You might have seen Serainas blogpost about her amazing vacation in the grand canion – my post here (again, Jerome only post here) might be a bit boring in comparison ;-). In my last blog post, I already stated that Seraina is in Switzerland going after some visa stuff. I thought that I would delay this next post until she is back, and I did, but the amount of content in her post is so big that we decided to publish two different articles at the same time. So this article will be written from the “me” (Jerome) perspective and not the “us” perspective again.
I teased in the last post that I was in a hotel room of a city without naming it. “Drumroll” – it was Chicago! This city is absolutely gorgeous, and I would say that this is one of the craziest experiences that I had ever? I am getting ahead of myself.
I travelled to Chicago as I was attending IFT, a fair that is all about R&D folks and them exchanging ideas and getting together. For Buhler, this is an important show as especially customers of ours from the ingredients sector, but also cereals and chocolate attend this fair, and we were present with a booth. The show went good for us btw.
We stayed at a Hilton near downtown, we then would take a bus every morning basically driving through the city center every morning to get to the show premises.
First of all, Chicago and its downtown area is the biggest I have seen so far. At least for me as a European not being used to cities of such a scale. They however came up with solutions to combat this huge scale, as they for example build elevated “tram” lines (we would call this a metro), but also elevated streets. There are two levels of street. Normal traffic has to use the above streets, public transport the lower level. This allows buses to get from A to B without big delay.
And here is, what I believe, the worst about Chicago. Traffic. If you live in Chicago, you will not own a car. You will use public transport. The congestion is around the clock. When we arrived, we flew into Midway Airport, about 12 miles (20km) away from our hotel. It took us in a Uber over an hour to get to our hotel. And it was like 2pm, so at a time of day where there is only little traffic. The day I traveled back home, I drove north about 50 miles. The last 20 miles on the way back took me over 1.5h to reach the airport, and again, this was a time of day with little traffic…
Besides all the traffic, if you are on foot, downtown is very impressive. This is what you would understand as the stereotype of a US city. Even for its young age, architecture is absolutely stunning. I am wondering how Chicago managed to have such a fitting combination of big complexes, while we in Europe have such a high focus on maintaining an existing picture by actually preventing houses from being built. Here it just seems to work. Of course, there are some buildings that are simply excesses of (non-existant) masculinity (talking about Trump Tower here), but they still match the overall tone of the city and how these huge structures play together.
I had the chance of walking the central area of Chicago along its water two times. You are flanked by these huge buildings while going along Riverwalk. I believe pictures will tell more than I will be able to.
Things that I did besides “oooh”-ing and “aaaah”-ing was having dinner in a very exclusive fish restaurant along the Riverwalk, then on the second day have lunch in a market (a market is a collection of small takeaway restaurants sharing one dining area), where I ordered a Humus bowl (expecting a bowl full of variety) and received a bowl full of humus and a tiny pita bread. It was awesome, never ate that much humus in my entire life. 😀 On the third day, we had deep dish pizza (I am now OK with it calling it a pie instead of a pizza, it tastes good!).
On that same day, we went to Millenium park with the huge bean (its called “Cloud gate”). Amazing views and the bean itself looks really cool. Inside the park, they had a public movie screening that night. Finally, we went to a Tiki bar. Oh boy. These cocktails were amazing, see the pictures. And they were actually fairly cheap, 15-18$ per drink. And they also tasted really good.
I also took a day off to visit Six Flags Great America, but more on that in the Nerdtalk section. So, really looking forward to go back to that city and to explore more. I hope next time with Seraina, its about a 6h drive from Minneapolis, so doable if going there for an extended weekend. I came back on a Thursday night, had the chance of running the washing machine once, as I headed to Raleigh again on Saturday.
I chose to travel to Raleigh one day early as there was still a park left that I wanted to visit, which is Bush Gardens Williamsburg. Its about a 3h drive from Raleigh itself, so not that bad. Again, more on that later. We had a stunning dinner at Raleigh at “Angus Barn”, they specialize in meats of any kind. The atmosphere in this restaurant is awesome, they have even some old “famous” revolvers and weapons from wild west icons on display. That same week I also flew then back to Kansas City to visit a customer of ours, it was over 100 degrees F (so over 38 degrees C). I got the best rental car to date, a Ford Mustang cabriolet, but due to these crazy temperatures I could not drive around with the roof down. Pitty.
Finally, the last five weeks I have been here in Minneapolis. I found a new friend that shares my love for amusement parks, her name is Molly and we have already visited Valley Fair, with plans to extend our visits to other parks in the region. I will be back travelling next week. My next destination is going to be Idaho, and then next week… I will tell you that in our next post. See you soon!
