coasterville

Yes, You picked the ngiht of the Baloon Glow to go to Coney, otherwise you would have no trouble making a run of the classic rides in an hour or less. That might also be why you mentined parking was $7 BEFORE 4pm, as the park really goes insane at night on the 3rd. I know the weather was crappy all day on the 4th, but it sounds like you were able to get a decent amount of rides in iat Kings Island.

I'm going to have to go with Top Scan (Space Roller) as the best flat ride, ever. Talk about being a rag doll at the mercy of the ride, that thing shakes you every which way but, oh wait, some park managed to do that to. I thought Tango was interesting, a bit harsh on the male anatomy but interesting. I can see the family lineage between Top Scan, Tango, Power Surge, and a couple other rides that do the same general kinds of motions. Some that haven't been mentioned: Moonraker - This was a "Quest for the Grail" type ride, its extremely rare in the US, I think the last surviving example played the Florida State Fair in 2006 and given its (lack of) uptime at that show may have been canned. It operated maybe 2-3 days of the whole fair and was replaced by a Cliffhanger on day 5 of the fair. When it did open it opened for maybe an hour or two here and there, and then only ran a half dozen of its many seats, if that. The ride LOOKS awesome, like a big flying saucer, the ride action is not wholly unlike a sit down round up, except it spins much faster than the round up, tips up to an insane angle, and then the whole ride goes around on a turret while the flying saucer is also spinning at high speed. You were secured by shoulder bars, not that you needed them with the high g-forces almost pushing you through the back wall of your seat. I am proud to say I have the Moonraker credit, though that did involve camping out on the stairs of the closed ride for over an hour while they worked on it. Rok-N-Roll - Sure its a golden oldie (or is that moldy oldie), imagine 10 round tubs not unlike dryer tubs, put two people in each one held in only by some of the widest seatbelts you will ever see, then whole ride goes around in slow circles, but just wait till the "dryer tubs" start acting just like dryer tubs as they go around. Wins points as you can influence the ride. Similar to the Looper at Knoebels, except Rok N Roll doesn't have the foot pedals in the tub, instead it has a mechansim that automatically rolls the tubs, controlled by the operator, not you. Tempest - no love for the Tempest? It can get you spinning pretty good, I remember the feeling of getting thrown about the cages before they started adding seatbelts to these. Experience - I got to ride this one once up at the Minnesota State Fair - Its actions at heart aren't that much different from a Troika except that instead of a ring of cars on each of the three arms, it only has 8 seats at the end of each arm, 4 facing each way. So the whole ride lifts up and spins like a troika, but then the seats you are on can do flips, and are controlled by the ride, it can even hold the seats upside down. Evil ride, sort of like a poor man's Top Scan. Speaking of the Florida and Minnesota State fairs, thats where some of the best traveling flat ride collections in the USA come to gather. Up in MN I got to also try the Eclipse (imagine a Tilt-A-Whirl with a severe case of hyperactivity disorder), the Shake (Magnum) - a Break Dance with cars than can flip upside down as well as spin around, the Spin Out (okay I also got the Spin Out credits at the OHSF, FLSF, and Morey's Piers). The KMG Fireball (Afterburner) which just doesn't do it for me anymore. The Techno Power is good (an Orbiter with open air legs dangling seats) FLSF wins the award for bringing in stuff like a HUSS Enterprise, HUSS Tornado. and HUSS Rainbow to a fair. Also the only time I have seen the Zamperla Fireball knock-off - Nitro. Flip-N-Out was also memorable as a Top Spin like ride where the two ends of the gondola can move in opposite directions, twsiting the gondola in all kinds of weird and interesting ways. I have ridden several of the rides already mentioned in this thread - the VF Riptide is a nice ride, is not as bad on the male anatomy as you might think, and is also good at getting you totaly soaked. Then again I didn't find Acrophobia (Viagraphobia) at SFoG to be all that bad either. I'm going back to Cedar Point in a couple weeks and am actually kind of looking forward to riding Demon Drop again, if only to remind me how nasty those things are. Then in the fall going to vegas and I hope the insane circle swing ride on top of the Strat decides to run for me, last spring I went to Vegas when it was windy all week and they wouldn't run it. The see saw ride on top of the Strat is good once or twice in the front seat for the visuals. I got to ride the Jump when it was at SFGAdv, shame there aren't more of those around, as thats actually a pretty fun ride. Another rare but fun fnd is the Hexentantz (think the Tumblers at MoA and Knotts) Then there are those flat rides that are so nasty - they get dishonrable mentions from me - currently the Chance Sky Diver and Larson Hi-Roller are on that list for just being too evil for their own good. I did manage to get the Cedar Point Vertigone credit - yes that was the most open feeling, riding it in head down drop mode with just a restraint that looks like a special needs bus vest. The more open and vulnerable you can make a drop ride the better. Disney learned this by taking the lap bars off of Twilight Zone and just having seatbelts. I far prefer the "Drop Zone" ride that comes to the OHSF every year to the 300' Drop Zone at PKI, why, because the one at the state fair, you could easily fit two people under the shoulder bar in its tightest setting. talk about room to move around and appreicate the airtime. Shock Drop at Beech Bend does manager to have that open vulnerable feeling. So many flat rides, so little time.

Indiana Beach is one of the few parks left where you can either buy the ride all day armband (About $27, add $10 or so on to that if you want to add the water park) - OR - you can buy tickets for each ride. There is NO grounds admision fee in 2009. (Before there was a nominal charge of $2-$3 to enter the park) Remember as well, there is plenty of free parking, its like Kennywood "Parking is free, its just that some choose to pay for it" That said, I recall the prices to ride the coasters was $4 each several years ago. At that rate, i'd figure one spin on all six coasters should get you pretty close to the pay one price fee. It was even easier when you could buy a 7 hour pass for $16. To the OP - no mention of Frankenstiens Castle? That is easily one of the best walk through fun houses left in America, I know its an extra $3.50, I know they don't honor ride passes, its still worth it.

Did you happen to try the "boring, non-occilating circle swing ride"? I recall that what it lacked in variation (bobbing up and down) it more than made up for in sheer speed. Wait, I just saw your recation to the Tilt-A-Whirl, I guess you didn't. That swing ride needs to get up to speed and fast because the center spindle does not raise up like most swing rides, so it has to get you out and clear of the ride deck as soon as it can. Another oddity is it doesn't have the child swing bar you lift up on the front of the seat, instead the chain that comes up between your legs cluips to both sides of the seat frame. That Twister was down on both of my trips to the park, but I rode the one at William's Grove which by most acccounts is the better of the two anyway. I'm with you on the Skydiver being a death machine, and last time I rode that Toboggan I swore "Never Again!", which is a shame becuase I used to kind of like them, but strong airtime, and unpadded car roof just does not work out well. I miss the Mad Mouse they used to have, it was one of the older wild mouse rides and gave a pretty wicked ride. Their two woodies are not top shelf thrill rides, but both are great for their own reasons. As far as the state of the park, they aren't trying to be the next big theme park, well Boyertown tried, and you see what became of that. A couple years ago I was at the park and the park owner was talking about their situation. He remarked at the time they serve a community where the median income is under $20,000 and their customer base just cant aford much more than the very minimal ticket prices they charge. Did you notice they have removed most, if not all, of the midway games, and their arcade is on a $3 play all day system. It's a local park just trying to survive to provide some amusement to its community. At the time he remarked how there were 20 something parks accross the nation that charge more to park your car than they do for admission, how Six Flags was getting praise lavished upon it in Amusement Today for lowering ticket prices by $5, yet no word on his $1 days. In other words they know their place, they don't try to be more than they are, and somehow, depsite how it looks it all seems to work. He commented though that they have many of the exact same rides as the parks that charge $30 and $40 do.

I see where Robb is going with it being subjective. For example, many of you have listed the Stricker's Grove coasters as being 'rare credits'. I live in Cincinnati, and have now been to Strickers more times than I care to admit. So in my case, there is nothing special about those credits, in fact I have an invite to there on June 21. Decisions, decisions.

Funny you should mention them as an exercise machine, when I first saw one, that's exactly what it was being marketed as. I was at some "Toys for Adults" type expo at the Cincinnati Convention Center and they had a booth marketing these as the 21st century workout. Best part about the booth - free demos, and the line wasn't too awful bad, so I tried it out. It's a weird but fun feeling, the thing actually does give you quite a workout trying to get it spinning well. They claim the way you lean, is the way you spin, but with the three rings, you invariably send the rings off on some unexpected direction. LeSourdsville Lake had one for a short while as a pay extra concession, and they had an operator who had just as much fun giving the rings a hard push while you were captive inside. If you are light enough, I think there is a powered one left in the Dells,but most of the manual ones are in the hands of private owners and party equipment rental shops. They just didn't seem to make it at fairs and parks.

Well, about the Power Pass , information is at their website http://www.visitticket.com or let me hot link you right to the page you want http://www.visiticket.com/LasVegas/attractions_all.aspx Free tickets for the magic show at Tropicana, my uncle won them at a promotions booth in front of the casino. They have a game there and you are guaranteed to win something just for playing (for free even), it could just be a deck of cards, or the show tickets. So I don't know what the odds are on the free show tickets, but I know thats one of the prizes.

Well, I just got back from Vegas last month, stayed at Luxor this time. Anyway for shows, I saw "O" this time at the Bellagio, and its is breathtaking. I haven't been to Vegas' other Cirque shows yet, but O is the by far the best of its kind that I have seen. (I have seen three of their touring shows) While waiting to get into O, we were talking up someone who was just raving about Mystere. If you are a Star Trek fan, I hear Star Trek Experience is on the endangered attractions list, talk on the Trekkie sites is that it may be history by the end of the year. Yes, its very expensive ($43), but the special effects are out of this world. Plus you can get a ticket stub that still bears the logo and name "Paramount Parks" on it, if that gets you excited. ($5 off if you buy web tix in advance) Be mindful if its windy, Insanity doesn't take wind, at all. (Says the one who went to Vegas during a windy week and got iced out of being able to ride Insansity) Stratosphere Tower can also be quite costly at $34 for the POP package for their three rides. The Big Shot is one of the best S&S towers for power, X-Scream is a novelty good for a ride or two (be sure to ride up front in the front seat for your first ride!) Circus Circus has Adventuredome in the back - $25POP, I have seen some $4 off coupons floating around for it. Has the Canyon Blaster arrow multi-element ( one of the smoothest Arrows around), and bunch of flat rides. Manhattan Express - oh boy - It's not as bad as people make it out to be, but its not that great either, and at $14 PER RIDE, yep PER RIDE, ts very expensive (But hey the second ride is only $7 and ther do offer a $25 POP) Then again I got a back seat ride with the shoulder bar almost all the way up, and learned the thing actually has airtime. Speed the Ride ($10/ride, $22/POP also includes Cyber Speedway) - fun Premier rides shuttle, still has OTSRs. All in all the rides in Vegas aren't that great, but they are credits! You may think they are costly but they do keep you safely away from the tables and slots. I did the Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage, and its only $15, not $35. It's not exactly Sea World, but it was fun with the up close and personal views available by standing tankside while a trainer interacts with the dolhpins. For the record, I also did Madame Tussauds - go as a group, they have plenty of photo opportunities where you can be next to the wax figure of your choice. ($24) Eiffell Tower Experience it is about what you'd expect, an observation tower. ($10) In Serach of the Obelisk - Not a bad ridefilm, and the preshow was actually pretty good for a non theme park venue. ($10) Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay ($16) - well worth it, its actually a full blown aquarium attraction, not just sharks. Oh, one other thing you might want to consider, the Las Vegas Power Pass, they start at $79 for one day, to $140 (web price) for 5 days, and include unlimited use o a long list of attractions, including Speed, Manhattan Express, Adventuredome, Star Trek Experiece, Eiffell Tower, Madamme Tussauds, Dolpin Habitat & Secret Garden, and much more Its one of those passes that before you buy it you have to run the numbers and see if it makes sense to you. I paid $140 for a 5 day card, and wound up getting $210 worth of admissions out of it, so I came up ahead on it. Conisder though a 1 day $79 card, take it to Star Trek ($43) Adventuredome ($24), Speed the ride ($22), Manhattan Express ($14 - sorry 1 ride per day limit) thats $103 value for $79. Not a bad discount. If you do gamble, be sure to get the slot club card for the your hotel, then visit the players club desk BEFORE you check out, With enough play, they may negotiate your hotel bill down a bit. Once we had them tear the whole thing up, for a weeks stay. Oh you mentioned magic show, you might want to check down at the Tropicana, I think they have one during the afternoon, and you might even get free tickets if you stop by their promotions booth. Oh and from what I recall they can't have actual strip clubs on the Strip, but there are a few topless shows that go as far as the limits allow.

TR: Halloween Haunt at Kings Island - 9/28/07 TR: Halloween Haunt at Kings Island September 28, 2007 Mason, OH T-Shirt of the day: Knoebel's Phoenix Phall Phunphest sweatshirt - the black one with the skeletons riding the Phoenix. Seemed appropriate for an amusement park Halloween event. ****************************************** This year, Cedar Fair announced that they were upgrading the already successful "Fear Fest" Halloween event at Kings Island to the bigger and better "Halloween Haunt" event. The event to include 13 horrifying attractions, including 7 haunted mazes, 3 Fear Zones (which may as well be haunted mazes due to how they are run), 2 special live shows, and 1 special ridefilm in the Action FX Theater. From the past, I know that opening day is really the best day to go, partially because it's in September and people really aren't in the mood yet, it's a Friday so they don't get the use of the parks rides all day before the event, and all that. With the circumstances of scary I-71 traffic on a Friday night, the desire to have dinner before arriving at the park, and other complications, I decided to leave for the event right after work. So I left work, threw the aforementioned sweatshirt on over my dress shirt and headed to the park with a meal stop along the way. Hmm, Skyline Chili! The event hours were 7pm-1am, so I thought I was doing great when I pulled into the parking lot around 6:45. I made my way to the front gate, passing a haunted parking tram with skeletons as crew and passengers, shortly beyond that I stopped. The line to get in was clear back to the parking lot. Looking things over it looked like they only had one, maybe two metal detectors in use. Then I realized that even the one line wasn't moving. Man, I'm glad I can use this season pass and don't need to waste more time getting a ticket. This is how the situation stayed until right around 7pm. Being back in the parking lot, I missed the much talked about "Wall of Monsters" opening show. On the other hand shortly after park opening security finally decided to come out and man the metal detectors, except I don't think all of them were security, some looked like managers who were more interested in getting people into the park than screening people. Thus, even though I was clearly far back in the original line, I was past security just a couple minutes past opening, and then I came to the front gate. The front gate had scareactors positioned next to the ticket takers so you had to come up close and personal with a scareactor to get into the park. As you might expect this slowed throughput down somewhat. I saw a clear path using the stroller gate in front of me, and scanned in that way. I had just noticed that some poor guy was getting the ultimate hot seat with an electric chair positioned where the map rack usually is when I started feeling vibrations in my own pocket. Uh oh, what can this be. I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket, and looked at the screen "Rideman", I'll take this call. Okay, seems Dave and April are also coming to the park tonight, but their arrival time is currently estimated at 9:00. We agreed to meet up somewhere then, and I proceeded to International Street. On International Street, this year instead of the tombstones memorializing attractions of the past, the flower beds instead tease the haunted attractions you will find in the park, with each section themed to and advertising a specific haunt. The bandstand has been themed to a haunted bar, the Tomb Raider statue has been decpaitated and the poor guy is being made to hold his own head. Welp, I guess since they won't be needing that statue next year if rumors are correct, so why not have a little fun with it before you send it back to Viacom, in pieces. I'm sure Viacom will love the alteration. Even the store windows have been redone. The coaster camp scene in front of the Emporium for instance has been changed to Death's office in a setting that stirred plenty of message board controversy with Death's hit list. With that, I decide to take the contrarian approach. I figure most people would be heading for the much talked about Club Blood, so I headed to Nick Universe. There was only one attraction open in Nick Universe, and that was CarnEVIL, which from reports is a slight retouch of the former Circus of Horrors. CarnEVIL was staged in a long disused space that used to be the Enchanted Theater, which was a live performance venue located next to the Phantom Theater dark ride. The queue was routed in through the Little Bill's Giggle Coaster queue, the went through some temporary switchbacks that were setup in front of the Giggle Coaster by its photo booth. I followed another party in to be the first group of the night. Except one person ahead of me decided to invoke the "I hate gratuitous walking" rule and jumped over the ropes, unfortunately the security guard who was there decided to be a stickler for the rules, and made the person go through the attraction exit, then back through the line again the correct way. Mind you the 6 of us were, in sum, everybody at the attraction. Then the grouper took us inside and passed out 3D glasses. We got the usual safety rules, then she hollered in a loud voice "The person wearing is being a troublemaker, make sure they get special attention". With that our esteemed troublemaker goes darting out the entrance as if the building was on fire. CarnEVIL is a good fit for Nick Universe. For one, it's the only haunt that has the lights on for most of the maze, all the better to see those special "3-D" patterns along the walls. I don't think this would scare anybody, unless you are of those people that has a distinct fear of clowns. The place is bright and cheery and themed to a fun house. You have the hall of doors, (plenty of good jump out opportunities there), a fortune teller, the light tunnel where you cross a bridge through a revolving drum and the light patterns along the wall make it feel like you are moving instead of the walls. My favorite scene in this one was the room that is all black with polka dots all over the walls, standing dead ahead of you is a scare actor dressed up in exactly the same pattern as the walls, add a strobe light to that and you have a great effect, such a good effect that it has been a staple in haunted houses in the area for quite some time. On the way out, you are allowed to keep your glasses, or toss them in a bin. I note nothing special or collectible about the glasses, so I toss them in the bin, and go up the exit ramp which comes out by the Scooby Doo Meet and Greet. With that, I have Nick Universe out of the way. I walk through what literally seems like an empty park until I come into Rivertown. The only other guest I see is someone who is just being admitted to Redbeard's Revenge, and then the door closes and I am literlly the only guest, I do a panoramic 360 look at the area. Strange. I head to Redbeard's Revenge, which is a make over and retheme of last year's Cowboy Carnage. I note the former General Store is NOT a part of the attraction, except its porch and the entire pathway between the general store and the little sign carver's booth (man, I remember when that was the Rib Pit!) was filled with a rope queue maze for RedBeard's. Duly noting what happens when you try to short circuit the unneeded portion of the queue maze, I dutifully grumbled as I walked through the entire thing, did I mention it was empty? When I got to the gate, I got some grief for being alone. "Ya should have brought a crew with Ye" Soon enough the gate was opened, and I made the lone journey into the unknown. The first part of the attraction is outdoors in the space formerly used as the Back Porch Stage. I admit this area didn't quite work well in bright sunlight. About 30 seconds into the haunt, one of the Scareactors calls out to me by name. Did I leave my ID Badge on? A quick check reveals I did not. Creepy. I make my way at a fast clip though the boat dock themed outside area, as there was really nothing to obscure the path. Then I headed into the former Mining Company building which is the inside of the haunted pirate ship. The transition from sunlight to a dark building was brutal on the eyes, and I needed a bit of guidance to find my way into the indoor maze. Ah yes, this is more of a haunt than the fun filled CarnEVIL. I think my favorite scene is when you see, I think its the captain's wife looking all pretty in bed and just as you are looking at her someone else pops there head in through a slot right above the bed telling you to get moving on. Distraction, its a wonderful device in haunting. So I made my way through the haunted pirate ship and soon find myself back out on the midway next to Wings. I headed through a sparsely populated Rivertown, noting that the log flume and white water canyon are closed as well as all the Nick rides. I cross the bridge and look at the train station. There is a haunt tied into the train ride that is infamous for being really bad at capacity. So bad, its been encouraged to try to ride it when it first opens. Well, it's not open yet, as its an outdoor haunt, so it doesn't open till 8pm, by which time it should be dark. I check my watch and it's like 7:20. I note nobody is in line yet, so I decide to chance it and go ride Beast. I note Tomb Raider is still closed, and head to Beast. I start wondering if Beast is open as I head up into the station. There might have been two people sitting in the Beast train, I jump into the second seat, and soon the three of us are off on a Beast ride. It wasn't a particularly noteworthy Beast ride, but it killed a few minutes. But tonight is more about the Haunts not the rides. After Beast, I remind myself how thankful I am that the fence between the Beast exit and Beast entrance has been removed. This meant I was able to get back to check on the train station without going up and down hills. Still no line for the train. I take another chance, and head to a walk on Italian Job. Okay, they had a few people but everybody fit inside the station, and with the small crowd, I got in the front seat line. Italian Job gives airtime in only one seat, the front seat. So I had a rare thing, an Italian Job ride with airtime. Still, as I said, this isn't really about the rides. I head back to the train station. This time there is one family in line, and a check of the watch reveals 7:50. I get in line for Tombstone TERRORtory. The usual train ride queue area has been augmented with a huge rope queue maze set out in front of the train station. At first we are held at the start of the queue maze until just before 8pm. At that time we are walked through the rope part of the queue maze but told to wait in front of the ice cream stand. 8:00 comes, 8:00 goes, and a train goes empty, after the train is out of view, we are invited into the train station. We go through the normal train queue area and a rope has been setup down the middle of the train station so in effect you go through the turnstiles, then have to walk all the way to the potato works end, then all the way back to the canyon end. In theory they will only open the loading gate at the far end. A train arrives, and the one gate is open, we board the train, just in time to see the impatient crowd open all the other station gates and start a mass crush towards the train. How did they NOT forsee that happening. Anyway the train was loaded, and they seemed to take their own sweet time about it too. I don't think we pulled out of the station till 8:15. During the train ride the narrator tells you a rather lame ghost story to kill time. At least they have dropped the charade of the train breaking down, now the story is you have arrived in some abandoned ghost town. Ah, that does work better considering the train does stop at a train platform. You know that train platform you see on the left just past white water canyon wihen you ride the train, thats where the train stops and they tell everybody to get off the train. You exit to the platform then the directions were to exit the train and go to the left through the gate, well there are gtes at both ends, and I followed a crowd that went through the gate to the right into the grass field where the pumpkin patch is during the day. I think the crew is learning they have to take more control of the crowd as they didn't sound that happy. So we walked through the grass field and rejoined those that took the proper gate. The train returns to Rivertown empty. You are then led down a paved road, and I know what is coming, so I am jockeying for position all the way down the road, but so are other people. At the end of the paved road, you cross over the railroad tracks, and go through a service gate that leads to the very back of the White Water Canyon observation area. The back part of the observation is a queue area where you again have to wait in line. Seems that now that they brought hundreds of people here at a time, they now want to group you into small groups. This works out about as well as you might expect, and soon you realize that its now 8:20, you were on the first train out, and you are now standing in a 10-15 minute line. In short this takes almost 45 minutes to get through, even with no line in front of you at the train station, I also suspect going back and getting back on the train is not an option. They dutifully group us into our group, and we enter the walking part of the haunt. Which has some old west themeing and winds through the canyon observation area. Then they have what could have been the feature of the haunt, its a simple device where they have a small one person wide tunnel built with several sheets of burlap about 2' apart, oh and they are constantly blowing artificial smoke into this contraption. So you can't see whats ahead, you are worried that just beyond that next burlap sheet is a scene worse than death, but all in all nothing jumps out at you in this device. What actually happens is that people take it so apprehensively that they are going through it one at a time, and a huge bottleneck forms trying to get through it. This means that by the time you get out of it at the other side, the rest of the haunt is a long 'conga line' of people. Which means for the majority of the haunt you just have one long solid parade of guests going down the White Water Canyon exit path. From here on out the scareactors are innefectual at best, because you can see ahead what is going to happen, you just don't know who its going to happen to. I think it richly deserves the rating of SUCKFEST it received in the message boards. Oh it had its moments like the hanging heads in the covered bridge, or jumping up at you on the rampway up, but all in all this one did not end with a "It's over already!", it ended with a "Thank goodness thats over with" Well Rivertown is out of the way. Anyway Rivertown is now the shrine to dead attractions tht was moved from International Street. It also has its moments like the BBQ across from the pizza parlor. Except its cannibals bbqing other humans. For a time, the Chick-Fill-A sign was moved to this area, and "Eat more Chicken" was changed to "Eat More Human" That disappeared, so I am supposing Chick-Fill-A told Cedar Fair that contrary to its "No limits" advertising,t here are some limits. I head up into Coney Mall (Coney Maul for the event), and brreze through so fact I fail to reaize the overriding theme of the area. I head to Death Row, and by now I have caught up to the crowd. The line for Death Row was wrapped back to just after the Racer underpass. For those that remember the former haunt in this area (the asylum), the entrance and exit have been reversed, so you now enter through the door next to Firehawk, and exit through the door next to Racer. Death Row was also when the effects of the VIP Media Night promotion started showing. You see, members of the press and other VIP guests were accorded front of the line privileges, instead of having a private media night as had been done in past years. So the line moved even slower than it would normally, as I seemed to hit this at about the same time as the media. But it wasn't a bad place to be stuck, they had setup a stage in front out Flight Of fear and had a DJ there, and the DJ was trying to get people to embarrass themselves by getting up on stage and dancing. That and the guest services people who were running the media event were working at getting regular guests grouped so everybody was ready to go by the time we got to the door. Here a convict gives the safety speech, and tells us that they have Paris Hilton and OJ Simpson inside, Welcome to Death Row, as you enter he screams "We have FRESH FISH!" Death Row, unlike the other haunts, is a true maze, complete with dead ends and everything. Its a maze made up of chain link fencing, mirrors, and black curtains, some of which you can go through, and some of which you can't. It's very diorienting and confusing, add to that a constant loud alarm siren, the fact that the only lighting in the maze is strobe lighting, and it can start to create a sense of panic almost immediately. I noticed that in this, as in other mazes, the mandated "Hands on the shoulder of the guest in front of you" lasts for maybe 15 seconds. In this maze, more than in other mazes, the group you enter with and the group you exit with may be two different things, as when people realize its a maze people seem to follow their own hunches. I think I score points for finding an off limits part of the maze, we pushed through a black curtain, and found an ordinary looking water cooler and some chairs, then we pushed through another black curtain and had started to continue our tour when the scareactors informed us we went the wrong way through a restricted area, and have to go back through and follow along the correct path. By the end of that experience, I most wanted to put that constant siren out of my misery. The scareactors here are mostly about keeping order in the maze, with the confusing panic enducing maze being the main attraction here. I exited out the door nearest Racer, and started to head towards Trail of Terror or whatever its called now, when I felt that familiar vibration in my pocket. Ah, Dave and April are inside the park, we agree to meet in the middle of Coney Maul by the path back to X-Base. They take a little longer to get to me as they could not resist a walk on Drop Zone ride on the way back. We all meet, and we all head to Flight of Fear as a group. The Flight of Fear line is back to the entrance door, but it is going the short way. While waiting for Flight of Fear, April tells me she is sad to hear I can't make it to Knoebles. Hey, I was waiting for a perfect lead in, and April just handed it to me, I make the announcement that contrary to what I told Dave Monday, I AM in for Phall Phunphest next weekend. There was much joy and celebration and a little planning going on, which means the 20 minute wait for Flight of Fear went by like it was a few seconds. First I take a solo ride in the front seat, then Dave and April take the next train. If it weren't for that full stop on the mid course brake this would be a great ride, but remember today isn't about the rides. After Flight of Fear, we head to Trail of Terror. To get to Trail of Terror you go through a service gate between Firehawk and Death Row, then down the long path to the Trail. Well first you have to pass the insulter in the little house that used to be Scrooge's house at Winterfest. I won't get onto the insulter except to say that element of Haunt has caused more controversy, flame wars, thread deletions, hurt feelings than anything else here. I'll just say that making fun of peoples handicaps should never be fair game, even if it is a "no limits" event. You know, usually when there is someone on a midway paid to insult you, the patron usually has a means of retalliation, there was no such outlet here. Yep, the insulter is usually sitting in a dunk tank, and they are paid to insult you to the point where you lay down good money to throw a baseball at a stiff target in the small chance of sending the insulter into a tank of what you hope is ice cold water. It took a good 20-30 minutes wait for Trail of Terror, and you wait in a single file line down a service road to the entrance of the trail. To add further uneasiness there was somemysterious object making noise behind the chain link fence along the road. Eventually we were admitted to the Trail of Terror, it has a bunch of redneck themed scenes involving outhouse humor and so forth. This is where Micheal Vick's doghouse was moved to (it was along the midway in Action Zone) I though the outhouse labeled "Marshall University" was a bit gratuitous, must have been a UC fan/student that added that touch after their team lost to Marshall a week before the event. They did the usual gross looking port a potties, where the door opens and you get wet. Part of it was a hillbilly wedding, and here two the walking through dangling skulls was an element. Anther noteworthy element was the crawl, here you were expected to crawl through a dank dark musty sewer pipe for a ways, there never was a payoff to this other than walking crawling through a sewer pipe and feeling vulnerable, unlike the crawl in the old Curse of the Crypt where you crawled over a glass floor which lit up to reveal live snakes. I can also report there was a bypass for those that couldn't take it. This haunt ended with our first encounter with the chainsaw weilding maniac of the night, which had you running out of the train, right into the loving caring home of the Insulter. After Trail of Terror, we stopped for some soft drinks and cheese coneys at Skyline, before continuing our little tour. Next up was Worksite, called a FearZone, it works like a maze. Instead of open access from either end as the fear zones used to be, they have been turned into one way paths, with a grouper at the start grouping people into small groups, which therefore means they have a queue area. There was a very short line by Antique Treats, and I love the fact they used an electronic road constnstruction sign as the marquee. This is the work zone from hell, with upended police cars, and construction equipment, and of course chainsaw guy was here as well. Orange barrels defined the pathway, and we found the whole thing so pointless we were breezing through it when a Scareactor said "Slow Down! You are proceeding too fast through this zone!" So we stopped to let the group ahead of us get some distance "I didn't say to STOP!!!" Well, make your mind up, either we follow right behind the group ahead of us or we don't. Worksite was pretty stupid. What was stupider is that the line for CornSTALKERS was backed up up the hill and back to the Tomb Raider statue. Sure, we wanted to get to Italian Job, but not have to wait in that line to to it. We headed around Eiffell Tower to get back to Coney Maul, when we realized Cemetary, another Fearzone, was a walk in. Cemetary was setup in the old Paramount Story, or Tower Gardens before that. As soon as we entered Cemetary, we noticed something. All the scareactos were huddled in one spot talking with each other since they were obviously very bored. No other guests were in the entire haunt. They all had to dash out to their places, and then since nobody came in after us, they proceeded to all follow us through the maze. We were laughing so hard at how lame this was, then we found the exit and came out next to the Attitudes shop, which again this year is offering the "Have your photo taken lying down in a coffin" photo op. From here we walked down Coney Maul noting the old Phantom Theater props as well as some pieces from other former Hana Barbera rides that did not make the transition to Nick Universe. The highlight of the area was the area in front of the Skeeball building, where the Carnival from Hell was setup. With a skeleton ticket seller, you entered an area where they had Whac-A-Skull instead of Whac-A-Mole, (no not to play, they were just props, other palces like Kennywood would have had an actual Whac-A-Skull game at their event if they wanted one), Scatterball had eyeballs in the game instead of the usual silver balls, peach basket had hollowed out stuffed animals as prizes. Posters advertised sideshow acts. Then there were the food concessions, the soft pretzel warmer had snakes in it, the shaves ice machine had something that was meant to be shaved flesh, the soft drink booth had a fountain head with such products as "Backwash", "Vomit", "Dr. Phleghm" "Snot Zero", "Blood" and "Diet Sewage" We proceed to take rides on Beast and Italian Job, before heading up Coney Mall towards Oktoberfest. Its 12:30 when we come across a closed Adventure Express, then we go take a ride on Delirium. Finally at 12:45 we head to a closed Top Gun. Here, "Rideman" decided to go ride Son of Beast, while April and I tour Club Blood. There was maybe a one group wait for Club Blood. It also explained why Top Gun was closed, becuase Club Blood took over Top Gun's queue line, so you went down to the Top Gun chicken chute, then walked back the Top Gun line in reverse. Tonight there were being merciful and had a gate open just past the underpass. Club Blood is the newest maze, in a brand new building loctated behind Extreme Ekyflyer. It is the much talked about R rated haunted maze. We enter and first you head down an ally towards Club Blood where the actors talk openly about drugs and the like, then you pass a bouncer to enter the club where scantily dressed women are doing exotic dancing and cages and poles are invovled but they do keep their clothes on. Hey, this is a family park after all. You then go though the very gross haunted clubs bathroom, where some ppor schmuck is worshiping a very nasty looking toilet. The second half of the attraction seems to be a haunted hospital, and the key scene is a nurse appearing to give head to a cadaver. Scary, no, risque yes, and potentially disturbing, yes. It winds up that we all met back up by the Extreme Skyflyer at about the same time. We noted that Skycoaster was priced at only $5, so we decided to ride Skyflyer, mind you it is like 12:55 on a 1AM close. We buy our tickets, and get in line behind maybe 3-4 groups in front of us in line plus the ones inside the attraction. They only had one side of Skyflyer open, and only a minimal crew. That means they same people that were walking groups out to a flight area (and they were using the FAR one by Drop Zone too), and guiding them through their flight, were also the ones running the harness shed. At first they were literally taking one group at a time all the way through the process before starting on the next group. We inquired about just calling the whole thing off and getting a refund, but they would not go for that. So finally, I guess when the waiting line to just us and the next group and us, they take both groups in and gets us harnessed up. Then they walk us out to to the flight area. By the time we are invited to walk out onto the lift, it is 1:45 by my watch, The park has been closed for 45 minutes, and security is standing at the Skycoaster booth eager to get the area clear. The Skycoaster crew is also none to pleased to be working 'overtime'. They had little patience for our silliness, but we eventually start our way up to the top of the launch tower. We get a countdown, do I pull on command, of course not. I like to catch my groups off guard. He He. So we fly, and after having only made 3 or 4 swings, they are already all "Grab this loop when you fly back over" What, already, we still have tons of speed and momentum behind us. Now, I KNOW they probably think we were being smart asses and not cathing the ring, but the honest truth was that we were honestly trying to catch the ring that they were holding just a little bit out of reach, and we were going too fast. Avert trying this like 4 times, they grab the manual pole. At least the guy with the manual pole seems to know the right hight to hold it, the bad news is he was trying to stop a LOT of pounds of coaster nuts swinging. That approach failed when he let go of the pole just before wiping out on the lift. Yep, the Skycoaster crew REALLY loves us now. But eventually we get stopped, and escorted out. We turn in the harnesses and they shoo us out right into the waiting arms of security who gives us a personal escort out to the parking lot, seeing as the park is already all closed and cleared except for us. Next up: Knoebels Phabulous Phoenix Phall Phun Phest.

