Great Escape Walk-thru

this bright orange coaster on the hill is the calling card of the Great Escape a beautiful historical park next to Lake George in upstate New York the parking lot is across the highway and you get to this section over a bridge and then down this ramp toward the entrance and here we are hi Karen as is the current practice at Six Flags parks the security gates are before you get to the ticket gates so we're just going to advance past the ticket gates and right on to the main entrance it's a really charming entrance to the park it sort of reminds me of a mini Busch Gardens or a Hershey Park where you have this quaint sort of rustic look that Sasquatch in the background now there's a path that leads down into what they call the hot rods area and this is actually the main entrance into the park there's the exit which we'll look at later on and we're gonna walk through here now the park has lots of intertwining paths we're gonna follow a sort of clockwise path around the park as you can see there little shops along here great escape began life in 1954 as story town USA the first theme park in the United States before Disney it was created by the legendary Charlie wood now you see we come to an intersection here and paths branch off to the left and to the right if we go right we'll go into that hotrod area which will see a little later instead we're gonna go left and you can see that little castle in the background that's one of the remaining pieces from the old story town days carousel is beautifully placed right up on the Midway here and there are many other paths we can take there but I want to take you in a different direction an interesting little sort of hidden path up here to the left it's a hike but it's a pretty charming walk the park originally was designed for children and it focused on Mother Goose nursery rhymes so you'll see a lot of references to that throughout the park it was later expanded with a ghost town area which we'll see in a little bit but right now in front of us is the home of the old woman in the shoe off to the left you can see the Sky Ride and their Cinderella's castle now in the past you can see that pumpkin coach they used to actually give rides there was a horse that pulled the pumpkin coach around the castle and children could sit with Cinderella in the pumpkin coach and ride around the castle well they don't pull the coach anymore but you can still have a little photo-op there with Cinderella and I'm not sure what those benches are for I think maybe just to give old people like me a way to sit down after climbing that hill so let's head down this hill and you can see there are all these buildings that are kid sized so adults have a hard time fitting in them but they're perfect for kids and they have a lot of wonderful details inside for instance there's a little church you can see in the distance and the church actually has a little miniature wooden organ in it and you know if you have kids that are around you know six to ten years old they would be in heaven here it's a park built just for them so let's take a peek inside the church so you can see what it looks like so as you can see there are a lot of these buildings all over there's a a jail where you can stick your kids behind bars and things like that this cave that you see here usually has a waterfall running over the top of it it's really nice but the more important thing about that that sort of cave is it is one of the entrances to ghost town and again it's a great entrance for kids and it sets the mood really well and we'll take a walk through there when you get in here normally you would see the waterfall cascading through these windows on the left and the passage here is pretty steep and it's very dark and as you can see there is light at the end of the tunnel and this will bring us up to the ghost town area which is basically located above the steamin demon roller coaster that we saw at the beginning of this video on the left is the Condor you know a very tall spinning Tower ride and over on the left in this little nook over here is the actual entrance to the steamin demon and there's an eatery in front of us there's the entrance and there's the steamin demon that we saw at the beginning of the video as you'll see this area of course is a Western theme for many many years they had a show here with windy bill McKay who would help kids track down the bad guys windy bills Western world is a gift shop the marshal shop next to it has a display about the history of story town there's a dodgem car arena in front of us is desperado plunge which is a really nice flume ride also what used to be in front of us was one of my favorite rides in the park the ghost town train which is no longer there it was removed to make room for this the canyon blaster which is a pretty short arrow mine train it's basically two helixes connected by a lift Hill the Charlie would owned another Park in upstate New York fantasy island which is still there called Martin's Fantasy Island in Grand Island New York and he also owned a little park called Gaslight village just down the street from Great Escape so he was quite involved in the amusement industry and in 1996 he sold the park to premier parks and they're familiar to many of you who know Six Flags because premier parks in 1998 bought the entire Six Flags chain and rebranded all their parks so this became Six Flags the Great Escape for a slight time in between when premier parks just had bought a bunch of different parks they had renamed a lot of their parks to the Great Escape so Riverside Park in Agawam Massachusetts became Riverside The Great Escape and Elitch Gardens and Denver became Elitch Gardens The Great Escape that didn't last too long once they became Six Flags everything's got rebranded but I think it's really interesting that at Great Escape the branding is still Great Escape it says a Six Flags park on the sign but they're not really calling it Six Flags Great Escape and you'll see that as we walk around it really has a different character from a lot of other Six Flags parks this particular Park is proud of its roots as story town USA now over on the right the pink whale is a famous attraction from the old days it used to be in a different area of the park and