Sep 152021
 

Hello from a Six Flags that didn’t feel like a Six Flags which is the best compliment ever!!

Six Flags Great Escape is in Queensbury, NY, which is apparently nestled amongst the Adirondacks. I always forget about those mountains! And to be perfectly honestly with you guys (because HONESTY is kind of my BRAND lol ugh gag), I never would have just randomly said one day to Henry, “Hey hon, let’s take a drive up to them there Adirondacks,” nor would I ever call him HON.

Lol ugh gag.

Legend has it that this park was formerly known as Storyland or something like that, a quaint family park, but then Six Flags came in an usurped it. INCREDIBLY, they didn’t fuck with the adorable theming by spraying the whole park with their patented DC Comic jizz. They let the park retain its adorable woodland feel! And the Storybook forest-y shit is still there!!

As soon as we rolled up into the parking lot, I had a good feeling about this joint.

But then Henry randomly got searched and our season passes didn’t scan and the ticket scanner broad was not very nice to us. BUT! Then we went to customer services and a very nice guy named KAI got us all sorted out without making us feel fraudulent. Of course a guy named Kai wouldn’t let us down. Mmmh.

Nice little entrance area thingie with shops, etc. I see you, Great Escape.

So, I already wrote about our first coaster (Flashback) in my post about Henry’s doppelganger, but now let’s talk about the second coaster we stuffed our butts in: COMET.

Straight from the no-longer-there Crystal Beach Park in Canada, which also happened to be the setting of one of my fave books from 2020, Sodom Road Exit. I became moderately obsessed with this park after reading this lovely book and started watching YouTube videos about it. It closed in 1989 and I would give up grilled cheese to be able to go back in time and take a family road trip to this place, eat some of their famous waffles and butterscotch suckers, knock back a Loganberry or two (or not).

Comet was thankfully saved from turning into kindle back in the 90s when Great Escape bought it and gave it a new lease on life

My friend Dawn used to go to Crystal Beach as a kid and she flipped out when she saw this on my Instagram. I hope she takes a trip to THEM THERE ADIRONDACKS and relives her youth on this bad boy, because he is running RULL GOODLY. Talk about an airtime machine! And smooth (mostly)! I rode it three times in a row, in the third row from the back, the very back, and the front row.

This ride is the shit, man. I was expecting some janky lumbar crusher but no – this was excellent. I mean, even HENRY rode it three times in a row! I kept screaming about how pretty the mountains looked from the top of the lift hill but no one was agreeing with me.

Love a classic coaster! And it was a walk-on every time. Two train ops! Already this place did not feel like a Six Flags!

Dummies.

The landscaping and colors in this park were poppin’.

There was this one guy eating a turkey leg and wearing a shirt that said “if you don’t respect *picture of ameriKKKan flag*, then you can expect *dot dot dot, I couldn’t see what it was but can imagine it was probably a gun or fist*”. I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and tell him that I use flag scraps as panty-liners just to see what I could expect, but Henry was like DON’T. I’m 1000% sure I could have outrun him,  though! Dumb mountain man. (The t-shirt guy, not Henry.)

(Although I can see where you might think I meant Henry.)

Aren’t you glad they maintained that storybook integrity??? I am! I love shit like this!

Sadly, their Intamin bobsled coaster was closed for the day (season?), so we walked to the other side of the park and took Canyon Blaster for a spin.

Chooch pointed out that this is literally the same guy that sits on a bench at Kennywood, just with a different paint job! WHO USED THE MOLD FIRST, I WONDER???

(THROWBACK TO 2018)

Chooch barely spoke to us when we were in any line, pick a line, that day so I amused myself by taking selfies with Henry like we are an actual couple or something. Smile Henry, you’re stuck with me.

View of the western town facade thingie from the Canyon Blaster station.

This was one-train ops and one of the longest lines we stood in all day (a whopping 20 minutes, maybe).  It was OK! A runaway mine ride, family friendly, would have been better if there had been a tunnel. I liked it better than the one at Six Flags Great Adventure because I actually felt like I was going to perish on that one.

Chooch and I then rode Steamin’ Demon, an Arrow corkscrew which was SO FUCKING TERRIBLE I CAN’T EVEN…possibly the worst one I’ve ridden. I hate these types of coasters so damn much and would not be sad if they were completely eradicated from every park in the world, but this one was particularly painful. Going around the corkscrew, my head ping-ponged off both sides of the restraint and it caught me right in the jaw, below each ear. If I was in a Looney Tunes skit, hummingbirds and stars would have been undulated around my head like a YOU LOSE crown. Ugh, nope. Never again. We took that credit and ran. Well, I staggered.