TR: Minnesota/Wisconsin - Day 6 - 9/4/07 TR:Minnesota/ Wisconsin 2007 – Day 6 September 4, 2007 Mall of America, Minneapolis, MN T-Shirt of the day: Teal Americana Amusement Park golf shirt. *************************** Well, this is it the final day, or should I say half day as I need to be on an airplane at 3:30, in Minnesota. Not wanting to waste the morning, Jerry and I went to the Mall of America. Yes, you can be assured there is an amusement park in that great big mall. So, being my final morning, I had to get all packed up and moved out, then we headed to the Mall. We arrived at the mall shortly before 10 and parked in the East garage. I noted the garage entrances now have several sternly worded signs warning against overnight parking. Jerry told me that both the airport and the mall are on the same light rail line, about 1 station apart, and so the mall had become an unofficial long term parking option. The mall is responding with strict parking enforcement. We pull into the garage, and the sections are named after states, for example we wound up in the Indiana section, which coincidently, is the state I would be spending the night in, not my home state of Ohio. We entered the mall using the bridge from the parking garage and wound up on the second floor, a quick ride down the escalator, walk around the elevators and special events area and there we are at the entrance to the park. The Mall of America, toted as five floors of shopping. The entire complex is a gigantic rectangle with the anchor stores on the corners, and in the middle a gigantic courtyard under a glass skylight. This courtyard houses the amusement park, and has entrances from several points along the shopping concourses, but the East entrance has the main ticket office, which on slow days like today, may be the only ticket booth open.The Park is a free admission park, so there is no barrier at any of the access points, and you just walk on in. The overall theme of the park is an outdoor summer camp theme. Even though you are clearly inside, the landscape is lined with trees, and buildings that look like log cabins. It’s a very rustic feel, and in some parts it can temporarily fool you into thinking you are really outside. I refer to it generically as "the park" because that is its real name. Gone are the days of Knott's and Cedar Fair management, and gone are the rights to the Peanuts characters, so what they did was go through the park and did a quick removal/cover up of anything Peanuts related, then rename the park, "The Park at Mall of America" How creative, and as it turns out only a placeholder name as the park has signed a deal with a new thematic license, and will become a "Nickelodeon Universe" but more on that later. We go up to the ticket booth, Jerry has the annual pass, so he is covered but he gave me a coupon for $6 off the price of a wristband. My, this park has gotten more expensive, the price with coupon is just shy of $21, I remember that when the price was about $16 with coupon. Seems the full price goes for about $28 after taxes, but at least the parking is free. Being a mall amusement park, they also accommodate the short term visitor who only wants a ride or two, with an all electronic barcode based pay per ride system. This system you buy a bar coded ticket which is scanned at every ride you take, and as you ride points are deducted from your balance. Incidentally, the wristbands and annual passes are also bar coded and all must be scanned at every ride. Pay per ride tickets deduct points and show points remaining, wristband show the number of minutes remaining, and annual passes show the number of days remaining. I noticed that the per point price on rides has remained pretty steady, which means the gap between pay-per-ride and pay-one-price is getting larger instead of smaller as the trend seems to be in those very few parks left that offer both systems. Having my wristband, we head directly to Timberland Twister and right into an empty car. Ahh, I like slow days! At the boarding area we get lucky and we sit in the right hand seat, and no one sits in the left hand seat. We fasten the seatbelts and lower the lap bars. Soon the car is on its way out of the station and through a turnaround to the right to go up the lift hill. The lift hill almost takes you up as high as you can go given the ceiling, then at the top of the lift a turnaround to the right starts the ride. Unlike other companies spinning coasters, on Timberland Twister the car is unlocked and free to spin as soon as you crest the lift hill. With our car about as out of balance as you can get, we started spinning like a top the moment the car left the lifthill. The ride consists of a lot of gradual turns, but nothing as orderly as the sets of zig zags on most wild mouse type rides, then there is a helix, then the ride actually has a few drops and hills, who knows which way you'll be facing for any of them. There is a mid course brake, but don't let it worry you any, and we came into the final brake still spinning. You then advance from the final brake onto a positioning brake. Here your car is held while the coaster attempts to gently stop your car from spinning, then realigns it so that the car will reenter the station in the same orientation it left. After the car is aligned correctly it advances to the unload area, where the bars open and you unload. Mall of America has both load an unload on the same side, though I notice a platform was built on both sides of the track in the station, but the platform on the wrong side has no easy access back to the midway. So it sorts signs "EXIT OTHER SIDE" while the side with the load and unload areas reads "EXIT THIS SIDE" The park operates Timberland Twister just a bit different on slow days with only one operator. That operator runs the ride like a cycle ride. Which means they load one of the 2 cars operating, send the first car on its way, and stop it on the lift while they load the other car, then the restart the lift, and dispatch the second car as soon as the block is clear. Thus both cars are running as close together as is safe. Then the operaor goes and opens the gate, and admits the next group of riders, closes that gate, and comes back to the console in time to bring both operating cars into the two loading areas in the station. Then after both cars are parked, the bars are opened and riders are requested to open all 4 bars, even those in empty seats. Both groups of riders exit and the cycle repeats. As we were the only riders on the ride we loaded the car for maximum spin potential and had a very fun ride exited, rode again. In fact we rode again and again and again, I'd say for at least an hour or more straight. We did have one ride interruption. It is rumored that if the car comes into the positioning brake spinning too fast it will cause the ride to fault. We're not sure that’s what happened but we came into the brakes spinning like you would not believe. Next thing the ride went down for about 5 minutes while the operator called in a fault and the key operator reset the ride. What made it funnier is the maintenance people stood and observed operations for awhile, and they left just as we were getting into a car. So, as I said we rode till like 11:15 solid, then we headed to Ghost Blasters, imagining the person monitoring the ride ticket computer "You know those crazies who just rode the spinning coaster for an hour or more straight, well now they are headed to Ghost Blasters where you have to see straight!" We next came to Ghost Blasters, a Sally interactive dark ride. The remodeling efforts have taken away some of the queue area, but we merely had to wait for the next cycle. Yes, in slow days Ghost Blasters is also a cycle ride, where they first load all the cars, or all the cars they have guests for, then dispatch them into the show building one at a time, then wait for all the cars to come out of the show building, then come around and unlock the lapbars, to unload and repeat the process. I was having fun with the practice targets outside the ride when Jerry said don't get too excited those don't count, as the scoreboard gets reset as you enter the ride. Ghost Blasters and Scooby Doo and the Haunted Castle share a lot of the same scenes, just in a different order and obviously without the Scooby themeing. This is the more traditional style dark ride, so the ride is punctuated by several crash doors. I hate to admit it, but I lost to Jerry again this year, however Jerry didn't tell me until we were three fourths of the way through the ride that the park had disabled rapid fire shooting. See, most Sally dark rides have guards in place to prevent rapid fire shooting, but this particular model didn't have that in place, well it does now. From Ghost Blasters, we head to the Treetop Tumbler with the goal of being there when it opens at 11:30. The Treetop Tumbler is I think the last remaining Zierrer Hexentantz in the United States. It's a very neat looking flat ride that consists of a multitude of cars that go around a center spindle. After the ride starts the ride cars are raised up about halfway on this spindle through a really neat folding legs aranagment. Then each pair of cars is mounted on opposite ends of secondary booms that are connected to the main spindle. Those secondary booms rotate in such a manner that the two cars on that boom start leapfrogging each other as they go around with one tub going over the other. Yes this can provide airtime if run fast enough, and Camp Snoopy runs it fast enough for some minor airtime. It’s a very rare ride piece, and part of the reason for that rarity is how finicky the ride is about proper balancing. It seems both tubs on each pair set have to be balanced. Riders are secured with seatbelts and a lap bar. We sat in separate cars both for comfort and so that we could balance each other, and the operator looping the unused seatbelt around the lap bar, and told us at the end of the ride to unfasten that belt first. It won’t win any intensity awards, but it is a very fun ride. From the Treetop Tumbler, we went to ride the Pepsi Ripsaw. This is the parks older coaster. It’s a 5 point ride, and the entrance is on the second floor above the shooting gallery. Ripsaw is what looks like one of those Zierrer coasters with the 20+ car long trains. The ride is more like the parks train ride and does a better job of taking you around the park on an elevated railway than at being a coaster. Sure it has a helix, it has a tunnel, and has some neat curves, but no real drops. We take seats towards the front of the train, and lower the two ratcheting lapbars in each seat. Odd that it has separate ratcheting lap bars for each rider but no seat divider, but considering the size of the car, if it had a seat divider that would preclude bigger riders from riding at all. It's a better solution than what Zamperla came up with that puts the support bar in the center of the car, with a policy that in most cases both riders legs are supposed to be in the same side of the center bar. We made sure each half of the bar was ratcheted equally. The ride, as I said isn't thrilling at all, but it’s a coaster and you get to see the park. Watch your eyes for the high beam in ride photo lamp right after the helix. Man that thing can blind somebody. About midway through the ride is a long tunnel were you can get a sneak peak of the theming inside the log flume ride. I hear the train storage, transfer track and other service areas are hidden inside the lengthy tunnel. It is also noteworthy that you are powered all the way through the tunnel on drive tires. So I guess it barely counts as a coaster. We meander around and over the park some more before arriving back at the station. While riding the Pepsi Ripsaw it would be a good time to fill you in on the park's future. As I mentioned it is about to become a Nickelodeon Universe, with an extensive make over. The Mystery Mine Ride (motion simulator) is already gone, and most of the area from the Mystery Mine to Ghost Blasters is completely ripped out, as are the big fountain in the middle of the park and much of the theme work in the center of the park. The walkways in the middle of the park are closed off, but they have kept as many rides as possible open. As the signs say "All attractions are open, please refer to the signs for access to rides. The center walkways are closed, please use the main walkway around the perimeter of the park" It seems like they are doing all they can to keep operations as normal as possible during the big make over. We then head to the Mighty Axe. Mighty Axe is a Zamperla Roto Shake. We board the ride, the shoulder bars come down and lock, or so we think. Apparently the ride is not happy with the second locking position any longer. With that we are rejected from the Mighty Axe and head back to Timberland Twister. We have another Timberland Twister marathon for at least an hour straight. By now a line has been forming but it never gets much past the ticket scanner. They also now have two operators, so the ride is now running interval more like a regular coaster. Recall that I have that 3:30 flight. At about 12:45 I decide I need to ride something different. We head to the Paul Bunyan Log Chute. I am very surprised that Jerry, Mr. I Hate Water Rides, is so willing to ride the log chute, and sit up front even. Here I drag Jerry into a cave labeled "Log Chute" It's my least favorite style queue, a long twisty cave where you can't really see your progress. We were relieved to see the big room in the cave with a queue maze closed off. After no wait at all we found ourselves approaching the loading area. Log Chute uses a non-stopping loading system and we were soon in a log, with Jerry up front for a change. We leave the station and enter a long themed tunnel like a cheap Splash Mountain but if you recall quite similar to the log flume at knott's, you come out of the themed tunnel, (the Knott's product placement theming has been removed), take the tour past the food court, go floating atop the mountain looking structure, and eventually re-enter the interior of the cave which hides drop 1. You're ride is not over as you then climb an even bigger lift, travel along the mountaintop some more, pass by a different food court, then you turn and go down the BIG drop. This log flume however, has been designed to not get a rider too wet. Its really neat with the theming in the tunnels, and its really long path. You make one turnaround to the station. Like last time, they made us exit back to the entrance side, then climb up and over a bridge, then back down to the platform on the exit side. It seems totally idiotic, but I at least got an explanation this time. In minimal staffing days like this, they don't have an unload side operator (not that that stops other parks), so they have you exit back to the load side so they only need one station operator. While exiting I must have braced on my arm wrong as I was exiting the log and I heard the snap of a wristband come flying off. Oh NOOOOOO!!!!!! I did learn the park is quite prepared for this to occur as a manager was paged and arrived at the Log Chute within minutes with a replacement wristband. She had been over at the Twister most of the morning and for small talk commented that "You finally wore it out, huh?" To which I responded, well after 25 or more Timberland Twister rides, she did not dispute the total. Speaking of Timberland Twister, although I had only a few drops of water on me, we went back to Twister for a couple more rides on the spin dryer. In fact we rode about as long as we could before Jerry said "You know, we really ought to think about getting to the airport" So we left the park and headed to the third floor for the food court. I grabbed a quick cheesesteak and Great Steak and Potato Company (The steak was great, the potatoes were awful), and Jerry had some Long John Silvers. From the food court on the south side, we walked around to the east side, down an escalator, and back out into the parking garage. We made the quick trip to the airport and I'd say we arrived at the airport around 2:15 (for a 3:30 flight). Luckily for me there was no line at all for security, and luckier still for me, it was the person behind that came up behind me that was chosen for all the extra screening. As I went to pick up my luggage to put it into the X-ray machine, my second Mall of America wristband snapped off. Man, they must be using the world's flimsiest wristbands. But I get through security with no problems and head back to the waiting area next to my gate, pausing only to grab a soft drink from a news stand. I get to the gate with about 20 minutes to spare before they start boarding procedures. As I start to board the plane, I get to the top of the stairs of the plane and the stewardess comments favorably about Americana Amusement Park, I quickly remember which shirt I have on. I comment that she must be from Cincinnati. From then on every time she passed me on the plane we would work in 5 or 10 seconds of chat about Americana Amusement Park. Then some three hours later, thanks to the time zone change, I arrive at the "Cincinnati" airport around 6:30, which is not in Cincinnati at all. Then instead of going home, I head to Grand Victoria Casino for the night, in Rising Sun, Indiana. And that ends the great 2007 Minnesota trip, but not the end of my trip reports. Checking the log here, I have two trips to Kings Island, as well as visits to Knoebels, Kennywood, and Stricker's Grove to write up. Maybe I'll have it all done by the start of the next coaster season.

I know I promised this to you some time ago but here it is: As a way of making it up to you for the delay - here is the photo album: http://www.flickr.com/gp/9542069@N02/3rXizD TR:Minnesota/ Wisconsin 2007 – Day 5 September 3, 2007 Minnesota State Fair, Falcoln Heights, MN T-Shirt of the day: Dark blue shirt with American Flag and bald eagle design. *************************** "Lights! Sounds! Motion!" Well, so I haven't been the most timely person in writing these reports. Better late than never, I suppose. Anyway, this particular report represents my last full day in Minnesota for the 2007 trip. As has become our tradition, we spend Labor Day at the Minnesota State Fair. We left Jerry's house pretty early, on the order of 7:15-7:30, despite the fact the midway doesen't open until 10, and its only an hours drive to the fair. Jerry has long impressed on me the fact that Labor Day attracts a large crowd to the fair, and there just aren't enough parking spaces on the fairgrounds. Something like 9,000 parking spaces for 150,000 people, and the fair acknowledges this fact, and has implemented an extensive park and ride program, as well as a hefty $10 parking charge for on site parking. We opt to park on site, and Jerry being a self proclaimed morning person, I think he just likes arriving early. As predicted, arriving around 8:20 or so we had no trouble finding a parking space and at that time there was nobody waiting at the entrance gate so we quickly entered the fair and soon found ourselves standing in a still mostly closed fair. Sure, the livestock area was a buzz with activity, but the exhibit areas don't open till 9, and a good number of the food stands aren't quite ready yet. To kill some time , we walk down Judson Ave and watch them get the Rapids Ride ready. You see, this fair has a bunch of rides outside of the midways. They have not one but two sky rides, and the usual giant slide, but they also have a Space Tower observation tower ride, an Old Mill, a haunted house, go-karts, and a rapids ride. All of these rides come at extra cost of course, usually around $3-$4. We continued around the front where the Bazar section, where you can enjoy food, crafts and culture from around the world was not open yet, and I noted several past exhibits such as the MN DoT, and the aviation exhibit were not present this year. As we walked around the space tower, there was a booth setup where they were selling decorative lawn ornaments made out of bundles up grass. We walked past some administrative office type buildings, and returned via Dan Patch Ave. It's sort of fun watching the fair wake up, as vendors are just getting their stands open and slowly the fair springs to life. Right around 9 we headed to the DNR park, which has a bunch of natural resources exhibits, including a fire tower. By fire tower, I mean the elevated platforms you would find in rural, wooded areas or state parks where a fire spotter is posted watching out for the first sign of forest fire. According to the signs, sometime in the 1960's a full size fire tower was built at the state fair as an interactive exhibit where fairgoers could climb to the top of the fire tower and enjoy the view. Sometime in the late 1970's the firetower was closed to the public, and could only be looked at from the ground. More recently, in 2006, the firetower was reopened as an observation tower. Jerry informed me that the fire tower is a very low capacity attraction, and that while they do offer a virtual queuing system, my best chance of seeing it would be to go first thing. When we arrived the towers small queue area was already half full, and they were not yet offering the virtual queue. It became apparent that the bottleneck is that they only allow about 6 people or so into the Fire Tower area at a time, once they have those people in, they admit one person to go up only once a person comes down. Even at this early time it still took about 15 minutes or so in line. We were then admitted to the fenced in tower area. The first flight of stairs is a fairly normal grade and starts some distance away from the tower and the first flight ends when you get within the main tower structure being mindful of a low beam. They do have bright yellow padding around that beam, from then on the stairway seems to get tighter and steeper with each landing. From the base of the stairs to about halfway up there is a railing separating the up and down sides, as you near the top, the center rail goes away on the landings as the landings become about 1 person wide. There are some more padded low beams as you near the last turn in the stairs before you go up through the trap door and into the room at the top of the tower. Now, most know that last year, I spent Labor Day tackling a different climbing project, as a I climbed over the top of the Purple People Bridge, as a part of the short lived, and now defunct Purple People Bridge Climb. The top half of the fire tower stairs are every bit as steep as the stairs to the top of the bridge, and unlike the bridge, fire tower climbers are NOT issued fall prevention harnesses, or training or anything like that. To be fair, the stairway is fenced in, so I suppose the theory is that even if you should slip you might have a nasty spill down one flight, but it won't be life threatening. At the top of the tower, is a small room, and when I saw small room, I mean the trap door for the stairs is the most dominant feature of the room, circling the trapdoor is a narrow platform from which you can stand next to the windows and take a look out. Pictures under the windows give you an idea of what you can see on a clear day and how far the object is. You can't walk all the way around, as one corner has a rangers chair and table where an attendant is there to answer questions. So as you can see there isn't a whole lot of room up top for people to gather. They ask you to please limit your visit at the top of the tower to 5 minutes. After our time, we started the decent. I took the stairs down very gingerly, basically sliding one foot ahead till it hit the end of the tread them stepping down. It might have taken me awhile but I did make it back to the ground. Once on the ground,it looked to be about 9:30 or so, so we started to head over to the Mighty Midway. We spent the time watching ride and game operators get their attractions ready for the day, and were happy to see the Tornado cars getting a nice fresh application of lube. We must have circled the midway 3 or 4 times waiting for the rides to open. I was going to start the day on Space Roller, I knew I had trouble fitting on it, so I figured in the morning before the crowds arrived would be my best chance at getting a crew willing to be patient enough to take the time to shove the shoulder bar into submission. It did not look like there were quite ready at 10am, so we decided to walk next door to Avalanche. Avalanche is a Pinfari Zyklon coaster. Its your standard fairground coaster full of lots of helices and very few real drops. The ride was a walk on, and capacity is always on the crews mind. Instead of letting the two of take an entire car, one per bench, they loaded another pair into the seat behind us, despite the ride being a walk on. To be honest Jerry and I didn't mind as our take is the more weight you can cram into one of those tiny cars the better. We didn't have any hard encounters with trim brakes, and we also did not get the feeling like we were going to crash land into the car ahead of us like we have had on previous rides. All in all it was a fun ride, and while riding it, we noted the Space Roller had opened. We walked back to the Space Roller. Those who have read my past fair TR's know that the Space Roller is one of my favorite rides, so why am I dreading it. Well, the story goes that Space Roller went in for some extensive rehab work this year, part of that rehab work is all new seats and shoulder harnesses. Anecdotal comments from those who have ridden, and those who have tried to ride this year, is that it is a tighter fit than it used to be. I walk up to the ride, and I do note that the part about new seats is true, the older seats were yellow, and the new seats are a baby blue color. I also note crotch belts have been added to the front center of the seats that fasten into the shoulder harness. I have also been told those belts are a non-issue. Well, may as well get it over wiht, find out if I can ride the thing or not anymore. I head up the entry area, where I note a new fence has been added narrowing the entrance to about 1 person wide. Wonder if they had trouble at another spot. I turn in 5 tickets, and head up to the top of the waiting area. Soon the current cycle ends, and I am admitted to the ride area. I am shown a seat, and sit down, the bars automatically lower, but of course fails to lock. This is not cause for immediate alarm as I have always needed a slight helping push. The loader fastens the seatbelt, then goes to work on pushing the bar. He tells me he has to push, I say "Okay" he pushes, no luck, he asks if he can push harder, I say okay, he pushes, no luck, he says he will give it one more try, but he has to really push hard. I say okay, he pushes HARD on the bar, it locks. It is a really tight fit, he makes sure I am alright before he leaves me to give the all clear. The ride starts, and what a glorious ride it was! This is all the goodness of Space Roller that I remember, and I will tell you something, being stapled that tight into the seat is actually a benefit, it is even more rideable than it was before, now that I am essentially one with the ride, with no room to slide or bounce around. I think I am given a slightly longer than average program, then the ride ends, and the loader comes around to let me out. One of the downsides of the new belts is that it is very hard to reach the end release buckle (with the red button on the bottom) while seated in the seat. I thank the guy for his patience and return to the midway. Jerry and I agreed that my morning ride today was better and longer than the ride I was givenon Thursday. Oh, the obligatory ride description: A Top Scan consistts of a lifting boom, attached to the lifting boom is the main boom. At one end of the main boom is the counterweight, at the other end is the ride vehicle. The ride vehicle end consists of 6 5-seat spokes set in a windmill like arangement. All 5 seats on a spoke face the same way. So first the lifting boom lifts the main boom up into the air, then the main boom starts spinning, and when it spins it is set at an angle so it is also raising and lowering the ride arm. Then the windmill with its 6 spokes starts rotating, then each spoke is mounted on a swivel so it can roll backards and forwards as inertia dictates. If a very impressive ride which turns you every which way but loose, and the inertia mounted spokes help ensure no two rides are the same. It is still, very much on of my favorite midway rides. We head back up the midway, and our next stop is at the Techno Power. The Techno Power is the 'extreme' version of the popular Orbiter ride. It was developed during the craze was to reduce the big bulky ride tubs of the past down to bare essentials, basically a seat, with legs dangling free. The downside to this, is that while the Orbiter has rather loose non adjustable lap bars, the Techno Power has much more restrictive adjustable shoulder bars. I had heard an anecdote that the Orbiter was developed with no passenger restraints, and that they are added when they come to the United States, but a review of a German rides video, shot in Germany reveals the Orbiter had the lap bars in their video. The ride consists of the main center tower, at the top of which extends seversal sweeps, the sweeps are L shaped so in the load poasition the ends of the sweeps are hanging straight down. At the end of each sweep are mounted three stub arms, each stub arm having 2 seats. The ride starts by lifting up from the load position to the run position, then the main tower starts spinning, then the sweep ends start spinning, then the seeps pivot up so that instead of hanging down, at their peak they are sticking almost straight out perpendicular to the ground. The ride spins around awhile at very high speed, then the sweeps pivot back down, then the ride stops spinning and lowers back into the load postion. Jerry and I board the Techno Power, and the bars come down, and hit the locking position all on their own. The ride starts and when the sweeps are hanging down, the lateral forces push you towards the outside, but when the sweeps are in the upright position, the forces push you down into your seat. The upright position is also hard on your legs. All in all, its a great little spin ride. After spinning for a bit, the ride ends and we head on up the midway. We start on lap 2 around the midway and wind up on the Magnum. The ride is the Magnum, which is a Breakdance on serious drugs. The ride looks like a Breakdance at first glance, you have the huge main turntable, and on the turntable are mounted 5 turrets, mounted on top of each turret is a set of crossbars, at the ends of the crossbars, are mounted tubs, so 4 tubs per turret, 20 tubs on the ride. Like on the Breakdance, the tubs are mounted on a swivel so thet can spin by inertia, but instead of the car being mounted directly to the swivel, the key difference is the swivel ends in a set of uprights, from which the ride car is hung. This means that the cars can not only spin bi inertia, but they can also roll forwards and backwards by inertia. The main table spins, then the turrets start spinning, and from that point on, who knows what your individual tub might do, and yes rocking the car is perfectly allowed. Jerry and I have ridden this before, and we also know they like to pair single riders. The problem with the two of us paired into the same tub is that the tub gets too heavy to get any good action. This time we get more aring and enter the ride with a few riders in between us, and amazingly they let both of us ride single. I wind up in Tub 20, which Jerry has proclaimed the best on the ride, and Jerry is in second best (#18), and I'm off on a chaotic exciting ride. During the ride I had several ulti flip sequences going, and I also had some interesting moments where I had the tub stuck upside down and still spinning around, once it even held for a complete rotation of the main turntable. In short, it was a great ride, but not for amateurs, and maybe not even for us, as while we didn't get sick or anything like that, it did mess with our equilibrium to the point where we wound up chatting with Justin for quite some time socializing and recovering. After chatting with Justin, Jerry and I follow it up with another spin on Techno Power. Smooth, fast, powerful as always. After the second Techno Power ride, we head to the Coca Cola booth, and $2.50 later we each have a cold drink. We then go over and all at once wind up finding Paul Miller, Cameron, Loren, and Bill. We do that weird ride nut behavior where we are on a midway talking about rides instead of riding rides. After chatting, Paul, Cameron, Jerry and I wind up taking a ride on the Fighter. The Fighter is a Mondial Swinger, as is Mondial's take on the circle swing ride. The ride has a lot of characteristics similar to a circle swing ride. It is big and round, with a stairway all the way around the ride, and in the center of the ride a main tower, where the top of the tower rises up from the load position to the ride position. The big difference is that at the top of the tower, instead or a large round cap that contains a multitude of swings on chains, the Swinger is different. The cap on top of the Swinger main pole is a large square shaped affair, on each corner of the square an arm hangs down, at the end of the arm is a cluster of 5 sweeps in a circular arangement. When the ride starts, the ride lifts up, then the main boom starts to rotate, then each of the four arms starts spinning its set of 5 sweeps. To make life even more interesting each arm is mounted with a hydraulic arm that is capeable of pushing the arm out from a vertical position to about 30-45 degrees off center. Of course, I would be remiss not to mention the theming, that of a female ninja. On the top piece, in the center on all four sides, is a female ninjas face mounted above body armour clad boobs. The four arms coming down from the ride in effect are the ninja fighters arms, and you can clearly see her hands, and at the end of each hand the 5 armed sweep is meant to resemble some martial arts weapon. From theme, looks, sound system and entire package, its a stunning piece, and Minnesota recognized that fact by putting the ride in the "Spot of Honor" the front center ride on the midway. We board the ride, with the very open chairs, and refreshingly for a big European super spectacular, the ride does NOT have shoulder bars. The ride instead has very simple non-adjustable loose fitting lap bars. We sit down, and lower the lapbars so that the flat metal plate at the end fits into the locking mechanism where a deadbolt type arrangement secures the bar. I have ridden this ride in the past, and now the ride can deliver a variety of ride experiences from mild to intense. For this particular ride, was needle was unlike Thursday, instead the needle was more towards the Wild side, as we were given a demonstration of the rides thrill ability. Jerry even looked over at me and said "What's with this hanging on stuff??" From the Fighter, we intended to go to Tornado. Unfortunately no matter how persuasive we tried to be, we just could not get Cameron on the Tornado at this point in time. Paul had to go off towards the livestock area, which was his real main purpose for going to the fair to begin with, and Cameron headed to the Coca Cola booth. After Cameron got his drink, we headed to some television stations booth, where they had an exhibit about tornados going on. I got the impression they went through it to show me how cheesey it was. Bookended by some expository areas with photos, text and video clips is the show room. The main feature of the show room ae some high powered fans and some water misters which are meant to give you the feeling of what it would feel like to be inside a funnel cloud. We dubbed it Air Conditioning: The Ride, which is actually quite an attraction on a fairground on a hot day. We next went to another television stations booth to get their goodie bag, the main feature in the bag we were interested in was a FREE Park at Mall of America ticket. The catch is you don't know if the ticket is a free ride, a free day of rides, or a free year of rides until you go to the amusement park. Later review with a barcode scanner revealed that we had four tickets all with the same barcode, I'm not sure what it was, but I know that common sense would say they were all 1 free ride. Enough visting exhibitor booths. We next headed to the Corn Roast. Its the main corn roast booth at the fair, and its a mass production operation with a gigantic corn roaster, vats of melted butter and all. To speed things up, the people passing out the corn don't deal in cash, instead the booth has ticket kiosks located out front, where you buy your $3 yellow Corn Roast ticket, then take the ticket into the booth and trade that for your ear of corn,. If a bucanneer is a terrible price to pay for corn, I don't want to hear about $3. We noted the main ticket booth had three long lines, but then the person manning a ticket booth off to the side was just standing there unnoticed, we went over to the side booth, bought tickets and soon were enjoying our ears of corn while walking through the fair, and conveniently finished up the corn right as we were arriving at the 1919 Root Beer Stand. Oh, and I regret the absence of Lemon Pepper at the corn booth. I then visited the 1919 Root Beer Stand and most of wound up with $3 cups of gourmet root beer, well at least thats a 33oz. serving (no ice in root beer purist tradition). We enjoyed our root beers while we watched Cameron play some shoot-em-up game in the arcade. From the arcade, we headed to, you won't believe this, the SPAM booth. Loren and I decided to try the Deep Fried Spam Curds. Yup, deep fried mounds of Spam, instead of cheese, served with ranch dressing. I want to say I gave $4 for them. "Officially eating my way through the fair!" In all honestly, the Spam curds were rather bland and lifeless. From the SPAM booth, we decided to take a walk through the main exposition hall underneath the Grandstand seating area. Once inside, I realized that fair expo halls are pretty much the same place all over. Cameron pointed out one booth that sells stationery, cards, books and other things entirely made of paper made from elephant droppings. After walking down a few aisles we left the expo hall. Cameron announced he had a need to see Machinery Hill, and it was clear he was putting off as long as possible getting back to the rides. So we parted ways, Jerry and I started back towards the midway when Jerry mentioned to me that he remembered I wanted to get some photos, and that right now might be the best time, sky conditions wise. We headed out to the parking lot. On the way out, we had our inside lower arms stamped with readmission stamps that used the flimsiest,most water vulnerable ink they could possibly find. This stuff is so bad, that by the time we walked to our relatively close parking space, got our cameras, drank a bottle of water, and walked back to the gate, the stamps more resembled a smudge. We started our photo safari with the exterior of the livestock buildings, and hey I did get some horse pictures as a group was marshaling for a show in the Colisseum. We then spent a LOT of time taking photos of the rides midway, From the rides midway we toured the Heritage Square area. This is more of a historical area, you can visit the blacksmith shop, the newspaper museum, see some classic cars and more. We went to the train. The train itself is from Royal American Shows, which was an old train based carnival that had the fair midway before they went indepedent. Outside the train car they have some old ride cars, like a car from a Herschell kiddie coaster, a very vintage tilt a whirl car, an old kiddie carousel, a Pretzel dark ride car, and some old sideshow canvas that looks remarkably similar to the canvas being used by the sideshow that is on the midway this year. Inside the train, the first few cars are full of carnival lore, posters, photos, memorabilla, including an old gaming wheel, some sideshow props including a blade box, just like the one being used this year in the sideshow, the second half of the train is full of railroad exhibits. At least this year, I remembered that the watch your step sign is mounted right above the step, not an advance warning for the step. After the train, we went through the Minnesota State Fair History Museum, which has a lot of photos and artifacts from the history of the fair. A popular exhibit is a 1928 sale model of the fairground. There is a whole section on the hipprodrome and the old ice shows they used to have. Also in there are grandstand searchlights that have a military history behind them, old mascot outfits and more. A more disturbing artifact is a length of bungee cord from the 1992 bungee jump. The good news is I have now felt a bungee cord, the bad news is it did nothing to reassure me. From the museum, we left Heritage Square, I saw a gourmet soft drinks stand, but no birch beer. Jerry and I continued our photo safari, making our way past the grandstand, through the arcade, and then up Machinery Hill. We opted NOT to take photos on the Kidway due to problems others have had with that related to parents seeing men without children taking photos of kiddie rides (and by connection kiddies). We did stop in a hardware store booth to get a photo of a t-shirt making fun of the whole Fair on a Stick craze "We also sell things on a stick, they are called Sledgehammers", and a dining hall "Absolutely nothing served on a stick". We got some photos of some farm and home implements like tractors, mowers, snow blowers, etc. We continued around Machinery Hill, got some photos of trick skateboarding in the skatepark like area, noted the baseball exhibit is looking a little worse for wear after its run of the fair. I did stop at Giggles for some watermelon sherbert but the were out, so I setled for raspberry sherbert. I was eating my sherbert right when the lumberjacks climbed the two flag capped telephone pole likethings at the lumberjack show. This area has some rustic buildings like Giggles, a kettle corn stand, a bbq rib pit, the lumberjack show, and the Minnesota Bound store which is flanked out front by both American and Canadian flags. We then took a break for a slice of Green Mill pizza each with soft drink. It was actually pretty good pizza, with some unique seasonings. We then took photos of some of the WPA era buildings. The Fine Arts building, Creative Activities Buildings, 4H building, and more were all provided when the fairgrounds were build courtesy the WPA. They are classic art deco buildings that are now architectural gems. The 4H building also has the military recruiting display, and a snowmobile display. Man those things have spedometers calibrated to 200MPH !!! I saw a booth featuring Beer Pizza. Jerry assured me they were two seperate products. We walked through another expo hall, and at about the same time my camera batteries died. My photo safari is over. We finsihed up our circle tour stopping at the Empire to see the butter heads (they do popular Minnesotans heads in butter), we also stopped past Playworld Arcade to get photos of me playing Turret Tower. From there, we finished our lap, and Jerry offered to return cameras to car while I partook of the Dairy Farmers booth,. This booth features fresh milk for only $1, with free refills. It's the "All You Can Drink Milk" booth. I must have had like 6 or 7 cups, 12 oz. each. I do like fresh milk, and I have a tip for you. The milk flows from the refigerated tank and down nearest the windows facing Clough St. It is noticeably warmer by the time it hits the windows facng Judson Ave, and the windows on the other side were closed. I also noted several people turning the milk booth into the All-The-Milk-You-Can-Dunk-Cookies-In booth. Great idea, that. For my last cup I tried the chocolate, it had a nice rich chocolate flavor. Jerry and I returned to the midway ready to ride. We have ride ticket sheets left, and only about 2.5 hours to use them. We took an educated guess, and were able to locate Cameron and Loren,however we never did see Paul again. Sorry Paul, I meant to ride more with you. We took Cameron over for our much hyped Tornado ride. This time Cameron was willing to ride. The Tornado somewhat resembles a Paratrooper, except I don't think it tips up near as high. The key different is that instead of the Paratrooper seats, the ride consists of 8 sweeps that hang down, each ending in a spherical shaped ride tub. Each ride tub has 4 chairs facing inward, and no other siding which again helps with the wide open feeling that many newer rides wish to instill. Riders are secured to the seats with T shaped lap bars.The key feature of the tub, however, is the Wheel of Delight (or the Wheel of Doom, depending on your point of view) in the center of the tub. This allows each ride group to spin or not spin the ride as fast or as slowly as they see fit. This particular unit is equipped with a modification I had not yet seen. Essentially the center pole between the wheel and the top of the tub has been covered with a red sleeve. The sleeve is not rigidly connected to the ride, and therefore can free spin. The idea, which apparently stemmed from an incident that occurred a couple years ago, is designed so that if you should grab hold of the center pole during the ride, instead of causing bodily injury, it will safely spin with you. I would expect this unit to have all the modifications, as I believe it is Wisdom Rides show model, that they themselves are exhibiting, We board the Tornado and grab Tub 6. The ride starts, and as soon as the tub brakes release we have the tub spinning at a nice clip, however we got one of the tighter models, so we didn't get it spinning as fast as we know we are capable of.. During most of the ride, the outside world is a blur, and all I can see clearly are Jerry, Cameron and the wheel. To be sure, it is tiring to keep the tub spinning, but its worth it. From Tornado, we got to Techno Power and Jerry, Cameron and I ride. It was mostly the same as usual except at the end of the ride, after the sweeps lowered, but before the ride center lowered, the unit poles stopped spinning. Not a bad feeling just different. After Techno Power, Cameron and I were going to ride Space Roller until we saw the line. Yeah, it was probably at most a 1 or 2 cycle wait, but hey we are spoiled by walk on rides at the fair, plus a line probably means less effort into getting me onto the ride. Instead, Cameron and I walk over to Extreme. It is Extreme, a KMG Afterburner. The afterburner is a pendulum ride where the pendulum ends in a 6 sided claw. The floor drops away, then the pendulum swings back and forth, then the claw starts spinning, At the peak of its swing the arm is swingng up well above 90 degrees. I say the ride would be the real test is I tried to ride a similar ride at the Florida State Fair, and could not fit, later last year, I tried to ride another ride just like it at the Ohio State Fair, and could not fit. I board the ride, take a seat, and the bars drop. Of course, it doesn't lock by itself, but it I got a tighter seat than Thursday as it took a lot harder push on the part of the loader to lock the bar. I like the spinning pendulum rides, the problem is my home park has Delirium, which is a massively large swinging pendlum ride. The small KMG ride just doesn't seem to do it anymore. The program they run on Extreme is prett mild except for the final 10 or 15 seconds, when it starts swinging back and forth with gusto, as the ride starts spinning at maniac speed. The problem is the intense part of the ride is much too short. After Extreme, all four of us go for a ride on the Crazy Mouse. We walk up to the loading area, turn in our tickets (5) and the ticket taker assigns us a car. We step into the assigned car, we put Cameron, the lightest of us by far on one end, and pull down the lapbars as the car continues to roll forward. We reach the end of the station area, and a visual check of the restraints is performed, then we roll out onto the course. The operator also makes special note of how obviously unbalanced we have the tub with the heaviest people together. There was a time when I thought the Crazy Mouse was a neat ride, then I saw the Gerstlauer version. The Crazy Mouse very much keeps to its Wild Mouse roots. We roll out of the station, make a left turn, and on every turn I think it was Loren and I that shouted "OPA!" in tribute to the Mt. Olympus ride, roll across the front of the ride, another left turn, then climb the lift, another left turn. We go around the ride marquee as we enter the top level switchbacks. At this point the ride is a normal Wild Mouse, as the cars are not free to spin yet. At the end of the switchbacks, you go down a short dip and rise, then make another left turn to again go across the front of the ride, this time on the mid course brake. The next left turn is the big one, as you go down the big drop, then up into a weird long extended uphill that flattens for a little bit towards the top, before climbing again for the final short hop. The bump adds an interesting experience to the ride, often accompanied by a wonder if you are going to make it to the top of the hill, to make that next left turn. Before the first switchback turn, you pass the mechanism which unlocks your car, for the second set of switchbacks you are free to spin, You make a few switchbacks, before heading straight towards the front of the ride, a drop, rise, and turnaorund at the front, then a drop, and you cut diagonally through the ride structure on mostly flat track that does have a bunny hop in the center. You then make one final turnaround and its into the brakes, then the mechanism that realigns your car to face forward, then lock it back into stationary mode. For all the things the Crazy Mouse does right getting you onto the ride, we must talk about how they get you off of the ride. The Crazy Mouse does not stop in unload. An unloader unlocks the lapbars, which you then raise. He then walks along side your car telling you to get out. He has a knack at telling you to jump out right as you pass a support column. He also probably means well, standing nearby to help people exit the tubs, but if you decide to instead jump out of the tub, it is quite easy to lland near or on his feet. . We then exit the ride, making sure to take care on the extra large last step, then walk down the exit path, dutifully ignoring the on ride photo booth. Cameron and Loren are out of ride tickets, but they watch while Jerry and I show off on Magnum. Yes, we got good tubs, no we weren't paired up, yes we put on pretty good shows. At this point Cameron needed to go meet a friend over at the Haunted House. Jerry and I head over to the Spin Out. The ride consists of a claw shaped passenger car with 6 'fingers' each holding 4 riders facing in. It sounds a bit like the Afterburner, but instead of being connected to a pendulum, the claw is connected to the end of a robotic arm. The arm is capable of turning the claw completely upside down, or anywhere in between, and is often the bearing that controls this rotation is constantly turning. The claw itself also spins, and the base that holds the robot arm is mounted on a turntable which is constantly spinning. You might see why its called the Spin Out. We hand in our tickets, and with just a slight press by the loader, we are cleared to ride. Jerry and I feel the lapbars click into place when the operator pressed in on them, we saw the alert lights go off. The ride starts. The claw makes it first big twist where it turns the claw upside down and spins it. Well, that's what it does normally this time I flipped upside down, then quickly righted itself, then the ride stopped in midair. What? Thats not supposed to happen. We stayed stuck up in the ai r for a few moments until a crew member started working with the mechanism at the base of the arm that holds the claw. Once he did that the ride returned to the load position. As you can expect, there were a lot of cries of "Is that it?". Well that was it for Jerry and I as a crew member came up on the ride deck, opened our lapbars, gave us some ride tickets and sent us away. We didn't catch what happened due to the fact we could not really understand the attendant. All we could catch is that there was a problem with the safety bar. Of great, just what we want to hear. Now, if I had to venture a guess, I would say the safety bar was locked the entire time and was not the main cause for alarm, we suspec we had seats with finicky sensors and the first time we went upside down and all our weight was on the safety bar, it send a false positive to the console that it thought there was a lapbar malfunction. Which means, in the end, that everyone and everything responded appropriately to the alarm, and so it was all a big non-incident really. So we take the walk of shame, and head right on over to Techno Power for one last ride on it. Now, Extreme, Spin Out and Techno Power have basically the same seat design, but they don't act the same. After the Techno Power ride, we go take one last ride on Roc N Rol. You heard that right, a Chance Rok-N-Rol. (user cues up a medly of "Rock and Roll is Here to Stay", "Old Time Rock and Roll", and "Rock and Roll Music") From what I understand, a state ride inspector commented that he had not seen one of these in at least 20 years. The ride consists of a center spindle which has a large round frame around the outside, mounted to the frame are 10 cylindrical cars mounted on edge. The cars resembles the tubs of a spin dryer, and as you are about to find out, that is quite the valid analogy. The tubs are closed in with a metal mesh on the inner side and on top, only the outer side of the car is open. The tub has two seats facing inwards, and in the middle of the two seats is a U shaped grab bar mounted to the inside wall of the tub. So the ride starts, and the 10 tubs start spinning around the center pole, then the tubs unlock, and as the name suggests, you can Rock the tubs, and if you are sucessful, the tub will start rolling. Yes, in a refreshing blast from the past, it is a ride where the rider gets to control the ride experience. I recall that a couple years ago, a major local newspaper for the Twin Cities wrote a midway review panning the Tornado becuase it required the rider to exert real work to get their ride. However, with the Rok N Rol, sedentary riders need not worry, as there is a mechanism in the center of the ride, that when activated will automatically roll the tubs as they go past it. You have to watch these interactive attractions. This Rok N Rol has a skilled crew that likes to play with the flipping mechanism so that as the ride spins you can't always be sure if its going to flip you or not. They also like to act like your ride is coming to and en, slow it down, then speed it right back up. Oh and how do they hold the riders into the car. No shoulder bars, no lapbars, just seatbelts. Of course, they are not normal seatbelts, they are special extra wide seatbelts, and instead of a buckle, the ends of the belt are fed into a special camlock mechanism. The belt is fed into the camlock, then the cam is clamped shut. Once this happens it can be pulled tighter, but not looser. From early photos of the ride at the fair, it started the fair run, with not only a "No Single Riders", but also a "4 Riders per Tub" sign. I note both of those signs had been removed. By this time, we were recognized by the crew and given the VIP escort to the tub with the longest seatbelts. Unfortunately, we did not return the favor with a good performance, I think both of us were starting to get tired out and we just couldn't seem to muster up the energy to hit spin dryer mode. After Roc N Rol, we crossed over to the Zero Gravity, the Zero Gravity being Darton's take on modernizing their classic round up ride. They manged to do lots of things, they gave the ride a bit ore midway flash, they souped up the engine so it gets up to speed and slows down a lot faster, allowing for more actual ride time. The filled in the seldom used back exit with some more berths, they removed the potential hazard of a ride being hit by an unfastened chain, by replacing them with belts that don't even have buckles. A loop in the belt fitts over a peg to secure it. They improved access by having a nice wide stairway, and the secured the ride exit against premature exiting while the ride slows down. Now the stairway folds up and complete blocks the exit. All in all its a real nice update on the classic stick to the walls as the ride tips up to a steep angle while spinning ride. . From the Zero Gravity, we try another of Darton's updates, the Downdraft. The Downdraft is an attempt to give their famous Hurricane ride the more open floorless cars. It wins points for using an overhead lapbar, and not shoulder bars, but it loses points for haing a no to comfortable seat mold, particularly once the ride starts spinning at full speed. Of course the cars do still bounce in and out, controlled by compressed air. For the Downdraft they have you exit out the back stairs, then have fences which force you to walk around the ride and make your final exit at the front of the ride. From Downdraft, we took a ride on the Skywheel, commonly reffered to as the double ferris wheel. This ride set out to solve the ferris wheel problem, by having one wheel always in motion while the other one was going through its load/unload cycle. This culminates in the main ride cycle where both wheels start going around in a giant circle, as both small wheels are still spinning away. There was a bit of a line to ride the Skywheel but it was well worth it to ride such a well maintained example of this piece of history. From the Skywheel, Jerry went to ride Magnum, and I went to ride Space Roller. The line for Space Roller had died down, and to make things better I foun a slightly bigger seat that took a bit less force on the part of the operator. What's more I think I manged to get my best ride on it yet, fo the 2007 season. From the Space Roller I went back to the Magnum and Jerry and I finished up MNSF 2007 with our final ride being on the Magnum. We both managed to get great cars, he got 20 and I got 18, which meant we got a lot of flips and spins with little effort on our part. What made this ride particularly special was that the ride ran about as long at it usuall does, and the ride had then almost come back to a full stop when I noticed the song Ride Spinners start on the sound system. Sure its a song about spinning hubcaps but it fits the crazed spin ride fanatic as well. "We ride spinners, ride spinners, they don't stop" In fact someone else took a clip from that song and made a YTMND out of it. Check it out for yourself: http://monsterspinnaz.ytmnd.com/ Anyway, right when the chorus of that song started up, the ride went back into high gear for another cycle, that would make it a double ride on Magnum in a great tub. What a way to end the fair! Jerry reports that the fair had a television commercial where they show somebody on the midway, and he is chanting "Lights!, Sounds! Motion!" over and over except each time through he starts sounding a bit more woozy, and it ends with "Lights! Sounds! Motion?, I'm getting too old for this" Our version would end "Lights! Sounds! Motion? We're getting too tired for this!" So we checked in with all our various friends along the midway, before heading out of the Mighty Midway. I did make a stop for some hot out of the oven Sweet Martha's chocolate chip cookies on my way out of the fair. Hmm, some of the best chocolate chip cookies you will ever eat! We then headed back to the parking lot, and headed back home for the night. One more day to come, stay tuned for the Park at Mall of America TR. (Posting that any day now, what it took my a month to get this one out????)