it got reconstructed here a few years ago interestingly it was originally a depiction of the biblical story of Jonah and the Whale and here it's just called Moby Dick now but Moby Dick is a white whale so maybe kids are colorblind there are a few games over here on the Left that took the place of a petting zoo that used to be there there's a nice view of Cinderella's castle and notice these little figurines scattered throughout the park again holdovers from the old story town days there's the knave of hearts there's three little kittens and there's the pumpkin coach which you remember we saw when we look down from up by the old woman in the shoe and now in front of us besides funnel cakes is the grand carousel which we saw when we first entered the park so we've made a big circle from ghost town all the way around that big Tower you see in front of us is a dive show that's currently in progress this same dive show has been going on for close to 20 years at least and the routines don't change much but the kids really like it now notice over here there's yet another little piece of the story town Village area and that also would take you into that hot rod area which we'll get to also there is the jolly tree theater which has musical reviews you'll notice that everything in the park is brightly colored let's take a look and see if this guy's going to jump well I guess not let's move on so this path brings us to another intersection you see that arched bridge on the right that also leads into the hot rods area and we're instead going to bear left over here you can see the Primo's pizza that's a pretty good pizza shop now the area we're heading to used to simply be a continuation of the storybook area they had a jack-and-jill that used to tumble down a hill and more of similar buildings that you saw this station the ranger station that's in front of us used to be the little red schoolhouse and you can still see the bell up in the schoolhouse which kids could actually go into the house they could ring the bell this was also once the home of the pink whale for a while this was rithi m'as basically gutted and Rieti mintu Looney Tunes when Six Flags took over now it's a sort of generic kiddie area called timber town and it's nicely landscaped up here on the left is the timber town grill and marketplace one of the larger eateries at the park and this one serves really good black bean veggie burgers then over there on the right is a little spray area for kids this section is one of the only dead ends in the park and I'm taking you down it because I wanted to show you this odd-looking building in front of us another historical remnant of the old story town days this used to be jungle land which was a pretty fun walkthrough with a rope bridge and animated crocodiles and elephants well it was shut down when the park became Six Flags they rebranded it as a looney tunes area and i had never seen it open after that and now it's rebranded as timber town trail but it still was locked up when we were there and it wasn't even on the park map although you could see the trail on the map there was no attraction listed so i'm not sure if they're opening it up again but it was a fun little attraction for kids and as you can see the usual attractions that would be in kiel and a little miniature train and miniature swings that swing ride by the way used to have the Tasmanian Devil on the top when it was a Looney Tunes area and is called casas tornado that yellow structure you see in the distance is screaming Eagles which is a beautifully situated flying scooter ride and this pink house is another structure from the story town days that used to be Goldilocks and the three bears every building has a number above it and I'm not sure what the significance of the numbers are I had never seen those before so we'll head out of timber town now and follow this bridge across the Little River here and into the fest area that big yellow and red coaster that you see is flashback which is the stock become a boomerang roller coaster and as you can see there's plenty of landscaping all over beautiful flowers and plantings there go the swan boats which we'll be looking at later another wonderful throwback to the old story town days let's pretend Harry Potter's going to Hogwarts for the first time no Castle though that's another example of the wonderful family attractions here again you know my focus is always on things families can do together and there's plenty of those type of rides at Great Escape so when you see that lion drinking a beer you've know you've reached the fest area so again there are lots of paths here splitting off we're gonna stay to the left there's attitudes which is a little clothing shop there's the Screaming Eagles that used to be the site of a 180 degree theater and the Screaming Eagles look so much better than that theater which just had an ugly white dome this area on the right used to be a Trey band and I don't know why it was taken out and just filled in with mulch but there you have it and here is one of my favorite attractions in the park and it was closed for many years and they just reopened it it's Allison Wonderland where kids can actually pretend they're going down the rabbit hole and becoming part of the Alice in Wonderland story so let's go down the hole here and as you can see there's really not much here except for little displays that you can look at basically telling the story of Alice and wonderland but again it's so wonderful distraction for kids and where did that smile come from of course it's the Cheshire Cat notice instead of smoking a hookah the caterpillars playing a flute trying to keep it family friendly there and there's the Mad Hatter and that's Alice in Wonderland one of the things that I find really charming about this park over on the right is the skillet marketplace which serves fajitas and quesadillas and the two white towers that you can see there that's the sky coaster and inside the building here are a bunch of games on the left is the fest house which is another big eatery now as you can see the Midway continues straight on down but we're gonna take a left over here because there's something I want to show you [Music] the station over here on the right is the Alpine bobsled which is a rare