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    Six Flags Great America
    Six Flags Great America
    Six Flags Great America
    Ebook155 pages35 minutes

    Six Flags Great America

    By Steven W. Wilson

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    About this ebook

    Marriott's Great America first opened in Gurnee, Illinois, on May 29, 1976. Located midway between Chicago and Milwaukee, it was the second of two Marriott Corporation theme parks.


    Great America was created to be a place where families could have fun together while gaining an appreciation for United States history. The park's five authentically themed areas based on America's past included the best in family and thrill rides, restaurants, specialty shops, artisans, and games. First-rate live entertainment included Broadway-style musicals, bands, parades, a circus, and the Warner Bros. characters featuring BUGS BUNNY. In 1984, the park became Six Flags Great America when it joined the Six Flags family of theme parks. Since then, the park has continued to innovate and expand. Today, including its 20-acre Hurricane Harbor water park, Six Flags Great America is one of the country's finest theme parks. Since 1976, the park has entertained more than 100 million guests.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 4, 2017
    ISBN9781439659939
    Six Flags Great America
    Author

    Steven W. Wilson

    Steven W. Wilson is a lifelong amusement park and theme park enthusiast, photographer, and historian. He created the web site GREATAMERICAparks.com to celebrate the history of the two parks built as Marriott's Great America in Gurnee, Illinois, and Santa Clara, California. A former employee of the Illinois park, he has previously authored California's Great America with Arcadia.

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      Book preview

      Six Flags Great America - Steven W. Wilson

      (s17)

      INTRODUCTION

      Six Flags Great America opened as Marriott’s Great America on May 29, 1976. By the early 1970s, tremendous growth in the theme park business led to Marriott Corporation’s decision to develop its own theme parks. The first Marriott’s Great America entertainment center, proposed to be built midway between Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC, was announced on January 26, 1972. Plans called for a theme park, a marine life park, a wild animal safari park, hotels, a campground, shopping, restaurants, and other entertainment. Later, Marriott’s Great America parks were announced for Santa Clara, California, then Gurnee, Illinois. Local opposition to the Washington, DC, area park halted its development both at the Maryland site and later at a backup site near Manassas, Virginia.

      David L. Brown, vice president of Marriott’s Theme Park Group, was tasked with creating the Marriott parks. He assembled a team of top talent that was recruited from industry leaders such as Disney, Six Flags, and Cedar Point. Many were eager to join Marriott for the extraordinary opportunity to create world-class theme parks from the ground up.

      Marriott hired Economic Research Associates to conduct feasibility studies. The firm was founded by Harrison Buzz Price, who served as a consultant to Walt Disney in the selection of locations for Disneyland and Walt Disney World. The studies for Marriott revealed that the best markets for a new regional theme park in the United States were Baltimore/Washington, Chicago/Milwaukee, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The village of Gurnee, midway between Chicago and Milwaukee, stood out as an ideal location for Marriott’s Great America.

      Randall Duell and Associates of Santa Monica, California, was hired to design Marriott’s Great America. Architect Duell started a small firm in Los Angeles in 1937. With demand for architects low because of the Great Depression, Duell worked in Hollywood as an art director for more than 30 MGM films, including Singin’ in the Rain. Duell left the movie business and founded his new design firm at the age of 55. His company’s first job was to design Six Flags Over Texas for the Great Southwest Corporation in Arlington, Texas. He went on to design the other two original Six Flags parks, in Georgia and Missouri, as well as nearly every other major regional theme park in the United States.

      Duell set out to make Marriott’s Great America his finest yet. Marriott researchers combed the country to find authentic artifacts to enhance the historical theming of each of the park’s sections: Hometown Square, Great Midwest County Fair and Livestock Exposition (aka County Fair), Yukon Territory, Yankee Harbor, and Orleans Place. Also planned but deferred for a future expansion was the Great Southwest.

      For a grand entrance, Duell designed the spectacular Columbia Carousel, situated at the end of a huge reflecting pool. The ornate structure housing the double-deck ride would reach 10 stories high. Many of the country’s rarest carousel horses and figures were reproduced for the Columbia Carousel. The rare originals were loaned to Marriott so that molds could be made directly from them for the reproductions.

      The entrance area would be named Carousel Plaza. From there, the five themed areas were joined so that a path leading from one section to the next would eventually loop back to Carousel Plaza. This design feature, common in Duell’s designs, was known as a Duell loop. The loop ensured that guests would pass through all of the themed sections without bypassing any of them. At Marriott’s Great America, the center of the loop served as a service corridor. Each of the themed sections could be serviced from the center of the loop without interfering with the guests’ experience.

      Marriott’s Great America opened with one of the finest collections of rides in the country. Arrow Development Company of Mountain View, California, supplied major rides such as the Turn of the Century roller coaster and the massive interlocking flume rides. Many of Europe’s best ride offerings were imported via Intamin, Inc. These included the thrilling Whizzer, designed and built by the team of Anton Schwarzkopf and Werner Stengel, and the world’s first triple Ferris wheel. A June 1975 announcement informed that four more rides would be added to the park’s lineup to better serve the expected opening year crowds: Traffique Jam, Cajun Cliffhanger, Spinnaker, and Whirligig. These rides would not be added to the California

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