Sunday, October 21, 2007 TR: Minnesota/Wisconsin 2007 - Day 4 9/2/07 TR:Minnesota/ Wisconsin 2007 – Day 4 September 2, 2007 Valleyfair! Shakopee, MN T-Shirt of the day: 2007 All Ohio Coaster Odysey shirt from Coastermania! *************************** "Let's try this again" As you may recall from the Day 3 TR, Jerry and I stopped past an insanely packed Valleyfair for a few hours last night, so today we decided to try it again. As such, we arrived at Valleyfair at about 9:30 on Sunday morning. Jerry got waved through the toll plaza with his parking sticker, and we parked in Jerry's favorite section, near Steel Venom. We headed up to the gate, and noted the food drive was still going on with a reward of a significant admission discount coupon on offer. We headed to the front gate plaza and chatted a while until the lines started forming at the gates. Jerry had predicted the gates would open early at 9:45, so when the lines started forming I went into Guest Services. Still, a very simple procedure to use a Kings Island pass. I showed my pass, they wrote down my name, checked the Kings Island box and had me stand next to the secret panel. I thought I would impress them with a Kings Island pass, until the person behind me presented a Carrowinds pass. At 9:50, they played the national anthem, and when it ended I heard the buzzer tell me I could push in on the secret panel and enter the park through the Guest Services office. Once inside the park, the walkway to Renegade was much lighter. There was a running of the bulls, but Jerry advised me not to worry about it, because the pathway was roped off just before the train station. We stood up near the ropes, which were sporting large rectangular purple flags not unlike the Legend lift hill flag I have. Shortly after 10:00 the rope was dropped and the bulls stared running again. Jerry told me not to worry about it, which was good advice since quite frankly there weren't enough people there to worry about, even if each and every person headed to Renegage. Renegade was open when we arrived at it. The park has done a good job of keeping Renegade’s track plan a secret, from the park midway, all you can see is the lift hill, and the final part of the ride where you circle the station, then the queue area before heading to the final brakes. The entrance and exit sit next to each other as two cutouts in the track structure in this final pass. We enter the queue and find it to be empty. The switchback area was closed off, so we walked back the long path that runs alongside the brake run approach, then ducked under the lift approach and through the hallway underneath the transfer track. We finally caught up to the line at the bottom of the stairs up to the station. We soon realized the ride was not yet open, and when the station was opened, we wound up being on the second train of the day. So, on the second train of the day, Within two trains, I was climbing into the back car of the milinneum flyer train. I really like GCIs rolling stock, particularly after riding PTCs the day before. The GCI trains feel like sofas on wheels. Jerry had mentioned that at first there were problems with the lap bars and larger riders, but this seems to be sorted out now. I did notice the park went with individual seatbelts, where other GCI’s I have ridden used shared belts. So, we are seated in the train, and we leave the station a turn to the left takes up to and up the lift. We go over the lift and down the first drop, the first drop is the rides signature element, as first you make a right turn going down the drop, then a left curve to straighten the drop back out. It is an evil first drop, at the base of the drop you turn left, and go over a speed hill that produces some nice floater airtime. You then start dong the GCI typical ride of going around a series of curves while going gracefully up and down in this twister like section. John Allen said it best “Curves don’t do anything for people”. After a glass smooth twisty ride, you reemerge next to the lift hill, and then make a right turn to go around the station with a big swooping trademark GCI turnround right by the midway, the next section is so close to the midway the only thing separating you is a metal grate fence. Time for a speed hill places in just the right spot to become the rides focal point from the midway. You then go through an elongated turnaround that wraps around the queue area, and the on ride photo is taken just before the last curve. You then head into the station where they have a combination of magnetic and traditional braking to ensue a very smooth stop in the bake run/transfer area. Then when the station ahead of you is clear, there is one last turnaround into the station. It’s a neat ride, but Jerry seemed offended that I only give it a B. Sorry, I just need more airtime with my curves, that said the ride could be very reridable if the chance presented itself. Fortunately for me, the opportunity was presenting itself. We exited the ride and headed down the series of ramps down to the ground level. There isa point where the exit and entrance paths run right alongside each other, seperated by only two railings and a yard or so of mulch. I aske if there has been abuse here, and Jerry points out the very worn patch of mulch indicating that yes, people have been making the shortcut quite often. We head around the proper way, heading back out to the midway. I note the park has strategically placed some park benches so you have to go towards the ride photo booth. Jerry was concerned that the park decided to open Renegade with both trains today, as the park is not known for adding extra trains until the crowds and lines warrant it. On our second ride, the line was only halfway down the stairs, and on the third ride, we walked right into the station, We rode mostly in the back seat, but took a couple rides up front. We continued to ride until the line started getting long again. We rode again when the line got to the bottom of the stairs, then on our last ride the line was halfway back the hallway under the transfer track. By the time our ride ended, the line was starting back the long straight section toward the switchback area. We decided to try something else at that point. We headed back the pathway to Excalibur. Excalibur is themed after the famous sword of King Arthur as you can tell from the flags and the front of one of the trains. (The other train has a plain front, and the big sword in the rides major sign has been missing the last few seasons). Excalibur was only running one train, but that wasn't a problem as the ridewas a walk on, maybe a 1 or two train wait in choice seats. We took repeated rides in the back seat, walking around each time of course. Excalibur is an overgrown Arrow mine ride, that has a real tall lift hill, that leads into the usual ground hugging mine ride type course with a bunch of tight curves. As built the train takes the course way to fast for the parks comfort, so they have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR trim brakes on the first drop. Even with all four trims on, and they are all on, the train still barrels through the course generating strong laterals, and provides a wondefully intense ride in the back seat. We did take one ride up front which is much less intense but allowed me to verify that all 4 trims are on. Jerry said he would be taking a nap while we rode up front. We rode Excalibur for awhile, then remembered we may want to try to at least finish one lap of the park before the crowds hit. We next headed to Wild Thing, along the way I noted they took away my favorite water fountains. Yes, you read it here, Cedar Fair is removing water fountains. These particular fountains are the large round barrel fountains that you had to stick your head into the large round opening in the wall, then deal with a water jet with high pressure. When we arrived at Wild Thing, the queue was overflowing out onto the midway but with no switchbacks in use. All told it took about 20-25 minutes until we were getting into that third seat with two trains on. Seat 3 used to be the ejector seat, just like Magnum, but that has been somewhat diluted. We climbed up the lift, down the first drop, up the second hill with a nice floater airtime moment on the drop into the turnaround area. Some interesting laterals in the turnaround, then the mid course brake hits hard. I recall there used to be several strong pops of air on the camel back hills of the return run. Now there are just minor hints of floater air. So its a nice tall fast coaster that gives a purely mediocre ride. We decided to head for something else. We entered the 1950's themed area, on past visits I noted how the High Test Arcade has signs outside advertising No Tilt Pinball Additve, but no pinball machines inside. This year they had one Whitewater pinball from Williams. I gave it a try, then we headed to Extreme Swing. Extreme Swing wins the reward for comical safety sign. One of the items on the sign reads "The manufacturer of this ride prohibits persons with fear of heights from riding" The queue area was half full, and even at that it didn't seem to take too long to get on the ride. Cedar Fair has added a short length of strap to the lapbar grab handle that connects with a caribiner to an eyebolt next to the seat. We sit down, lower the lap bar, fasten the clips and wait. To my surprise they check the lap bar, but do not push down further on it. The S&S swing takes your standard backyard swing and makes it about 150' tall. Even better than the backyard swing, instead of going up and then floating for a split second, then come back down, on this ride you go up, and whileyour body is still going up, the swing starts going back down, generating a very weird feeling of airtime. In short its a great ride, especially with a loose lap bar. Valleyfair runs a short ride cycle on this, so I have an action packed, if short ride. From Extreme Swing, we head to Power Tower. Jerry had told me that Power Tower had been given a pep talk and was performing better this year. We cross the bridge to Power Tower Island. The queue maze for the two Turbo Drop towers looked full, but he headed around the long trail to the single Space Shot tower. Itwas about a3-4 cycle wait to get on the Space Shot. While waiting we did notice that one of the two Turbo Drop towers wasn't running and started testing while we were waiting. We boarded Space Shot, and we rewarded with a very lifeless thrust that barely made it to the top of the tower, much less shoot you up the tower with some extra energy that caused airtime at the top. It wasn't a very noteworthy Power Tower ride, so we didn't even bother trying the Turbo Drop side with its long line. Our next stop was Riptide. Riptide was a walk on, we just had to wait for the cycle in progress to end. Riptide is a floorless Top Spin ride with water effects. While watching the group ahead of us I noted nobody wears their shoes while riding, and that they leave them on the ends of the ride deck. So, I removed my shoes and socks while waiting, then walked up to the ride barefoot. I noted a safe dry area at the end of the ride deck to place my footwear, then went back to my seat. Jerry was I think, the one person to keep his shoes on. Jerry also noted that every rider gets their very own personal water jet. The ride starts, and it wasn't as wet as I remembered it, I mean you get some decent blasts of water but it wasn't too bad. Of course we were on the side facing away from the midway, I think the midway side gets a lot wetter. At the end of ride, which inlucded a nice flip count, and a nice 5 flip manuever to end the ride, I collected my footwear and walked barefoot back out to the midway where I took the chance to put my stuff back on. We next headed to Seel Venom, I noted an African tribal dance show going on, it would seem that we would pass this show in action several times. On the way to Steel Venom, Jerry stops off at the Skyscraper. Jerry had purchased an upgrade for his season pass so his pass includes the upcharge rides like Skyscraper. I held Jerry's stuff, and Jerry took two rides on Skyscraper to dry off. I could have paid the $10 to ride it once, but after those two awesome Timber Falls skyscraper rides, I didn't want to spoil it with a mediocre Skyscraper ride here, After Jerry had fun we walked to Steel Venom. I was surprised to find it a walk on. We took several rides all in the back seat. I could get the tounge almost all the way into the buckle by myself but not far enough to get it to lock. Jerry pushed down on my harness and that was enough to get it. Plus, unlike Cedar Point, here the operators will help you. So I would sit the tounge into the buckle, then assume the Wicked Twister position of putting my hands on top of the shoulder bar and pressing down. Whatever, it worked. Steel Venom is an Intamin Impulse coaster, with bidirectional LIM's pushing you back and forth, First you launch forward, and don't go too far up the spike, then you go backwards, and get a thrust in the station, enough to make it to the top of the back spike then fall back down, and get another jolt forwards so you almost make it to the top of the twisted front spike, then back down, and a jolt backwards to the top of the back spike, where a holding brake holds you in place for afew seconds, then back down, through the station, most of the way up the front spike, then backwards and it smoothly parks you back in the station. As I said, we took numerous rides on this until the line reached back to the ride entrance. We then took a trip to the Challenge Park clubhouse for some free ice water. We next decided to have some roasted corn. Labor Day Weekend is also Green Giant Corn Feed Day at Valleyfair. You might want to sit down for this! We are at a Cedar Fair park and are going to get FREE roast corn. They set up the distribution point between the High Test Arcade and Atomic Pizza, not far from the parks normal Corn Roast booth (which was closed). They have it down to a science, you enter the line, they hand you a plastic bag, and then you walk up to the main station, where you see roasted corn rolling down a ramp into a vat of melted butter. Attendants pick up the corn and plae it into your bag. They use the mini cobbettes which are maybe 3 inches long, but there does not seem to be a limit on how much you can have. After you get your free corn you move over to the condiment table for napkins, salt, pepper, and lemon pepper. We had tried the lemon pepper here on past visits, so this year I opened up my bag and vigourously shook some lemon pepper out of the shaker into the bag. We then found a shaded spot to sit on a seat wall outside Coasters Drive In. Time to feast on roast corn, in a Cedar Fair park, for FREE. After enjoying the Corn Roast, we headed to High Roller. Jerry had once told me that if you ever see both trains on High Roller you probably don't want to be there. I look up and the storage track is empty. Yes, High Roller was running both trains. The queue was almost back to the entrance, but with no switchbacks in use. However, the park runs two trains very efficiently, so while it may have been the longest line I have ever waited in for High Roller, it was about the shortest wait I have ever had. We were soo headed to that back seat. High Roller was one of IAD/NAD's last coasters, so it runs IAD trains (not Century Flyers) that have been setup to allow flush loading. This means that instead of just having a lap bar control lever on the bak of each car, then a guarded channel along one side controlling all the bars for that car,each seat has its own control lever. The park has never automated the lap bars int he station, so for every ride, all 12 seats must be locked manually. We sit down in the undivided bench seat and fasten the retracting seat belt. I'm not sure if this still counts as an ACE Coaster Classic. It has retracting seatbelts but it is a shared belt. I'm not sure if retractors alone are enough to disqualify a ride, or if it gets a pass because it still uses a shared common belt. After the belts are fastened they tell everybody to put their hands in the air, then they come alongside doing a carefully arranged routine where they hit that rows lock lever, while lowering the bar, checking the bar, then moving on to the next seat, its a nice smooth operation. Bars checked we leave the station, and the rides automatic lap bar locker makes it presence known as it noisly kicks each seats lap bar control lever making sure its in the lock position. The idea was that someone though you would not need attendants, you would sit down, lower the bar, this device would lock it as you left the station, you rode the ride, come back and another device triggers the car side lap bar release as you reenter the loading area. Most parks have either automated the entire process in the station, or have at the least removed the automatic bar unlocker. Most have also removed the locking device, but there is no harm to keeping it and it is a good double check. In 2005, I actually got some nice floater air on this dogleg out and back wooden coaster. This time the turnaround trim brake was on heavy, and it seems like we hit a new trim brakeon the way back, the result being a pretty lackluster ride, even the one spot of ejector air on the final drop was reduced to a mild float. At the end of the ride we reenter the station, I start to lift up on the lap bar but it is still locked. Apparently the automatic unlock device has been removed here. We exit High Roller, and head to the front of the park for Corkscrew. The line for Corkscrew was entirely inside the station, but the seat queues are real long, so it was still several trains before we were getting into that back seat. While waiting Jerry pointed out the wireless access boxes for the on ride video system. Yes, of all the coasters at the park, they chose this one for the on ride video system. So we get into the train, lower the shoulder bars and fasten the belt from the seat front to the center of the shoulder bar. Corkscrew here is a little bit more interesting than Cedar Point's but not as good as Arrow's multi element coasters. Vertical loop, a turnaround, the corkscrew and thats about it. Short little ride, and at the end of the ride we return to the station. The bars unlock, and I raise my shoulder bar and attempt to get out of the train. I then notice there is an orange strap blcoking my way, thats the strap that is supposed to hold the shoulder bar close should the bar lock fail. Yeah, I feel reassured, now that I know the orange strap is long enough you can raise the bar alost all the way up with the belt fastened. Not only idiotic and un needed, this fix to a problem that doesn't exist doesn't even work! We exited the ride, and I looked at the on ride video booth, the video loop they kept replaying was just the first drop into the loop. We exited the ride and decided to head back to Mad Mouse to complete the coaster collection. Unfortunately, Mad Mouse did not cooperate, as it had a full queue maze, we next headed to Renegade, but it had a full queue. I decided that since I don't have many park photos, I would go out to the car get my camera, and then take photo safari through the park. After we got out to the car, we decided to take a trip to Culvers to get some food. (Reuben, fries, root beer, and a raspberry sundae for me). We reentered the parking lot and the attendant actually had a ticket ready to sell Jerry before noting we had a decal. We reentered the lot and parked almost right by where we left. I grabbed a camera and entered the park. We took a lap around the park taking photos, noting busy queues for the rides and having a good time. I noted the Excalibur queue ws almost back where it was Saturday, Renegade had a full queue, they were actually using all the rows on Looping Starship, and that Wheel of Fortune has card suit themed flags. I slso got some nice action shots of the rides, and after completing a lap around the park, Jerry held my camera while I took a ride on Chaos. It was only a 1 or 2 cycle wait for Chaos but it takes a long time due to fact that all the bars must now be released manually. When it came my time to ride, I did myself right, rocking the car at all the right times, and getting a nice flip filled ride. Chaos looks like an Enterprise at first glance, but after it starts to go up, the main wheel at the end of the boom tilts back, so the whelel spins at an odd angle, and the cars are free to rock back and forth, including all the way over. After Chaos, we headed out of the park, noting that the coaster lnes were just as bad as they were Saturday. We exited the parking lot and headed to a Mystery Destination. Soon, we arrive at the Mystery Destination, which is SS Billiards. I was a bit worried upon arrival at SS Billiards because, quite frankly, pool halls generally do not enjoy a reputation for being safe family friendly places. We walke through the front door, and standing mere feet from me is a row of about 6 pinball machines. I look to the left and there is a small selection of video games, and to the right I see some snack vending machines and the service counter. Along the side wall next to the service counter were 4 more pinball machines. I heaed past the first row of pinabll machines, where I saw one of those double ended pingames sitting on a service cart. The main part of the room was, of course, taken up by several pool tables, then along the back wall of the pool hall was a row of at least 10 maybe more pinball machines. All in all there were 23 pinball machines, just waiting for me. Yes, waiting for me as the place was totally empty. I have not seen this many pinballs in one place since maybe arcades in the 1970's. Unfortunately, I was indeed alone, and I did not see any change machines, We waited around for a little bit, and a few minutes later the operator came out of the restroom. At first, I don't think we knew how to take each other, other than the fact he had a quick witted sense of humor. All I needed do was compliment him on his pinball machine collection, and it was like we went from total strangers to best of friends. According to him there are less than a dozen true pinball arcades with the quantity of machines he has. I bought $5 worth of quarters and tried various machines. He has mostly new machines, but he does have a few older machines set up, like an Eight Ball Deluxe, and a Bonzai Run. All the machines were in excellent shape, and with the excellent condition comes a price. Some pin's were 50 cents, a fair number of them were 75 cents, and a couple of them were $1.00 He also has some extremely rare machines like Big Bang Bar, that he only operates on Saturdays as a way of preserving the life of this machine, I think only 3 were ever made. I may have been a good pinball player at one time, but my skills are gone. I want to assign some blame as pressure to perform, its just much harder to play when somebody is looking over your shoulder the whole time Yeah, thats the excuse I'll use. But for an hour, I was in pinball heaven. We would then return to Jerry's house, and he would introduce me to the game of Descent. Yes, I know its an older video game, but I was more of a Doom person. Descent is basically Doom played in a fighter jet. Fun game, which I'm sure is more enjoyable than Shocking Lazer Tag for instance, Well, tomorrow is the Minnesota State Fair, all day, and we want to get an early start, so I'll be signing off now. Link of photo album from Valleyfair! - http://www.flickr.com/gp/9542069@N02/R8E279 Next up: Minnesota State Fair - Watch for it!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007 TR: Minnesota/Wisconsin 2007 - Day 3 9/1/07 TR:Minnesota/ Wisconsin 2007 – Day 3 September 1, 2007 Wisconsin Dells, WI -> Valleyfair, MN T-Shirt of the day: Dark blue Holiday World Raven/Legend shirt *************************** As you recall from Day 2, we spent most of the day in Wisconsin Dells yesterday, and decided to stay the night. It really makes sense, as the trip is 4 hours one way, staying the night just helps break up the travel, and allows us to stay at night on Day 1. This is the second year we have used this schedule, and last time we sprang for the two day Mt. Olympus passes, and the second day at Mt. O was entirely too crowded. This year, we decided to have our morning wake up call on Avalanche at Timber Falls. As I mentioned in the Day 2 report: While researching ticket deals, we found a package on Timber Falls website, for $24.95 you could get a POP wristband, and one ticket to ride Skyscraper. This same package would run you $29.95 in the park. That was deal enough for us, but then they had a "Buy 3 tickets, and get the 4th free" promotion. Doing the math of that deal that meant that each of us could have a morning wake up call at Timber Falls for only $12.50 each, including a Skyscraper ride that runs $20 by itself. ($10 with a valid POP armband). A check of the website revealed the park was set to open at 9AM, but we had our doubts that the rides would be ready that early. Accordingly, we did not check out of the hotel until 9:30. After checking out, we took a ride around the Dells scooping out the best gas bargain. As it turns out the best gas bargain was at a little independent station near Timber Falls. You may recall we were staying by Timber Falls, so most likely any money saved by finding the best gas deal was burned away driving around town. But it gave us an excuse to see the town. There was a big college football game going on somewhere nearby today, and driving down the strip we was more than a few over excited, and maybe drunk, college age people hanging out car windows hooting and hollering as they drove down the strip. You may recall Timber Falls is located next door to Pirate’s Cove mini golf. We managed to pull into the wrong driveway, and although the Pirate Cove gold looked well landscaped, they just don’t have a wood coaster. So we drove through their lot, I noted the Jolly Roger pirate flags with a red background instead of the traditional black background, and we pulled out the other exit, and drove around next door to Timber Falls. If the park was having a slow night last night, it was absolutely deserted this morning. The only cars pulling in were either staff coming to work, or being dropped off for work. We waited in the car till about 9:50, then we decided to go up to the front counter and see what is going on. I mean, if the rides don’t open till noon, we would have to figure out a Plan B. We walked up to the counter and met some guy who looked like he might be the manager. From him we learned that the mini golf does, in fact, open at 9AM, ad the rides open at 10AM. Perfect timing, and the Skyscraper will open at 11AM. The manager scanned our tickets and gave us our wristbands, but even he seemed a little surprised when we pointed out to him that our tickets included the Skyscraper ride. Must not be a common option that people select online. While we waited for the rides to open, he offered to get us set up for a game of mini golf, and Jerry was fast to respond he had no interest in mini golf. Instead, we used the 10 minutes until park opening to take photographs. . In the front center of the park is the clubhouse with tickets, merchandise, snack bar, arcade, restrooms and a second floor observation deck. Behind the clubhouse there are 2 mini golf courses, wrapped through and around the mini golf courses is the parks log flume ride. The Avalanche coaster runs around the perimeter of this area, and just outside the bounds created by the coaster are some bumper boats, and sitting out in the parking lot is a Skyscraper. Accross the street from the park are two more mini golf courses they own, and then the river. On the other side of the park is a competing mini golf operation. Right at 10AM, we head right up the stairs and ramp to the Avalanche station. Avalanche is a triangular shaped coaster that basically runs around the perimeter of the park. We arrive at the station, and head for the back car of a waiting train. Queue gates open and we board the 3 car 2-bench PTC train. Bars checked, we pull out of the station, left turn to the lift, up the lift, first drop, up into the second turn to the left, then a few speed hills. The third turn is a signature element, its a turn that is just so wrong that it feels so right. You pull into an underbanked curve that tries to manhandle the train through a 270 degree turn. Did I mention the apex of the turn is the top of a hill, so you go into this curve, and it slams you to the right side of the train, then you come over the hill, get lifted out of your seat by the airtime, then the train finishes the curve and it slams you back to the left, as it puts you back down in your seat. It's a great element, and if you didn't like that, you'll love the next speed hill with ejector air that slams you up into the lap bar, holds you there for a second or two, then slams you back down into the seat. You do another left turn as you fly by the station, for the second trip around the park, you ride closer to the ground with a series of speed hills for the first two sides, each one with nice airtime.. The third side on the second lap around is mostly concerned with a final dip and rise up into the brake run. It's the kind of coaster that doesn't look like much from the road, but once you ride it, it will hook you in one ride. I also have to officially dispell the rumor that a trim brake was added to this ride, that's not true. The grapevine has it that that the park though they bit off more than they could chew with the upkeep of this ride, but at least they are still running it. We basically spent the next hour just riding Avalanche over and over and over and over again. During this time, we got a demonstration that Timber Falls knows they can't compete with Mt. Olympus with rides, but they can compete by having much friendlier staff, and more customer friendly policies. For example, you can ride as long as no one wants your seat, and if someone does want your seat, you can either find a new seat, or exit back to the load side. Did I mention we had tons of rides, like an hour straight. We had near ERT conditions all morning. Occasionally a family would come up to the station, hand in some ride tickets ($6 each), take a ride and then leave, but for the most part we had the ride all to ourselves. Shortly after 11AM, after we had confirmed we saw life over at Skyscraper, we exited Avalanche and headed back to the clubhouse. Instead of going directly to the Skyscraper, we headed through the arcade, and out the back door. This leads you to the Timber Falls Log Ride. We walk up to and get in a waiting boat. I admit, I was a bit surprised when Jerry came in after me, last time we were here, he sat the log ride out. He did, however, make sure I sat up front. We got into the log, and you leave the station and make a slight jog to the left, and go up the first lift. After going up the first life you immediately go own the first drop which helps gives speed to the log. The second part of the ride concerns itself with the fake volcano in the middle of the park. (It even erupts occasionally). The log first goes through a cave inside the volcano, then goes around the outside of the volcano. After it has wrapped itself around the outside of the volcano, you start up the much taller second lift that runs along the back of the park. A turn to face the front of the park, and you go up one more slight rise, past the operator’s booth then down the big drop. It’s a very well themed log ride for such a small park, and its actually a nice long fun ride. Water damage was minimal. At the end of the ride, they offered to send us around again, but we declined that offer, and decided to exit the ride. I had offered to switch places in the log with Jerry, but Jerry wasn’t interested in that either. So we exited the log to the infield side, and then climbed across the bridge that takes you over the trough. That done, it was time for the spin dryer, otherwise known as the Skyscraper. He was still getting the Skyscraper ready, but was willing to take us for a ride. Wait a minute, it’s the same guy as last night, and he remembers us. When he commented that we were back so soon, I explained the great ticket offer we had. We first stowed everything in the car, then walked over to the Skyscraper where there was immediate seating available, and we were escorted directly to the ride deck. The ride deck consists of the loose article bins, operator console, and the access way to the ride itself. We step off the wood deck onto the metal platform and then hop into the chairs provided. It takes some time to get ready to ride Skycraper thanks to the complex harness arrangement. After the operator makes sure you are sitting all the way back in the chair, no slouching, he proceeds to strap you in. The harness system on Skyscraper is similar to but not totally like having two 3 point automotive harnesses, one located on either side of you. They key difference being the belts are not on retractors and are manually adjusted. So I sit down and the operator pulls two thick pieces of black padding out from the sides of the seat and ask me to hold them over my lap. He then reaches over my right shoulder and proceeds to cross that strap across my chest so that it fastens into to a clip/buckle mounted on the left side of the seat, this is also connected to a lap belt. He proceeds to tighten this until it is snug but not tight. He then reaches above the left shoulder and pulls out a similar looking belt that runs diagonally across your chest and fastens to a clip located on the right side of the seat. This means the two shoulder belts form a large "X" across your chest, and you effectively have double lap belts for added redundant protection. The operator proceeds to pull these belts snug but not tight. He then takes a moment to make sure everything looks to be correct with the safety harness, and then goes in and yanks on all the adjustors with all of his might to get all the belts as skin tight as he can get them. You then realize those two big black pads sit directly under the buckles and adjustors and they protect your legs from any nasty gashes from the buckles. This would also be a good reason to make sure your pockets are empty to make sure the thick straps don't crush any hard objects into your legs. The last step is to take the anti sub strap and to affix it to the front center of the lap straps. Men are thankful this belt is not tightened. He proceeded to step next chair and harness Jerry to his seat in the same manner. After all the harnessing the operator takes a step back to make one final visual inspection while thinking "Now I have you two right where I want you, you guys aren't getting out of those chairs until I let you, so for the next few minutes you belong to me and whatever I can dish out" While he was strapping us in, he had this big grin on his face that said, "I'm gonna have so much fun!" In, fact he looked even more excited than last night. He started the ride, and instead of going right into doing the usual loops on this giant propeller ride, he starts by rocking us back and forth, not unlike how a looping ship ride starts. Eventually we start making complete loops, but still not much action. A few loops later, and he starts to play with the speed control, and we find ourselves flipping almost continuously. We do this for several rotations, we then stop at the top of the ride, and pause for a breather while the ride starts shaking left and right, huh? Then it was time to do it all in reverse, lots more flips, and as we came into the loading dock he started jogging the main arm back and forth. We then come into the station and he lets us off the ride, clearly quite pleased with himself. The difference was the time he let the ride go much longer, which meant a lot more flips. It was also different in that instead of staying skin tight, my harness loosened up significantly, not dangerously loose, mind you but loose enough to slide around a bit in the chair which adds to the excitement of the ride. After Skyscraper, we go back up to Avalanche to say bye, and had a short 15 minute mini session on Avalanche. At around 11:30, we decided to head back to Minneapolis, but not before taking a little ride over to Mt. Olympus’ parking lot to take photos of Hades, Zeus, Top Secret, Riverview Park, and both the Original and Army DUCKS. Leaving Mt. Olympus, Jerry knew better than to try to make a left turn onto the main drag, sowe rode to the other end of the strip, and looped back around using a different freeway entrance. We then headed back to Minneapolis, and as if they aren’t enough waterpark resorts in the Dells, Jerry pointed out a new one that is just an hour closer. Not much goes on during the ride back, except a stop at Arby’s As we get closer to Valleyfair, the traffic starts getting heavy, and Jerry notes it is a bit heavier than he would expect. We soon arrive at Valleyfair, and take one look at the parking lot. Jerry said, “If it weren’t for you being here, I would be turning this car around and going home” Yep, the place looked insanely jammed. Yes, I know it’s a Saturday and wonderful weather out, but with both the State Fair and Rennasiance fairs in session you might think they would have a slow weekend. Nope. We pull into the lot, and using Jerry’s window sticker, avoid the $10 parking fee. One of the advantages of the window sticker is that Jerry merely slowed to a crawl at the toll plaza and was waved on through. Despite the crowded parking lot, we find a space near where Jerry would park anyway. We then make a stop to deal with some issues that come from 4 hour car rides, then I know better than to head to the season pass gate, so I take my Maxx Pass directly to the Guest Service office. Using the Maxx Pass was simple, they wrote my name on a log sheet and checked the box marked “Kings Island”. That’s it, they have no way of verifying your identity as the pass had no photo and they had no monitor sitting there. They next open the secret panel, and I enter the park through Guest Services. Once inside the park, the fact the park was crowded was confirmed by the packed midways. We headed straight to Rennegade, which is almost but not quite in the back of the park. The park has done a good job of keeping Renegade’s track plan a secret, from the park midway, all you can see is the lift hill, and the final part of the ride where you circle the station, then the queue area before heading to the final brakes. The entrance and exit sit next to each other as two cutouts in the track structure in this final pass. We enter the queue and find a pretty full queue maze, with all but one switchback in use. Jerry estimated the queue at around 45 minutes and was pretty close. The first section is a set of switchbacks positioned inside the final turnaround, you then go on a long straight section from the final turn to just before the lift approach. The queue then jogs to the left, then goes through a tunnel under the lift approach, and then heads to the transfer track building, You then go into a opening in the side of the transfer track building and into a long straight wide hallway. I mentioned that this hallway, at least 6-8 people wide, must be a line jumping nightmare. Jerry said it isn’t, and the park is nice enough to put in fans so there is a nice cross current to keep you cool. You step up to get into the building, then at the other end there is another step down, which seems to serve no purpose other than a tripping hazard. You see, about 10’ after you take that one step down, you go up the stairs to the station area, where you enter the station roughly in the middle. As we entered the station, Jerry asked if I wanted the View or the Experience. I chose the Experience and we headed to the back car. Within two trains, I was climbing into the back car of the milinneum flyer train. I really like GCIs rolling stock, particularly after riding PTCs the day before. The GCI trains feel like sofas on wheels. Jerry had mentioned that at first there were problems with the lap bars and larger riders, but this seems to be sorted out now. I did notice the park went with individual seatbelts, where other GCI’s I have ridden used shared belts. So, we are seated in the train, and we leave the station a turn to the left takes up to and up the lift. We go over the lift and down the first drop, the first drop is the rides signature element, as first you make a right turn going down the drop, then a left curve to straighten the drop back out. It is an evil first drop, at the base of the drop you turn left, and go over a speed hill that produces some nice floater airtime. You then start dong the GCI typical ride of going around a series of curves while going gracefully up and down in this twister like section. John Allen said it best “Curves don’t do anything for people”. After a glass smooth twisty ride, you reemerge next to the lift hill, and then make a right turn to go around the station with a big swooping trademark GCI turnround right by the midway, the next section is so close to the midway the only thing separating you is a metal grate fence. Time for a speed hill places in just the right spot to become the rides focal point from the midway. You then go through an elongated turnaround that wraps around the queue area, and the on ride photo is taken just before the last curve. You then head into the station where they have a combination of magnetic and traditional braking to ensue a very smooth stop in the bake run/transfer area. Then when the station ahead of you is clear, there is one last turnaround into the station. It’s a neat ride, but Jerry seemed offended that I only give it a B. Sorry, I just need more airtime with my curves, that said the ride could be very reridable if the chance presented itself. We exited the ride, and headed back to Excalibur. Excalibur: The Coaster in Exile,there is never a significant wait for Excalibur. We are stopped on the way back to Excalibur by some of Jerry’s friends, who deliver the bad news. The members of the family who decided to ride Excalibur have been in line for almost an hour. Yikes. Excalibur is a neat Arrow mine ride, but it’s not an hour neat, particularly since the ride itself is pretty short. The problem is that they were only running 1 train on it. A look at the queue was frightening as it was backed up to the Thunder Canyon exit. Jerry and his friends shared the opinion that this may be the most crowded they have seen Valleyfair in a long time. Clearly, Excalibur was out of the picture. We did go back to ride Renegade with Jerry’s friends. I took a fair amount of grief, as instead of going for a courtesy ice water, I instead went with a Lemom/Lime Chill. I also forgot to ask about rumors at the Lemon Chill stand. Refreshments in hand, we entered the now totally full Renegade queue, a wait which was made even longer as the ride went down for maintenance for about 15 minutes just as we were nearing the end of the switchback area. This time, when we got to the top of the stairs, Jerry’s friends headed to the back car, and we headed to the front car, and joined the front seat queue, and waited that out. I then got my Renegade with visuals ride. Yeah, that first drop is even more evil looking up front. We then decided to go over and see how things were going at Wild Thing. One look at the queue and we were soon heading away from Wild Thing. Extreme Swing had a queue overflowing its queue area, Power Tower’s line looked nasty as well. It was already nearing 7PM on an 8PM close. We gave up hope on riding much of anything else tonight, but then the goal was to ride Renegage, just in case it wasn’t open on Sunday,and we rode Renegade, so the objective for the visit was met. I noted a relatively short line for Riptide, but Riptide was in douse the riders mode, and the sun was going down. I think I’ll save Riptide for the morning. I was more surprised that when we walked by Enterprise, it was a total walk on. Hey, I can’t pass this up, so we walked right onto Enterprise. I walked around to the next available car, proceeded to get in and immediately slammed the car door closed, then proceeded to work on fastening the belt that goes from the car door to the buckle on the back of the seatback. Jerry, who was in the car behind me, kept screaming “No!”. Don’t know what got into him, but we proceeded to have an incident free fun Enterprise ride. On our way off the Enterprise, Jerry proceeded to lecture me that at Valleyfair, they are anal retentive and don’t want you closing the cage doors yourself, and that he had a ride operator give him grief about it on a past ride. Oh well. We then walked down by Steel Venom to get greeted by another frightening looking queue. I did go ahead and try the test seat while I was down there, and it said I could ride. Things are looking up. I also noted they put their 3 point challenge way down by Steel Venom which seems out of the way, and that theis is still only $5. After that, we decided to just give up for the night and come back tomorrow. We headed out of the park and beat the traffic out, and went on back to Jerry’s house for the night Coming up next: Day 4: Valleyfair! And a Mystery Destination! Watch for it!

