The closing of local amusement park Kiddieland and the selling off of its rides and attractions had a lot of local fun-seekers down. But for those still itching for a blast from the past, there's hope. The Little Dipper, the most popular ride had Kiddieland, has been refurbished and is going up at Six Flags Great America. The park spent $36,000 buying the ride and has spent more money refurbishing it. According to ABC 7, only 10 percent of the original wood from the ride was kept. But the original cars have been spiffed up and Six Flags has done their best to recreate the Little Dipper as authentically as possible, considering they had no blueprints. Gary Pohlman, director of construction, said, "We brought our people down there along with an engineering firm to basically shoot everything in place and do it 'As Built' of the ride there in Melrose Park. That gave us something to work off of for resetting it back up here." The ride should be ready to roll by Memorial Day. more ›

Some good news for fans of Kiddieland who are still disappointed by the closing of the popular area amusement park: two of the park's rides are staying in the area. The Little Dipper roller coaster will be relocated to Six Flags Great America and the purchaser of the famed carousel hopes to get it up and running in the area. The rides were part of an auction earlier this week. Frank Zygmunt of Westmont paid a total of $420,000 for the carousel told the Proviso Herald: more ›

Over 10,000 students from Illinois, Chicago, Wisconsin and Michigan bussed their way to Six Flags Great America for the annual physics day in which high school students pretend to learn about velocity and actually play on rides all day. We kid. Students actually learn a lot about how "stuff" works based on a curriculum by Nathan Unterman, a Glenbrook North High School science teacher who also wrote the book, Amusement Park Physics, which we love. Because if you're going to have to figure out the amplitude of a driven oscillation, you might as well have fun vom-ing on Raging Bull while doing so. [S-T, photo by Hendricks Photos] more ›