Great America

We have a season pass to Great America/Gilroy Gardens this year, and probably every year in the foreseeable future. Its about the price of one visit to each park. Today we decided to go to Great America and check out the little kid offerings.

We started off with two rides on the double-decker carousel. Why TWO rides? Well, Anthony started screaming that he wasn't done when we tried to get off after only one ride. Fortunately there was no line so we were able to ride again. Then we rode the Autopia style cars. I tried to get pictures but it was hard as both of our cars were moving. (Anthony and Bob rode together.) There was a line so we weren't able to do consequetive rides there. Too bad as there was screaming when Anthony had to get out of his car. (A theme here.)

Then we headed off to KidzLand. Kidzland was clearly created when Paramount (or was it even before them?) owned Great America. It was pretty heavily themed in Scooby-Doo. We rode the kiddie carousel there and Anthony got to sit on Scooby, his Aunt Erika's favorite character. His favorite ride by FAR was Kidzair, a ride in a pretend airship. We rode that one SEVEN times. When we tried to get off the first time there was screaming. Fortunately no line so we rode again. Still screaming but I wanted to check out the other rides. Then we came back and rode it twice more, then one more trip back for three more rides.

We ended our day with two more carousel rides, this time on the top deck. It was a good day.

My review of the two parks. I liked Gilroy Gardens a lot. It has very little to offer to the over 10 set in terms of rides. It has some great rides for little people, though. The gardens are beautiful, as are the rest of the grounds. Its also relatively small. Because it is oriented to younger folk, there weren't roaming gangs of teenagers and the like. It also felt very new.

Great America had a reasonable selection of rides and activities for the smaller folk. You definitely had to get deeper into the park to reach them. Kidzville felt a little run-down. It was definitely an older area of the park and could use some refurbishment. An adjacent area, Nickelodean Central was much newer. It had a great water-play area that Anthony will probably enjoy in a few years. Great America also has its own water park. That's a ways off for us. Obviously it also has a huge selection of roller-coasters and the like. We'll have to go back without Anthony.

In general, as a family outing I really liked Gilroy Gardens better. Too bad its an hour away!