TR: Minnesota/Wisconsin 2007 - Day 2 8/31/07 Trip Report: Minnesota/Wisconsin 2008 - Day 2 August 31, 2007 Wisconsin Dells - Mt. Olympus, Timber Falls Wisconsin Dells, WI T-Shirt of the Day: 2007 Holiwood Nights shirt - "Attack of the Airtime Monster" ******************************************** "My Big Fat Greek Theme Park" Here begins Day 2 of the trip. As noted at the end of Day 1, we are starting somewhere between 4:30-5 AM getting up, getting prepared, and getting ready for the four hour trip to Wisconsin Dells. Which we do, and somewhere between 5:30-5:45 we are out on the road. Our departure time is such that we will be able to clear downtown Minneapolis just before morning rush hour, even if that does mean having the sun in our eyes again. We cross into Wisconsin, and here I admit I slept most of the rest of the way to the Dells. I did note the highway patrol was in full force in its role as the Wisconsin Welcoming Committee, seeing as they like to handle traffic tickets for out of state drivers on a cash right now basis. You may recall when ACE had an event in the Dells a couple years ago, they felt the need to publish a strongly worded warning about the speed trap nature of driving in Wisconsin. No such bad news would befall us, however, and at around 9:40am we are pulling off the interstate and heading into Wisconsin Dells. We did not, however, rush directly to the park. We were going to spend the night in Wisconsin Dells, and our hotel, like many in the area, offers package deals which supposedly include "Free Mt. Olympus admission for every registered guest" Well, we added the Mt. Olympus option after already having reserved a room there, so we know exactly how much those "free" tickets cost us, and we also knew that was the best rate we could find. So, we stopped off at the hotel, picked up our tickets (labeled "Complimentary" of course) and also found out our room was ready for immediate occupancy. So we also grabbed room keys, got back into the car, then headed to Mt. Olympus. WIsconsin Dells is a big toursity area centered around the Dells, which are reportedly a wonder of nature in their beauty. It also contains craft stores, and a lot of tourist attractions. The Dells can also be referred to as a tourist trap, and I have heard the term "vacum cleaner for your wallet" used. So make a right at the intersection that has two mini golf places (one of those with a rollercoaster). then go down the road, past the deer park, a waterpark, Riverview Park amusement park (aka the carnival that setup in the Dells and never left), a haunted house, a fun house, "Top Secret" - and who knows whats in that upside down white house, they never tell you, but people still line up. Pickup point for the Original Dells Ducks, Extreme World - full of all kinds of extreme attractions, like bungee, SCAD and more. Oh here it is on the right, growing bigger every time I see it: Mt. Olympus. It has been fun over the years watching the place go from being an FEC to a theme park. It used to be just a go kart place, but it seems they have always been expansionistic. Before I arrived on their property the very first time, they had already acquired Crazy King Ludwigs, which was a competing go-kart operator next door, and had owned another go-kart place in another part of town, Big Chiefs Kart World. They started drawing the attention of the coaster enthusiasts when they started installing wood coasters in and around their go-kart tracks. A name change to Big Chiefs Kart and Coaster World. But these weren't tame little wood coasters, these were noteworthy coasters that grabbed the enthusiast community by storm, causing many to discover Wisconsin Dells for the first time, and to see what this little go-kart place was doing. (Other than keeping Custom Coasters real busy) Between my first and second trips to the park, they had managed to buy out the outdoor water park that was behind them, the indoor water park that was next door, and the hotel that was associated with that indoor water park. Thus, the property changed to "Mt. Olympus Water and Theme Park", the property was gated, and a gate charge levied, even to those who had no intention in partaking in the attractions, a massive parking lot was added, and lots of general improvements like new restrooms (people who remember the old Big Chiefs restrooms are still cheering), and Crazy King Ludwig's castle was rethemed to look like an ancient greek building, with shops and eateries. On the ride side, both a water coaster and the parks 4th wood coaster (and Gravity Groups very first coaster) were built. For this visit, I hear they have brought in some more rides, added an indoor theme park, and added another rollercoaster. This time, it was a steel coaster, a Zamperla spinning mouse coaster to be exact We pull into the massive parking lot, made even more massive as I think there are signs that a divider between their parking lot, and the one for Top Secret have been removed. I wonder just how many more of the town's attractions the Mt. Olympus people own that they haven't admitted to owning. I should point out, though, that its the massive FREE parking lot. We pull in and find a space, there is also evidence that the parking lot has already been restriped with a different traffic pattern. We were parked near the main drop into the tunnel on Hades, and to my right I noted a Group Sales office. Some of you may recall that on my last 2005 trip, two-day tickets were sold out of Group Sales, which was only available in a little building on the waterpark side of the property. I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, parks actually read my TR's because I am starting to see some of the problems I talk about in my TR's corrected. We head to the left, and I notice a new gift shop has been built, in the parking lot. I didn't make the connection at first, but I should have. We pass the new gift shop and head to the impressive entrance plaza that was built for the Mt. O transformation. Big greek stately looking plaza with the statue of a Greek warrior on top. Because of the way Mt. O operates, even though we still had advance tickets we still had to stop at the ticket plaza. We found an open window with no waiting, and soon our tickets were taken, scanned, and wristbands issued. We even got receipts which, to no surprise, claim we used comp tickets with a value of $0.00. So I follow Jerry's lead and use the window ledge of an unopened window as a way to facillitate appying the wristband to yourself. (Place band upside down on ledge, put arm on top of wristband, then you bring the ends up and fasten.) That chore done, we entered the park. On my last visit, I had noted the park entrance was down an insanely steep hill that ran from the parking lot to and area that was the core of the old Big Chiefs. That path was fenced off, and a new path was created that ran alongside the parking lot behind Zeus. Ah now I get it, this new path takes you around to the rear of that new gift shop in the parking lot. At this point there are three from the parking lot: the one from the main ticket plaza on one side, the path down from the group sales building on the other side, and the park exit path in the center. As you have probably concluded the park exit path runs directly into the gift shop. This is just more of that transformation into a full fledged theme park. At the gate they have one person sitting there to inspect incoming guests for wristbands, and to divert all exiting guests into the gift shop. There is a chain and stanchion barrier directing exiting guests into the gift shop, but they divert all those who try to beat the system. From, this point the path turns and goes downhill. I soon realize this new entry/exit path becomes what used to be the Zeus entrance ramp. I wonder if part of this decision is that from what I have seen Zeus isn't very popular, and with the entrance path moved, I wonder how many people are about to do what we did, which was to walk directly up those Zeus entrance stairs as we entered the park. So up all those stairs we go, through the turnstile, and head to that back car. We noted the front of the back car had been roped off, literally with some multi colored yellow rope blocking the seat queue, and some purple rope tied through and around the seatbelts and lap bars keeping the bars lowered at all times. Whoever though white is a good color choice for a coaster train should see this train. A white train would seem to require almost daily washings, which this train is not appearing to receive. We climb into that back seat, drop the ratcheting lapbars, fasten the shared seat belt, and prepare for a ride on Zeus. Zeus drops right out of the station, and then a turnaround to the left brings the ride to the chain lift. Up the chain lift you go, then a turn to the left. Zeus is an out and back style coaster which means basically we are going to go over a series of hills on the way out, turnaround, then come back over another series of hills, then make a right turn into the brakes, then there is a drop between the brakes and the station. Zeus was reported, upon opening to feature lots of floater air on the way out, then a couple strong airtime moments on the way back. That may still be the case, and it would work well if it were a smooth ride, but the ride seems to bottom out and pothole at the bottom of every drop. Penalty flag on the play for unnecessary roughness. Zeus, has not aged very well. From Zeus we exit down the stairs into what I call Exit Land. Both Hades annd Zeus have their exit stairs right by each other, then share a common midway width path back down to the main path. Back at the main path, we take a right, and head to Hades. You know, someone once quipped that diplomacy is defined as telling somebody to go to hell, and have them looking forward to the trip. So it is here, as we pass under the impressive HADES archway, then we pass under the cut through under the first drop. Here I notice the park has gone with new safety rules and height signs. What I was impressed about is they used the style where they put the various warnings on cartoon character signs, like the big parks used to do before they started making ride safety signs look like a scary legal document. One of the signs indicated the wait would be an hour if it extended back to the sign, given the way Mt. Olympus operates rides, I would say that is an understatement. We enter the queue, which takes the form of a ramp up through the infield of the ride, where you turn and go up a much steeper ramp, then you turn again, and the path in front of you gets much steeper in the form of 4 flights of stairs. More than a couple people refer to this place as Stairmaster Park. The line was already halfway down the stairs. When we got to the top, you can notice where they have fenced off the queue gates for the last car they never have installed. Mt. O is not known for doing fences very fell, and the stairway for Hades takes you quite close to the tracks. I see they have used the finest cheap looking plastic latice work as fencing. This same plastic latice work has been installed in the station from the railing up to the ceiling. For our first ride, we opt to hold out for the back seat. This allowed me to witness a truly scary sight, and that is the way the ride is operated. Everything is fine until they dispatch the train. Then the person on the unload side working the main console, and the person on the load side, working the co-dispatch console, both leave their consoles, walk over to the sides of the track channel, then sit down with their feet sitting on the track rails holding a conversation. They continue to do this until the train comes back to the brake run, then they get up just before the train rolls down the drop from the brake run into the station. Also, from what i witnessed, no button presses are needed to stop the train in the brakes, advance it from the brakes to the station, then stop it in the station. The ride is automated as far as it can be, which leads to spells where you have bored ride operators. Perhaps a change in park policy allowed this to happen. You see, Mt. Olympus used to be a pay per ride park, (with POP plans offered), and that time when the coaster trains were out on the course, used to be when the load side operator would allow people past the turnstile after checking for tickets/wristands and other ride restriction. It probably one of those situations that is safe 99.9% of the time, even if big name parks would cringe if they saw their ride attendants act that way. However, I am thinking of that 1 in a thousand freak acciddent, I know I would not want to be around the cycle the brake run fails, and send the train barelling into the station. This appears, though to be standard Mt. O operating procedure for Hades, at least when there are no other staff members up on the platform, when that happens, they suddenly know how to behave. So, enough with that, its time to ride, we take our seats, ratchet bars, shared seatbelt. Wait, I thought this ride opened with individual seatbelts. Hades starts with a pre lift sequence that has more action than some full length wood coasters. You start with a drop right out of the station, then a curve to the right, back up a little bit, then down into an extended double down with a turn in the middle of it. You then curve around some more then its up a short hill, into the rides fourth drop. Thats four good drops before the lift hill, with good air on three of them. You then curve around again to start up the life. I see they worked out the math, as the lift chain does not go all the way to the bottom of the lift hill, it only goes down as far as they need. We then climb the lift hill which goes over the station roof, and then, "Hands Up Everybody!", its the main drop, which is set so that you are in clear view of the parking lot and the people driving down the main drag. It seems natural for people to raise their hands here, even if it's the only time on the whole ride. You can also, almost always see people standing in the parking lot taking photos of trains coming down the drop. Here comes the signature element, the long tunnel under the parking lot. This is not your ordinary coaster tunnel, as this one has drops, hills, curves, and a 90 degree baked section within it, Welcome to the underground coaster. At the other end of the tunnel, you come blasting out for a brief above ground moment. Up the turnaround hill, then a curving drop, then another hill and a wondefully airtime laden drop through greek temple ruins back into the tunnel. This area is the best coaster billboard for a park, thinking outside the park, the coaster leaves the park, goes under the parking lot, and comes out to do a few tricks right up alongisde the main drag. What better advertisement, than to see people having fun. It's a genius move. Anyway, its back through the tunnel for more surprises, and when you emerge from the other side, you go up a hill that runs right alongside the main drop, except not as high obviously. You do curve and go through a wonderful set of headchoppers as you dive through the lift hill structure. For some reason, I thought this hill had airtime, but it doesn't. You then dive under the station, giving the station platform quite a shake in the process. You finish up with an extended figure 8 element that circles the queue area and the brake run. This part of the ride exhibits some unbelievable shuffling, and has been termed by some people as why the ride has gotten too rough. Funny, I thought this section was rough and shuffled when I rode it two years ago, not really a noticeable change. You know its Gravity Group when the train finishes the course on a fast paced upward journey to the brake run. Pause, then its down a little drop into the station. We then exit the ride and head down the stairs to the exit area. Well, after 4 hours of travel and 2 coaster rides, it was time to get a little business taken care of, so we headed to what was the front of the park. I'm not sure I can call it the front of the park anymore. When it was Big Chiefs, you entered between Pegasus and the kiddie rides area, then when the entrance was redone, you entered between the kiddie rides area and Cyclops, but still in the same general location. Now you enter between Cyclops and Zeus, which means that the long dead end trail to the wood coasters can now be considered the park entrance. Does this mean the front of the park is now back by Zeus? If you define the front of the park as where you enter, I would sat it does. This means that as you enter, Zeus is on the entrance path, and at the bottom, the Hades rollercoaster and Poseidon Go-Kart track are to the right, and everything else is to the left. A word about go-karts, I have tried Mt. Olympus' go karts and have found them to be slow with non responsive steering, and generally suck, I also note they tend to have long slow lines, so I just sort of ignored them. Coming down the hill towards the core, we passed by a play area that looked like the deck of a pirate ship, totally random there, and then walking further down the hill, we noted there is a consession stand in the side of the ship. The ship actually does make some sense, thematically as it sits between Poseidon and Dive to Atlantis. Next we pass the aforementioned watercoaster, Dive to Atlantis. It's ride has been clocked at over 15 minutes, and with only 3 or so 4 or 5 passenger boats at most, its an arduously long wait. I have the credit, so I skipped it this year. Past Dive to Atlantis is a shaded sitting area and then a booth that used to servce as the main ticket booth. Now, I think it still does a small business in ride tickets, (per the Dells Price Guide, a single amusement ride ticket at Mt. O can be purchased for $6.50 on top of the $10 general admission *spectator* charge. ) However, the main use for this booth is actually a relatively cutting edge idea, "Cash on Wristband". This idea is you get a barcoded wristband, then you can make a deposit to a house account represented by that barcode. Then you enjoy your day in the park, and whenever you need to spend money you can just have the attendant charge it to your wristband. I did note, that at the end of the day, they advertise you can cash out any unspent balance on your wristband. That's a really neat concept, given the fact that the park has a major water park component, and the ability to give kid's money they can only spend, not lose. We then come into what used to be the core of the park, the ride ticket booth we just passed, the original gift shop (still open but it doubles as a coffee bar), concession stands, restrooms, and an eating area. What used to the the main park entrance has also been fenced off at the bottom of the hill, and now the kiddieland, Torjan Horse go-karts, and Pegasus coaster are in a dead end area, instead of being at the park entrance. So we take care of business, then walk down behind the concession stand. In this area there is a cluster of go-kart tracks (yawn again, however I do note that go-kart tracks seem to being quietly removed, like Medusa's Drop). In front of the go-kart tracks, the park has added a small 4-seat model of the popular S&S Screamin Swing ride, which the park calls "Apollo's Swing" Apollo's Swing was not yet open for the day, with a crew working on it, focusing mainly on the on-ride video system. The bad news, is this ride is not included in the Pay One Price admission plan. Even worse, I heard at the start of the season, it was going for an almost reasonable $5 per ride, to an obnoxious $10 per ride. I have a very hard time for paying $10 to ride this ride, when later this weekend, I can a similar ride for free. But, the ride is not yet open, so lets keep moving down the path. We decide to take a trip through the park. The next ride we passed was Little Titans, which is the park's children's coaster. Luckily, I was able to snag this credit before the park discovered the "You must be shorter than or accompanied by" rule. Right after Little Titans I recall on my last visit the park had a grand midway that seemed to go nowhere, just a dead end. Now it makes sense, as the midway runs right into the new outdoor waterpark expansion. We dodge the waterpark expansion and headed to the right. We pass one of the parks numerous "Information" booths, these are dubious information booths, as normally guest services booth don't need to be flashed with "Have dinner on us, ask us how!" signs. Yep, these booths are really time share booths just waiting to ambush the unwitting tourist. We continued to the next major turn in the path, here are some more go-kart tracks, and remarkably the batting cages remain. I notice in the corner of the park, a DUCK is parked. In this case a DUCK is the amphibious vehicle. Upon closer look, it appears that it is one of the Dells Army Duck. That would make sense, as Original Dells Ducks has a boarding point right across the street from the park. Next to the DUCK was a wooden stairway pushed up to it to facilitate loading, and I note a similar wooden stairway sitting just a few feet away. Also next to the duck, is a ticket booth, as this is an extra charge attraction. It looked as if the idea was to board the duck there, but I noticed the duck parked there did not seem to move all day. Either there was very little interest in riding the Ducks, or they merely sell tickets at that booth, and refer you to a meet up point elsewhere in town. I like the idea of having pickups in the park, as that keeps the guests in the park longer, a brilliant move on the part of Mt. Olympus? Why let your guests leave to go take one of the Dells most popular tours and then risk them not coming back, when you can get a cut of the ticket money, have them board the duck right in your park, and most importantly have them dropped back off in your park. I note the park map is fluid, even the one on the website is not quite up to date. Appaently the Duck pickup was in front of the park by Pegasus. The park, and Extreme World had also both advertised that the extreme attractions were coming to Mt. O but apparently that did not happen. We continued around the park to the area where Crazy King Ludwig's castle was. On my last trip, this was the line between the ride side and water side of the park. The castle became a greek themed building, and was filled with shops and eateries I notice this year the arcade in th center has been removed and replaced with a locker room for the water park. More to the point, the little pond in the front of the park, has been replaced by Poseidon's Rage, a fairly agressive sounding wave pool. (Waves up to 9' high). Also in the front of the park is Triton, a waterslide tower. These waterpark attractions are a fair walk from the remained of the outdoor waterpark, and this waterpark expansion area as even been known to have different hours. In terms of rides, I notice the Disk'O that was sitting in front of the "Shops at Mt. Olympus" building has been moved elsewhere in the park. The Robocoaster is still there, but it was labeled as not going to operate today. Bummer, that. I did note the Robocoaster is no longer part of the POP package. We continued along the main pathway and passed three games of skill. The noteworthy thing here is the price, all the games were 3 tries for $1. Sure, the prizes looked to be on the dinky size, but what to you expect for 33.3 cents per try. It's an interesting business model in times where parks are up to $3 per try for a midway game. It will be interesting to see how it works out for them. Just past the game joints is the new Parthenon building. The Parthenon is the much touted "indoor theme park" So, we stepped inside. Inside the building, the most notable feature is the Zamperla spinning mouse coaster called "Opa!" Opa! sits the to left and takes up most of the left half of the building. In the front on the left hand side is one of those dubious info booths, restrooms, and vending machines. I suppose in the summer, they just use vending machines in here, as you have the big food building almost right next door. To the right when you enter is a lazer tag, and an arcade. The arcade had no pinball, but I noted it has those Deal or No Deal machines. Down the center aisle is a Zamplera mini tea cups and a Moser Spring Ride, as well as a karaoke video booth. Along the back wall dead ahead is a Zamperla Central Park, to the right is a bumper car ride. Don't get too excited the cars look real slow and the ride doesn't look that interesting. To the left is a climb around attraction and the Zamplerla Disk'O. Also in this area I noted a replacement socks vending machine. Why is this not over by Dive To Atlantis? The Disk'O operator looked bored, so we went over to see if it was open. The Disk'O is sandwiched between the side wall of the building and Opa!, which sort of sets up a queue area be default. The attendant comes down, opens the gate and admits us into the ride. I note that it looks like lots of seats are marked Out of Order. We find two seats that appear to be open. Disk'O consists of a U shaped track with a big round spinning disk ride car in. The round ride car has 24 seats facing outward. The neat thing is the seats themselves, which look like motorbike seats. You straddle the seat, and lean up against the front of the seat, then an automatic combination safety bar/backrest comes out of the base of the seat, raises up and claps tight against your back. Thats how its supposed to work, but it took a couple tries until Jerry and I both found seats that worked properly. Looking out at the track, a good deal of the abbraisive/traction surface on the ride rails appeared to be worn clean off, which meant the ride squeals some as it gets started. The ride didn't seem to spin as fast as i remembered it, but just wait halfway through the ride, the direction of rotation reverses, and then as the ride goe on the ride acts more and more maniacal finging back and forth along the course faster and faster while the disc spins faster and faster, and it seems to want tofly clean off the ends of the track. Yep, the Disk'O is still a great ride, its just that this particular example needs some serious rehab. The exit to Disk'O takes you on a pathway behind Opa!. Opa! is not set flesh with the building wall, which may also be meant to prevent people from reaching out and touching the walls. We next decided to ride Opa!, the line for Opa! was down the stairs and wrapped around the side of the ride,but not too far back. We thought, this won't be a long wait at all. Then we saw how the park operates it. You see at carnivals, they have a ticket taker, a grouper, a person loading you into the cars, a person checking lapbars, then a person in back unloading people, and the cars never stop moving, and they have enough cars on where it works like a well oiled assembly line. Not here, here they try to run it with one person. Here is how it works, the bring a car up to the front of the station, then they open the gate and let the next group in. There is no attempt to pair up groups, the person seats the group and has them lower their lapbar. Then I think thee is a design flaw, as our loader could not reach the lapbars on the two far seats. Therefore, what she did was climb down of the platform, onto and over the track rails so that she was standing in the middle of the track, between the track rails. She would then check the lap bars, then have to climb back out of the track channel to the ride platform, then dispatch the car. By this time it is time to walk to the back of the station, unload a car,walk back to the front of the station, then advance the cars in the station ahead one slot. Note that they had two cars sitting on the storage track, So after an agonizingly slow wait, whee I had time to read the "Roller Coaster Rules" sign, which I note is the same exact sign for all the coasters, right down to the "You must be 18 or over to ride in the back car of Cyclops" printed on all the coasters signs. We do make it onto the ride, and Zamperla took a nice ride and messed it up. Seat cushions, GONE, hard molded seats with seat horns in,and the individual ratcheting lap bars. My main problem is that the Zamperla version does not seem to spin as well as the Reverchon. Being indoors was a different experience, but overall the ride was pretty meh. But wait, time to sound the coaster credit meter for Coaster # 265. After Opa, we backtrack out way towards the wood coasters. We catch the end of a cycle of Apollo's Swing, and prepare to watch a full cycle to see what you get for $10, but there was no group waiting to ride, so we passed it up for now. As it turns out, that was a bad move. Speaking of bad moves, instead of heading straight to Cyclops, avoiding Pegasus, I decide to go take a ride on Pegasus, and Jerry follows, all "Do we really have to?" Pegasus is not my favorite ride at Mt. Olympus, and I think I ride it each visit just to remind myself how awful it is. I mean can CCI really turn out a ride that was this bad. The entrance to Pegasus is a marked opening under the lift hill, and then past an abandoned go kart station. You then come to the stairs (this is Mt. O afterall), Pegasus was meant to be a children's coaster, and that fact is driven home in that the stairway and handrails for both entrance and exit were clearly designed with the younger set in mind. We get up to the station and it does run a full size train, albeit only 4 2 bench cars long. It now runs a PTC train, but legend has it, Pegasus was the second coaster to attempt and fail to run CCI's in house designed 3 car 3 bench train. The park never did reconfigure the queue gates when they changed the train, they just keep one roped off at all times, and they don't really line up to the train at all. On the way to the platform, Jerry reminds me that if I value my body, that we each sit in our own row, on the unload side of the train. Well the front of the back car on this coaster is roped off. So I take the back seat, and Jerry finds an open spot near the middle of the train. I dutifully sit on the unload side, and with a little trouble, fasten the standard PTC install short outboard side seatbelt, and pull down the lapbar. I note Jerry started to sit on the unload side, but by the time the train dispatched he was on the load side. Once nice touch I like about the ride is the use of a big old lever in the station. Note, I did not say big old brake lever, instead this big old lever controls the lapbar mechanism. The train departs the station, and the train lurches like it is fighting to negotiate the curve to the lift hill, up the lift. Now the ride has no real big drop, just a few shallow drops. In the past I had noted the rides most redeeming feature is that the big flat top section serves nicely as a flagpole rack for a collection of international flags. This year, it lost that redeeming feature as the flagpoles sat empty. So you go down a couple shallow dips, and then a collection of brutally sharp right turns that slam you into the side of the cars. If there is one thing Pegasus has its laterals, but the way it executes them, it isn't even pleasant. In true CCI fashion, even though the ride does no real drops, it still seems to continue to pickup speed all along the course. I was happyu the ride was shorter than I remembered it, and we could soon get down the exit stairs and start heading to Cyclops. On the way to Cyclops, I aksed Jerry what the deal was with him sitting on the wrong side of the train. He reported that the seatbelt on the unload side of his bench was so badly damaged it could not be adjusted, so he had to sit on the wrong side of the train, and wasn't exactly happy about it. We head to Cyclops, Cyclops has maybe the fewest stairs required to ride a Mt. O wood coaster, and is the only one that has a wheelchair ramp up to the station. I still don't get the part where you enter the station in the back, then go down a real sharp, short ramp down maybe 2 feet, then walk to the front of the station, then back up 2 feet with another sharp ramp. The only thing I can come up with, is that is to discourage running. Er enter Cyclops and head to that magical 18 and over car. (the back car) Due to the demographics of the crowd in this part of the park, at this time, we had almost exclusive access to the back car. For ride 1, we both sat in the back seat, and I noted the metal tongue on the seatbelt is BENT like 45 degrees, suggesting somebody needed to test the integrity of the seatbelt, then again it is a shared belt, and the tongue may have gotten outside the car somwhere it shouldn't have. The best news is the ride till uses the drop down buzz bars. The train taks a curve out of the station, and up the relatively short lift hill, the ride comes quite close to Zeus, so thatr if you focus your attention on Zeus you are caught off guard as you crest the lift, and is that airtime on the first drop, then a speed hill, then yep thats some nice airtime on the second drop. You then turnarond and slice back through the structure with another drop and then a ride into the signature element, you see the midway in front of the ride sits much lower than the ride itself, so the rides major drop is actually the last one! You come around a high right turn, and you are facing the midway, and the train has a nice head of steam behind it, you then go down an incredibly steep drop with a twist at the bottom. Those riders in the back seat suddenly see their life pass in front of their eyes. Dear God, keep me in this car! This is one of the single best airtime moments on any wood coaster. You know its quality air if you feel the seatbelt grab hard at you, and if you ride with a loose seatbelt, your knees getting a rude introduction to the lap bar. If you want ejector quality air, this here is the ride for you! After "The Drop" you do a turnaround in a trench in front of the station, unfortunatelyu this part washboards some, then you come back up as you circle the station building and come onto the brake run in back of the station. Another turnaround takes you back into the sttion. It's short, its a one trick pony, but oh what a trick it is. We walked around, yes you have to walk all the way around, even if the station is completely empty, it says so in the rules, no exceptions. We head back for the magical back car, I take the back seat, and Jerry moves up a seat, so that we have more elbow room. That back seat, and that drop, alone in the car, with a loose belt, that is one of wood coaster's greatest moments. I decided to ham it up and scream bloody murder all the way down the drop. I've pulled this trick before, on Rideman, on the Kennywood Jack Rabbit, another ride known for out of this world backseat air.. Sorry Jack Rabbit, you have nothing on this. You see, I very rarely scream on a coaster, and then very very rarely ever scree bloody murder. In both cases, I had Rideman and this time Jerry whipping around in their seat fearing the worst and hoping I was okay. In humor, timing is everything. I didn't have time to gloat about getting Jerry, cause the next thing I know I was screaming in real pain as I managed to land right on top of the seat divider. Yeouch, that hurt, but it only stung for a few moments. We proceeded to ride Cyclops three or four more times, basically until the sensation caused by "The Drop" wore off. We alternated between the two seats in the back car, only after that ride I starteed sitting on the unload side of the train, like Jerry did. I had avoided that side because thats where the side that has the lap bar mechanism in the car at perfect height to abuse your shins. I figured that was better than any more seat divider landings. After Cyclops, we skipped Zeus and headed straight back to Hades for a Hade ride session, basically defined as riding the ride over and over again. We took about 5 back to back rides on Hades in this set. (Yes, walking around of course, particularly since the line varied from beiing halfway down to 3/4 of the way down the stairs, I think once it was even clean down to the bottom. Jerry prefers the back, I prefer the front so we alternated ends of the train, how is that for the buddy system. Then since the way the station is laid out, with the entrance being in the back of the station, the cramped nature of the station, and the fact that visitors here don't seem as bent on waiting for the front seat, we took all but one of our front end rides in the front seat. Hades was already performing better than it did during our early morning ride, and seemed to get better with each lap. We basically rode over and over until around 2:30 when we decided to take a meal break. Besides the riding, maybe the best part was talkign with a group of first time Hades riders, and seeing their reactions when they got back to the station. Some were priceless. We then headed out of the park, up the hill by Zeus, and through the gift shop. The giftshop is set up so you have to walk from one end to the other, but that patch is mostly obstruction free. I noted on the exit doors, they have a sign about remembering to cash in unused balance on your wristband. Nice touch, as they could have kept quiet and hoped people found their way a 100 miles from the park, with no way to cash the band. We took a drive through town, past Extreme World, and I noted a new facade has been applied to the Mt. Olympus Resort but it looks more Roman Colliseum than Greek to me, and I noted the dumpy motel next to it is now the "Mt. Olympus Value Motel" A bit further we passed by the famous Noah's Ark waterpark, and the Pizza Pub, which is a often mentioned pizza buffet, a bit later past Tommy Bartlett's place, and some boat tours and hotels and we come to Moosejaw on the other side of town. Moosejaw is a brewpup/pizza parlor. It has the rustic hunting lodge look, with antler themed chandeliers, fireplaces, rustic log cabin look, and drinks out of mason jars. Moosejaw is a Canadian chain, (the Canadian flag in the lobby should have told you), and in addition to a brewpub for beer, they also make their own root beer, orange soda, and grape soda. The word of caution is that the word "small" is not in their vocabulary. We started with a nice order of cheese sticks, which instead of beeing deep fried like almost anywhere else come out almost looking mexican inspired with a hard tortilla like shell. Jerry then had a 1/2 lb huge hamburger and fries, while I had what has to be the world's largest calzone (pepperoni, sausage, green pepper for those keeping score) Great food, big portions, fast service, and a reasonable price coming in at just around $35 before tip for the two of us, in a tourist resort town. Keep watch for their delivery PT Cruiser with moose antlers on top. We caught it right timing wise, when we arrived we walked right in, when we left people were waiting out on the porch. We left Moosejaw, and returned to Mt. Olympus. We had to park further out than we did in the morning, and we learned that whatever genius painted the parking lot has ALL the arrows heading towards the park, and none of the arrows painted away from the park. This works fine as long as their are parking attendants, if not, if you choose a row that has no space left, you can either exit the lot, reenter and try again (and good luck with that left hand turn out on the main drag), or take your chances, and go again the traffic arrows. Most take the later course of action. We wind up parking out past the Group Sales building, and I note behind Group Sales there is a pathway marked Park Entrance, and the gate was open. We head down the hill, passing behind Hades lift hill, and come out by the gift shop. There is a chain blocking our way into the park. Main if they didn't want this ramp used, why didn't they block it at the other end of the ramp. We decided we were smarter than the chain and clip, and proceeded on into the park with no resistance. On the way into the park, we snagged a back seat ride on Zeus. Nope hasn't gotten any better. From Zeus we head down to Hades for another mini marathon riding session, and hey the line is getting shorter, only 1/4 to 1/2 of the way down the stairs. They way Mt. Olympus operates their wood coasters, is that if there aren't enough riders to fill the train, they will wait a few minutes to see if anybody else come,s, if they have enough riders, however they will run the ride as long as every row is full. Single riders are OK, but there must be at least one person in each row. Of course they don't explain this to anybody, as that would involve speaking, they just wait there with the queue gates open until somebody figures it out and claims that undesired seat. I think their operators have a very limited phrase book they are working with, and if you ask them any question not in their phrase book, they are unable to answer it, and they can only respond with their limited phrasing. I have doubts that they can understand much less communicate in the English language. I hate to use the term Eastern European to describe them, as other parks, like Valleyfair, also employ Eastern European, and they are much friendlier and have more command of the language. Everything is black and white with them, which is why I usually refer to them as vogons. We take several more Hades rides. We then go to check out the Swing and the other end of the park, We get down to the swing, and they had either had mechanical troubles or had given up on the day already. So much for Apollo's Swing. We kept walking,and that same DUCK is still parked there. We eventually head into the indoor theme park, and find Opa! with a longer line than the one we suffered through. No, thanks. Since we did walk all the way down here, we headed back to Disk'O, maybe 20 people in line. It was then that I realized how bad of shape the ride was in. Out of 24 seats on the ride, only 8 were in safe operating condition. What should have been a one cycle wait took 3 or 4 cycles. I don't know why we stuck through it. After riding Disk'O, one last look at Opa!, nope that line keeps getting longer. We head all the way back to Hades, but look that DUCK is moving! Oh wait the passenger less DUCK is moving and the ticket office is closed. They must be calling it a night just like the swing operator. We make it back to Hades, and finish out with one more multi ride Hades session going till about 7pm. And hey, we even get one or two rides with no waiting. For some reason the Hades line seems to have died down for a bit, but then it picked back up. The park was schduled to close at 8pm, it was already 7pm. We decided we had our fair share of Mt, Olympus rides, and besides we had prepurchased tickets to Timber Falls, so wanted to make sure we got our money's worth there. Timber Falls was scheduled to be open till 10pm, but you never know if the crowd is light. While researching ticket deals, we found a package on Timber Falls website, for $24.95 you could get a POP wristband, and one ticket to ride Skyscrpaper. This same package would run you $29.95 in the park. That was deal enough for us, but then they had a "Buy 3 tickets, and get the 4th free" promotion. Doing the math of that deal that meant that each of us could have a morning wake up call at Timber Falls tommorow for only $12.50 each, including a Skyscraper ride that runs $20 by itself. ($10 with a valid POP armband) We bought the 4 ticket package and planned to drop by for a few hours tonight, then an hour or so in the morning for a wake up. We pull into the small but ample Timber Falls parking lot to find an open, yet sparsely populated park. We go to the ticket booth in the center of the park, head to the line for e-Ticket redemption, and get a clerk who clearly has no idea how to handle the e-tickets. She looks them over, puts them in the cash drawer without scanning and issues wristbands. We ask about our Skyscraper rides, and she seemed puzzled and even after seeing the e-tickets I don't think she was all that sure about it. She was nice enough however, shrugged and tore two Skyscraper tickets off the roll and handed them to us. We head right up the stairs and ramp to the Avalanche station. Avalanche is a triangular shaped coaster that basically runs around the perimeter of the park. We arrive at the station, and head for the back car, a train pulls in, and the riders in the back car move to different seats, the queue gates open and we boar the 3 car 2-bench PTC train. Bars checked, we pull out of the station, left turn to the lift, up the lift, first drop, up into the second turn to the left, then a few speed hills. The third turn is a signature element, its a turn that is just so wrong that it feels so right. You pull into an underbanked curve that tried to manhandle the train through a 270 degree turn. Did I mention the apex of the turn is the top of a hill, so you go into this curve, and it slams you to the right side of the train, then you come over the hill, get lifted out of your seat by the airtime, then the train finishes the curve and it slams you back to the left, as it puts you back down in your seat. It's a great element, and if you didn't like that, you'll love the next spee hill with ejector air that slams you up into the lap bar, holds you there for a seond or two, then slams you back down into the seat. You do another left turn as you fly by the station, for the second trip around the park, you ride closer to the ground with a series of speed hills for the first two sides, each one with nice airtime. "Attack of the Airtime Monster" indeed. The third side on the second lap around is mostly concerned with a final dip and rise up into the brake run. It's the kind of coaster that doesn't look like much from the road, but once you ride it, it will hook you in one ride. I also have to officially dispell the rumor that a trim brake was added to this ride, that's not true. The grapevine has it that that the park though they bit off more than they could chew with the upkeep of this ride, but at least they are still running it. We basically spent the next hour just riding Avalanche over and over and over and over again. During this time, we got a demonstration that Timber Falls knows they can't compete with Mt. Olympus with rides, but they can compete by having much friendlier staff, and more customer friendly policies. For example, you can ride as long as no one wants your seat, and if someone does want your seat, you can either find a new seat, or exit back to the load side. Did i mention we had tons of rides, like an hour straight. After about an hour we looked around, and after having better than ERT conditions on the coaster, as in just the two of us riding for several rides. we took most of the rides in the back car, then moved up to the front car. Jerry said, "It's not as intense up here", well thats a relative statement, as due to the short trains, I don't think there is that much differance in the front and back cars. After an hour we exited the coaster and took a look around. In the front center of the park is the clubhouse with tickets, merchandise, snack bar, arcade, restrooms and a second floor observation deck. Behind the clubhouse there are 2 mini golf courses, wrapped through and around the mini golf courses is the parks log flume ride. The Avalanche coaster runs around the perimeter of this area, and just outside the bounds created by the coaster are some bumper boats, and sitting out in the parking lot is a Skyscraper. Accross the street from the park are two more mini golf courses they own, and then the river. On the other side of the park is a competing mini golf operatin. We wanted to be sure to get to the Skyscraper before they closed down early due to small attendance. We first stowed everything in the car, then walked over to the Skyscraper where there was a single rider on the ride, and the rest of his group on the bleachers setup for spectators. Since we had tickets, we got to sit in the riders lounge area at the bottom of the stairs up to the ride. After his ride ended, we were invited up to the ride deck. The ride deck consists of the loose article bins, operator console, and the access way to the ride itself. We step off the wood deck onto the metal platform and then hop into the chairs provided. It takes some time to get ready to ride Skycraper thanks to the complex harness arrangement. After the operator makes sure you are sitting all the way back in the chair, no slouching, he proceeds to strap you in. The harness system on Skyscraper is similar to but not totally like having two 3 point automotive harnesses, one located on either side of you. They key difference being the belts are not on retractors and are manually adjusted. So I sit down and the operator pulls two thick pieces of black padding out from the sides of the seat and ask me to hold them over my lap. He then reaches over my right shoulder and proceeds to cross that strap across my chest so that it fastens into to a clip/buckle mounted on the left side of the seat, this is also connected to a lap belt. He proceeds to tighten this until it is snug but not tight. He then reaches above the left shoulder and pulls out a similar looking belt that runs diagonally across your chest and fastens to a clip located on the right side of the seat. This means the two shoulder belts form a large "X" across your chest, and you effectively have double lap belts for added redundant protection. The operator proceeds to pull these belts snug but not tight. He then takes a moment to make sure everything looks to be correct with the safety harness, and then goes in and yanks on all the adjustors with all of his might to get all the belts as skin tight as he can get them. You then realize those two big black pads sit directly under the buckles and adjustors and they protect your legs from any nasty gashes from the buckles. This would also be a good reason to make sure your pockets are empty to make sure the thick straps don't crush any hard objects into your legs. The last step is to take the anti sub strap and to affix it to the front center of the lap straps. Men are thankful this belt is not tightened. He proceeded to step next chair and harness Jerry to his seat in the same manner. After all the harnessing the operator takes a step back to make one final visual inspection while thinking "Now I have you two right where I want you, you guys aren't getting out of those chairs until I let you, so for the next few minutes you belong to me and whatever I can dish out" While he was strapping us in, for small talk he asked if we hae ever done one of these before and we both enthusiastically said we had, and then Jerry mentioned how many times he has been on a Skyscraper, thanks mostly to the fact he bought a season pass upgrade at Valleyfair that includes their Skyscraper. I let the operator live with the impression I was also very experienced. He had this big grin on his face that said, "I'm gonna have so much fun!" He started the ride, and instead of going right into doing the usual loops on this giant propeller ride, he starts by rocking us back and forth, not unlike how a looping ship ride starts. We ecnouraged those watching us to come over and get in line themselves. Eventually we start making complete loops, but still not much action. A few loops later, and he starts to play with the speed control, and we find ourselves flipping almost continuously. We do this for several rotations, we then stop at the top of the ride, and pause for a breather while the ride starts shaking left and right, huh? Then it was time to do it all in reverse, lots more flips, and as we came into the loading dock he started jogging the main arm back and forth. We then come into the station and he lets us off the ride, clearly quite pleased with himself. After Skyscraper we take about another half an hour worth of Avalanche rides. At this point we had to exit the ride, and we then decided tht since Jerry had driven 4 hours this morning, and had another 4 hours tomorrow, tht we would just call it a night. It was 9PM at this point anyway, and we had been at coasters for nearly 10 hours. We did stop at Arby's on the way to the hotel for shakes (love that Jamocha), then we headed to the Best Western Ambassador Inn. I am happy to report we had better luck with the building access system this year, and our room was satisfactory. Jerry went straight to the internet, and i decided to check out the hotel pool. They have both indoor and outdoor pools, and I elected the outdoor pool. It's a nice pool area, with a kiddie water area with zero depth entry, bubblers, and a mushroom fountain. Then the main pool, but even it has a waterfall in it, on the other end is a sitting area and a hot tub. The area even has changing rooms, and right inside the hotel are vending machines and an arcade. I swim and hot tub for about an hour. I learned my swim skills are very rusty, I could sake myself, but it wouldn't look pretty. 1 cycle in the hot tub did wonders to ease the abuse my feet and side had been taking all day. While I was out there there was a group of teens who had discovered the kiddie pool was not heated, and the main pool was nice and warm, and then there was the hot tub. They were having fun going from one to the other, and feeling the effects of submerging themselves in varrying temperatures of water. I'm thinking that can't be good for you. After my swim, it was time to head back to the room and call it a night. Tomorrow is more Timber Falls, then we return to Minneapolis for some Valleyfair action. Watch for that TR whenever I get to it.