Nerdtalk
Because I have gotten the question: Why does my scale go to 11? There is a reason behind this: a) I would rank to positively, and there would be no room at the top. b) This saves me in future, because I hope that I have not yet seen the best of the best parks :). Should you have other questions, let me know!
Lets get started with the first park I have been to:
Six Flags Great America
Six Flags Great America just north of Chicago is known to be one of the best Six Flags Parks. I sadly only had little time there, so I was not able to ride everything yet. The park is big, and there is lots to do. From what I’ve read online, its always pretty packed, so doing everything in one day is a challenge. They also supposedly have good operations (which is not the case usually at Six Flags parks), however when I was there, operations were not that great… And: The park is a Six Flags park. Less themeing, more focus on the rides themselves. This was one of the nicest Six Flags from a theme perspective for sure though.
American Eagle: An old wodden coaster. I waited forever in line for this ride in the sun, that was annoying. This coaster was once supposed to be a dueling coaster, but Six Flags only runs one side nowadays, which is sad. Also, the overall construction does not look nice anymore, it would need a refurbishment… And it also goes like it is 40, there is a lot of vibration… Second: Whizzer. This is a piece of history: An original Schwarzkopf coaster. Anton Schwarzkopf and Werner Stengel are known as two of the most influential coaster builder / designers. This coaster was opened in 1976. You can certainly feel that it is old, but still a very fun ride. There are no real restraints. Queued for this much too long, but was totally worth it.
On the positive side: Goliath, a converted RMC coaster. As all RMCs, pretty short and super intense, but an amazing ride! Goliath broke some records when it was new, and it still is a lot of fun today! X-flight, a B&M wing coaster, was also really fun. With that ride, the operations where however pretty bad, so wait times were longer than they should have been.
Their newest addition is Maxx Force. This is an S&S air launched steel coaster, it launches in under 2 seconds to 120km/h – insane! The ride is as short as the launch is though. The ride is noteworthy though due to its air launch, only very few of those exist in the world. Most of them are built into Drop Towers or Shoot up towers, but not on a coaster! The ride can be heard through the whole park due to the air being released very quickly, this results in a bang every 3 minutes when a train launches. The launch is that intense that you are close to grey out, I have not felt something that forceful before. Whether that is a good thing – not sure. Less force seems to be more sometimes…
Finally, and weirdly, my ride of the day: Superman, Ultimate Flight. This is a flying coaster from B&M, so you are below the tracks in a lay down position. I was surprised by the intensity and the fun factor of this coaster. This is the closest to feeling like flying, and I sadly was only able to ride it once due to time constraints. Would go again, loved it!
Final verdict: Best Six Flags Park so far (and it is one of their best). Will go again, simply because I could not ride everything. Overall 8/11.
Bush Gardens Williamsburg
I had very high hopes for this park, and I was not let down. Must be the nicest park I have seen so far here in the US. It gets close to theme parks such as Europapark solely based on the themes they offer. Bush Gardens is themed after European countries such as Germany, Italy, France, Ireland and some more, and they do it very well. The park is layed out well: A river valley passes through the park and gives very nice views, the rides are built into this valley and are built into the terrain. There is a lot of very old trees all over the park that add to this. Even though it was a super hot day, the shadows were a god-sent.
The ride selection is very good, there is something for anyone here. Busch Gardens just opened Pantheon, an Inamin multi-launch coaster with a switch-track, a very intense ride. Outstanding on this ride is a piece of track that is used by the train multiple times to build speed, forwards, backwards, and then forwards again, with a very intense 3 launches. The coaster broke down on me while I was waiting for it, and it took them two hours to fix the issue (I left the line).
Alpengeist is a B&M suspended coaster, one of the first with a custom layout. It is not as good of a ride but has this sort of legend status in the park. Talking about legends: Loch Ness Monster is most likely the best Arrow Dynamics coaster I have ever been on so far, and it has two intertwining loops!
Finally, the best ride of the park: Griffon. A B&M dive coaster. Very intense forces with a flying feeling throughout. Rode this coaster 3 times as I liked it that much!
Minus points: They still hold animals. For me, nowadays, a no-go. Horses and dogs would be fine, but they also have wild animals not belonging into small cages. And: Tempesto, a Sky Rocket from Premier rides: That ride was absolutely miserable. Should you be taller than 1.8m, do not ride. You do not really fit into the restraints, and it hurts bad as the coaster is pretty forceful.
Overall, the best park I have been to so far, however, the rides are not as crazy as in some other parks, resulting in a 9/11.
- Bush Gardens, Williamsburg, 9/11
- Six Flags Great America, Chicago, 8/11
- Kings Dominion, Richmond, 8/11
- Carowinds, Charlotte, 7.5/11
- Six Flags St. Louis, St. Louis, 6/11
- Valleyfair!, Minneapolis, 5/11
- Nickelodeon Universe, Minneapolis, 3/11