Tac Talks Coasters - Post 199
Photo Sources: All photos are mine
Little Dipper at Six Flags Great America!
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Opened: 1950 (Relocated to Six Flags Great America in 2010)
Manufacturer: Philadelphia Toboggan Company
Height: 28 ft (8.5 m)
Speed: 20 mph (32.2 kph)
Length: 700 ft (213.3 m)
Place in my rankings: #155 (landing between Woodstock Express and Hurler, both at Kings Dominion)
The last ride I'll cover from Great America (for now :3) is this very charming little wooden coaster! Before this opened here, Great America really needed a small kiddie coaster, since Sprocket Rockets (now Chirp Chaser) was more of a family coaster and the park's previous kiddie coaster, Gulf Coaster only operated for the park's opening season before being removed due to its habit of catching on fire lmao.
Anyways, Little Dipper was a great fit for Great America's lineup, but as you can see with the stats listed above, it didn't start out here! It actually opened back in 1950 at another park called Kiddieland in the Chicago suburb of Melrose Park. It operated there for nearly 60 years before Kiddieland unfortunately shut down in 2009. But in an unexpected but welcome move, Great America was the highest bidder for the ride at auction, getting the ride for $33,000 and moving it up to its new home in Gurnee to open in 2010. It's exceedingly rare to see a wooden coaster of any size get relocated in this day and age, it happened more often in the 80s with rides like Phoenix at Knoebels or Comet at Great Escape. So I'm so happy Great America stepped up to the challenge and saved such a historic little coaster that holds a special place in the hearts of many Chicagoans :]
But how is the ride itself? It's perfectly good for what it is, I would say! Like with all the other kiddie coasters I've talked about throughout making these posts, I am not within the target demographic for these kinds of rides. They are very tame and are meant to be a stepping stone for younger riders before taking on bigger coasters. The ride is a double out and back layout in a figure-8 pattern. Like a smaller version of Thunderbolt at Six Flags New England, or very similar to the Woodstock Express wooden coasters at Kings Island, Kings Dominion and Carowinds. In fact, I would say Little Dipper is just about on par with those three Woodstock coasters, the ride experience felt very similar. Those rides are just a little bit bigger than Little Dipper, which gives them the slight edge in my rankings.
In general, I thought the ride was fun for what it was and very charming! It's a super cute ride and like I said, I love that Great America saved it. And they're still very proud of it's history! The Little Dipper's queue line is full of posters and plaques detailing the ride's history at Kiddieland, it's move to Great America and it's operations since then! They definitely play true to the tagline they gave the ride: "Keeping the history alive" :]
But with that, I have now covered every coaster I've ridden at Six Flags Great America! Of course like I've said, I have yet to ride Chirp Chaser, but I'll snag a ride on that next time I'm at the park, as well as getting a ride on Sky Hawk, the new Vekoma Suspended Family Coaster they're getting next year :3 And you may have also noticed, this is TTC post number 199! That means the next coaster I ride will be my overall 200th!! I'm so hyped to hit that milestone, and it'll be happening in less than a week at the time of writing this post hehe. It doesn't take a lot to figure out what number 200 will be for me, but if you don't know it, you'll just have to wait til then :3
Thanks for checking out today's coaster post! Keep an eye out for tthe next one in a couple weeks!