Friends, on August 30, I went to the Minnesota State Fair, and then wrote an insanely long TR. (And if I call it insanely long you know its LONG. To be a nice netizen, instead of putting the huge file on a bunch of differnet sites, I am going to merely link to it: http://coasterville.blogspot.com/2007/09/tr-minnesotawisconsin-2007-day-1-83007.html

TR: Kings Island with Wierd Al - 8/18/07 Trip Report: Kings Island Mason, OH August 18, 2007 *********************** Greetings, and welcome to another trip report. Man, I have to get better with the timlieness of posting these. Anyway, as you might note, it is yet another summer August Saturday, and yet again I am headed to Kings Island. This time, I'm not the one that's nuts, its the performer I am going to see who is nuts. This particular trip was strange in its planning. First, I receive an email slugged "Geauga Lake" with a message asking if I wanted to go to Kings Island on Sunday. I replied that I would, while pointing out the discrepency between subject and message. I got a response back that, oops, they did mean Geauga Lake, but that they we going to see Weird Al at Kings Island on the Saturday and asked if I had interest in that. Now, I have heard a fair amount of Weird Al's stuff, mostly through watching Robb Alvey's coaster videos. (Admit it Robb, you use a fair amount of Wierd Al in your soundtracks) So, I decided, that I would like to go see Wierd Al. The next subject was tickets, and according to Kings Island's website, season pass holders were eligible to purchase tickets for just $9.95. Remember that price, it plays into our story a bit later. So, I dutifully went out to TicketMaster, found out that yes the season pass offer was offered online, that there were plenty of seats left, and that the TicketMaster fees on an order of three tickets would total about $18. TicketMaster: You can't live with it, you can't live without it, thier business practices still suck. So, I report back to the group, and we decide to just wait until the day of show, and purchase the tickets at Kings Island as walk up sales. I then offer to handle the ticket purchasing as I knew the rest of the group were coming in from Columbus, and would be arriving fairly late in the day. In this case the group would consist of Dave Althoff Jr., April and myself. That was either Thursday or Friday night. Saturday rolls around, and for going to an amusement park, I was decidedly sluggigh and bordering on disinterested. After all, its nearing the end of August, its Saturday, the weather outside is beautiful, its one of the very few days in only the low 80's after having a fortnight or more of above 90 days. In other words, I knew perfectly well the park was going to be jam packed, and since i have the luxury of going on very slow days, i'm a bit spoiled when it comes to ride lines. So, I don't leave the house till almost 2, then I decide I am not paying for a Cedar Fair meal, so I stop at Wendy's on the way to the park, and they had a sizeable line, but it seemed to move at a decent rate. So after a relaxing meal at Wendy's, I head to the park and arrive just before 3:30 pm. I walk up to the front gate, and I must point out it has been 15 years or so since I have been to a concert at Timberwolf. I head to where they used to sell Timberwolf tickets, key word there being "used to". I have no trouble getting through security as I spot an open lane that everybody else seems to not be able to see. I head to the park gate, and find an admission lane that had just opened. I note the admissions person was personable, commenting on my shirt, a Xavier Musketeer Alumni shirt, which has bearing on the story as I noted on the big electronic sign out front, that it is "University of Cincinnati" day at the park. She also noted the Bengals shirt in my season pass photo. As I said, a friendly personable admissions person, then I head into the park and head directly to the Return Visit Offer booth. I somehow manage to dodge the Keyhole Photo ambush and arrive at the booth unscathed. Now. on the sign above the booth it tells me I can buy (emphasis mine) : Return Visit Offer, ***Concert Tickets***, Season Pass Upgrades. So I walk up to the one open window, and ask for 3 tickets for Weird Al. "We don't sell concert tickets here", I glaringly look up at the sign. "Yeah, I know, the tickets are out in the Group Sales Building" The person makes it clear that they are just as annoyed about that sign directing people to her booth as I am. So, argh, this means I have to go back out of the "secure zone". So I head back to the main gate, remembering to get a hand stamp. I note the park is back to using the "magic light" UV stamps, only they are different than before. Cedar Fair must have set them on the right course. Before they used an ink pad which looked like it contained some toxic green slime, and twhen they stamped it on your hand, they used copious quantities to the point where you could clearly see the yellow mark on your hand without the light, for hours to come. Now they use a more normal stamp pad, and the magic light ink disappears from view within seconds of being applied. So I exit the security gate, and head to the Group Sales building. I spot two lanes, one for will call tickets, and one to purchase tickets. I head to the window to purchase tickets, and ask for three Wierd Al tickets. No problem, I see tickets come out of the ticket machine. That will be $44.85 please. Wait, it says season pass tickets are only $9.95. I find out they are $14.95 when purchased at the park. So much for dodging the TicketMaster fees. I'm still sore over the park tacking on a $3.95 service charge for tickets to their own event, now they are tacking on a $5 service charge for concert tickets purchased at the venue. No wonder Cedar Fair attendance is down, between the hidden service fees, and the hideously overpriced concessions, they are actively trying to tick off their guests where it matters the most, in their billfolds. But, what am I to do, but fork over $44.85 instead of the $29.85 we had planned on. Tickets in hand, its time to head into the park. So, its back through security, again a short line, then I learn you can reneter with a handstamp at any lane, and that the lanes have been equipped with the lights. So, I am back into the park, and its like a robot boots up program "Kings Island solo touring program" I mean, I think I do the same thing, or attempt to do the same thing most every visit. Yep, I head to Delirium. There I find a full queue spilled out on the midway. I'll pass. I head to Face/Off, "Sorry, this ride closed...", Drop Zone "Sorry, this ride closed...", Son of Beast "Sorry, this ride closed..." I skip on Top Gun as it is such a long walk. I headed into Oktoberfest, note a healthy line for the Slingshot, and go to Adventure Express "Sorry, this ride closed..." Yep, Kings Island is making this walk through the park memorable for all the wrong reasons. I get around to Racer, and hey its open! The line is backed out onto the midway, but none of the switchbacks are open. I opt for a ride on Racer Forwards. The line moves at a reasonable pace, and when I get into the station, I find the usual congestion towards the front of the sttion allows me to score a seat with ease at the back of the station. While waiting to board, I note I have not seen Firehawk run. After the ride starts, I pay special note to look at FireHawk while going up the lift. Okay, no one in station, both trains parked in station, and no queue hanging out onto the mdiway. I'm not sure its closed, but it sure is exhibiting all signs of being closed as well. At least they did race the trains on the Racer. I had another reasonably smooth rides that exhibits hints at floater air. I think the Racer is running better this year than it has in several years. We return to the station, and I note Adventure Express is cycling test trains. I exit Racer, and head back to Adventure Express, and by the time I get there, the queue has been opened. I enjoy a walk on ride in the back seat. It's all about timing. Adventure Express has improved this season now that the special effects in the third and fourth tunnels have been restored, now lets work on the spears in the second tunnel, and whatever is supposed to happen in the first tunnel. (It's been so long, I forget), oh and the train warning bell at the start of the ride. Adventure Express is still running well, and except for having the service door open on the second enclosed lift, drowning the scene in light, it was a great ride on Adventure Express. How they managed to stack all three trains at the end of the ride, with 6 crew member on platform is a puzzlement. However, while riding Adventure Express, I saw Son of Beast testing. Can I pull off the "test rides walk on" again? I dash over to Son of Beast. Nope, the queue stil isn't open, and the lineis back to the Skycoaster harness shelter. But since it is stopped at the top of the ramp down, I figure to give it 15 minutes. About 10 minutes later, Son of Beast opens, but not before I notice another Cedar Fair Unscrupulous Business Practice. All season long, the posted regular price for Skycoaster has been $15. Now, they rarely charge that, as they seem to be running a $10 special most of the time, and on rare occasions you can even see a $5 special. Today I look at the big bright yellow Today's Special" sign - Limited time offer: $15!!! Wait that is the regular price, or so I thought till I looked over at the ticket booth, where THAT sign has been changed to read $20. Artificially raising the price to create the illusion of a sale, I tell you. Yes, I realize retail pulls that BS all the time, and some have gotten busted for it. But, back to what I was doing. We were then walked into Son of Beast, and when the dust cleared I was right up by the seat queues. I decided to forgo a walk on Son of Beast ride, and instead opt for this rumored excellent front seat ride. It would take about 8 trains to get into that magical front seat. Seems, just about everybody headed to that front seat lane. Rumour has it, that is the only seat that doesn't rough you up real bad. So my time comes, I board the train, and a ride operator jumps in with me "I need to give it a test ride" smirking the whole time. No problem, we head out onto the course. The rumours are correct! Up in the front seat, Son of Beast is wonderfully smooth. I don't think I have felt this ride run so good since maybe it's opening day so many years ago. It's still not a great coaster, but at least its ridable now, and the Gerstlauer trains actually allow real size Americans to fit comfortably. I exit Son of Beast, and decide to follow the rule. I headed to Top Gun. The line was back past the chicken chute, but not quite back to the tunnel under the service road. At least the had two trains on, so after a lengthy wait that I clocked at 45 minutes I was heading to the front of the back car. Top Gun is still a great, intense, smooth and SHORT ride. The longer you wait for it only stresses how short the actual ride is. As I am exiting Top Gun, I receive a phone call that the rest of the group was in the area, that they saw the parking lot and concluded the park was jammed. They indicated they were going to grab dinner and then come to the park. I figure dinner at Skyline is worth about 30 minutes or so. I purchase a Strawbeery/Banana Chill. YA know, I have managed to avoid the Lemon Chill craze for numerous years, I had one in preseason this year, and now I am hooked. "Hi, my name is David Bowers, and I'm a Lemon Chill addict" I enjoy my Strawberry/Banana Chill while perusing the International Street gift shops. I look at stuff, particularly in the Emporium, Thrillriders, and the "Clearance Sale Room" where they have taken all the old Paramount stuff. I admit, I alsmost bought some instant lottery tickets, except I could not see the cashier on duty. At around 6pm, I head to the main gate to meet April and Dave. As it would turn out, they didn't arrive at the park till almost 7pm. Some of that, however was due to finding a parking space in BFE and walking from BFE to the main gate since Cedar Fair discontinued the tram service. Come on, at least Paramount ran the trams on busy days. I was getting a bit nervous for them when shortly after 6pm (which is when you can enter the park on a concert only ticket), the admission gate was overwhelmed as they only had two lanes open, and the line to get in was backed up clear to the metal detectors. By 6:30 they had the full gate with all lanes open, and by the time Dave and April arrived they just walked right in. We then exchange greetings, along with money and tickets, then head into the park. Our first stop is the front gate gift shop to get some candy for the show. We then decide that since we have reserved seats, we can casually arrive at the concert just before it starts. We head to Adventure Express, and see that the queue looks to extend all the way back to the midway, but hey its Adventure Express, veven that is only about 20-30 minutes. We then learn that it is because some people ahead of us had STOPEED in the queue for whatever reason. When they finally decided to get the heck out of the way and let those of us who really wanted to ride past, the actual line was only about halfway through the bridge over the track. Not that much longer, and we are boarding Adventure Express in the back car. It was, like the first ride, a good ride on Adventure Express. By the time the ride ends, it is 7:20. I note my concert ticket says 7:30 as the start time. I hardly if ever attend rock shows, being more of a Pops/Symphony man myself. In my culture, when a ticket says 7:30, that means you are in your seat by 7:20 at the very latest. Dave and April convince me we have time for Racer, and so we head to Racer and the line is just back to the queue house. We wind up getting a back car ride on Racer. When the Racer ride ends, its 7:35. We then decide to head to Timberwolf. As we walk through Oktoberfest, I note that I can't hear the concert. Having worked at the park a long long time ago, I know that with most acts you can hear the show in Action Zone and Oktoberfest. We walk through Action Zone, still not hearing anything. The entrance to Timberwolf is back near Face/Off's entrance. So we present our tickets at the checkpoint which is located direcrly underneath Congo Falls. Man, Congo Falls leaked 13 years ago when I used to work here, and it STILL leaks. Some genius stationed the checkpoint right under the leaky spot. Kings Island has not invested in TicketFast, so they are still tearing tickets, then you step forward and some guy, in a not too nice manner is all "Left arm, Palm up!" then he applies a handstamp in black ink to the lower part of your arm, right above the wrist. The Timberwolf staff could be classed as being openly hostile. I attend concerts at Riverbend at Coney Island with some regularity and that venue is staffed with friendly people, and especially outgoing ushers who are willing to do just about anything for you. Here, they treat you like you are a nuisance to them. We head up into the seating bowl, skipping the refreshment and souvenir booths, and find the show has not yet even started. Its now 7:45pm. We dutifully head to our assigned seats. We head to Section 4 row Y and find out seats at extreme left. This is bad for a variety of reasons. One is Weird Al, like most shows these days has installed a video wall behind the set, and a substantial part of the show required seeing the video wall. The other is the park seemed to put everybody in one area of the theatre. In other words they packed the front in solid, while leaving the back a ghost town. (Well the center was filled most of the way back). We last in our assigned seats for about 3 minutes. We then realize that if we move just 5 rows back. we can sit on an aisle between the side and center section, with a lot more elbow room. We make the seat upgrade, and as luck would have it, never got approached either by an usher, or the rightful owner of those seats. In fact, I think others followed our lead. Note: the show still has not begun. At around 8PM, the show finally begins! The tour was the Straight out of Lynwood Tour, and as you might guess, it contained a lot of the Straight out of Lynwood album. He started with Polkarama, which is especially fitting for play in Cincinnati, as it starts out with the Chicken Dance. You cannot have a wedding reception or other similar social event in Cincinnati without the Chicken Dance. Now I don't remember the set list, or the order of the set list. (Back in my culture, I am used to being handed a set list on the way in) I do rememmber the highlights though. One thing is the format of the show. Weird Al believes in costuming to fit each song, and to cover up these costume changes, they either play segments from Al TV (specifically the celebrity mock interviews) on the video wall, or play segments from TV shows and movies that reference Wierd Al. Don't get me wrong, some of the mock interviews are funny. Like the guy that just kept saying "You know what I mean", followed by Al saying "I know what you mean" repeat ad nauseum, the other artist who didn't want to talk about anything related to their career, the other guy that hit on Wierd Al during the interview. In other words none of them are serious, and are part of the comedy being presented. The one to pay note of is in the early stages of the show, Wierd Al works with his guest, explaining that he, Wierd Al, can make a song out of just about anything. The guest says "We all have cell phones, so let's get real" And Weird Al sets that line to music. He then lets it drop, but you shouldn't, it comes back later. Rideman and I agreed that there were far too many video presentations for our taste. Other notable songs includes "You're Pitiful", the song he can do in concert but not record. During the song, in which he makes fun of others loser lifestyle, he changes t-shirts sevral times, by continually pulling off layers. One shirt proclaims "Atlantic Records SUCKS", and generally the shirts fit the lyrics. I don't know if its a standard part of the act, but he ended up in a Spongebob Squarepants shirt at the end of the song. Fitting for the park with the world's best kid's area, "Nickelodeon Universe". He then proceeds to remove his belt, and then his pants to reveal a pink skirt/tutu thing underneath. He still has the Spongebob shirt on. The audience goes crazy. Speaking of kids area, I was shocked at the number of families who came to this show as a family. Call me conservative, but while I was loving this show, and laughing it up, I would not take children to see this show. He also did, "Bob" a song that is written in all palindromes, or phrases that are spelled the same forwards and backwards. Just in case you have your doubts, they put the lyrics up on the video wall so you can see for yourself. It's a very clever piece of novelty work. For the nerdy, there is "It's All About the Pentiums" which has the IT people in the audience, such as ourselves laughing. But all in all he did several of his hits, "eBay" about peoples addictions to eBay, a song about Spiderman sung to the tune of "Piano Man", noteworthy as Wierd Al doesn't have Billy Joels harmonica holder, instead someone else had to hold it for him. In one song Wierd Al came out dressed as Gilligan singing "I'm in love with the Skipper" while clips from Gilligan's Island played, and there was a song about the Flintstones, while Flintstones clips played. I think a most noteworthy part of the show came about halfway through. I noticed about a hlaf hour into the show, the night novelty people started working the aisles, except the only novelty they had were Star Wars style light saber light ups. Then I noticed, it wasn't the children buying these, it was full grown adults with no children with then buying them. About halfway through the show, after sundown, the stage was overtaken by Imperial Stormtroopers, then Wierd Al comes out dressed like a Star Wars character and does "The Saga Begins" to the tune of American Pie, eventually joined on stage by Darth Vader. Ah, now the light sabers make sense. As not only is the audience waving their light sabers around, but there are also light saber duels going on up on stage. Even with all that thetricality, I just about lost it when during the peppy part of the song, the Stromtroopers started getting down and dancing. Weird Al quickly followed this song up with "Yoda" , to the tune of "Lola" another Star Wars themed song about everybody's favorite little green runt. Admit it, I know when I was watching Attack of the Clones, the whole theatre went nuts when the seeming fragile Yoda busted out a light saber and started kicking ass. The way most of his songs go, he gives a hint, like playing the first 5 seconds of the video, or giving some other onstage clue, to which the true fans seemed to react with a knowing smile. Like when he comes out on stage riding a Segway, you know its time for his new hit "White and Nerdy", I guess I am geeky enough or nerdy enough that the lyrics hit home. They play the first 3 seconds of the video for "Amish Paradise" a song I will forever associate with Hersheypark and Dutch Wonderland, thanks to Robb Alvey. I swear I might have just thought this, but it seemed like all the stage lights went dark at the words "No lights, no phones, no motorcars" No one or thing is safe from Wierd Al, who also sang "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi", I mean Wierd Al cam even get a hit song singing about going through the fast food drive in, in "Trapped at the Drive Through"which is a singsong almost storytelling about all the bad experiences you have ever had at a fast food drive through, or dealing with your spouse when it comes to getting dinner, all rolled into one. He did so mang songs that I'm sure I forgot one or two along the way, all told the show ran 2 hours, without intermission. Towards the end of the show after what you think is the end of the show, he starts singing the words "We all have cell phones, so let's get real" then you realize it IS a real song, and he proceeds to sing it, while the audience holds their cell phones high in the air waving them. We walked out when he started singing "Albequrque" as we knew that was the last song in the set, you can hear it all over Action Zone, its not a good song, and we wanted to ride Son of Beast. You know what Wierd Al is missing? A big closer, the end of his concert just peters out, there is no song he sings that proclaims "This is the final showstopper!" I hear he used to use "Yoda" for that purpose. So did I love the show, HECK YEAH! That was about the fastest 2 hours, with plenty of laughs. So, we get to Son of Beast at around 9:55, we enter the queue and find it to be jest a station wait. April had heard that the back seat also produces a great ride. "I have a bad feeling about this" But, we head to the back seat queue anyway. While we are waiting the closing fireworks go off, and we are concerned we may not get to ride in the back seat, and may have to move to a middle seat, which we all know are rough. First Dave and April depart in the blue train. Then I am loaded into the red train, both of my rides today being in the red train. We depart the station, and head into the drop out of the station just as the blue train is returning to the final brakes. We make the curve to the lift approach, past the camera, and start up the lift. We barely start up the lift when the lift stops. I know the other train is well past the next block point, in fact I saw it hit the final brake. A couple minutes later, the lift restarts. We get near the top of the lift, the lift stops again. Moments later the lift restarts, and we crest the lift, and down the first drop. Up the second hill, down the second hill, and into the helix, and dang it, I KNEW this was a bad idea. I get roughed up pretty bad in the helix. We head into the mid course brake, and we stop. Total stop. A few moments later, we restart and roll a bit further down the mid course brake, and it stops again. Wait a bit, and we continue, luckily there are no more brakes until the end of the ride. At least coming off of a dead stop at the downtrack end of the mid course meant I could verify that the kicker tires that were there when it had the loop were removed. This may have helped as the the rest of the ride was just rough, and not brutal. Overall, I did not enjoy the ride in the back seat. We come up to the final brakes, and we of course stop again. Only this time I can see why, the blue train is being unloaded. Wait, you mean after all those stops, they are just now unloading the blue train? Something seems amiss. They then close the lapbars on the blue train, dispatch it empty, and bring us into the station. As I would find out, I was on the last train that night. Those who were waiting for the next train did not get to ride. Apparently the ride computer started acting up, and they had to bring the train I was on around manually in service mode, overiding what the computer thought were block violations at every block point. They then unloaded the blue train, without giving them a ride, closed the ride, and jogged the blue train out to the lift so they could jog the red train I was on back into the station. A crew member noted that they have been having lots of downtime lately. By this time, the park is closed, so we make our way up to International Street, out the front gate, and then make the long walk to BFE. Dave them gives me a photo CD from Coastermania, then proceeds to take almost an hour to get out of the parking lot. Did I mention the crowds were insane? And that ends, Kings Island with Wierd Al, which means I can start to to work on my next big novel, yep, I went to Minnesota and Wisconsin again, that can only mean one thing. Trip Reorts from the Minnesota State Fair, Valleyfair!, Mall of America, Mt. Olympus, Timber Falls, and SS Billiards are about to head your way, that is when I get around to them, Considering it took my almost a month to get this TR out.

Well, I do have a photo gallery for that visit: Here is the link:

Wow that was so long I have to post the conclusion here: Beast was showing its good side tonight, as it was running partcualrly well. Not too rough, good speed, and the first half of the ride up until the second lift had very few lights, and before tunnel 2 had no lights. Don't worry, they made up for it, they have added two very high beam spotlights on the second lift hill. I mean divert your eyes or they may blind you spotlights. Man, those suck, I closed my eyes until we were halfway up the lift. Through that wonderfully intense helix, into the final brakes and into the station, We stop in the station in case anybody wants to change seats. Chivlary is still alive, as those in the front seat were willing to trade seats with someone else. Wow, here we go on our reride, even better than the first ride, and I close my eyes as we start to approach lift 2. That light has got to GO! We return to the station, and exit the ride. The Beast crew thanks us, and we head to the Beast exit ramp. Park security is holding everybody on the Beast exit ramp, and will then escort us to the front gate after everybody has finished riding. I took the time then to thank Don, Josh, Dane, and Ryan for the wonderful event, and I will do so again here. Thanks guys for the fantastic day. KIC's first event was a lot of fun and a great time. After everybody;'s Beast rides were over we were escorted to the front gate, We did pause at Eiffel Tower, and at that time there was another chance to get scavenger hunt answer keys. We were then walked to the front gate area just in time to fall in behind the last of the regular park guests. I did duck into the restroom where at least 4 or 5 guys from restroom crew had that look of "I though the park was closed, we just finished cleaning this restroom for the night, and here comes another group of guests" Sorry, guys! From there it was the walk out to the car, saying goodbye to coaster friends and heading home. Next Up: "Kings Island with Wierd Al - Watch for it!

