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The big news at Six Flags Great America this season is the Viper--a daunting wooden roller coaster modeled after the Coney Island Cyclone. It promises an 80-foot descent, including 11 "gut-wrenching" drops and speeds of up to 50 mph.
Park managers hope the new coaster--the ninth at the 300-acre theme park--will generate interest and boost attendance this season from the estimated 2.9-million visitors last year, which was an off year.
The coaster is expected to do for the park what the park has done for its hometown, Gurnee. Great America's arrival in the sleepy farming and blue-collar town 20 years ago sparked a development drive that reached a fever pitch with the 1991 arrival of Gurnee Mills shopping center.
"We were here a long time before people figured out what a great location (we had)," says Six Flags Great America President James Wintrode.
When Marriott Corp. began building Six Flags, Gurnee was a sleepy rural community of 3,500 people. The area once was a center of mink ranching, but foreign competition wiped out the industry in the 1960s. Residents farmed or held blue-collar jobs in adjacent Waukegan.
The city had only four or five police officers and a volunteer fire department when Great America, says Lake County Chamber of Commerce president Charles Isely, "put Gurnee on the map."
Six Flags Great America has prospered since its opening, providing a substantial economic boost to Lake County and Illinois:
*Six Flags is the state's largest seasonal employer, hiring 3,000 workers for its five-month run.
*It is the second-largest taxpayer in Warren Township (after shopping mall Gurnee Mills), forking over $1.75 million a year to fund schools, the library and parks and other public services.
*Six Flags estimates its direct and indirect economic impact in Illinois at $60 million, including salaries of Six Flags employees, income to suppliers and contractors and consumers at nearby hotels, shops and gas stations.