A small group of coaster enthusiasts waited by the entrance for them to close off access, either unaware that the queue was so short that we were running laps around them, or else they were posers who had no real enthusiasm for the Iron Wolf and simply wanted the last ride for posterity. As the evening approached zero-hour, the fans were even more thinly spread.
I was expecting to see queues over an hour in length as local fans and enthusiasts rushed to take one final stand on the Iron Wolf after providing over two decades of thrills for Chicagoans. Starting tomorrow, crews would begin dismantling the structure to prepare it for relocation to Six Flags America near Washington D.C., where it would be reborn as the Apocalypse. Today was the end of an era, the final operating day of the first B&M coaster ever built at its original location. Even up to its last day, I never once actively regretted taking a dance with this wolf. I can subject myself to all the jostling whilst carefully avoiding any fatal blows which allows me to climb off it in perfect, healthy condition but weary of all the hard work I had to put in to stay that way… this seems to be a better adrenaline rush and scare factor than all the uber-controlled coasters that try to feign intimidation. Maybe I’ve somehow adapted a better self-defense technique against these rides than most people. Knowing all of that, I’m not pained or discomforted by this coaster at all. At times we’re jolted around not simply due to of loose wheel assemblies or a primitive heartline technique that’s only calculated up to the second derivative, but because the track itself is misshapen (you can see a big kink halfway down the curving first drop). Opening in 1990 as B&M’s first roller coaster as an independent company, the Iron Wolf represents the Swiss firm at their absolute rawest. While generally I like to believe hypothesis #2, my continued loyalty to the Iron Wolf even after getting pulverized by the restraints on several occasions might indicate I should more carefully consider hypothesis #3 in the future.
#IRON WOLF EXPRESS INC CRACKED#
When people are flaming a coaster in online message boards about how it cracked their spine in two and caused cranial hemorrhaging, and then I ride the coaster in question and don’t have any problems whatsoever, I have been led to believe one of three conclusions:ġ): That I am very lucky that I always get to ride rough coasters on their one ‘good’ day out of the year.Ģ): That most enthusiast’s skeletal structures are made of Crispix.ģ): That I am a masochist without realizing it. I hear this said about a lot of coasters, and I rarely understand it.
This unpopularity was probably mostly attributable to its oft denounced status among park-goers as “rough”. Another reason it was my favorite was because it reliably had the shortest queue for any major roller coaster in the park. Back then I found a dynamic, twisting layout that was deceptively longer than it looked, and despite being a compact B&M coaster on a small plot of land in the back corner of the park, it was old enough that the trees had grown so tight around the track that at times it felt like we could have been a mile removed in a remote forest. It was not so very long ago that the Iron Wolf was my favorite roller coaster at Six Flags Great America. Six Flags Great America – Gurnee, Illinois
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