TR: Kings Island - 08/04/07 - KIC: The Event Trip Report: Kings Island Mason, OH August 4, 2007 Kings Island Central: The Event ******************************* Following the trend of different kinds of trips to Kings Island this summer, today I opted to go to Kings Island, on a Saturday, in the summer. I know what you are thinking, "Are you out of your mind?" Perhaps yes, but this was also the day when a website I occasionally post to "Kings Island Central" was hosting their first ever organized social event. The event was, creatively enough, titled "KIC: The Event" (Kings Island Central: The Event). However, before I could attend the event, I had to register for it. I'm glad to see enthusiasts clubs are starting to embrace online event registration, and for a website based "club" it's a natural. Event prices for the event were just around $42.95, but if you had a pass or furnished your own admission, the price was rolled back to only $16.95. It was obvious the park and KIC worked together well on this event from the moment I registered. Kings Island handled the entire registration process, from filling out the registration card (which gave Dane and Ryan the information they needed, and gave you the link you needed to go to the event ticket page). They used the standard Paramount Parks event ticketing page which works well for them, and is easy to use. It was particularly easy as I already have a profile on Paramount's event ticketing page so it filled in the vast majority of the information for me. It's a lot better than the event registration process I am used to. You may recall normally for an event, you read a paper flier, fill out a paper registration card, and send it with a paper check in a paper envelope. That's it, no confirmation, no nothing, just show up at the park gate the day of the event and hope your name is on the guest list. While I haven't had any problems, I am still one to take a copy of the canceled check with me just in case. The KIC: The Event tickting process was, not too surprisingly, similar to the Coastermania and CoasterEXT registration procedures, and soon I had confirmations galore. An e-mail confirming my RSVP, and an email confirming my ticket order. What's more, just two days later, I received the manila envelope containing my receipt and personalized event ticket. To sweeten the pot, the ticket stub has a $15 off one admission coupon. Just about the only thing I didn't like about the registration process was the $3.95 processing fee (postage on manilla envelope: 81 cents), but then that same business practice irks me to no end with TicketMaster as well. It does irk me a bit more as the Paramount Parks event ticket system has boasted NO processing fees IF you elect a print at home e-ticket. The park was cunning enough to NOT offer e-tickets to this event, so you had to pay the service fee. It's a minor blemish in the grand scheme of things, and the only ding in a very smooth electronic registration process. So on Saturday morning, I left home with camera, season pass, and the all important event ticket in tow and headed to the park. Following advice on the website, I did grab a breakfast at McDonald's before arriving at the park at around 8:48 am. I walked up to the entrance plaza to find a quite large crowd already assembled. I knew the event was limited to just around 100 people, but it sure looks like more than that here. Following directions, I headed to the former season pass entrance. Setup at this side gate was a registration table. Registration was speedy, you just told them the name used to charge your event tickets (tickets were only available presale and then only with credit card), and they crossed you off the list and handed you a FUNvelope along with a copy of the days event schedule and a empty lanyard. While I was checking in the group around me had their yellow tickets out where they could be seen by the registration crew, but I'm not sure if that was needed as you were being checked off against the ticket sales list, not the RSVP list. After having a very efficient registration, I opened my FUNvelope to obtain the insert for my lanyard. Then a few moments of arts and crafts time as I inserted the insert into the lanyard, connected the two ends of the safety break away joint together and I was ready for the event. I noticed the prime feature in the design of the credentials in the lanyard were the letters "VIP" in large friendly letters, flanked on top by the event logo, and on the bottom by the Kings Island logo. The top of the credentials read "080407" which was how the event was teased before we even knew it was an event, and the bottom had a sticker with your username on it. Now, living in Cincinnati, I have gone to some other events at the park and seen cases where various departments in the park did not seem to talk to each other about the event. I recall once where we were admitted to the park before security even arrived, and they demanded we exit the park and be screened, and another instance when the admission people were not informed that a season pass plus the event lanyard was as good as having the event ticket. I am pleased to say that was NOT the case with this event. In this case, after checking in, we milled around outside the park, as nothing was open including the metal detection point. Shortly before 9AM our event hosts walked us over to the three metal detectors on the far left (nearest the will call buidling) that had previously been roped off, and gave our group exclusive use of those three lanes so that we could gain entrance to the park at least 30 minutes before the regular visitors. Having no troubles with metal detection, we proceeded to the admission gate, where there was no problem getting in with a season pass and event lanyard. Following directions, I headed to the plaza in front of the Paramount Theater. We waited here for a bit, and made introductions and small talk, while the rest of the group got checked in, and cleared through metal detection and the admission gate. At around 9:10 it was time to begin. First up, our hosts introduced themselves. Ryan and Dane from the KI Central side, along with Josh and Don Helbig (Mr. 12,000 Racer Rides) from Kings Island's marketing department. Ryan and Dane are to be complimented for dressing professionally for the event in dress clothes and ties, despite the near 100 degree temperatures we would be facing. There were some general announcements and ground rules about how the event was going to go. Most noteworthy was that because Son of Beast was not behaving today, the Son of Beast Photo Tour would have to be canceled, but not to worry, a replacement activity has been scheduled to replace it. Almost as if on cue, security dropped the rope by Paramount Theater and we were escorted back to X-Base. Once we arrived at X-Base, we were greeted in the Flight of Fear plaza by two Flight of Fear team members who would be leading us on the Flight of Fear backstage tour. Simple ground rules, don't touch any track or parts, and stay behind the safety fences. We were led into the Flight of Fear building via the exit hallway and came into the unload station. Here there were views of the short tunnel that goes between unload and load with the lights on, but more interestingly, we got to see a train in unload complete with its brand new on board video system. We also got to see something the average guest won't get to see, a bunch of heavy duty cables running from the coaster cars to a power source, presumably to give the camera system its daily charge. From there we went through a wooden gate ad down a short flight of stairs so that we were level with the transfer track/brake run, then down a much longer stairway to the floor of the show building, we walked under and to the side of the brake run, being careful to watch out for tripping hazards and low beams. When we made our way into the main show building, thats where you hear the oohs and ahhs of those that have never had the experience before, and some who have. Flight of Fear's drum section is often dubbed a spaghetti bowl, and for good reason. There is a whole bunch of track in there packed in about as tightly as clearance guidelines will allow. It is very impressive, and for us they had both the work and show lights on for a unique look at it all. I also noted that since the ride spends much of its operational hours in the dark, there are parts of it that are quite a bit dusty. As I was walking around the perimeter safety fence I heard people wonder which went up first the building or the ride. Because I care about you so much, I went back and looked at my notes from a Flight of Fear tour I had taken on October 2, 2004. A reading from Dave's previous Flight Of Fear Tour Trip Report: That lecture included such fascinating tidbits as the fact the ride was first designed to launch via a flywheel cable system. That idea was short lived, however, when they could not find such as system that would meet their needs. They then saw one of those LIM powered people movers and thought "If we scale this up", and thus the idea of a LIM powered coaster was born. Other tidbits were that due to the construction timelines, the building was constructed first, then the ride was installed inside the building (usually its the other way around on indoor coasters), and that the building has serivce cranes built into it. However, he got the biggest round of applause when he talked about changing the shoulder bars to lap bars, and detailed the 6 month testing process where they mounted a car on a piece of track, put people in the car and turned it upside down to see how it worked. Here endeth the reading. I walked around the Flight of Fear show building, which besides the massive roller coaster taking up most of the building it also has lots of other interesting points of interest. Amongst them are the King Cobra trains, a Flight of Fear car that is still equipped with shoulder bars, the bare metal frame of a Flight of Fear car, boxes of giant springs, boxes of flat metal fins that were labeled "LIM Fins" which I presume could work on both Flight of Fear and Italian Job. There were also parts of coaster lift chains, old used ride control consoles, and many bins of various ride parts. Remember the service cranes I mentioned, well towards the back of the show building I saw a crane head that was labeled indicating it had a 3 ton capacity. Sitting next to it was what looked like a crane basket without minimal railings suitable for lifiting parts (and I presume properly harnessed passengers) In the big open area towards the front of the show building were both a small cylyndrical crane basket which I think is a single passenger manlift, as well as a larger rectangular basket complete with railings all around it and clearly visible Red Cross symbols. I will presume this is a bigger work lift that is rated for use as a ride evacuation lift. Towards the end of our photo safari time, we were given the rare opportunity to stand inside the fully lit show building and watch (and possibly photograph/video) a Flight of Fear train go through the circuit. After the test ride, the photo tour was over and we were escorted out the way we entered the Flight of Fear building. Okay, 1 event down on the event agenda, and it was a success. As we exited the Flight of Feat building we were encouraged to head directly to Firehawk, "Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200" as the general public was about to be admitted to the park. I had a fanny pack and all, but still opted to get the locker so that I would be more comfortable on the ride. We were all safely in line in time to be able to watch "The Running of the Bulls" and see the surprised looks on the faces of the front runners when they saw a queue had already formed. I did notice that Kings Island has joined the Cedar Fair tradition of starting the day with the national anthem, and nothing, I repeat nothing takes place in the park during the playing of the national anthem. As an aside, I have noticed this year, mostly because I have been arrived at the park after noon, that the giant flag in the front of the park is proudly flying during the day, and is absent at night (yes, it is equipped with the required lighting for night use) Today I noticed the flag was not flying when I arrived. Perhaps Cedar Fair is taking a page of out Walt Disney's book and is being patriotic with flag raising and retreats at the proper times. Where was I, yes waiting for Firehawk to open. The ride wound up opening at around 10:10, and after the queue was open and we were advanced in, I found myself in the last switchback lane before the greeter and queue split. Shortest wait i have had for this yet, and they had both stations/trains running. We were sent down the left lane (the one that ducks underneath the track and enters the right hand station), where a seat assigner was grouping people. I got sent to row 4 and was soon off on another great FireHawk ride. This ride is quickly becoming one of my favorites in the park. For the most comfortable ride, you have to ride arms outstretched like a superhero and embrace the flying concept. After First Ride on Firehawk (event #2: chalk up another success), I decided that now would be my best shot at getting a ride in on Flight of Fear. I left the stuff in the locker and headed into Hangar 18. The line was just back to the door between the hangar proper and the entrance hall, and they were going the short way, and the pre show video was running. Not too long after I was getting into seat 2.2, and had no trouble fitting the safety restraints. I can verify that if there is any lighting for the on ride video it is infared or other invisible lighting that will not distract the riders. Decals advertising the on ride videos have been added to the cars since my last visit and . WHAM here we go into the show building. Dark as ever, and the trims hit as hard as ever but it was still a great ride. One of the parks top rides. Its no wonder X-Base gets crowded, it has two great rides. Upon exiting Flight of Fear, I noted it was 10:50. I also noted the Sign Shop tour was at 11:00, and I was very interested in taking the Sign Shop Tour. Meeting spot: path to picnic grove. Move out, its going to be a sprint to make it there in time. First I had to get my stuff out of the locker, then I moved it at as fast a pace as I could muster given the out of control heat and the fact it was an uphill trek most of the way. The good news is I made it to the meeting spot on time, and with some flexibility in the schedule I would have had some time to spare. When it was presumed that most of the group had arrived, we were escorted back the Boomerang Bay/ Picnic Grove trail, and went backstage through the gate directly across from the picnic grove entrance. A quick lanyard check and soon we were standing on a service road. We started walking back the service road and saw a building labeled PKIU. The building itself wasn't that remarkable, but what was noteworthy were the multiple hearses parked out front. I suppose FearFest isn't that far away. We walked further down the service road we came to the Sign Shop building. Some time was given for the work crews to close off parts of the building that were not open for tours. I can somewhat feel for them, I mean to have a large group of strangers invade your work area, toting cameras is certainly an awkward situation. We were told to wait on the driveway outside the sign shop and due to the nature of the worksop environment we would be taken inside in small groups of 20. Later on, the waiting area was moved to just inside the building so as to let people get out of the direct sun. When my turn came around, we were let into a back room. The sign shop is also the parks Art and Design department, and clearly the current project is FearFest theming. It was hard to miss the massive crypt style tombstones bearing the names of Cedar Fair executives, and the smaller gargoyles and other things that were being put together. In a way I was both surprised and somewhat honored that they would allow us to see, and photograph, and post on the web for all to see, set pieces for an attraction that is still under development. But seeing what the project of the day isn't the main reason for the sign shop tour. You see, it seems like the park does not throw out many, if any of the parks former signs. I suspect this is for reuse, or so their designs can be reused. This gives the workshop a park history museum kind of feel to it. There were the big show pieces like the huge King Cobra and Winter Festhaus signs, down to obscure thngs like signs for booths and one time special events. Those would include two Survivor logos. Sitting in the back of the shop is a rack full off all the past skins for the portable A-frame signs they use for special events. It was one of those tours that went by so fast and there was way too much for one person to notice. Another task of this crew is restoring the carousel horses. The park has a few spare horses, and the horses are cycled out for rehab on a continual basis. On our way out of the sign shop, we were reminded that the 12:15 Son of Beast tour had been canceled, "While the ride is closed it is considered a hard hat area, and therefore for your safety we aren't allowed to take any tours back there" We were presented with our replacement activity. Pair up into teams of two, one person from each time come up to collect an ink pen and a packet. Yep, its another of the infamous Kings Island Evil and Demented Scavenger hunts. This one was a bit different than their past hunts. Instead of being given a clue of what to find in the form of a cryptic rhyme, each team was presneted a packet with tiny thumbnail size images, except they weren't full images, they were extreme close ups of a minute part of something. If you like the Eyebenders in Games magazine this is for you. All you have to do is look at the pictures and write down on the answer sheet where in the park it is, be as specifc as possible. Each picture correctly identified is woth 1 point except for the two bonus items worht 3 points. The instructions inform you that you will need to go to all sections of the park to complete the hunt, and that all the items can be found in areas of the park that are accessible to the general public. I noted that prizes would go to the top two scoring teams. The winning team would get a PKI-Opoly game and a Kings Island viewmaster for each person, the runner ups would only get the viewmasters. Oh and you have till dinner to complete and turn in your answers. I was planning on posting the scavenger hunt clues and answers here, but this post from Kings Island Central does the job quite nicely: http://www.kicentral.com/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=10493&view=findpost&p=172592 After the Scavenger Hunt was introduced, we were asked to kindly stay on the driveway directly outside the sign shop, and we would be escorted back in to the park. Upon being escorted back into the park, I made my way to Avatar: The Last Airbender. I noted a mostly full queue, but it moves fast. I also noticed a large group of event participants fall into line around me. It didn't seem like long at all, thanks to conversation, that we were informing the grouper we had 7 people. It did not help us get preferred seats, even with the VIP tags. We wound up in middle row 3. Avatar is a fun ride, and was also quite refreshing with the natural air conditioning provided by the spinning. After Avatar, the group went to Chick-Fill-A for soft drinks, and then announced that they simply planned on chilling out in the Festhaus until the ice show. I had a naive moment, I was all gung-ho about ignoring the oppresively hot weather, I have rides to ride. In fact as I had already seen Endless Summer on Ice, I was planning on skipping the Ice Show, and since I had been on numerous Beast tours, I planned on having a nice ride session and rejoining the group for dinner. At least thats how I had it planned. I did grab a Strawberry/Banana Chill at a cart located near Eiffel Tower and headed to Action Zone. It did not take long for my enthusiasm to get squashed. I got to Delirium, and saw a totally full queue with the line overflowing out onto the midway. I verified Son of Beast was closed, and that Face/Off and Drop Zone had lengthy lines. I didn't feel up to the hike back to Top Gun, so soon made a hasty retreat out of Action Zone. I did briefly think of rejoining the others in the Festhaus, but pressed on into Oktoberfest. Once in Oktoberfest, I went on Adventure Express, and the queue was backed up about a third of the way over the bridge over the track. Interestingly, when I got to the queue split everybody was heading towards the front, so I dashed through the line for back. Soon I was in a seat near the back of the train. Adventure Express gave a noteworthy ride. Not only was the ride running great, it seems that attention has been afforded to the special effects, such as the errie green lights on the lift, but most noteably all the tribal drummers AND the big boss at the top of lift 2 were fully illuminated and working. Wow, I haven't seen this in awhile. Adventure Express is getting some love from the special effects maintainence team. After Adventure Express, I headed into Coney Mall, and proceeded to take a ride on Racer. The line was down the ramp, but quite back to the queue house. As always there was congestion in the station, and once I actually got up to the load station, there were plenty of seats available in the back of the train, so I chose seat 5.2. One click on the lapbar and away we go. I see the FireHawk line looks insane, I note we are actually racing, and I note the ride is running as good as it can be given the trim brakes. Racer was so good, I went and tried recaR. The line and congestion in the station were about the same, and I found myself in 5.1. Again one click, and again the trains were racing. Backwards was giving a great ride until the big dip right before the turnaround. That was when the safety bar decided it wanted to go CLICK-CLICK OUCH, I didn't know it could get down that far. Well there is still airtime on backwards side, as it was a bit unpleasant with the bar embedded into your gut. I was just happy there was enough room to push down, then pull up at the end of the ride. After recaR, I was headed towards Vortex, but spotted an interesting situation at Monster. Both lanes were open, there were several people in the right lane, and almost nobody in the left lane. Hey, maybe those Disney guidebooks about always taking the left lane were correct. The upshot is that by noticing the line disparity I was awarded with a near walk on ride on Monster. Woo-hoo. I can verify they are still using the click pins instead of Eyerly door keys. I had a well behaved tub. That meant that while it didn't spin at an incredible rate, it did keep pretty much in constant rotational motion, and as with most good Monsters, the up and down motion of the tub provided nice floater air especially as the effect seems to amplify and by the end of the ride you are getting bounced up and down in the seat. I knew there was a reason I liked these rides. I grabbed a courtesy ice water at Subway before heading to the Arcade. I call a cool break. I didn't play any of the games, but I did take another look at the Kiddie Casino. I don't get redemption games that last maybe 5 seconds per quarter, with incredibly awful payback percentages. (Then again, what do I know, I like playing slot machines that last about 3-5 seconds for often more than a quarter, and sometimes offer dubious payback percentages) After chilling in the Arcade, I headed to Vortex. The Vortex line was back to the Shake, Rattle and Roll exit, and the switchbacks in the station were in use. It still a pretty short wait all things considered. I soon found myself in the front of the back car. The car that gets what is possibly the best airtime moment in the whole park, shame it is ruined by shoulder bars. And I swear they have really tightened that mid course back up to the point where it hangs you through the corkscrews. After my Vortex ride, I checked the clock, it was 2:15. And this oppresive heat is not getting any better. At first I thought I would skip the Ice Show, but now, here it is 2:15 and NOTHING sounds better than parking my butt in an air conditioned theater for an hour. I did enjoy a nice cold adult beverage, okay a BEER!!!, while walking to the Paramount Theater. According to my instructions, I had interpreted it to mean we were to meet at the left side doors to the Paramount Theater. When I approached the theater there was no crowd gathered along the side but I found the group by the left front door. Shortly before 2:30 our hosts invited us to walk around to the side door,and after a quick lanyard check we were admitted to the Paramount Theater about 15 minutes before the general public. The majority of the group decided to take the suggestion that we fill up the first few rows. While we were waiting for the show, our hosts checked to make sure everybody was having fun, to remind us of what the future events are today, but the most important announcement before the ice show was that Maureen (the parks former PR person) was making a cameo appearance at this event. Also before the show, the spirit of cooperation was making itself known as I noted people were sharing scavenger hunt hints. Once the doors opened to the public, we got to watch the children of the audience (mainly) play a big game of Simon Says to kill time. Then of course there was the usual screaming competition to get the audience all warmed up for Endless Summer on Ice. So as I said, the show in the Paramount Theater is "Endless Summer on Ice", the headliner of the parks live entertainment program. It looks like they placed a synthetic surface on the stage, however after getting "iced" during one particular skating maneuver, I can verify that it is a real ice surface, albiet somewhat small. The show offers a series of scenes that depict the typical summer. Last day of school, camping trip to Jellystone complete with Yogi Bear, a day at the bech, a trip to a NASCAR race complete with Scooby Doo, 4th of July celebration, return to school, and the return to school dance. Lots of song and dance numbers complete with figure skating moves complete with some spins, flips and jumps, even some trick moves. All in all I thought it was a very good show, and I do think the parks live entertainment department is back in good hands, and unlike Paramount, Cedar Fair seems willing to fund it. I really enjoyed this show on July 1, and it seemed to be even more spectacular today. After the show, we remained seated while the general public left the theater. As part of the event package, we were treated to a meet and greet with the cast of Endless Summer on Ice. While we waited for the case to change into street clothes and get refreshed after the show, we started playing a Kings Island trivia game, then once it became apparent that the questions were way to simple for such a seasoned group of Kings Island enthusiasts such as us, it suddenly became Scott's Trivia Game. I mean there are people who know such minutia about Kings Island that they had no trouble answering the question "Who made the ticket printers Kings Island uses?" First we were introduced to the cast, then we had a Q&A session. There were questions of a wide variety asked. Questions from the basic "How long have you been skating?" (most since a very young age) "What got you into skating?" (More than one person noted they were introduced to skating by a friend, a friend that no longer skates), to the technical "How do you adjust for the small rink?" (Some noted that this is actually a bit bigger than the rinks used on cruise ships, but the general answer is by careful use of corners and geometry to make the most of the smaller floor), questions about shos business like "What did you do before this show" or "What do you have lined up after this show?" (most mentioned they have done other shows of various types, and most have something lined up), of course with a group of park enthusiasts, they were asked to name their favorite ride (Vortex and Firehawk got several mentiones, and a few people who stated they either don't like rides, or just haven't had time), even the morbid questions like "What is the worst accident you had?" (I think the winner went to the one that was doing a flip or jump, misjudged the edge of the stage and went flying into the audience (not at Endless Summer, sounded more like an arena show somewhere). A lot of them mentioned how different "Endless Summer" is to their regular routine. They indicated that they are used to giving one 2 hour show a night rather than 4 half hour shows, and yes the repetition does start to wear on them. They indicated that there have not been any changes mid year to the Ice Show, and I don't think we got a confirmation on if we would have an Ice Show next summer. After the very informative Q&A session, there was some time for a meet and greet before we were dismissed. Upon leaving the theatre, a quick time check revealed we would have to head directly to the Beast, for the Beast Photo Safari. I had not originally planned on the Beast Photo Safari, but I could meet up with Don Flint there, and I figured with the crowd size, I couldn't really do much else, so why not? I headed to Beast and had intended on getting a bottle of water to take with me. Hey it was near a hundred degrees, and we would be outdoors in the middle of nowhere for about an hour. Unfortunately the vending machine was out of water, so I settled for a citrus soda. A short time later, the service gate to the right of the ride entrance was opened, lanyards checked, and we walked back the service road. There was then an unannounced attraction, as some took photos of the Tomb Raider theme pieces sitting out behind the Tomb Raider building. The ground rules for the tour are the usual, stay on the paths, don't touch the structure, and take nothing but photos. The tour started next to the station area, and we walked down a roadway that goes alongside the final brake run, then ducks through an opening built into lift hill 1, we then made a quick right and walked through a 'tunnel' made up of the bracing for lift hill 1. The first photo attraction came when we got to the base of the first drop where the train enters tunnel 1. I noted the park has added some safety fencing in this area, probably especially for photo tours such as this. This particular area is pretty good for photos. You have drop 1, the entrance to tunnel 1, the exit from tunnel 1, and the big turn after the tunnel as well as the drop off lift 2, part of the helix and the final dip into the brakes all at your disposal for action shots. But proceed we must, but not before peering deep into the woods to get some shots at a distance from drops 2 and 3. We then talk under the second hill and alongside lift 2. Unlike on past tours, they were totally cool when we wanted to get close to the motorhouse for lift 2 and take photos of the motor and mechansisms (there is a locked safety gate). Next to the motorhouse is the bridge to lift 2. As usual we couldn't go there, but there was a place to get a shot of the approach to lift 2. Did I mention Beast is very photogenic? From this point the paved driveway ends, and we continue further back in the woods on a gravel trail. This isn't Holiday World, so I can't call it the Snowy White Gravel Road. The trail to see the rest of the ride goes deep into Beast Woods and parts of it have lots of foliage, and there are also parts where the ride can't be seen at all. Since it was also Boy Scout days in the park, and I just watched the Weird Al concert Saturday, I'll call this part of tour the "Nature Trail To H***". And look, while we are on our nature trail, the next point of interest is up on the left, here you can see the track enter tunnel 2, and if you look on the right, you can see the wooden horseshoe part of tunnel 2 heading back behind some trees. Let's grab a few photos, and head on our nature trail. By the way, how many people remember when the land where Beast now sits was a nature trail, for real, along with a canoe ride. Anyway there is another short section of nature trail, then look to you right to see the other end of the wooden horseshoe part of tunnel 2 diving back under the path you are walking on, and it you look to the left, you can see the train exit tunnel 2, and make the right curve towards that long ground hugging rambling section. Now we have a longer nature trail, then the trail goes down a steep hill. You can go on, I'm going to just wait up here on top of the hill. I've had problems in the past with the gravel on the steep hillside giving way under my feet causing a real dangerous trek. No one in our group hit the gravel, but there were a couple close calls. At the bottom of the hill, is what I can best describe as the Beast's turnaround point, its where you stop heading further back into the woods, and start on the way back home. The gravel path gets very near the track which allows for some great photos, and great photographer/rider interaction. Don't worry I was still able to get some good shots from up on top of the hill. At all the signifcant photo spots amble time was given to photograph several trains, and we stayed at the turnaround for a while before heading back in. We went back the same way we came, so we passed the same spots, and some folks got some more photos, but this was a faster paced walk. There was another point of interest when we got back to the front of the ride. Here we could venture into the space between the train storage area, and the motorhouse for lift 1, along with some supply sheds. These last photos taken it was back the path to the park. Another chance to get those Tomb Raider photos, or rare shots of Beasts queue maze, and station from otherwise inaccesible places. I even took some Vortex photos from the unusual vantage point. Well, look at that I am back in Rivertown, time to check my watch, and look at that, it's time for dinner. I decided to walk through Rivertown to get some shots of the closed Tomb Raider ride. Those ancient caves come complete with modern garage doors, didn't you know. By the time I got back to International Restaurant, dinner was in progress. I entered the restaurant, ticket out, but the host at the bottom of the stairs indicated that the lanyard was sufficient to enter. So I head upstairs, and the line for the buffet is back into the lobby. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the lobby walls are covered with old newspaper clippings of new attraction announcements for Kings Island. I noted the Carousel Room and bar areas were off limits. Dinner was described as an elegant picnic. After waiting for some time in the buffet line, I reached the head of the line. Here I took a red cloth napkin which was rolled around real silverware, then took a real china plate. I started down the buffet table: dinner rolls, baked beans, potato salad, buns, hot dogs, hamburgers, a nicely stocked toppings area for the sandwhiches, and fried chicken. Over at the next table, I picked up a real glass, filled it with ice, and poured a soft drink. Sitting at the very end was a freezer with ice cream. In other words, it was the standard Cedar Fair picnic package served amidst the elegance of the former International Restaurant. You will, however, notice there was no gravy on that buffet. I first tried to join a couple groups, but wound up starting a new table. Not too long after we had a full table good ofgood food and good conversation. Oh the elegance continued to the dining tables where they had real tablecloths and Eiffel Tower centerpieces sitting on mirror bases. Overall there were very few announcements during dinner, but the scavenger hunt players did have to turn in their papers during dinner. So after enjoying my share of the hospitality, it looked to be around 6:30 and time to find a ride or two. I gathered with Don Flint and his group outside the International Restaurant, and as a group we decided to go ride Son of Beast. We headed over to Son of Beast, and as we were getting in line, one person of our group got a weather alert page. The page indicated that severe weather was due in our area in about an hour. That should be just about right, as should be heading to the Paramount Theatre for the "Night at the Paramount Theatre" but the rain may arrive first, so we could see it would be a race to get our ride and get back to the theatre. The line for Son of Beast was back to the tunnel under the service road. The group was guessing 20-30 minutes, but having just done this a week or so ago I know that 40-45 would be a closer guess. One of the benefits of being in a big group is the conversation makes the wait time just fly by. When we got to the top layer of the ramp queue, we could also kill some time by taking photos. We got a few drops of rain but nothing major. When we were almost up to the station, we got something else to watch and kill time. We saw a service truck pull up, a ride mechanic get out, take a wood ladder out of his truck and haul it up the long stiarcase up to the Son of Beast platform. He also pulled up some other stuff with a rope and pulley arrangement. We never did see what he was doing, and it didnt effect ride operation. We were glad to get under the station roof in case we did get a downpour. When it came time to choose seats our group filled rows 5.1, 5.2, and 6.1 of the blue train. More specifically I was in row 5.2. I was not exactly looking forward to it when the train left the station, we headed up the lift and after the ear splitting loud racket cresting the lift. I must admit that todays ride was better than my first ride, mainly due to the fact I followed the guideline "Don't let your back touch the seat back". As i said then the ride is great up the lift, down the first drop, up the second hill, its the Rose Bowl Helix where the ride turns into ShuffleMania. Yes, the train was still shuffling like mad, but keeping my back off the seat back and leaning forward while grabing tight to the grab bar seemed to help. When you get to the mid course brake, the brakes bring the train down to a crawl, which also seems to reset the train so the drop off the mid course, and the new track section are nice and smooth, but then the rest of the ride is all curves, so more shuffle action. We returned to the station and decided it wasn't that bad. After our Son of Beast ride, I would have liked to ride Top Gun, as the two rides seem meant to be ridden in a pair, and I had not yet ridden Top Gun today, but the majority voted for Adventure Express, so thats where we headed. I was glad to see I was not just imagining the improvements to Adventure Express. If we get the bell at the entrance to tunnell 1 ringing, and the spears popping out of tunnel 2 operating, I think we would almost have the entire package. After our Adventure Express ride it was almost 8, and even better it looks like that storm changed paths and will go north of the park. We headed to the Paramount Theater and joined the crowd waiting outside. After the audience had left after watching the 7:30 Endless Summer on Ice, we were admitted to the theatre. Almost everybody headed to the front of the theatre, which given the video nature of the presentation, may not have been the brightest move. First order of business were the general announcements, and the thanks to Josh,Don and Scott for having us. Scott was introduced as the manager of the Paramount Theatre, and has been very instrumental in getting KIC sneak peeks of upcoming shows, not only that he is letting us use his theatre tonight. Before we start the videos, it was time to talk about the scavenger hunt. We spent time discussing some items that generated interesting (but wrong) answers. It was also announced that the prizes were being slightly upgraded. First of all both the winner and the runner up would collect the same prize. That prize would be a PKI-Opoly and Viewmaster for each person, plus a collection of undisclosed promotional posters from the PR department. They talked about how they were worried they would end up with a five way tie or something like that, but were relieved when they had clear cut winners. Lets see it looks like a perfet score would be 51 points. It was revealed that the runner up scored 36 and the winner scored 38. Prizes were passed out, winners congratulated, and in a refreshing change in policy, they said the answers would be available as we left the theater. (In the past, the park did not reveal the answers in case they wanted to reuse the game) After the winners were announced it was time for the video presentations! "Roll that beautiful bean footage!" For the first video segment, they said that even though it is KI Central, they are working on some other related projects. One of those is LeSourdsville Lake, and that they were given special permission by Jerry Couch to walk through LeSourdsville Lake and take photos. So, they took the photos, and decided to share them with us. So after polishing it up into a video file, adding music and all that, it was time for the video. The introduction to the segment had me bracing for the worst. The slideshow started, and I realize I am no expert, but I didn't think the park looked near as bad as I feared. Sure there are some signs that look faded, are missing letters, or are broken. (Most tragically the Screechin' Eagle sign is broken in half. Some of the rides look like they were taken apart and stored, others look like they were left out to the elments. (Like the Pirat and the Carousel, but the Carousel is under a pavilion). The pool is drained as you might expect, and I can' tell if the lake was filled in, or just filled with the scum and alegy that collect when a body of water stands too long, particularly a man made body of water like that lake. The Belle of Lesourdsville has been taken out of the lake and is sitting up on its trailer. At the end of the show they showed the Screechin Eagle. It has been overtaken by brush, but it looks like it the brush was cleared the basic structure still stands. Of course I remember it cost a lot of money to get it running after sitting dormant for only 2 seasons, we are now up to 5 dark years. Again, it was depressing, but it didn't look near as bad as I had thought. I temper that comment with the fact that it was announced that video was only a teaser and that the photos shown were just the tip of the iceberg. We should keep our eyes peeled to see the rest of the photos. But hey, why should you be sitting there happy, let me bring you down too! KIC was nice enough to post this presentation on YouTube, and its link is: But we are at an amusement park, its time to get happy! Our next presentation comes to us from 2004. This video stars former PKI PR personalities Jeff and Maureen. Sadly, Maureen had other plans and was not present to witness this in perso. In 2004, working with the parks Viacom parents, they created a new attraction teaser video that was themed to imitate the famous Brady Bunch episode, "Cincinnati Kids". Maureen played Ma Brady and the three daughters, and Jeff played Mr. Brady, the three sons, and ALICE! Given their association with the time with Viacom, the opening and closing credits are spot on for Brady Bunch, except with Jeff and Maureen dressed up as all the characters for the opening credits, and of course their names in the closing credits. Okay, for the benefit of those who had not seen the original Brady Bunch episode, I am about to compare the two versions. I know the first time I saw the promo video at a different coaster event, I had not watched the original, or if I had, I did not remember it. So I failed to get the in jokes, but since then, thanks to cable and DVDs I have now seen the original Cincinnati Kids. Both versions start out with Mr. Brady announcing a surprise vacation to Cincinnati, in both cases the family is less than thrilled until they learn that his client is an amusement park. In the remake, to cover the fact that there are only two actors, the shot only shows the Brady parents, and not the children. Then the remake used vintage footage of the original for establishing shots of the park. This includes such things as the old front gate, a ride on the Bayern Curve, and of course the famous Racer ride. Gone from this segment are the subplots the original had. One subplot involved the children being admonished not to spoil their appetite on carnival junk food, as they had a big lunch planned, quickly followed by scenes of a pair of the children stopping at about every food stand they came across (and trying to justify each purchase), culminating meeting back up for lunch with a full belly. The other subplot was about the older Brady daughter flirting with the Football Toss operator, and subsequently following him even as he took a shift covering as a costume character, causing envy with one of the Brady sons, who bribes another costume character to borrow his costume. Someone did ask about this subplot after the video finished. What is important is the main plot, the family meets for lunch. During lunch one Brady daughter shows off a poster she had purchased at the park. Ma Brady looks concerned at this point, and well she should, I mean every seasoned park goer knows you wait till you are leaving the park to purchase souvenirs, particularly those which could be easily damaged. Actually, MA Brady does express concern about the poster getting damaged, and suggests that Mr. Brady loan the daughter one of his blueprint tubes. Not to over analyze this (Too Late!), but why is Mr. Brady carrying around a spare poster tube in the park, and if it wasn't a spare, if the blueprints, which mean big money, were valuable enough to put in two separate tubes, why merge them together just to protect a souvenir poster. Why, the plot of course, this allows the tubes to both be set under the table, and swapped, unbeknownst to their owners. Why Mr. Brady didn't check his tube before leaving the lunch table is beyond me, but I am paranoid that way. (Sorry, over analyzing again). Anyway, you know whats coming next, more footage of the family enjoying the park put up with footage of Mr. Brady in the boardroom delivering his introduction, opening the tube, and having to deal with the sickening realization that his plans are lost, vowing to get them back, and being giving a not too kind warning that the board has to leave in 2 hours. At this point, I like how the original has that shot of the girls commenting that they had lost the poster, but not to worry they can always buy another one. At this point Mr. Brady meets his wife at the front of the park, and may I point out the major continuity error. The whole premise of this recreation is that Mr. Brady delivers the plans for Italian Job, however before the board has seen the plans, there is an Italian Job preview center set up at the top of International Street. I know as a PR video they want to get the name of the new product out as much as possible, but its still a major continuity error. Anyway , just like in the original they split up to find the daughter, then when they find the daughter and learn the poster is lost, they split up to search the park for the poster tube, almost just like the original. The Football Toss game even gets a cameo appearance, as Mr. Brady finds one daughter at the Football Toss game, and when he alerts her to the problem, she says "I'll look, you play the game" And here, even with his job and career on the line, he takes valuable time to play the Football Toss game, badly. (Over Analyzing again, Sorry!) Since the Spinning Kegs ride is no longer there, they search the cars on the Monster, but we are all curious on the original the plans were found on the canoe ride, which has not been there in many years. Where will the plans be found? Well on Delirium, sitting between two seats. Alright, this is just laughable (as I go back into over analyzing mode), on the canoe ride there is no chance of the plans being flung from the ride (unless the canoe capsizes of course), and it is plausible that since the canoe was manned by a park furnished guide at all times, that guests might presume the tube was part of the ride, and belonged to the guide. Contrast to Delirum, that tube is gonna be flung from the ride on the first cycle. Thats if a rider or operator doesn't see it first since its glaring obvious and turn it into lost and found. Anyway, the tube is found, and we have the mad dash back to Mr. Brady, mimicking the nonsense route the original took. I mean the plans were found on Delirium, they are going to the administration building, and Alice is seen running out of Hana Barbera Land by Showplace? (And yes jumps two chain fences just like in the original) Anyway the plans are found, Mr. Brady is found, and the board is found on their way out of the park. In the original they take the plans with them and leave the park. We find out he was successful when Mr. Brady gets a phone call in the last scene. In this version, I suppose the board was lying about the two hours, as they all go back into the Administration Building and look at the plans. At this point the video changes to the Italian Job promotional video that was on the parks website, and released to the various media outlets. Its still fun to watch to see all the changes since the rides initial design. The most obvious is the bright yellow track was changed to gray to better simulate a roadway. Then it shows all the things that have gone wrong: the working headlights on the cars, the fogger in the long tunnel, a more impressive splashdown finale, the famous subway stair drop effect (bouncing the train) that never did come online, and the fishtailing that some deny works, and those that say it works says its so slight its barely noticeable. Speaking of changes, its too bad we could not have kept the Siebert shipping container in the show scene. So that video ends, and the crowd cheers, next its time for something much older. My friends, they presented what they think is the first ever POV footage of Beast. (Imagine assorted oohs and ahhs here). They could tell from the footage that it is no later than the 1979, and is beleived to have been shot during pre opening testing. The video will sort out the myths, once and for all as to what all has or hasn't changed with the ride. Let's take our video Beast ride, shall we? We are in the front seat and we start out heading out of the station and going over the former Beast lake under the queue area and lift approach. Note the absence of Vortex as you start up the lift. We can see that even back then the train was slowed down on the top of the first lift, and we can see that yes the brakes were there on the first drop. At the bottom of the first drop, we can see the mine tunnel theming was not in place at the tunnel entrance. We go through the first tunnel, round the first curve, and over hill 2, and is that a skid brake sitting there on hill 2? I could have sworn people keep saying these brakes were added much later. Over hill 3 and into the mid course brake run, not its just a covered section of flat track with a trim brake at the end, but it was intended as a block brake, and used to be lined the entire way with skid brakes, with kicker tires at the very end to get the train back up to speed after a dead stop. Like father, like son, I think Son lost its kicker tires on its mid course brake run this year. Coming out of the mid course, we round the corner and head towards the first real big change. In the video we go through a short concrete tunnel, the go around a horseshoe curve that is out in the open, then back through another short concrete tunnel. As most Beast riders now, those two short concrete tunnels have been made one long tunnel as the exposed section between them was tunneled with wood. We go through the meandering section as it hugs the ground in the speed run before coming up to lift 2. We noticed the service walkways to lift 2 were not yet installed, and it looks like there were no brakes on the big drop after lift 2. Of course, I may have been distracted from looking for those brakes by noticing the other major change. Originally the helix was NOT tunneled. (This itself, was as opposed to the artists rendering which showed a completely tunneled helix all the way around) Today, we have what must have been the compromise, which is the two short tunneled sections of the double deck tunnel on the helix. I also noted that despite rumours to the contraty the return to the station from the helix looks to be just as it is today, some claim there was another dip that was taken out. We come back into the station and instead of Tomb Raider, we see the Kenton's Cove Keelboat Canal. Following the on ride footage, there was lots of off ride footage of the train going around the course. This allowed for great views of the short lived 4-bench 4 car PTC train with each car a different color. Ironically the video looked steadier during the POV than the off ride footage. Next up was a promotional video for Tomb Raider the ride. This was done as a National Geographic special. We come across our exciteable explorer as he comes across the ride preview center at the park, and received the directions to see David Mandt. He goes to David Mand's office which is just filled with Tomb Raider posters, media kits, a coffee mug (which David drinks out of) and more, yet when our exciteable explorer asks about Tomb Raider, David acts like he had never heard of it. Looking about the office, our explorer is not buying it, but David sends him "on the other side of the park" Here he starts walking into the Tomb Raider cave where he finds a video. Remember the park was real hush hush about what Tomb Raider really was. They establish that its NOT a coaster, its NOT a simulator (but it shows footage of a Traver Rocket ride, not a simulator) it's a "Highly Themed, Fully Immersive Dark Ride Adventure" a catchphrase they repeat numerous times. When the video acts like its going to show the ride, the video experiences "technical difficulties" and abbruptly ends. Hmm, that fits the way the ride is currently running to a T. Next up was another promo video, this one for Son of Beast. It is done in Blair Witch Project style. Two ACE members went hunting for the Son of Beast, they were never seen again, a few days later this footage was found... They are looking for Son of Beast and come across a wood coaster, but sadly discover its only Beastie (Not the right Beast), they try again, and you guessed it they come across Beast (Not the right Beast), at the end they come across the construction site of a partially costructed Son of Beast, point out some key features, till they come across "Son of Beast" the creature lurking in the woods, which brings an abrupt end to this video. The final video, weighing in at 20-25 minutes long is our feature presentation. It is the video they showed in the Beast queue in 2004 (and possibly a year or two thereafter). Its the Beast 25th anniversary video. Tracking the Beast project clear back to the building of the Racer (and telling about Don Helbig's 12,000 rides, stand up and be acknowledged Don!), then to the planning, design and construction of the Beast, to Beast opening day. It tells the Beast story and hs interviews with the then president of ACE Carole Sanderson, then ACE PR person Sean Flaherty, Don Helbig, Carl Eichman (the Beast Tamer) and more. It's a great video for anyone curious about the Beast story. I noticed they trimmed off the ending where they used to say "In 2000, the Beast had a Son, and it shows a glimpse of Son of Beast "But, thats a different story!" But if a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a 20 minute video is worth about a zillion words. Here, on Google Video is the Beast 25th Anniversary video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7289711399869627611 After the Beast video, "Night at the Paramount Theatre" was over, please exit quickly but carefully, being sure to grab your scavenger hunt answers on the way out. See everybody at the Beast at park close. This event was great, very well done guys. This left about 40 minutes to explore the park. Earlier this week, Don promised that if Extreme Skyflyer was $10 or less, he would try it. It was, so thats where we headed. Don and I arrived back at Extreme Skyflyer, and noted the $10 special was still in effect. We walk over to the ticket booth, and the ticket booth is empty. Geez, I hope Skyflyer isn't all sold out for the night. A few minutes later the person selling the videos comes to the ticket window, and $20 later we have a double flyer ticket. Oh, we also learn that tickets are sold clear up to park close, and at park close they will stay open until all ticketed riders have flown. Don and I get in line, and find only 1 group ahead of us at the gate. We are soon invited into the harness shelter. We are first offered the chance to stow loose articles in the cubbyholes in the harness shelter. I don't usually leave loose items behind, but in this case, only crew and flyers can get near the cubbyholes, there aren't many people allowed in the area, and there are at least three crew mambers manning the harness shelter at all times. I'll risk it. So while we are stowing our loose articles, the crew is setting out two red flight suits for our use, So, I figure this is at least my 13th or so Skycoaster flight, so by now, it the usual drill. Legs in leg loops, pull up like a pair of pants, clap hands together, dive through mess of straps, tick arms out through shoulder holes. Now stand at attention, and hold harness tight to chest while the crew goes behind you and adjusts and tightens things up. Okay grab hold of your foot bar, and proceed to the line next to the boarding gate. We get in line at the boarding gate, and we must have arrived at the tail end of a crowd, as they lookedto have just reopened Flight Area 2. A crew member comes out and splits up the line, sending every other group over to Area 2. We are amongst the groups heading to area 2. It winds up we are group 3 so there is one being hooked up to the cables, one on deck, and then us. Now, I know we all have occasionally had morbid senses of humour, but once the group on deck is invited in, Don and I discuss the fatal accident on Air Glory, a bad Skycoaster knock off ride. Oh well, it kills the time. Beofre we get invited in, a check of the harness and its adjustents is made while still outside the flight area, then we are invited into the flight area. We wait next to the lift under instructed to board. We board the lift go up, watch the group in front of us recover from their flight. Flyers change places, put feet on the foot bars, and then we are attached to the flight cables. The next part is what I call the "Connection Integrity Test", thats where they drop the lift down about halfway, and since you can no longer touch the floor it has a gallows like effect, and you are hung, literally. Well not by the next, but by the harness, so you fall forwards and feel a slight jerk as you are caught by the cable and harness. Some say thats even worse than the real fall. Now the winch cable is attached, and everything is double checked. Then the lift goes down all the way, the previous group exits, the crew gets out of the way and the winch starts winching. I must say it was a bit unsettling when I thought I heard the harness straps on my harness groan as we were winched up to the top. We could also see the construction site for the mystery building in Action Zone, but the lighting on it wasn't too good tonight. And my this whole experience just seems to go by faster and faster each time, I remember my first flight everything seemed to take an eternity, Soon we are at the top and the countdown is given. A few seconds later, I gently tug the ripcord, which sets this whole exercise in potential and kinetic energy into motion. First the big breathtaking drop, then its a swing ride. We seemed to be in spin ride mode, as we seemed to spin around on the cables the whole time we were swinging. Coolness, I love the added bonus. I knew we must have been off kilter as we kept wanting to rotate around while they were getting us ready down on the lift. All in all, it was a fu ride, and Don proclaimed it better than his first ever Skycoaster ride (this was #2). He was a bit nervous on the way up. So grab hold of the lander, and grab hold with all your strenght and then some. We stop, kick off the foot bars, the lift is brought up and we try to stand ourselves up. Interestingly, the way we are standing, I could watch the main cables being disconnected. Two locking caribeaners (Air Glory only used one). The important part was they were locked. So we get disconnected, change places. When the lift lowers we are free to exit out of the flight area to the access path back to the harness shleter. We return to the harness shack, the straps are loosened and we are helped out of the harnesses. Harnesses returned, we reclaimed our loose articles from the cubyhole, exit the ride area and forget to check our video. We have less than 10minutes till park close. We first head for Delirium, even enter its queue, and I find its queue maze half full. Thats at least 30 minutes, which is too long. We bail out of Delirium, and wind up heading to Vortex. The Vortex line wasn't long at all not even filling up its permanent queue area, but the station switchbacks were still in use We wound up scoring a back seat ride, with the fireworks starting one train before ours. Where Firehawk is good for watching fireworks while riding, Vortex is bad as you always seem to be pointed the wrong way, Anyway, it was another good ride. We head to Beast and join the crew waiting outside Beast entrance for the Beast queue to clear out. The lanyard said 10-10:15ish, and it wound up being more like 10:30 until the Beast queue was clea. We did have to deal with one obnoxious group of guests that razzed us for waiting for a closed ride. "You guys aren't going to get to ride tonight, Y'all are stupid" Unfortunately the ride entrance reopened for us just about 2 minutes after that incident, that would have been icing on the cake had we been let in right as they were razzing us. "Well, actually, we are!" I heard there was an upset guest who saw some people jump into the queue at unauthroized places after it had reopened for us, mainly becuase their family was not admitted due to not haing the lanyard. That situation was handled easily, one cell phone call uptot he station meant that lanyards would be checked again as you boarded the train, There will be no free rides here. We entered the queue area, and I get the feeling we were moved into the queue area in case the razzing and so forth from the regular park guests got worse. That was because, as we were being let into the queue area, Beast was still cycling regular guests, and we were held at the bottom of the ramp between queue areas 2 and 3. There was some intersting R-rated conversation going on, "They stuck a string of christmas lights WHERE, and then they PLUGGED THEM IN!!!???!!" When it was time, we were admitted through the "Front of Train" side of the rampup to the station, and lanyards were rechecked before getting into the seat lanes. We wound up in seat 1.2 of the middle train. There happened to be few enough people that everybody could be accomodated in three trains. Therefore it was announced that everybody would be sent around TWICE. I like them rerides without even getting out of the seat. Now, why is that one click on the lapbar has been fine all season, and it would be fine on the night of August 18, but tonight during the event ERT, its a two click minimum. Beast was showing its good side tonight, as it was running partcualrly well. Not too rough, good speed, and the first half of the ride up until the second lift had very few lights, and before tunnel 2 had no lights. Don't worry, they made up for it, they have added two very high beam spotlights on the second lift hill. I mean divert your eyes or they may blind you spotlights. Man, those suck, I closed my eyes until we were halfway up the lift. Through that wonderfully intense helix, into the final brakes and into the station, We stop in the station in case anybody wants to change seats. Chivlary is still alive, as those in the front seat were willing to trade seats with someone else. Wow, here we go on our reride, even better than the first ride, and I close my eyes as we start to approach lift 2. That light has got to GO! We return to the station, and exit the

