Louise

That thing was seriously one of the most painful experiences of the trip! I got whiplash on the first lap! Did a bit better the second and third as I braced myself so well, but OUCH! Also that was the day Jon decided I was a $3 whore. LOL.

I think Jackie was hiding her head in shame at being dragged onto the kiddie coaster... Amazing picture though, LOL!

^ Oh my goodness, less of the "celebrity" crap, but yes, we will hang out more on future trips! Glad to hear you guys are okay, you were the first thing I thought of when the earthquakes hit the news! And being home sucks, but c'est la vie. Looking forward to the rest of the report!

Just caught up on all this, I LOVE that you're both posting updates now! Great pictures, great captions too, really enjoying this. Bonus points for quoting Rob Reiner's mother in When Harry Met Sally! Was a pleasure to meet you both, shame we didn't hang out much and despite sitting so close to you on the bus on many of the long drives, as you might've noticed I pretty much use the bus as a bed, which sucks actually as I didn't get to know as many people on the drives as usual! Glad to see you both enjoyed the trip, I know a lot of us who've done a few trips now get a real kick out of seeing new people have so much fun, I'm sure we'll see you again! I'm honoured that I got to witness some of the lesser-spotted Kiwi photography methods at the St. Louis Arch, what with lying on the ground and all...

I still see starting a game with you with "pubes" and a game with Steve with "slag" as some of my greatest recent achievements.

That is an awesome picture of Matt!! That was one of my favourite days of the trip. Despite my group not being smart enough to ride Little Dipper during the day. The ONLY TIME I have ever not ridden an ERT coaster before ERT. I should know better.

YAY Hanno! Loving your work as always, looking forward to more.

I was disappointed at the fact that I enjoyed things less than on my previous visit, the attitude of some of the park staff was appalling in many places on this visit (exception being the guy at LoCoSuMo and the guy at the rope at Steel Hawg... Were they one and the same?? They were great, regardless), though on my only previous visit there were like half a dozen people total in the park so I guess my perspective then was skewed. Despite that though, I had a great day and still like the park, it was just a shame to me that some things seemed to have deterioriated. Chuck, this captured the day really well in my opinion, I felt like this day was chilled-out fun, there was no real urgency or rushing to do anything, just good company and a nice amount of wandering around and chatting. And getting covered from head to toe in the messiest ice-cream in history. LOL.

Chuck, I love your trip reports, this one is no exception. Random thoughts: *Glad you like the red hair *LOVE the picture of me, Jon, Kyle and Adam in the fun house, that evening at SDC was such good fun and I'm so glad you came and joined us for a few hours *I'm in agreement with many of your opinion on the coasters and parks thus far; a major exception to thist is Ninja - there have been dozens of coasters where a majority of people seem to think they're great/okay/comfortable and yet they cause me great great pain... Ninja is the reverse - everybody else seems to hate it, and yet my ride was perfectly comfortable except for one moderate jolt! Perhaps I've finally found a ride built for my height and build?! Who knows. *City Museum was crazy, and although I wouldn't/couldn't do some of the stuff, I had an absolute BLAST seeing everybody almost kill themselves. The Cold Cave rocked. It's funny that everybody sweated MORE at the Museum than at SFStL!!! I can't wait to see more! And I miss you!

LOL Larry, this whole update was amazing, thanks!!! Yay Phantasialand. I still just adore that park, even though as time passes I get more and more confused by my own adoration. Kinda like how I feel about Larry... This was a really great day. I'm so glad you got a picture of Wang, after "I" (note: I actually did not care about finding Wang) spent the day chasing him! Also YAY for the Hollywood Tour picture, which Dave needs to be notified of immediately as it was seriously taken just for him! I'd also just like to point out that referring to Dominique and Cory as "quality free agents" in the German Fair update made me laugh out loud. I love those guys and that is a perfect description in so many ways!

I would totally have got on a plane and flown to Hungary or wherever the hell you were to ride a Condor with you! It must be love!

YAY for Laq pics!! And dude, there was a Huss Condor at Gardaland?? Why didn't we ride it?! I don't even remember seeing it! Though I also don't remember riding the rapids...?! I think I DO remember that that might've been the line where we called Cameron to come and pick up the LaqSack, but not the ride itself. Look, you were taking a really rather dull picture of TP and James not paying any attention to you whatsoever, I figured having a curly-haired manically grinning freak in the picture might liven things up!

As always Hanno your pictures are so stunning that I don't have enough superlatives to describe them! Utterly beautiful, and incredible capture of facial expressions (and my hair, this is becoming a theme!) as always. Can't wait to see more, thank you so much for posting them!

Larry, I love this already! Now that I've just about recovered from the shock of you carrying a camera around on a trip, I can be excited for the rest of the updates! Glad you managed to capture just a few of the DOZENS of Brit Crew routines... LOL.

Um. Ok. Thanks Lou. It looks to be a deciduous tree, which would lose it's leaves in winter if there is a winter. It's pretty large which means it's probably fairly old. It's in an amusement park. That's pretty much all I got. Disappointed!! It had amazingly beautiful very unusual leaves, though sadly (and this is not an insult to Divv's photography skills, which are rather fabulous) they did not translate as brilliantly to film as I might've liked! I wanted to identify it so I could publicly praise its awesomeness. Cheers for all this Divv, brilliant report so far and tons of great photos for me to steal! I look FRIGHTENING in the flume photo, far too happy. The photo of Steve/Derek/Cameron/Larry on Katun is brilliant, and the one of me and Scottish being pregnant came out much better than expected! How the eff did Scottish hit his head on those rocks and Russ didn't?! I'm not sure if you realise this but Russ is tall... Can't wait for part 3!