intamin bobsled ride that's the exit you're looking at the entrance is around the other side this used to be a little miniature golf course here that was removed several years ago they had a rock wall there for a while and what you're looking at now is raging river which is a really nice raft ride a little too cloudy that day for my taste but you will get drenched on that ride and in front of us is the parks giant ferris wheel if you were to continue along the path that turns to the left that is a dead end but it gives you a really nice overview of the raft ride you can watch the boats go by well I want to take you down this path this takes you to the picnic groves so if you have an outing this most likely will be where it is there is also the huge wave pool down this section which is part of splash water Kingdom which is the big waterpark section that's sort of rumbling noise that you can hear in the background is the machinery for the wave pool but the real reason I'm taking you down here is because just a little ways down here is a pathway that leads alongside one of the greatest attractions in the park and one of the greatest rollercoasters ever built now looks like a lot of these buildings are new since I was last here there's a restroom area here I think we should be able to get through along this section here and you can see the track of the coaster over there enough this takes you into the wave pool that's it so let's double back and we'll go around the restroom dahm dahm dahm do dahm do and here we are no they blocked it off well what you're looking at is the turnaround of the comet so we're gonna have to double back here this turned out to be a dead end it never used to be but it is now just so you know the comet was the reason I first came to this park it began life in 1927 as the legendary Crystal Beach cyclone at Crystal Beach Park in Ontario Canada the Crystal Beach cyclone was one of the three Traver triplets as they're called Harry Traver decided to build what they called cyclone safety coasters which were the first real would tracked steel structured roller coasters and the ride the Crystal Beach cyclone was so severe that legend has it they had to keep a nurse on duty at the exit platform because riders would get off with broken ribs and snapped collarbones and all sorts of injuries it was an incredibly vicious ride in fact the forces on the ride were so strong that bolts would snap off of the track as the train went by not exactly the greatest piece of engineering but an absolutely amazing ride to look at so because it was nice to look at and not nice to ride ridership dropped off and eventually the maintenance costs were so high compared with ridership that Crystal Beach decided to take it out but that was in 1946 during the Second World War and there wasn't enough money nor supplies to go around so they went to one of my favorite designers herb Schmeck of the Philadelphia toboggan company and said to him can you just take what we've got and give us a new roller coaster so because it was all a steel structure Schmeck was able to basically use it like a Lego set and take the pieces and rearrange them into a different configuration and he produced what was probably the greatest roller coaster wooden roller coaster ever built the comet and it sat on the shores of Lake Erie for about a half-century until the park closed and when it did Charlie wood who populated his park here at Great Escape with lots and lots of rides that he got at auctions he knew that this ride was going up for auction and he bought it and he dismantled it and then put it in storage at Fantasy Island and so a lot of people thought it would be reconstructed at Fantasy Island but it ended up getting rebuilt here and opened in 1994 and wood and also the general manager at the time Tom wages involved the coaster enthusiasts community in the reconstruction so the rebuilding was done right they did a phenomenal job and it instantly became my favorite roller coaster then a couple years later the park was sold to premier parks and the ride was still good but when Six Flags took over through the different management's of Six Flags it started to get a little rough and fell out of favor this season when I came back to the park it was in phenomenal shape again so I'm glad to see the park is keeping it up now there's the entrance to the bobsleds if it were open over here is a go-kart track that's an upcharge and then in front of us is the path going up into the water park area splash water Kingdom but we'll keep curving around on this path here toward the comment now originally when the comment first opened it was surrounded by newly planted trees and it was stunning to look at against the Adirondack Mountains you had the whole long white structure of the ride against the forest in the background and it was clearly visible but over the past you know 20-something years it has become hidden by most of the trees and it's very hard to find I mean it was put way at the back of the park to begin with so you had to do a long hike to get to it and now even though you're hiking toward it you don't even know where it is you have to listen for the rush of the train as it goes by so that path over on the left would take you down toward the wave pool section of the water park it's where we saw those kids coming up from when I got stuck at that dead-end they'd come down that path and there's a nice overview of that section of the park and there you can see the comet going around the first turn around there this is black Cobra which is a pitch-black waterslide it's completely dark you can't see a thing in front of us now is extreme supernova which is a spin and barf ride and of course since it's a Six Flags park they're playing popular music so I had to reverse the audio ever since it opened the comet has been renowned for its lift Hill because they programmed it so the chain speeds up as you get near the top pretty thrilling and there it is for coaster enthusiasts this is somewhat of a pilgrimage this is a legendary roller coaster that's been beautifully preserved and is definitely worth a trip to the park in fact I'd say it's worth going out of your way to come and experience this ride it's an amazing exhilarating experience so now we're gonna double