TR: Kings Island - July 22, 2007 Trip Report: Kings Island Mason, OH July 22, 2007 ******************** "This is a different kind of upside down" It the summer of different kinds of Kings Island visits. You may recall, in my last blog article, that the July 1 visit to Kings Island was the Mother/Son visit, today is the visit with my cousin who is about 7 years younger than me. So anyway, my cousin drops by and picks me up around noon and after a stop off at Wendy's for a reasonably priced lunch, we arrived at the park shortly before 1. We dodged the $10 parking fee by using my parking pass, then I dissuaded Rick from parking in Gold Pass parking, and instead finding a good space in the north lot which usually results in better easy-in/easy-out parking. We go up to the front gate to learn Drop Zone is still closed, and Rick buys an admission ticket using a wonderful $20 off coupon I had. We then cleared both metal detection and the admission turnstile with little fuss and were soon heading to International Street. Here is where I made the first tactical error of the day, I think we should have headed directly to Firehawk, but then Son of Beast had reopened after a years worth of downtime. So, it's one of those situations where you know its not going to be pleasant, but you have to find out for yourself. We headed to Son of Beast. When we arrived at the ride, the line was backed up into the tunnel that goes underneath the service road. The good news was that none of the switchbacks on the other side of the tunnel were in use. Still about 40-45 minutes later we were climbing into a SOB train. As you might be aware, Son of Beat has new trains this year. Gone are those hideous Premier trains, and here are two Gerstlauer trains, believed to have come from Pavilion in Myrtle Beach. The Premier's were three bench trains, and the Gerstlauers are only two bench, which meant some station redesign was in order. You may recall in its short service life last year, they had taken the back cars off the Premier trains, reducing them from 18 rows to 15 rows. The Gerstaluer trains only have 12 rows, so yes capacity on this ride has been cut down by a third in two years. Overall they seemed to have done a good job in the station. They blocked of the last three queue lanes, which they had presumably done last year, then they also blocked off the very first queue lane, and two more somewhere in the middle. In some cases they added a rail on the line side and removed the gate so the area effectively became a crew member spot. or if that was not needed they again sealed it off on the line side, but left the queue gate in place, with its mechanism disconnected so it stays shut. I also noticed a good deal of the front seat line has been blocked off. Further station changes include welding an extension onto the lap bar release pistons, presumably so they line up with the release button on the bottoms of the new cars. The new trains appear to be Gerstlauer bodies, but the bogies are modified. This is most noticeable if you look at the large wheels and axles,so big they don't fit into the axle cut outs in the car boides, so obviously the trains have been somewhat modified to fit SOB's track and to allow for the larger wheels needed for the speed this ride has. As luck would have it we got the blue train, they have a blue train and a red train, both with SoB logos on the fronts) I have heard the red train performs better than the blue train. It also probably didn't help that we were in row 6 (car 3, row 2) and I have since heard the ride runs worse in the middle of the train. Anyway the seating compartments are regular Gerstlauer, with no padding, no headrests, no seat dividers, and the usual Gerstlauer lap bar (the model with the flat iron on the outside) The park has added seat belts, they are orange, individual, manually adjusted belts. This differs from the parks trend of using retractable automatically adjusting belts on their other rides. The good news for larger riders, is that they may now be able to ride Son of Beast. I hear those Premier trains were BAD on taller riders. The belts are plenty long enough, however they aren't as long as they appear, as a big loop has been sewn into the end of the belt, making it easier for the operator to tighten it. The train departs the station, and the track layout up until the mid course brake appears to be the same as it was. The drop out of the station, the lift approach, the on ride camera on the bottom of the lift hill, the tall lift (218'), and let me tell you, if you thought the Premier trains were loud cresting the lift, you haven't heard anything yet, the Gerstlauer trains are deafeningly LOUD cresting the lift. We go down the first drop, and up hill 2, and then into the Rose Bowl helix. That's where the ride continues to go to heck. The train still shuffles like mad going through the Rose Bowl and yeouch that is not pleasant at all. The ride may be trying to take the unlicensed chiropractor title away from Mean Streak. We hit the mid course, which is slowing the trains down to a crawl. In the newspaper articles, Cedar Fair talked about adding new brakes, but tightening up the mid course brake is the only braking change I discerned. So now you go down the drop out of the mid course, but without the built up momentum you had with version 1 of the ride. Of course the big news is at the bottom of this drop, the vertical loop is, as you probably know, gone. New trackwork has replaced the loop, but don't get two excited, all the trackwork manages to do is nudge the train over so it will be lined up with the second helix track. The new track seems to start partway down the drop, into a straight track then most of the way up into helix two. The new trackwork features a tiny hill in the middle of it which looks as if it should deliver a pop of air, but only generates a floater. Since they have replaced so much track, there are no sharp curves in this very elongated S curve, instead they seamed to have found the two most shallow angles they could use to get the job done. It may be an entirely dull piece of trackwork but it does allow for some smooth riding before yuo hit the helix and the various curves following the helix which allow the train to shuffle like crazy again. I was greatly relieved to be going down the final dip before the rise back up into the final brakes. I fail to see any improvement in this ride. Rick was somewhat more animated in his dislike over the ride. After riding Son of Beast, we had to follow what has become something akin to the Kennywood Rule. (At Kennywood, a Jack Rabbit ride mustbe followed by a Racer ride) The local variant is that a Son of Beast ride must be followed by a Top Gun ride. I guess you could to it the other way, but then you have to walk all the way UP the Top Gun Exit ramp, just to turn around and walk back DOWN the Son of Beast entrance lane, that is part of the Top Gun exit ramp. Of course we saw that others solve this problem by jumping the rail at the bottom of the ramp. Top Gun, as you might expect, was a walk on. It's now well into Cedar Fair's watch as park operators, and the Top Gun theming situation has not improved at all, but then it fell apart during Paramount's watch so I guess I can't really pin blame on Cedar Fair. We get to the station and take a ride in the back seat. What I noticed is that people were arriving at the Top Gun station just about at the same pace as people were leaving the Top Gun station after riding. In other words, a near perfect situation capacity wise, as it looked like the trains were going out either full or pretty full. Top Gun's problem is that it is too short, because for what is there it is a wonderfully intense little ride, aided greatly by the visuals that Son of Beast provides. We exited Top Gun and make the long climb up the Top Gun exit ramp, and then into Action Zone plaza. We took a look around. Drop Zone was closed as was posted out front, and we weren't in a water ride mood. (Recall it was still in the 70's this was before the summer heat wave took hold) This left Delirum and Face/Off in Action Zone, neither of which Rick cares for. Rick did, however say that he wanted to watch Twisting to the 60's so, I rode the Action Zone rides while he caught the show. I started with Face/Off, which had a queue that was not quite backed up into the queue house. It also had something strange going on up in the station, it seems like people were only going into the station one trainload at a time. This was without a ride operator there to enforce this. Weird, but it amounted to me getting an end seat on the end closest to the midway in just about 10 minutes, being paired with another single rider. Face/Off is still a wonderfully intense ride, with the sole problem that it is low capacity. From Face/Off, I headed to Delirium. While waiting in line for Delirum, I got to see another downside to the various virtual queue programs. It's been said that fights have occured at some parks over the virtual queue programs, but in this case I could see where the virtual queue line members may be trying to provoke one. We had a group of people with Fast Lane tickets while waiting to be admitted turned to the queue house (only 1 of three switchbacks in use) and loudly taunt them "We have Speed Lane and you don't" Delirium should have been a 15 minute wait, but we had to wait a bit for them to handle the remnants of a rider that just couldn't contain themselves. (Get the garden hose!) Delirium is one of the parks better ride installs, being a Giant Frisbee. I had a great ride in Seat 49 which seemed to always be at the top of the peaks looking down on each swing. After my Delirium ride, I purchased a Strawberry/Banana Chill which I consumed whil e taking a shortcut through the Festhaus to look at the new Panda Express installation before meeting up with Rick in front of Starbucks. We both headed to Scooby Doo and the Haunted Castle. Scooby Doo's line was contained in its indoor queue area, with 1 switchback closed. In fact I had just enough time to finish my Chill before going through the secret passage. I got into the car first and Rick followed. You know the drill, shoot at lit targets, hit boxes of Scooby Snacks, score points. By the time the ride ended, I had smoked Rick by a margin of about 1,000 points. Rick used the tried and true excuse of Scooby ride losers everywhere. "My gun didn't work right" From Scooby I took Rick on a walking tour of the new Nick Universe as he had not seen it since the Hanna Barbera Land days. We also failed to ride both Fairly Odd Coaster and Reptar. Reptar had a half full queue and owing to the slow loading practices and single train operation, I know thats a painfully slow wait. We headed into Rivertown and I showed Rick the "Evil Elephant" of Wild Thornberries, and then we proceeded to just walk through Rivertown before ending up at the Beast. The Beast line was backed up into queue house 1 (the bottom one), with no switchbacks open anywhere along the way. The line was, in fact, a lot shorter than it appeared as one of the two lanes on the ramp up to the station was blocked off for Gold Pass speed lane. We soon made our way up to the station. When the dust cleared in the station, we were riding in row 3 after a very short wait. Beast has been exhibiting Jeckyl and Hyde disease this year, where sometimes you get a great ride, and sometimes you get an especially rough ride. Today, it seems that we drew the Hyde straw and were awarded with a very rough Beast ride. Rick is a big fan of the Beast, and he was having his doubts. After the Beast, we took a little break. Rick wanted to try out the Barrel of Fun (foot massage chairs "Footsie-Wootsie" machines) in the Beast plaza. He dropped in his quarter and seemed to like it, so I sat down in the next one and dropped in a quarter. Powerful motor those things have as not only does the metal plate massage your feet but you also get a good butt message as well. In fact I think everything in a mile radius of the thing starts vibrating. I can't explain it but your feet really do feel good after getting the Footsie-Wootsie treatment. We next headed down the hill to the Bowler Roller game. Rick poured a couple bucks into that game and waked away empty handed , I drop in a quarter and walk away with a small prize. Or I should have walked away with a small prize, I blew another dollar trying to get a second win to upgrade to the medium prize. We walked past Italian Job, which had a line backed into the queue house and into the switchbacks, then we came across three point challenge. Now it is true Rick played high school ball, it is also true that this was 12 years ago. I still managed to goad him into it. "How is your three point game" Not that it took much goading as Rick is the player parks dream of, the guy who thinks he can do anything. They had it marked down to $5 today from a posted price of $10, and at any one time I saw about 8-10 people standing in line to play. So lets say 45 seconds per player (40 seconds for the game and 5 seconds between players) they could reasonably move 80 players through that game an hour, at $5 per is $400 per hour. ($800 per hour at $10 per). "License To Print" money, and as for Rick's game, chalk that up to walking away empty handed. We come across Shake, Rattle and Roll, which was one of Rick's favorite rides growing up, but sometime about 10 years ago he lost his ability to ride spin rides without, messy results, and he claims that he gets queasy going upside down. Bear this in mind as you continue reading. So we skipped Shake Rattle and Roll and proceeded to Vortex. Vortex line was just over the bridge so, for not much of a wait at all, and we head towards the front of the train. 2.5 minutes later I am thinking what a great Vortex ride we had, and Rick wassaying how he hates going upside down. I do think they have tightened up the mid course on Vortex as it was running so well earlier this season. After Vortex, we headed to the Action FX Theater, the only option today was Spongebob Squarepants (in 3D) and that was only being shown on one screen. Not that it much mattered, as the ride was a walk on, and they couldn't fill the auditorium anyway. I noted that all the theming in the preshow area between the two theaters has been removed, including the turntables. I also noted the glare is so bad on the pre show televisions, you can't really see the pre show. And it is also true that this ride is about the extent of my Spongebob knowledge, but he seems to be an excitable little guy. So we get our 3D glasses and head into the theater. Inside, yes the usual movie about Spongebob working at the Krusty Krab, the last pickle in the jar slipping away from him, and in a move that would make Health Departments cringe, he runs after the pickle through the town, and after he finally retrieves it (nearly getting killed in the process) he proceeds to put it on a sandwhich he has taken away from the sterile kitchen environment, and serves it to a customer that had made his pickle allergy known. It's a silly story with a great punchline. We leave the theter dropping the 3D glasses into the yellow mesh bags. I note they are still attempting to run some sort of arcade in the theater exit area. We then head down Coney Mall, and our next stop is Firehawk, but wait there used to be two sets of flagpoles from the flags of the states where you could visit a Paramount park, this year Cedar Fair replaced one set of flags with generic yellow and purple flags, and the other set of poles sat disused. Well now the poles themselves have disappeared, you can see metal plates on the ground where the poles were rooted into the ground. We get back into X-Base, and get to Firehawk to learn the ride is currently closed, but should reopen later. I knew we should have come here when we first arrived. Oh well, we go to right Flight of Fear since we are in the area. The line is back to the greeters station, but I ask and learn it is going through the indoor queues the short way. By the time we enter the hangar building they have opened some of the outdoor switchbacks. We enter the hangar and it is going the short way, just as advertised, and the preshow video was running. I had thought they had given up on that for the year. So it took about half an hour or so, and we were sitting down in the back seat of a middle car. As soon as I sat down a ride operator was there, so I dropped the lap bar and she fastened the belt with no trouble. Very soon thereafter it was WHAM and launched into the hangar. Now if only we could lose this mid course brake. As we boarded the train I noted the camera equipment for the on ride video system the ride is going to be getting, but upon exiting the ride that booth is still closed. So, next he head over to Firehawk, get a locker, and yes the ride is open, and is running both stations/trains. We enter the line which is through 2 switchbacks. One bad thing about Firehawk is that you can see the entire ride from the waiting area. Rick (who had just ridden Vortex and Flight of Fear mind you) says "You know I don't like going upside down". I respond "This is a different kind of upside down" Rick responds (in mocking voice "A DIFFERENT kind of upside down, huh" "When this rides over, your dead" I remind Rick that he wasn't too thrilled about riding Extreme Skyflyer on our last visit to the park, and all that but he wound up liking it. Maybe 30 minutes later and I was being directed to use the left hand lane to exit the queue maze. All my other rides on Firehawk, I was sent down the right lane. The left lane goes down a flight of stairs, goes under the track (yes there is some sort of fabric guard between you and the track) then back up a flight of stairs into the station. They were assigning seats, s we went to our assigned row, a middle of the train row. We got into the seat queue just in time to see the train in front of us lower down to the ride position. Followed by a rider in said train going into a full-on panic attack as soon as the chairs tipped back to the ride position. I can also say the Firehawk crew is to be commended for the professional manner in which they handled the situation. So we get loaded onto the next train, get seated, train lowers down and we are out on the course. Close your eyes while going up the lift hill. Then I admit I was eager to hear Rick's reaction to his first Lie-To-Fly element. At first the sounds coming from the rider next to me weren't encoruaging. We do the station fly over, the vertical-loop-on-your-back, the barrel rolls, and the helix. By the end of the ride he was loving it. As we walked up the exit ramp he indicated he would like to try that again at night. See, I told him so, would I steer a person wrong? Having conquered X Base, we reclaimed our lose articles and headed to Racer. Rick only likes forward so we took one quick lap on forward toward the front of the train. Walk on as you might expect. I can tell there is a great coaster here wanting to be let out. We follow that up with a walk on ride on Adventure Express (row 3). They seem to be working on getting the effects running. Now if they would only get the big boss figure at the top of the lift to be visible, I think they would have almost the complete package. Having now made a lap of the park, I determined that Rick was not interested in Slingshot. so we started filling in the holes we missed. We headed back to Italian Job. We had just entered the Italian Job queue when the ride operator was walking back the line saying "I need two", she repeated this like 2 or 3 more times and got no reaction from the crowd. Rick piped up that we were a group of two, and to my big shock she took us. We were allowed to enter via the Speed Lane entrance and were expressed right to the station. When we got to the station, the crew had already send the train out that was light two riders, so she put us in Row 1 for the next train out. Man, I can get used to this VIP Treatment. It helps that Row 1 is the only row in the whole train that has significant airtime. That all made this a better than average ride on Italian Job. Sure the special effects on it are going downhill, but at its root its a fun little ride. We then paused to watch some more suckers try their hand at Three Point Challenge, before heading to Tomb Raider the Ride. Recall Rick was the one who said he doesn't like spinning or going upside down, yet Tomb Raider was his idea. Yes, he had ridden Tomb Raider before. The line was just backed out of the cave when we joined. However, due to the way they were operating it, it was only a 1 cycle wait. It seems that for all this season and part of last season, they have not been using the Monkey Room or ante chamber, sending you from the queue straight through the ante room into the preshow room. That also means you no longer have the music cue and the light show as the light pattern aligns itself to the pattern on the secret door, while the music builds, and finally the door opens while foggers mask your sight into the preshow room. Today they admitted the first group from the queue into the pre show room, then there was a pause, then the second group was admitted, then a pause, then all the house lights came on. Suddenly it was very bright in the normally very dark queue area. I was half expecting them to announce a delay or that the ride was closed, but with the work lights on, the third group, including us, was admitted directly to the pre show room. As soon as we had arrived in the pre show room, the door between us and the main ride chamber opened up, so we wound up going directly into the ride without the benefit of the preshow. Last time I had ridden this, the main show audio was off, and I was thinking, can they make this suck any worse. So we put loose items in the pouch and prepared to ride. Soon the ride was loaded, and the lights resumed to normal, and I could hear the tribal drums beating. Whats more important was when the ride cycle started and the ride audio was PLAYING. In fact the ride performed as designed with the first two gondola stops, and was running maybe the best it has this year until we got to the ice stalactites scene. At this point the work lights came back on, yet the ride audio still kept playing, and the ride continued to run its cycle. This really became noticeable when we were heading into the lava pit scene, and the big concrete pad under the ride could be seen. Also during the flips I could see a shower of loose articles raining down. How many times must we warn people. There was no special lava pit lighting, so it looked like we were just looking at a regular fountain jet which was pathetically bubbling. So much for the lava pit scene. The ride completed its cycle with the lights on, and I noticed the big blast of fog at the end of the ride was missing. Maybe they will get it all put back together and working right someday, but I have my doubts. Rick claimed Tomb Raider did a number on his stomach, and needed to relax for awhile, so we took a ride on the Kings Island and Miami Valley railroad. Sadly the animations and set pieces have not seen any rehab. In fact, unless I wasn't paying attention it seems the background music on the train was missing as well. After the train ride, we headed back up into Coney, and proceeded to take part in a family tradition, that of spending the last hour or so playing the midway games in Coney. I also noticed that there are very few video games left in the arcade, in fact most of the arcade games these days are redemption machines that would not look out of place in a casino. I mean how many variations can we have on "Drop the coin at just the right time for it to hit a rapidly moving target in the right place" or "Stop the light at the right time" Then there is Colorama which is Roulette. Except the casino might pay something closer to true odds, rathat than giving you maybe $1 or $2 in prize tickets for being lucky enough to time your coin to roll across the bridge when the drawbridge is down, which sets the bonus ball into play which rolls down a habitrail onto a spinning turntable, then hope it ultimately decided to land in the Jackpot hole on the turntable. All in all we had some fun, and around 9:10 or so we headed back to Firehawk. We propbably should have went and taken that night ride on Beast first (tactical error #2) and gotten back just in time to be some of the last people in line for Firehawk. But instead we entered the Firehawk queue, and the queue house was almost all the way through the switchbacks. Rick and I took the time to have a good cousin to cousin chat which really helped the time fly, and before we knew it we were being sent down the right lane, the one that stays level with no stairs to the staion house, and the seat assigner sent us to the back row. As the seats were train was being loaded I heard the first firework go off. I thought they don't run rides during fireworks, well they did, and we had the unique pleasure of watching a good part of the fireworks show while going up the Firehawk lift, which is situated ideally for that purpose, the fireworks continued during our ride, and we got the the exit ramp just in time to see the finale. What a great way to end the evening. So we headed to the front of the park, returned to our car, and yes, that parking spot we picked out was very easy out through the north exit. We then had breakfast at Waffle House before heading home. Next up: KIC: The Event - at Kings Island - 080407. Watch for it,