Fuck you.

Next up, we cajoled Henry to ride the log flume with us.  It was good! Except we were behind this extended family of hillbillies and I was pretty turned off. “Not to be an asshole, but I feel like they were inbred,” I whispered to Henry later on and he was like OMG but didn’t disagree. So.

OMG they were so loud too and acted like they were the only people in line and then I saw the one guy grab one of the girls’ asses when they go into the flume and that whole time I thought she was his daughter…but I guess she still could have been. Never mind.

Oh, the log flume? It was fine! I liked that there was an inside part before the big drop, and it had a little “men cutting logs, etc” scene happening. I was worried that we were going to flip over though because the ride attendant split us up as two in the front, one in the back, and Henry was like ME BIG MAN, RIDE WITH ME WOMAN IN FRONT and I thought for sure this was going to throw off the weight balance, but the ride attendant didn’t even flinch and sent us on our way.

Surprise, we survived.

Now that we knocked out all of the coasters (Chooch ended up with 8 credits on this trip and I think that puts him to 181!), it was FLAT RIDE TIME, BITCHES! So Chooch and I went on the Condor! He was like, “We are NOT sitting together” because one of us would have had to straddle the other and that’s fine for hillbillies but not so much us. So Chooch got in the car behind me but before the ride attendant started making his rounds, I made Chooch move to one across from me so we could “wave to each other.” LOL you can see how thrilled he was in that picture!

I was stoked, though! This ride went up high and spun in circles. It was pleasant.

The ride next to the Condor, however…not so much.

It’s called the ADK Outlaw and it is fucking terrifying. It’s the newest ride at the park, debuting earlier this season, and I had seen some videos of it previously. Going in, I was firmly rooted in my I AM NOT RIDING THIS stance. But Chooch kept saying that he was going to ride it. And the more I looked at it, the more thrilling it appeared. And somehow, the closer we got, the more…doable it seemed. Like, for me personally. I could do this. It would be fine. Let’s do it.

So we got in line, which wasn’t too long but because of the way the ride is set up, only 8 people can be loaded off and on after each cycle. So we had plenty of time to listen to the broad in front of us scream about how she should have brought her sweater into the park and wow she could really use a sweater, boy it sure was sweater weather, OMG maybe so-and-so who is not in line will go to the car and get my sweater, *shouts to so-and-so about her sweater 3x before he hears her*, now so-and-so is going to the car to get her sweater, hope he comes back before she gets on the ride, oh there’s so-and-so in the parking lot!, so-and-so should be coming back soon I hope, it’s almost our turn and still no sweater, OH HERE HE IS WITH MY SWEATER, *catches sweater tossed over railing from so-and-so, *makes big production yanking North Face sweater down over her big ADK peaks*, OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE MY SWEATER RIGHT AS WE’RE GETTING ON THE RIDE YAY.

Literally, the worst. STFU.

So, this ride was…wow, just wow. It whips you up over 200 feet (I think? I don’t feel like looking) into the air and then you flip all over yourself in your seat at the same time and it’s miserable yet exhilarating and between you and me, Internet Diary, I kind of wanted to do it again.

The most terrifying part though is when the other side of the ride is unloading and reloading, and you’re stuck at the top trying to distract yourself by looking at the mountains and the Martha’s Dandee Cream across the street so that you forget that you’re essentially just a landing pad for, I dunno, hawks and eagles. AND CONDORS?

(Speaking of, Henry thought he was so cool and nature-y for point out that that other ride was called Condor but it had eagles depicted on it. Cool story, Henry the Zoo Keeper.)

Um, I dunno, watch this video if you want a better visual than I am able to conjure with words alone:

Guys look! There is a cool little ghost cave that you can walk through for no reason!

It has a waterfall going over the side of it! I love Great Escape!

There was an indoor Scrambler there called Blizzard (the building was shaped like an igloo, nice touch) and here we have Chooch being miserable in line because we were behind three pre-teen bitches and one of their little sisters who was six, and I know this because before the mom left them alone in line, she repeatedly reminded them that, “SHE IS SIX, OK? SHE IS SIX. BE NICE TO HER.” Lol, oh they were nice to her alright.

