Marriott's Great America at night

[akorbel]

Marriott's Great America was great at night. I especially loved the Tidal Wave at night how the white lights traced the outside of the track, through the loop and up the towers but then when the car shot out of the station the lights changed to blue and followed the movement of the car (or something like that?). Orleans Orbit also had cool lighting, I think at some point it was red, white and blue-not sure if it's lit up at all these days.

Marriott's also used to do a lot more fireworks and was the Santa Clara park open later back then than it is now? The area has grown so much that it's probably hard for them to have fireworks and late hours without disturbing the neighbors too much.

[steven]

The original summer hours for MGA were pretty much 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM.

Steven

[ewilson]

At Santa Clara one year IBM boutght out the park for a party night. This was done quite often by local groups and companies. It was during the summer and it didn't get dark until late so IBM had a company come and do a daylight fireworks display, with special daytime fireworks......daytime fireworks????? We all came out to see as we were all so curious of what daytime fireworks were. They would give off colored smoke trails instead of sparks trails. It was nothing fantastic and was never done again.

[Santa Cruisin]

I remember the fireworks and the Tidal Wave lighting. Didn't Willard's Whizzer have head and tail lights on the coaster cars that were lit up at night?

Otherwise I think both the Turn of the Century and Willard's Whizzer were in the dark.

Does anybody remember that?