all hopped aboard.

Time to regroup. It was closing in on 7pm and we had to use our 8 Fastlane rides by 8pm. We decided to see what the line for Whizzer looked like as I wanted to check out this realatively unique ride and it was one both kids could ride with me. The line seemed to hold steady at "long" all day and now it was backed to the midway. Fastlane to the rescue! We marched up the side entry and right to the station. 3 credits punched from one ticket and one train later we were riding. Cool little ride and everyone had fun - until we got stuck in the final brakes before the station. It took a good 10 or 15 minutes before a maintenance guy showed up. His fix? He pushed us off the block and into the station and the ride was back in business.

The other must-ride coaster for me at Great America was Raging Bull. If you frequent the Coasterbuzz forums at all, you know how I feel about B&M hyper coasters. Let's just say my pet name for Nitro is NyQuil. Raging Bull turned out to be better to me than both Nitro and Apollo's Chariot (which is to say it did more than overengineered floater air), but it still wasn't anything exceptional. Basically, if you like rides like Nitro & Apollo's Chariot then you'll enjoy your time on Raging Bull. We used the Fastlane here too as the queue was full almost to the midway. My daughter loved the ride and wanted another go. I knew it was exactly the sort of thing my wife would enjoy and time was running low. Why not use the Fastlane yet again and let them take a lap?

We found my wife on a bench in front of Chubasco with my son asleep in her arms. We switched spots and off they went. When they returned my little man was still asleep and it was 7:52. Not enough time to get back to Iron Wolf to use the last Fastlane credit. Sigh.

The park had two hours of open time left. Our options were to lug around a sleeping three year old and wait out the long evening ride lines or get a small jump on the 100 mile drive to our hotel for the night. We briefly considered trying to squeeze in a few rides, but after seeing just how full some of the queues were, we figured there was no point in sticking around for two hours to get another two or three credits. The time could be better spent getting to the hotel and getting ready for Indiana Beach tomorrow than breaking our backs carrying a sleeping child and waiting in the humidity in long, stuffy lines.

We left the park by 8:30 and made good time to the hotel (even with the slowdowns through Chicago) and got to the Courtyard in Valparaiso, Indiana by 10pm. Everyone was quick to crash leaving me to do this update.

All in all, we found Great America to be a surprisingly nice park with solid operations. It's just a shame that the heat and the crowds conspired to slow us down. I'd say without hesitation that this is the nicest Six Flags park I've ever visted. This is how it's done. Other Six Flags parks take note.

Tomorrow we do the 11-6 session at Indiana Beach. Check back for that.

(As a side note I just want to mention that Deja Vu ran all day long. I've read other people's reports of never seeing one of these Giant Inverted Boomerangs running. As of today I've seen all three running (in fact, they all ran fine with the exception of one trip to Six Flags Over Georgia where we saw it go down while in line), but never ridden any of them. Just a fun fact about my riding experiences.)