back and we're gonna take a look at the waterpark section splash water Kingdom [Music] so as you see the park is pretty extensive it's a lot of property to cover and we haven't even finished yet there's still one area of the park we haven't explored which we'll get to a little bit besides the water park and you'll also notice there are a fair number of hills in the park so it's a lot of walking there really isn't any transportation per se the Sky Ride is only a round trip you go out and come back to the same point and the story town train is the same way you go out you come back to the same point and the swan boats are the same way you go out and you come back to the same point so even though there are transportation style rides in the park they don't really get you anywhere but they are enjoyable so we're coming up now into the splash water Kingdom area as you can see splash water Kingdom is bisected by the path that leads to the comment so it's two separate sort of small parks this is the Buccaneer Beach section which is pretty extensive you can see the big funnel slide in the background so now we'll go back down and there's an area just below us on the left that's another kittyland section it used to be themed to the Wiggles when it was early Six Flags and now it's basically the kids Oppel esteem that Six Flags has that many of their parks I actually like hearing those music backwards sort of like trance [Music] so here we are in kids appleís as you can see it's a pretty typical rides there's another little spray park and some concessions so we'll continue back on the Midway we're now in sort of the central eastern section of the park heading south and as you can see up here by the funnel cake stand there's a path leading off toward the east so we're gonna take that and wander through that section there are a lot more rides in there [Music] [Music] and there's the sky coaster named daredevil dive and then there's a big building at the back here which I've never seen used in all the years I've been at the park it used to be for outings and you'll notice all the shade in the park too which is really nice on a hot day we didn't have to worry about that the day we were there but on a sunny day it's a welcome relief [Music] this is the Cannonball Express in front of us and there's that game booth we saw earlier and then up here on the left that big dome that you see that's Blizzard and it's an indoor scrambler and they call it a family ride but if I were to go on it I'm afraid my lunch would be all over the arena and there in the distance you can see the Screaming Eagles we're going to continue along this path there are a couple more rides out this way now I had considered speeding up some of this walking footage but I really want to give you a sense of the amount of time it takes to get through this park it is pretty big [Music] so this ends the eastern area of the Midway at this point and it ends at the flying trapeze which is a yo-yo a swing ride you can see the flash back boomerang coaster there and in front of us now is the station for the sky ride which is a nice peaceful trip over the story town area so now we're gonna head back over that bridge by timber town and in front of us you can see that in a braided lion and as you might suspect given that there's a fest area the park does host and it's done for a long time an Oktoberfest celebration and after that of course they have the typical Fright Fest for Halloween much of it is geared toward kids since it is a family park but obviously Oktoberfest isn't geared at kids because they probably don't want drunken children wandering around the park alright and on our right is that dive show that we saw earlier there's the flash back over on the left and the sky right above us and so we're gonna take that arched bridge over into the hot rod USA area that big circle in front of us is greased lightnin which is a Larsen giant loop that populates most Six Flags parks the booth that was in front of us there on the right was a cotton candy stand and a drink stand and it also has Cold Stone Creamery so if you want some ice cream there you go there's the story town train station but you can't get there from here the actual entrance of the station is on the other side of the tracks so what you would have to do is go around this fencing here and then into the station on the other side there's the entrance to flashback [Music] and here's the track for Thunder alley which is a really nice sort of antique car ride with 1950 styled sports cars it's great for kids because they made the track follow route 9 out there so as the kids are on the outside edge of the track they think they're actually driving on the highway now this huge empty area here used to house this big round building concession building that looked sort of like an old 1950s drive-in and that was removed and now it's nothing there used to be a spinning car on the top of that building and that has been incorporated into the tracks of Thunder alley and there's Sasquatch and there they go and here's the actual entrance to the swan boats now over on the right a little earlier you saw that bridge going across to the little story town area down there that's one way you could get back to that area and here's another way this section here brings you right back to the main entrance to the park and that formally ends our trip to the Great Escape for years it was one of my all-time favorite parks it sort of fell out of favor during the early six flags years but it looks like the management is back on track keeping this fun historically but actually fun in a modern way as well so it's great for families great for teens you can easily spend the whole day here and they have wonderful gifts in the gift shop which is what you have to go through to exit out of here right down through there so if you're in the Lake George area by all means stop by the Great Escape you won't be bored

Channel: Jay Ducharme

Views: 39,109

Rating: 4.8594594 out of 5

Keywords: Great Escape, amusement park, theme park, storytown, children, kiddie, ghost town, nursery rhymes, comet, rollercoasteer, roller coaster, thrill ride, family, resort

Id: YcJt1XTk85w

Length: 42min 58sec (2578 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 21 2017