A Few days in Ilinois

Be Sure to Check Out My Previous Post: Iowa!

At the Harbor, the Best Pool

Well with a small break ahead of me, I started off to Illinois, The Land of Lincoln. I think its quite an odd slogan for a state. My drive took me across the Mississippi (I have never seen it before), through the rolling hills, and finally down into the suburbs of Chicago. Now for those of you who have never been to Chicago, I'm sure you have probably met someone who is from the "suburbs" of Chicago. For most cities if you refer to the Suburbs, they are usually within 30 minutes of downtown. However with Chicago that is not nearly the case, as you can live up to an hour and a half outside the city and people will still refer to it as the Chicago Suburbs. The city is just that massive.

So I was only really in Illinois for 1 full day, but I spent it with 2 of my favorite things: Pizza and Six Flags. First I met a few friends for lunch at the best Chicago Style Pizza restaurant: Ginos East! Some may argue this with me, however you do not have my taste buds. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of it, but just know that it was as incredible as always.

Me ad my friend Andrew

Then when the afternoon settled in, I met my friend Alex for an evening at Six Flags Great America. Last summer I interned with them and had an amazing time, so I hoped to see a few friends when I stopped in.

We weren't able to make it to the park until 5:30 because of a lot of traffic, but the park wasn't too busy so it all worked out. Once we reached the Harbor, I made a stop in each section to see what guards and supervisors were on-duty. It was really wonderful at how many people were excited to see me as well as asking all about what I had been doing.

Since they were all busy with closing duties, we left the harbor to ride NAMTAB (that's Batman

The Sun Setting Over The Harbor

Backwards). That's right, the famous inverted coaster was running in reverse. Now I have ridden plenty of coasters in my time, but it is pretty rare for me to find one that actually gets me scared the entire ride through. We rode in the back, i mean the front, but it was really the back. What I'm saying is we were in the location that would be the back if it were running forwards, but was facing backwards. Am I making it clear? It was incredible. I know the layout of the whole ride, but was still surprised at every twist and inversion.

X-Flight at Night

Now they were only running it for a short time, but have announced that they it will be running next at Six Flags Magic Mountain (Which is great for me as this is my home park!). So if you get the opportunity once it is running in the spring, be sure to make the trip!

Now we lucked out and found out that the park was going to be running extended hours that night as it was the first night of summer. All you had to do was show a photo of a flyer they had posted online and you were given a wristband for 2 extra hours of coasters!

When night fell, we made our way over to the new nighttime show, ignite! Its an outdoor show where
all of the effects are done by lights, lasers and video projection. Overall the show was very corny, and honestly the story line (starting with the Chicago fire) was really bad, and the projection mapping was nothing to call home about. HOWEVER, for a non-Disney park, it was fantastic! The show and stage has a lot to grow upon and I hope they improve it in the coming years.

Check out some more photos of ignite! over in the #LyfInFocus-Illinois Album.

Be Sure to Check out my next post: Indiana Beach!