Ah finally, after months of long grueling anticipation I finally took the trek up to Gurnee from my home in the SW suburbs of Chicago. After almost not going due to the weather reports, I was truely excited. The ride up seemed to take forever. Not to mention the fact that my mom stopped at the speedway on Grand Ave. for gas. I should have driven myself!So we pull into the park, and There it is. It's not quite the same without the big blue monster there, but the station and pretzel loop do have a good presence. We got front row parking right next to the number 11 parking light. I rushed everyone out of the car and ran to the gate. They had not started to let people in, so my mom went and got our parking passes.9:35 came and they started to let people into the park. We were a ways back, so it took a while for me to get in. Once I did, I was off in a flash. My mother and Younger brother trailed behind me as I made my way to Superman: Ultimate Flight. The line had already started forming and was out to the basketball game.Finally at about 10:10 they started letting a few people into the queue at a time. I don't quite get why they didn't let more people into the line. So get into the queue. The funniest thing happened. At a point about halfway through there are some gates that swing outwards. I leaned up against one and fell back a little. My mom and little brother started laughing. Then on the other side there was another gate and she did the exact same thing. I cracked up.So we get into the station and head straight to the back seat. We are two trains from getting on, when the train on the track stops in the brake run and doesnt continue towards the station. They were stuck that way for about twenty minutes. As comfortable as those seats are, that would bgin to hurt. So finally they get it moving and they test both trains about ten times each. Then stop the trains to wait for the ok to ride.5 minutes later they get the ok and we were back in buisness. We were ready to go. A few trains came and went through, and it was finally our turn. I got in and went to the money seat(far side).I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE RIDE!!!The pretzel loop is sooooo intense in the back row. The rest of the ride is made to recuperate. The drop of the loop actually took my breath away. I haven't had that happen in so long.I got off the ride and was absolutely astonished! Then I decided to go check out the new retracked Eagle. On the way I noticed the V2 had no line and we went over by it, but it turned out they had some sort of power failure, so we just kept going towards Eagle. They only had the blue train running, which I was a bit disappointed because I wanted some pics going forwards cause I haven't done it in so long, but oh well. It did open later, but we were on our way out already.The retracking is nice, but the trims were on really tight. It's definately smoother and it feels faster.After Eagle we went over to Raging Bull. Usually the line moves fairly quickly, but for some reason today, it was moving soo slow that it took forever.After RB we went to get our passes processed. This year it was much quicker than in previous years. Each camera had its own printer.I decided I wanted to go on Superman again and my mom didn't feel like it, so she went into the pictorium to watch Adrenaline and my brother and I went to Superman.I guess we hit the ride at the perfect time, because for a while we didn't stop walking. Since we rode the back this morning, we decided to go to the front. Surprisingly it only took about a hour and 30 minutes to go through the entire queue and the front row line.Like I said before,I ABSOLUTLEY LOVE THIS RIDE!!!The front row is a lot less intense in the pretzel loop and you can feel the banked turns a lot more. I think I like it a little bit more in the front row than the back.After Superman, we decided to go home. I would have liked to stay longer and ridden superman at night to compare, but unfortunately we told my dad that we would be home for dinner, and speaking of which, I have to go eat it.
