When he was a child, Evan Grubis ’24 fell in love with amusement parks. He grew up in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and once a year, his parents took him to Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, Illinois.
“I remember sitting below one of the roller coaster stations and seeing all the things going ahead,” he says, “and I thought, ‘How does all that stuff work?’ ”
Grubis’s father, Matthew ’97, is an engineer, and his mother, Lori, is a journalist. As a student, Grubis combined the two interests and began a blog reviewing theme parks. After earning his degree in mechanical engineering, he went to work for Hinchey Design, making animatronic robots for amusement parks. We asked him what ingredients make for a great amusement park experience.
What drew you to parks?
Theme parks have always been a combination for me between what my dad liked, which was the engineering side of things, and the thrill-seeker side. Heights and going fast through close things — that’s cool.
And what inspired the blog?
My mom’s a journalist, and I got a lot of my instincts from her. I explore new places and find unique new stories to tell. I interview people, fly my drone, combine journalism and photography, see how a coaster is constructed.
What do you look for in an amusement park?
It really depends on the context. When you’re going to Great America — a big theme park, a corporate theme park — you’re expecting a lot out of it. You’re expecting high thrills. There are going to be 40,000 people there on a busy day, so you’re expecting a certain level of polish. But you can have these attractions called family entertainment centers. These are similar to Urban Air, where it’s basically built in an old Walmart. They have a couple of kiddy rides, and they’ll have stuff to go do on a zero-degree February day. Or you can go to the other end of the spectrum and go to Disney or Universal and really see these incredibly immersive attractions.
What do you look for in a roller coaster?
Well, coasters do different things. You can focus on airtime — that’s where you’re getting lifted out of your seat. That’s a very desirable feeling. Some coasters are focused on going upside down as many times as possible. Sometimes, on a classic wooden coaster, they’ll focus on laterals — trying to push you to the side of the train. Or some coasters will have bigger gimmicks. At Great America, they have one called Maxx Force, which has the fastest acceleration on a roller coaster in the world. It goes from zero to 78 miles an hour in 1.8 seconds. It feels like getting rammed in the back by a semi.
Other than coasters, what do you look for in amusement parks?
There’s overall cleanliness — just like in a gas station bathroom, you don’t want to go into a park and have garbage everywhere. Food is part of it. A lot of parks are moving into food. Instead of just serving pizza and burgers or whatever, they’ll go into Korean corn dogs or random stuff on a stick. Great America does an Oktoberfest thing. They’re trying to give these unique foods at reasonable-ish prices. And there are shows. Some parks bring in actual performing artists who are on tour. There’s only so much you can do with a roller coaster, and parks have to do different things if they want to keep expanding.
