A lot of people like a good theme park, and for all of us in Gurnee, a theme park is what we have.

Six Flags Great America is a classic theme park that’s pretty much our Disneyland. Characters walk around the park while you ride roller coasters and the carousel goes spinning round and round. At this park, many treats and thrills come your way!

Great America has been open since 1976, and with that many years gone by, you would expect that change is common. But a change may be coming that would add quite a bit more to the theme park experience.

On November 3, Six Flags and Cedar Fair (who operate parks like Cedar Point) announced that they will be merging into one company, which would operate 27 theme parks and 15 water parks in North America. This new company will be worth a few billion dollars.

The new merged company will keep the Six Flags name, so the park’s name being changed will probably be unlikely. But the inside of the park is really where things can be changed…

We may see some new faces at Great America, as Cedar Fair currently owns the rights to the Peanuts characters. So we could see the possibility of Snoopy walking alongside the Looney Tunes and the DC Super Heroes, or maybe even a new ride themed after the Red Baron. Maybe one of the kids areas in the park could be reworked to add the Peanuts gang, perhaps.

However, I would say it would take about a year or two for these things to fully roll out. It takes quite a while to renovate and construct new rides and put up some new branding. And of course, these are just predictions of what I think could be coming and not what’s actually coming. For all I know, they could do something completely different from what I just said!

The merger is set to close in early 2024, so be prepared for changes to our local theme park coming pretty soon. But for now, all we can do is speculate… a lot.