Wow, this ride was SOMETHING. First of all, the ride operator, GENE, was very meticulous with his seat assigning and took a very long time going around to make sure everyone was secured in place. Meanwhile, this song about COME AND TAKE ME AWAY was blasting and at first I thought this was a great song choice – it sounded like the Beatles maybe?? If my friend Megan was reading this, she would probably unfriend me for not knowing. It sound like it was from the 60s or 70s, OK?!

Gene started the ride up with no warning and Chooch was being SUCH AN ASSHOLE. First of all, we were sitting in the wrong position so I was the one getting crushed, and he was purposely pulling himself away from me and then letting go so he would slam into my side with full force. It was the rudest and I was screaming. Then he made me smash my finger between my leg and the side of the car and I thought my fingernail was going to fall off for like a FULL DAY even though Henry kept saying, “You are not going to lose your fingernail.”

Anyway, this ride rotation lasted so long and that same song kept playing and I was screaming, “YES, PLEASE COME AND TAKE ME AWAY, GOOD LORD” and Gene was all, “Woo hoo motherfuckers” except that he was way too pure to say motherfuckers and I felt like I was in hell. It was actually hell. I’m convinced.

Right after this, we went on another flat ride called PANDEMONIUM and right when it was on our turn to ride, one of the ride attendants was replaced by…..GENE!!!! I kept trying to get Henry’s attention so he could see Gene, my new favorite ride attendant, but of course he was too busy staring off into space, waiting with all of the other parents while The Kids rode Pandemonium. Chooch really wanted to kill me on this ride I think because I was SO GIDDY and when Gene asked, “Is everyone ready?” I expected everyone to scream so I unleashed a guttural YEAHHHHHHHHHH like I was opening my mouth for all of Hell to purge in a fiery death metal torrent…

…and no one else said a word. It was just me and my big fat YEAHHHHHHH driving away the birds in droves. The parents standing along the railing waiting to take pictures of their children all smiled at me, like, “Aw, that giant child is having fun, she is cute” while probably thinking I was there on an asylum field trip.

Then Gene got on his speaker and said, “HEY EVERYONE, CAN YOU GIVE THE CLOUDS A…..HIGH FIVE?” so of course I had to try and then I started screaming, “I’M DOING IT! CHOOCH, I’M REALLY DOING IT!” and he was like, “omg plz fuck off.”

The best part was when the ride ended and Chooch’s restraints didn’t unlock so….GENE HAD TO COME OVER AND HELP HIM!!!!!!!!!!! I loved every second of this! Chooch was not having fun!

But then he got to play games, so he was happy.

There’s an Alice in Wonderland walk-thru! It starts out real strong!

But then it gets boring.

I told him to stand here and HE DID.

Oh! There was a kiddie coaster in the kid section so Chooch and I meandered over there to see if we could ride it. There was literally NO ONE IN THAT SECTION, but the young ride attendant was like, “I’m sorry guys, you’re too big for this” and even went through the motions of pulling out his measuring stick (lol). I did an exaggerated “aw shucks” motion with my arm and said sarcastically, “Aw man, we needed that credit!”

He took me seriously and said, “If you cross over that bridge, you’ll find plenty of rides that you guys can enjoy.”

Totally rejected. It was mildly embarrassing but luckily no one was there to witness it. He really thought we were broken up about it though.

Some people count these Larson loopers as credits but Chooch doesn’t and that is fine by me because I will only ride these if Kirk is the ride operator.

And that was pretty much it for us. We got to do everything we wanted except for that bobsled coaster, and managed to get out of there early enough to go and get dinner outside of the park. We will pretty much do whatever we can to avoid having to pay for full meals at amusement parks, especially Six Flags!

Snapped one last shot of ADK Outlaw as we exited the park.

You guys, this place is so underrated. It is absolutely beautiful here. The staff is great. (Especially GENE. He’s a LEAD, whatever that means. It said so on his NAME TAG.) The ride collection is quirky and fun. I’d like to see them get a really good B&M (literally, Chooch kept jokingly saying, “So, where’s the B&M?”) or a modern hybrid woodie. I think they could demolish that awful corkscrew and put in some total showstopper babe right there that can be seen from the road. This park has so much potential, but obviously I do *not* want to see them become another corporate Six Flags clone. Keep that humble ambiance, Great Escape!

  One Response to “THE GREAT ESCAPE!”

  1. Henry is a Moss Expert and an Ornithologist! WHO KNEW!

Say it don't spray it.

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