Originally Posted By juicer I remember a food location called "Ala Burger" - The burgers, fries and drinks would rotate on this huge turntable - You would take what you wanted and have a cashier ring you up - The problem was that the heatlamps would melt the ice in the soda's
Originally Posted By Mr X Bit of a "duh!" kinda system, no? I had fun at that Santa Clara park back in 1990...but hearing stories like this make me reluctant to return to some of my childhood favorites on the east coast (Canobie Lake Park was a fun and relaxing getaway back in the day...haven't been back there in over 25 years though!).
Originally Posted By Mr X Also, Edaville Railroad in Carver, MA has recently reopened...I WANT to go, but I'm a little afraid that my fond memories of childhood might get dashed on the rocks of todays "cheap and dirty" parks. Apparently, they don't even have a real steam engine train anymore!?
Originally Posted By Lisann22 Here's the park I liked more as a kid growing up than Great America. <a href="http://www.frontiervillage.net/" target="_blank">http://www.frontiervillage.net /</a>
Originally Posted By schnebs I went to GA about 15 years ago when I was sent to work in San Francisco for a few months. One trip was pretty much enough to convince me that I didn't need to go back. There was enough theming left that I could tell that the place was probably once pretty special, but it was pretty obvious that the folks running the place were not interested in providing a top-notch experience. Upkeep was spotty at best. It's sad to think that it's gotten worse since then...
Originally Posted By jonvn "Where is it located? I didn't see any buildings that big." You have to go up in the tower view thing to see it. The entrance is covered over in bushes and well hidden.
Originally Posted By Mr X Yes, Jon, but are you a fan of the Santa Clara Vanguard (I was testing you there..to see if you'd heard of them)?
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA In Summer of 1980, I was toying with idea of joining the Sacramento Freelancers. It was fun, but man, it was intense. Alas, I chose to spend the summer with my girlfriend at the time.
Originally Posted By jonvn No, haven't heard of them. SO I looked them up. Don't really follow drum and bugle corp music around too much.
Originally Posted By amazedncal2 <<<doesn't think Mr X read my post #26 I love reading about the old GA stuff, especially the food. Ala Burger, my kids loved that place!
Originally Posted By ABBY <<Anyone for red, white and blueberry ice cream? A great way to end the day at "Mariotts">> I agree !! I had forgotten about that too!! It was almost as good as Fantasia ice cream
Originally Posted By ShivaThDestroyer ..Here's the park I liked more as a kid growing up than Great America.<< Lisann22, you brought back some memories with that one! I loved Frontier Village!! The DW and I went to Great America several times this year. Only one of those visits was just the two of us. About halfway through the day we felt like we had done just about everything we wanted to do ended up leaving early and not feeling very fulfilled. All the other trips were with other LP'ers and we had a great time. I guess the secret to having fun there is to bring a little bit of DL with you. Of course, it would be really hard not to have fun when you have the RAM1984's, Schmitty Good Vibes and 2/3 & family in your party. ABBY, somehow someway we will find a way to remake Fantasia Ice Cream!!
Originally Posted By Mr X **In Summer of 1980, I was toying with idea of joining the Sacramento Freelancers. It was fun, but man, it was intense.** Oh, cool. Yup, it is intense...gotta devote lotsa hours to it for sure! I had a student here in Japan that wanted to go to America and join a top drum corps. I asked how often he practiced a day, and he answered "one or two hours". So, I told him he'd never make it. (well, that'd be true in general anyway...I suppose a real virtuoso wouldn't have any problem...) **Don't really follow drum and bugle corp music around too much.** Too bad..Northern California is famous for drum corps, including the winningest drum corps in the world the Concord Blue Devils (my group ).
Originally Posted By Mr X Amazed, yes I read it! That's cool. But you also wrote "back to topic", so I thought I'd better not reply.
Originally Posted By JeffG I've never actually been to Great America in Santa Clara, but this thread is still making me all nostalgic. For those that aren't aware, there is another Great America park just north of Chicago that was built by Marriott a the same time as the Santa Clara park. I worked at that park from 1986-1988. The Chicago park was bought by Six Flags at the same time that Marriott sold the other park to the city of Santa Clara and it is still a Six Flags park now. The years that I worked there were fairly early in the Six Flags ownership and corresponded with the first year that Warner Communications bought out the chain and heavily expanded the use of the Looney Toons characters. This last June, we took a trip back to the Chicago area to attend a wedding and were able to spend a day at the park. It has changed pretty dramatically (including quite a bit of expansion into what used to be parking lot), although from what has been posted in this thread it sounds like more of the old features are still in place at the Chicago park. The Pictorium is still opened and was showing an IMAX 3-D short featuring Marvin the Martian. They also still had two full stage shows, a musical revue and a smaller show with the Looney Toons characters (I didn't get a chance to see it). Overall, the park is in pretty decent condition, even if it is showing some of the deterioration of quality and service that is currently common with all Six Flags parks. My main disappointment of the day was that they didn't play the Carousel Song at closing... -Jeff
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan A little nugget about The Carousel Song: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Carousel" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C olumbia_Carousel</a>
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan And here's a little portion of the song (this is the instrumental part, but it also had singers/lyrics). The song was played at opening and then at the end of the day, when the park was closing for the day.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan <a href="http://www.greatamericaparks.com/carouselsong001.mp3" target="_blank">http://www.greatamericaparks.c om/carouselsong001.mp3</a>
Originally Posted By jonvn I think that it might be that Six Flags gets a lot more grief around here than it should, mostly because of how awful Magic Mountain is. The Six Flags park near me is actually very nice, and sounds like they are doing ok with that other park as well.