TR:Kings Island - 7/1/07 Trip Report:Kings Island Mason, OH July 1, 2007 ****************** Today is a different kind of day at the park. Now that Kings Island has a competent live show schedule, including an ice show, and I wanted to show Mom how the park is improving under Cedar Fair, this was a family day at the park. Since the shows don't get started till the afternoon, we didn't arrive to the park until shortly before 1pm. We use my parking pass to dodge the $10 parking fee, then using Mom's special blue pass, we park in the non-premium close in parking lot. Mom does not have a season pass, and upon researching my options, the best deal I found was a coupon for $22.95 Jr/Sr admission. I was kind of hoping to dodge the ticket windows by using the print at home tickets, but this was an even better deal. We first headed to the Ticket building which now sells both tickets and passes. We walked right up to a window and soon had a ticket. We next headed to the security checkpoint where they didn't seem to concerned about the metal detectors, but any bag, like Mom's purse drew their intense scrutiny. I think it is becoming more obvious this is a food detection checkpoint and not a weapon detection checkpoint. I grabbed a park guide off the tables in the security checkpoint and then we headed to the gate. We could not enter the first lane we chose as they were still waiting for their ticketing computer to boot up. We chose another lane and were soon inside the park, and submitting to the Keyhole Photo ambush, though we did strike a pose that said "There is no way we are actually buying this" Before watching the shows, I took Mom on a little tour of the park. We first headed to Action Zone, which was in No Action Zone mode. Son of Beast, Drop Zone, and Delirum were all closed. I didn't feel like subjecting Mom to the 3 mile hike required to see Top Gun, and suspected Face/Off would have a long line, I did point out how the movie posters had changed to attraction posters, how the Paramount logo has been removed from the water tower, and Mom watched a group fly on Extreme Skyflyer. We walked through Oktoberfest, and Mom was fascinated by watching Slingshot. While she watched Slingshot,I grabbed a walk on back seat ride on Adventure Express. I have to wonder what the park has against the temple god guy at the top of the second lift. Recall he is supposed to spill a vat of hot molten lava on you. Lately, the drummers are still drumming as you climb the lift, but the dude at the top is turned off, not even any lights on him. Other than that, the ride is performing as usual. We head into Coney Mall, and I point out the Roller Coaster Landmark plaque that was just added, and I take a quick 1 cycle wait ride in the front seat of forwards Racers red train. The past few seasons I have said there is a good coaster in Racer just begging to be let out. I think Cedar Fair is making progress, as I experienced some nice floater air on the outbound leg. We aren't going to have life on the return leg until they kill that turnaround trim brake. I next showMom the new X-Base area. I get her situated on a nice shaded bench where she could watch Firehawk while I went to take a ride. I head to the ride entrance, which isnowapparently closed. The hostess is suggesting coming back in about an hour, yet the ride is still clearly operating. I spent a few minutes listening to the hostess explain to people why they couldn't ride an operating ride. I know this sounds worse when I amalgamate this, but here was how it was going: Hostess: Sorry,Firehawk is not operating at this time. (Guest looks behind hostess to watch ride operating> Guest: What do you mean, I can see it running. Hostess: They are emptying the people in the station, then they ae going to close the ride. Guest: So if it isn't safe, why are you letting them ride? Hostess: That train is okay, we are taking the ride down to work on the other train (guest gestures towards queue area) Guest: Well, can we at least get in line? Hostess: No, Firehawk is closed, you can't get in line. Guest: So, why are they allowed to stand in line. Hostess: Because they are stupid. (Yes, she actually said that) (Guest storms off upset) Yes, that was an amalgamation of her interactions with several guests during the 5 or so minutes I stood watching. I admit I was feeling a bit bad for her, having to try to explain to guests why an operating ride was closed. Then a lead type person came out and explained to her that they had only closed the red station, they were still operating single train with the yellow station, and to let people in. Hostess flashed a look like "Don't make me look stupid in front of the guests" I suspect a little miscommunication took place here. Anyway, she was a bit flustered, gave the loose articles speech, and tried to tell us that it would take 2 hours in line. I looked over at the queue maze which was now only about 1/3 full, and knowing it took just over two hours last time when I started clear out at the archway, decided to risk it. It took about 45 minutes until I was in the front seat of the yellow train. They did get red side reopened just before I got to the greeter who holds the line back at the split point and sends people to the station in small groups. One of the benefits on the bad station design is that people entr the station and all congregate at the gate for rows 5 and 6, so seeing only a few people at the other rows I kept on walking till I got to row 1, which only had 2 people in line. So not only that, I scored a window seat, and soon had the safety vest on and the attendant dropped the lap bar. I learned some things about Firehawk, once they announce the train is locked, you can't adjust the lap bar, not even tighter. The other item is apparently once the lap bar is locked, it locks the retractors on the safety vest. I still don't get the use of the yellow strap handles on the front of the vest, as it seems like the way to tighten it is to push down on the bottom of the vest after the retractors lock, The rows are far enough a part where the view really isn't that much diferent up front, but you might get more wind in your face feeling. I noted they have put the lift hill so you are staring right into the sun. Time to close your eyes going up the lift. Upat the top we flip over and its time for that awesome flying coaster goodness. I love this ride and think its a great addition to the park. As a bonus the vest released the first time I pushed the red button at the end of the ride. I exited the ride, regrouped with Mom, and decided to pay $10 for an on-ride photo: http://www.coasterville.com/firehawk.jpg At this time, I checked my watch and realized it was after 3pm. My plan for catching all the shows was based on seeing the first show at 3pm. I consulted the park guide and determined we can still see all 5 shows starting at 4pm. We continue through Coney and I catch a minimal wait back seat ride on Vortex, which continues to run great this year. All while we are touring I point out stuff that has changed in the park since Mom's last visit. I point out the Three Point Challenge (aka License to Print Money), where even I am shocked that it has gone from $5 to $10. Well at least that's what the signs say, the$10 price may not be going over so well, as they had another sign advertising a special today, only $5. I point out Italian Job, and note the line is back in the queue house, so I skip this one for later. I point out the Roller Coaster Landmark plaque for Beast, then we trudge up the hill into Rivertown. Once in Rivetown, we pause for a few moments at a table by Potato Works, before continuing on, I point out that Wings is now a buffet, and the new Phanton Flyer ride. Momtakes devious delight in watching people get soaked by the elephant on Wild Thornberries. We enter Nick Universe and head to the Nick Theater, just in time to see Dora's Sing-a-Long Adventure. I know its the kids character show, but it's a start. To be fair, I hadn't ever seen Dora, much less know anything about the show. But, from watching the rest of the audience from the back row, it looked like today's youth were really into the show, and the show looked to be pretty well done. The show offered several opportunities for audience participation as it followed the adventure of Dora and friends in their quest to find Big Red Chicken to do the Silly Chicken Dance. I wonder if they incorporated the chicken dance into this show in the other parks, or if that was just for Cincinnati where we learn the chicken dance at an early age. I noted that they have bright new benches, recall that this was the Slime Bowl, then when the green slime era was over, the outdoor theater was converted from a show venue to a character meet and greet area. Now the theater seems to have been shrunk to a more intimate setting. From Doras show we took a walk through Nick Universe, and I show off the unusual Avatar ride by riding it. Luck was not good to me as I got a middle row, in the middle of the row. As we were walking around Nick Universe, Mom announced that she needed dinner, like now. Knowing this is not something to mess around with, we grab some sandwiches at Central Grill. I have said food prices at Cedar Fair parks are out of control, as evidenced by the fact that dinner for two, including two sandwiches, two side items, and two cokes came up to $24. Yes, this is the same meal you can get at almost any fast food restaurant outside the park for about $9. And the fast food joint usually offers the fries while they are hot, and gives free refills. The side effect of needing to grab a quick dinner is that we decided to skip Nicktoons Live at Five, despite the fact it got good reviews. That show, held at the bandstand seems to be the replacement for the parade. Seems the Nick characters are supposed to do a few song and dance numbers followed by meet and greet opportunities. This show was just wrapping up as we were walking down International Street towards the Paramount Theater. We arrived at the Paramount Theater (and I wonder how long that name is going to last) with about 5 minutes to spare. The show in the Paramount Theater is "Endless Summer on Ice", the headliner of the parks live entertainment program. It looks like they placed a synthetic surface on the stage. The show offers a series of scenes hat depict the typical summer. Last day of school, camping trip to Jellystone complete with Yogi Bear, a day at the bech, a trip to a NASCAR race complete with Scooby Doo, 4th of July celebration, return to school, and the return to school dance. Lots of song and dance numbers complete with figure skating moves complete with some spins, flips and jumps, even some trick moves. All in all I thought it was a very good show, and I do think the parks live entertainment department is back in good hands, and unlike Paramount, Cedar Fair seems willing to fund it. We continued on our tour of the live park shows. We next headed to the International Showplace for Twisting to the Sixties. We arrived at the venue just as the ropes were dropped. I also noticed all the benches just got a fresh coat of yellow paint. The show has some performers milling around the audience as people took their seats. The most interesting was the guy who was clearly playing the part of the nerdiest nerd you have ever seen. The show itself, like the others was pretty good. A revue of all your favorite sixites music, and scenes based around a dance competition, a surf competition, a humurours visit to the hair salon, and more. Thats three well done shows so far today. By this time.Mom was getting tired of walking around, so I found her a space to sit by Eiffel Tower within view of the Bandstand, and I went off to ride some rides. I starte off heading into Rivertown. I was headed towards Beast, but saw no line hangng out the Tomb Raider cave. I had heard some bad things about Tomb Raider recently, but you know how you don't want to watch the train wreck, yet you feel compelled to? Well, for similar reasons I entered the Tomb Raider cave. The line was backed up into the excavation tunnel where its really dark. Some time later a greeter let us into the ante-chamber. As it has been for a couple seasons now, we walked right through the monkey room directly into the pre show chamber. Fromwhat I had heard I was a bit surprised that they still play at least the pre show movie, but without any other special effects in the room. We entered the ride chamber, and yes some of the seats on the end, have been replaced by a railing. Seats taken, bars down, the ride started. Well, the ride still runs the same program it always did,but now there was no fog, and while the load and unload drum loop played, there was no audio during the ride, and the lava bit merely bubbles instead of streaming up and hitting the gondola. The end result is the pauses the ride takes where they used to be show scenes just look absurd, and the ride looks even stupider than it did before. The group I was with seemed to be pretty unsatisfied when they were exiting the show building. I also noted that the electronic lockers have been replaced with the usual mechanical lockers. I next headed to Beast, and was surprised to find the wait clear back to the start of the vending machines. Normally this would be a long wait for this ride, but since one of the two lanes for the ride was reserved for the Gold Pass Speed Lane, and none of the optional switchbacks were open, the line actually moved pretty swiftly, maybe 15-20 minutes. When I was halfway up the ramp, I noted they were going to close the Speed Lane down, and I must write to say they did it right way. They held the entire line back at the bottom of the ramp until the station was clear, then they reopened the ramp with both lanes open. I must have lost my common sense as I headed to the back seat. You may recall that on prior trips this year I commented the ride seemed tobe running better, well its still brutal in the back. I exited Beast, and passed by Italian Job, where the line was still back into the queue maze. I headed to Firehawk. This time the queue area was about 2/3 full, but both trains/stations were open. It took just around 45 minutes again, until I found myself on the yellow train in the back row this time. Ah, did I mention that I really like this ride? From Firehawk, I headed to Flight of Fear. I was a bit concerned when I saw people coming out the entrance, and yes the line was almost out the door into the outdoor queue area. However, once I entered the hangar, the line was taking the short route through the hangar. Good thing too, since the pre-show video was turned off. At least the station audio track was working "The collector becomes the specimen". I snagged a seat in row 8, dropped the lap bar, and this time even though the buckle can go clean over the metal tip it refused to lactch. It took two thawckings of the buckle against a hard surface before it latched. They need to get more reliable buckles on this ride. Flight of Fear still delivers a nice smooth ride,owing in pat to the unfortunate situation of a really hard near stop on the mid course brake. Upon exiting the ride, I noted the "On ride video" booth is STILL under construction. From Flight Of Fear, I made a mad dash to Delirium, and arrived just after the ride reopened from some down time. So I walked right into the queue and right onto the ride, they weren't even assigning seats, just "Go find a seat". Delirium is good, especially at night, but its not as good as MaXair. From Delirium, I went to the funnel cake stand to get us a funnel cake ($6), then I rejoined Mom in time for the 9:30 showing of Hot Island Rythms. It's their night show on the bandstand. No band, but some dancers doing some song and dance numbers in front of a backdrop of palm trees and the like. It's an okay show. After the show ended, I grabbed some free ice water from Starbucks, then we made our way to the front gate plaza area to watch the fireworks. There is a neat effect of the fireworks reflecting off the International Restaurant windows, and the Eiffel Tower decided to get in on the act with a red/white/blue light scheme. After the fireworks we ducked into a front gate gift shop to kill some time. I found some attractive looking t-shirts, but none of those in XXL. But I did find what I think was the Sale of The Century. Yes, I know any Paramount stuff is 50% off, and WinterFest stuff is 75% off, but I found a Cedar Fair ere Kings Island logo-ed full size double canopy golf umbrella in a an attractive hunter green/dark blue color scheme for only $12.99. At least I thought it was a great deal, a good enough deal that I bought one, While waiting to check out, I found it humurous that the cash register could not scan any of the barcodes, so the attendant was on the phoe to the office with almost every transaction, which made the line move painfuly slow. Not what you want when you are trying to entice people to pay you money. We then headed out to the car where we got to play a fun game of "Watch the family with a sub compact car try to find room for all the passengers and the giant prizes they have won". Next trip: ??? Watch for it!

TR: Stricker's Grove - 6/17/07 Trip Report: Stricker's Grove Ross, OH June 17, 2007 ********************* I had not planned on going to Stricker's Grove today. After all I had just spent two days at major theme parks up north, and the day's schedule called for a family party. As luck would have it the family party is located off of the same exit as Stricker's Grove, but it wasn't a public day, so you just can't show up at Strickers. Well, the stars were aligned, and it looks like my church was having their annual picnic at Strickers Grove that day. Well, it wouldn't hurt to drop in for a little bit on the way to the family party, now would it? As such at about 3pm we pulled into Stricker's parking lot, where we enjoyed free parking, then walked up to the unattended front gate where we enjoyed free admission. Then for the trifecta, I walked up to the beer booth and enjoyed a free beer. My, I like this kind of hospitality. Well I got Mom and Evelyn settled in the big picnic shelter and pointed out some important park features, then I headed to the rides area. The rides area was due to close at 4pm for dinner break, but I knew I would have enough time. But first, there have been some changes to the midway. The area that used to hold the Crazy Daisy (half a Cuddle Up), is occupied, but it is not the spin ride we were expecting, but a Jumping Jumbo's ride that looks quite similar to the famous ride at those world famous theme parks. Further down the midway, the kiddie helicopter ride has been replaced by an uncommon 6-tub Sellner spin ride, in this case it's a Spin the Apple. Neither of those two new rides were open yet. But the Jumbos are a good replacement for the helicopters, and the Spin the Apple is a good replacement for the Crazy Daisy in that both exchanges were for similar rides. The other midway change is a ride addition. The Electric Rainbow (Super Round Up) has been relocated from LeSourdsville Lake to Stricker's Grove. The ride now sits between the two wood coasters, next to the Tilt-A-Whirl. A fountain completes the relatively new midway addition. For those unfamiliar, that means the left side of the midway now contains: Carousel, Jumping Jumbos, Train Ride, Eli Ferris Wheel, Tip Top, Scrambler, Spin the Apple, Flying Skooters, and ending up at the Tornado coaster. The right hand side contains the barn with the kiddie cars, kiddie boats, and kiddie planes, further down are the kiddie turtle, the kiddie whip, the Teddy Bear coaster, Electric Rainbow, Tilt-A-Whirl, and ending at the Tornado coaster. So I arrived at the Tornado coaster, which is usually priced at $2, but all the rides are free today. (In fact I have never seen the ticket booth staffed). It was a walk on, and the first groups all headed to the back car, so I dashed to the front seat. Ah, a PTC train with the traditional double bars. Sure the seats are harder than concrete, and they now have the standard PTC belt installation, except that they made the outboard 'short' ends a little bit longer. The front seat gives a good ride, but it was time to exit, get back in line, and make a dash for that back seat. On the Tornado the back seat is where its at. While the ride does offer some good floater air, the back car and the back seat in particular encounter two dips towards the end of the ride that ride like mistakes. Good mistakes in this case, as they both propel you up into the lap bar with authority. I took a couple more rides on this classic profile coaster before heading down the midway. I had to get a ride in on the Flying Skooters, especially since Kings Island removed theirs. Towards the end of my Flying Skooters ride I actually got a couple small snaps. Stricker's seems harder than most to snap, partially owing to the fact they have the portable version. From the Flying Skooters I crossed over to the Electric Rainbow to pay tribute to LeSourdsville Lake *sniff*. Stricker's has way overbuilt the operator's booth with a brick operators booth, with two wooden ramps leading from the midway up to a nice sized wooden deck that is flush with the loading gate on the ride itself. A rather attractive install, I think. The ride itself looks to be freshly painted all over, the berths all seem to have new blue back pads, and the individual chains for each berth have returned in place of the long wire ropes that the Pugh's had put on the ride. The ride is operating though not complete yet. The rainbow colored scenery panels that belong in the center of the ride between the spokes are all lying on the ground underneath the ride, though they too look freshly repainted. As for the ride itself, it seems to be running well, with a reasonable length ride cycle. After the Electric Rainbow I returned to the Tornado for another back seat ride, and was delighted to find out they were now giving double riders, with two circuits per ride. Upon exiting my double ride, I saw my Mom on the midway worried. Seems that she remembered the fact we had a covered dish in the car for the family party, a cold appetizer heavy woth cream cheese, and today wasn't exactly cool. Have to rush off to the family party before it gets ruined. I grab a ride on the Teddy Bear on my way out of the park for completeness sake. It is noteworthy in that they have not yet installed seatbelts in their junior PTC train, which is noteworthy in itself as the train only has openings on one side. So I grab another ice cold courtesy beverage, ahhhh!, gather the rest of the group that was talking in the picni shelter, and make our way to the family party. No harm was done to the appetizer. Next up: Kings Island Watch for it!

TR: Geauga Lake - 6/16/07 - CoasterEXT Trip Report: Geauga Lake June 16, 2007 Aurora, OH CoasterEXT **************** Day 2 of the trip. We started out by sleeping in at a nameless hotel, and having breakfast at Speedway. Did you know you can get a 44oz. frozen Coke for only 79 cents? We were soon on the road to Geauga Lake. So we managed to miss the turnpike exit, and we did take a bit of a scenic ride around Aurora, but we did eventually arrive at the park in plenty of time. Again, using Rideman's All-Ohio Parking pass we dodged the $9 parking fee to park on the rides side of the park, where parking attendants showed us to a space in section B1. As someone else commented section B1 is just a bit closer than section BFE. it was a lengthy walk to the front gate. I noticed the six flag poles that Six Flags had installed in a planter up at the park entrance are all now American flags, and not assorted international flags. Cedar Fair has managed to get the road that separates the parking lot from the park closed during the season, eliminating the need for the crossing guards. I must hand it to Geauga Lake, most parks that just yanked out three rides would try to be as low key about it as possible. "maybe if we don't mention it, they won't notice" Not Geauga, they put a sign up right at the front gate plaza. "As a reminder: Steel Venom, X-Flight, and Bel Air Express have been removed from Geauga Lake" Since I had preregistered, by taking 30 seconds to visit the Coastermania site, I qualified for FREE event registration, and so I stood in line at a stick joint located before the ticketing plaza to check in with the host, recieve a lanyard just like the one I recieved yesterday, and a lunch ticket. Note, there were three people manning the table, but only one print out of the guest list. They didn't even try to split the print out up between them, so effectively you had one person checking people in. Okay, I checked in and was told to take my Maxx Pass directly to the admission gate to enter. Rideman, had to go to a designated lane in the ticket plaza, where he stood in a much shorter line to hand over $12 and showed his Maxx Pass, and was handed a lanyard, lunch ticket and a park ADMISSION ticket. Yep, per usual the people manning the registration table for the event failed to talk to the people manning the admission gate. I proceeded directly to the turnstiles as indicated. Rideman entered using his ticket, and I was told "You have to go to the season pass lane" Okay, I go to the season pass lane to get into a mess the park could have avoided. As you may have guessed, the season pass lane person was referring us back to the guest relations booth to sign in with our MAxx Passes. The line for the guest relations booth stretched back past the ticket plaza. There was a large group of us at the season pass lane with similar situations. I think when we were blocking access to the season pass lane, a manager finally came over to figure out what was going on. Said manager tried to direct us to the LONG guest relations line. Assembled large group made it clear that the event person told us we did not have to wait in that line. Its fun pitting two departments against each other. How it eventually resolved, was said manager went to the guest relations office himself, and came back with a stack of comp tickets. All in all the whole thing took way longer than it needed to, particularly since the park knew who had preregistered and could have given that table a stack of comp tickets and saved everybody aggravation. This is one area where Six Flags kicks Cedar Fair's butt. At a Six Flags park you take any Six Flags season pass to any turnstile at any Six Flags admission gate, and it scans. You take any Six Flag parking pass to and Six Flags park that controls their parking lot, and you get free parking. Okay, I'm finally inside the park, let's see what Cedar Fair has managed to do with the place. We head towards the Rockville area. Since my last visit (admittedly 2002), Mr. Hydes Nasty Fall, X-Flight, Steel Venom, Bel Air Express, and the Musik Express have all been removed. YEs, there is a Wipeout there now that wasn't there before but it hardly makes up for the way this area has been almost stripped of its rides. Mind Eraser ( a boomerang) has been renamed Head Spin. I noted that Cedar Fair has not fixed the queue area for it either. It still has a queue maze that feeds into a large open area, then it narrows again for the ramp up to the station. Rideman quipped "Have you ever seen the line past the bottom of the ramp?" Head Spin remains quite a forgettable Boomerang, not a particularly smooth ride, and they brake you hard on the return through the station, then stop you on a dime when you roll forwards back into the station brakes. It is quite humorous that the parks First Aid Office is found next to the Head Spin exit. I also noted the park had not added the crotch straps Cedar Fair seems to like to put on their multi element trains these days. We proceeded towards but did not ride Big Dipper as we had met up with everybody else. It was about 15-20 minutes before lunch and we were not going to make the same mistake we did last night. I noted the waterpark that was on this side of the park has been closed off, the Skyscraper observation tower was closed, as was the Shipwreck Falls water ride. I don't know yet, my first reaction to seeing the park was "BRING BACK SIX FLAGS!" So far the park looks worse off than it was under the prior administration. But now its time to see on of those Six Flags improvements. It seems they turned part of the water park area into a lakeside picnic grove. The picnic grove area does look really nice, and its well laid out, with a cook house and buffet tables in the center, 2 shelters on each end, and a Pepsi Oasis building complete with free Pepsi products during your catered meal on each end. We helped ourselves to some free drinks and waited for the buffet to open. Not too surprisingly the buffet was quite similar to the one at Cedar Point. They do stamp your hand here when they take your ticket to allow you to get seconds, and the buffet was fried chicken, hot dogs (in place of the brats), pasta, potato salad, baked beans, ice cream, and soft drinks. We enjoyed our lunch and the Q&A followed right after lunch in the grove, so we stuck around for it. Some points from the Q&A: - Skyscraper waiting parts, not known if the ride will even reopen - Park pushing the fact that it isn't closing, it is merely right sizing the park to the attendance it pulls. Not having the operational costs of X-Flight and Steel Venom though to make up for the predicted lower revenue. Had to address a doom and gloom article that recently appeared in a local paper. - As usual at these kind of things, people try to get them to spill the beans on upcoming new rides, and the speaker continues to stonewall them. - Redirecting advertising dollars from billboards, TV, radio to other avenues. - Goal the past few seasons was getting the waterpark side up and running. (On the old Sea World grounds), current goal is to restore park profitability. Sounds like lean times ahead to me. - noted he thinks the midway rides that are on the water park side really belong on the rides side. Noted those rides, as well as the motion simulator and 4D movie get underutilized, particularly when the water park is closed. (Why do I fear they will relocate those rides (Scrambler, Yo-Yo, Sea Dragon, Spider, Thriller Bees and more) to the Rockville area, and promote that as a new rides midway. I think they can't really play the shell game anymore, merely moving rides and slides around the park and calling it new each year) - Ferry boats while Disney-esque, had too low capacity and too high an operating cost to operate. - Noted that people are not responding to the non-discounted "Everyday Low Price" admission model. All that said, Bill Spehn was a gracious host and stayed around in the Grove answering questions long after the scheduled time had ended. Eventually we made our way out of the Picnic Grove and headed towards the Big Dipper. We were concerned when we noted it was sending empty trains through much of the Q&A. Big Dipper was a walk on, and we took several rides in between talking with fellow coaster nuts. Big Dipper is a living tribute to the parks of yesteryear, it keeps its classic looking profile and station, the two stop loading, the skid brakes, and it does have (albeit non functional) Big Ol Brake Levers in the station. It is also running a genuine replica NAD train, with loads of padding. Its a bit of a tight fit for two adults, so its not uncommon to see lots of single riders on Big Dipper. We tried riding in pairs once, it wasn't comfortable. The layout on this 1925 John Miller masterpiece is mainly out and back. It does have a folded lift, wherre you go out of the station, turn around, go up the lift, turnaround, down the drop and into the dogleg outbound leg. After the turnaround, and several speed hills, you do the final turnaround before hitting the brakes. I beleive the ride runs best up front, and possibly only in seat 3. Seat 3 seems to deliver the goods the best, also the back seat of each car seems to be have just a bit more legroom than the other two seats. It's an airtime feast! Again after several rides on Big Dipper, we made our way back eventually coming to the parks other wood coaster. April's time in the park was short, so we hit the rides that were high on her wish list. I noted the haybaler ride was unfortunately closed. We then took a ride on Villain. Villain is not running smooth by any stretch of the imagination, and I was shocked to hear the way it was running is an improvement over the last few seasons. The ride has Gerstlauer trains which is the first strike against it. The ride still has great airtime, and some wicked laterals, but its also running pretty rough. From Villain we headed to Double Loop. Double Loop is an early Arrow looper that does just what the name implies, oh along with a speed hill and a helix. Oddly enough Double Loop recieved the crotch straps while Head Spin did not. We also watched a two train operation that honestly would have been improved upon by taking a train off. From Double Loop, April and Dave wanted to ride the Pepsi Plunge log flume, so I took the time to grab rides on Texas Tornado (the first HUSS Top Spin in the United States), the ride I received had a nice flip count and was a great Top Spin ride. At the end of the ride, the ride did not want to let go of me, it liked me so much. I next headed to Dominator, but it was down mechanical, so I headed to the other demented carnival ride, Time Warp. Time Warp is a Chance Inverter which is an example of how not to build a looping ship ride. Way to complex and way to many moving parts to give essentially the same ride. This ride was no exception as it took a great deal of time moving riders around in the gondola to satisfy the ride computer to actually start the ride. This was a Double Inverter and not surprisingly one side of it was closed, oddly enough they kept the lakeside open and closed the midway side. After Time Warp, I ran to catch up to the others who had signaled they were headed to Big Dipper. I took a couple Big Dipper rides but they had left the scene. I made an educated guess that Rideman was going to head to his car next, so first I stopped in the Emporium and picked up an event shirt for $15 or so. Event shirt is a rare XXL shirt, not often seen in a Cedar Fair gift shop. The shirt proclaims the 2007 Ohio Coaster Odyssey and the back of the shirt lists all the Cedar Fair owned coasters in Ohio. I note they put Avatar at Kings Island on the list. Anyway, shirt purchased I got my FUN handstamp and did in fact run into Rideman in the parking lot, quite near his car. I stowed shirt, we upgraded to a much closer parking space, and re-entered the park. We proceeded to cross the big floating bridge over to Whitewater Kingdom just in time for the water park to close. What little I got to see of the water park does look like they did a nice job with the area. We got there by going through what used to be the Looney Tunes Area, but now with some generic kids area theme. The giant carrots remain! Looking around that area there aren't many kids rides left in the park, but a niece water spreyground and climbing structure type area for the kids remains. We noted the disused major show stadium. During the Q&A it was noted they tried putting shows there the last couple seasons, but the cost of operating the stadium plus mounting the show makes the stadium attractive but too pricey to actually use. In other words the park has been putting on the poor mouth all day, and when I loook around at the small crowd on a gorgeous Saturday, its easy to see why the park may be on hard times. It also seems that whatever Cedar Fair is doing, hasn't made any statistical inroads. It's quite easy to buy into the rumours about the park slowly dying. We passed the old Shamu's Happy Harbor area where Rideman noted that Sea World and Six Flags didn't care who romped around in the massive climbing structure back there, but Cedar Fair has restricted it to children. Shame, as it looked quite fun too. We observed a cycle of the Thriller Bees. When this ride was at Kentucky Kingdom the cars would alternate going up and down as the ride went around, now all the cars swing up and stay up the entire ride. In other words the one thing that made that ride pieece unique has been disabled. We did take rides on the Yo-Yo and the Sea Dragon. Sea Dragon seems to be hitting something it shouldn't as it passes through the station which is scrubbing off speed, which is preventing the boat from going as high as other similar rides. We then took the long walk around Raging Wolf Bobs to get back to the main ride park. The courtesy golf cart shuttle service along this long pathway had already closed for the night, if it operated at all, as I noted the attraction closed signs up. Raging Wolf Bobs was closed today, as it probably will be for quite some time owing to an incident on the ride earlier today that left a train on the tracks in one of the dips covered with tarps, and some broken structural members and tension cables. We chatted here for a bit before heading on towards the Carousel. Geauga Lake runs a fairly rare carousel, a Mangles mechanism with Illions horses. What makes it interesting is that it has the fly-out horses where the carousel poles go down from the horse and instead of going to a fixed spot on the floor, the pole is set into a slot that runs from the inboard edge to the outboard edge. When the carousel speeds up, and this one does speed up quite nicely, the horses 'fly out' along this track to better manage the rides forces. Instead of being pushed out to the side the force is redirected pushing you down into the saddle. Quite a clever idea. We then engage in more conversation, quite lenghty in fact, until we realize there is one coaster that will not be open for ERT. We head to the Beaver Land Mine Ride. Its a Zierrer family coaster and you get two circuits per ride. It runs a really long 20 car train, but don't let it full you, its actually quite a peppy ride. I note that neither Six Flags nor Cedar Fair preload the queue gates, keeping everybody back in the queue area, and doesn't admit you to the station until after the ride has stopped and the queue gates are open. Odd. We then head to Dominator. I had been worried about B&M seats since I sometimes have trouble with those. Dominator was a tight but doable fit in a standard size seat. Dominator is a floorless coaster, but we went to the back row instead, both to get the most intense ride, and the airtime coming off the mid course brakes. Dominator exits through a gift shop, but they did leave a nice clear path through so you can bolt through it pretty easily. I had to laugh though, the first t-shirt you see after riding Dominator is one praising wood coasters. We then tried to snag a last minute ride on Thunderhawk but it was down technical. We returned to the picnic grove as directed to wait until the park was clear. We then had 90 minutes of darn near whole park ERT: We had Villain, Dominator, Thunderhawk, and Big Dipper to keep us company. We headed to Thunderhawk, and scored that Thunderhawk ride, in fact we scored three or four Thunderhawk rides without leaving the station. ERT rules on everything except the Big Dipper (owing to two stop loading) was that rerides were okay, and vulturing empty seats was okay. I must say, this is still the world's smoothest Vekoma SLC (Hang and Bang) It received the on ride DVD movie sales system this year. We next headed to Dominator where there was more of a crowd. We did score a two train wait front seat ride. The front seat on a Floorless coaster really is the best in terms of view and visuals. After that we had to walk around. Rideman had to go run an errand so while he did that, I managed 6 Dominator rides in the second row from the back, left side, without leaving my seat. Eventually some others wanted that seat so I moved into Row 5 for two more rides, the last one with Rideman. From Dominator we headed over to Villain for 3 or 4 rides on Villain, one in the back car, and the others in the middle of the train. The side bars on Gerstlauer trains help you brace yourself,. and the ride in the middle was a bit more tolerable than in the back. Lastly we made a mad dash to end the night on Big Dipper. I managed to get 2 or 3 rides on the Dipper, with my final ride of the day being in Big Dipper's front seat. I had worn the Belmont Park Giant Dipper T-shirt that day. While I had to downgrade in name from the Giant Dipper to the Big Dipper, in terms of ride, the Big Dipper kicks butt. After that, ERT had ended, and we made our way out to our car, and started the long ride back to Columbus, and then I had a ride back to Cincinnati the next day. We did make a late night stop at 2AM to make sure the folks at Denny's "We may doze but we never close" were actually awake. Next up: Stricker's Grove Watch for it!

TR: Cedar Point 6/15/07 - *Coastermania* Trip Report: Cedar Point Coastermania June 15, 2007 Sandusky, OH ***************** It's a long ride up to Cedar Point, so I started the night before the event, traveling from Coasterville to Coaster Central to spend the night in Columbus. Rideman and I had reviewed the event schedule, and came to the mutual decision to skip the morning ERT session. After all, the evening ERT runs till 12:30AM, and morning ERT would require a 4AM departure from Columbus. We had planned on leaving Columbus such that we could arrive at the park around the normal opening time. That was before the trains, slow moving trucks, slower moving farm implements and whatever else had conspired to delay our arrival in Sandusky. As it turns out, rather than arriving at the park around 10AM, we actually arrived shortly after 11AM. We arrived at the park and using Rideman's All-Ohio parking pass, we dodged the $10 parking fee, and proceeded to drive most of the way around the perimeter of the park to park in the super secret lot behind Gemini. Cedar Point has multiple admission gates, including one that is really meant for Cedar Point patrons to be able to access Soak City and Challenge Park. Fortunately they also allow admission through this small back gate. Admission with Kings Island passes was easy, we were directed by the gatekeeper to go through a door marked "Employees Only" into the ticket cage for this gate, at which point we we were aksed to sign in on a clipboard, while the attendant in the office scanned our passes on a computer to verify our photos. Recall that Kings Island passes do not have photos directly on the pass. Rideman indicated the computer is a relatively new addition to the process. We walked through another "Employee Only" door into the park, and through a tunnel under the perimeter road. We entered the park and headed towards Magnum to find a 30 minute wait. We decided to skip it for now, besides its on the ERT schedule for tonight. Since we had entered in the back gate, we still needed to pick up Coastermania credentials at the front gate, also Rideman had an interest in the Q&A session which meant we had to head to the front gate soon. We made our way to the center of the park, then got in line for the Sky Ride to the main gate. Who should come up the Sky Ride entrance ramp behind us, but none other than Paul Drabek. Hi, Paul, haven't seen you around much this season. We chatted while waiting to ride the Sky Ride, a wait that was delayed as they decided to add on all the extra cars. The Sky Ride is a nice peaceful ride over the main midway. We also learned that Raptor had its usual long morning line, and that Blue Streak which had been closed when we drove around the park had just reopened. We headed to the Guest Relations office hoping to avoid exiting the park, but nope off to Group Sales we go. Get our arms stamped, and head out to the Group Sales building where we have one of the most efficient coaster event check in's possible. Since we had season passes, the event was FREE, and upon checking in, we received lunch tickets and credentials. This year credentials came in the form of a lanyard upon which hung credentials only slightly smaller than those seen in the Olympics. The lanyard was also useful in that it had the full event schedule, and we noted the reverse side had the credentials and schedule for tomorrow's event at Geauga Lake. There was one other thing, I had taken the 30 seconds to go out to the Coastermania website a month prior and pre-register. Rideman did not, despite numerous reminders from assorted people. What this meant was, I was qualified for complimentary all day beverage service. I was hoping this would come in the form of a wristband, but instead it came in the form of a small white plastic cup that had a stylized drawing of Cedar Point on one side and "Coastermania 6/15/07" printed on the other. Yep, I have to haul this cup around with me all day. We re-entered the park, and Rideman headed to the Convention Center for the Q&A, and since I don't get to Cedar Point that often, I decided to use the time to ride some rides. I first stopped at Ben & Jerry's to claim the first of several free drinks, then headed to the rides. I knew from past trips to save Raptor till the evening as the lines are much shorter then. Blue Streak had just opened up, so I entered the Blue Streak queue and about 15 minutes later I was getting into the third seat. I was a bit concerned getting into the train as I had struggled with the standard PTC seat belt at SFKK the month before, but not to worry, no troubles getting into the Blue Streak train. Blue Streak was running two trains, and soon I was up and through the lift hill cupola, then out onto the course. It may be a John Allen coaster, but it is packed with airtime in the third seat on almost every hill. A great coaster to start the day with. I next headed to what some refer to as the million dollar midway which is a name it was given a long time ago. It is now that area in the center of the park that has Milinneum Force, Wildcat, Iron Dragon, and Mantis. I know Wildcat is more fun in a group so I skipped that one, and I looked over to Iron Dragon and saw a queue way longer than I have ever waited for Iron Dragon. Mantis was posting its usual agonizingly slow 45 minute wait. I did go over to Force. Even though it was posting a 45 minute wait as well, I wanted to try out the test seat. Now I could ride Force on my last trip to Cedar Point, but I had also heard bad things since then. I sat down in the test seat, tried the belt, and "Not even a chance!" Not that I wasn't expecting it. The one good thing about being at Cedar Point at an enthusiast event is you can commiserate with other riders who used to be able to ride Force. It was at this point, that I could not hold off any longer, time to see f I can ride Maverick. I made the long hike down the Frontier Trail to Maverick. I sat down in the test seat for Maverick, lowered the shoulder bar, reached down for the seatbelt, directed the belt towards the buckle and I am eligible to ride Maverick. The wait was posted at 75 minutes, and looking at my watch, I figured oh well, I'll be late for lunch, too bad. New coaster or lunch, I'll pick the new coaster. I have learned with new rides to ride them the first chance you get, you never know when a ride is going to decide to go belly up for the rest of the day on you. Carpe Diem! The line was back to the vending machines in what used to be White Water Landing's queue area. It was a formidable queue maze, but I was shocked when I managed to make it through the maze in only 45 minutes. Yes, that is without cheating. Maverick may be new and only seat 12 per train, but it moves trains through like a well oiled machine. First you wait out in the sun in the old White Water Landing queue where every other queue rail has been removed to use the wider queues. You then cross a wooden bridge that takes you from the queue area over to where the boat ride station was. Look carefully at the old trough under the main queue house floor to see how they cleverly hid the ponds filtration system. The bridge extends alongside the old boat ride station to the far midway side. Now the turntable and trough have been removed and replaced with a solid concrete floor upon which a queue maze has been setup. At the other end, you go up the old stairs from the White Water Landing days. At the top of those stairs, you have a landing then you go up a new set of stairs up to the Maverick Station. Maverick offers a single rider queue, but the entrance to the single rider queue isn't until halfway up the station stairs, where apparently it isn't an option. The sign is quite clear, "Single Riders use Right Stairway ONLY!" For the very little queue area you skip, I think looking back on it I'd rather just stay in the main queue and be guaranteed a seat. However, since I was a single rider, I did follow direction and go up the right stairway, where I did proceed to watch those who were behind me on the left stairs get on the ride faster. I knew I was right, that this is just about the stupidest installation of a single rider queue. Guys, look at Universal Studios and Disney to see how this is supposed to be done! You see they here single riders are purely stand by, so you may wait longer than if you just stayed in the normal queue, thats not how single rider is supposed to work. Remember you gave up your choice of seat and ride partner. At least other parks that have single rider, they will put a couple singles on each train needed or not so you aren't unduly delayed. But hey, in the end I did win the jackpot, "Next single rider - go to row 1" So I join the queue for row 1, and two trains later I am getting into a Maverick train. The Maverick trains are very roomy before you put the bars down, with plenty of room between riders, and the front row is very open in the front, leaving you feeling very vulnerable. I proceed to lower the massively overbuillt shoulder bar. It contains both a lap bar that wraps completly around three sides of your body to join another fixed bar which means the lap bar effectively circles your body, mounted to the lap bar is the shoulder bar. which prevents you from leaning forward or moving too far either way laterally. A crotch strap comes up from between your legs, goes over the lap bar and connects to the bottom of the shoulder bar. Okay now that everybody is well restrained, two trains leave the station at once. The front train proceeds past two brakes and onto the lift hill, the back train parks on the first brake area, leaving one set of brakes in between trains in case of a rollback. This isn't your father's chain lift, the train is launched up the lift hill, initially at a high rate of speed, then they slow it down a bit as it crests the top. The first drop is at an impressive 95 degrees, so in effect you roll around past vertical to where you are actually going down the first drop somewhat inverted. Its a real unusual feeling. You then go around a curve and proceed into a course that has a few pure air hills on it, and a lot of overbanked turns. I think all in all it says you get inverted 5 times along the ride. Halfway through the ride you enter a long dark tunnel where you slow down to a bear stop, then the strobes come on and temporarily blind you just in time for the second launch to fire you at high speed right into one of those overbanked turns when you can't see it. Oh and watch out for the high pressure water spray along the second half of the ride, not enough to drench you, but you will know its there as it seems aimed right at your face. All told, I really like Maverick as it seems so different from anything else out there. Taken alone, the stats for the ride aren't that impressive, but its what you do with it that counts. I quickly exit Maverick, an affair that involves going UP even more stairs to a trestle built above the loading station, then down three flights of stairs to the ground level, and suggested exit through retail as I note there is a bypass. My, its not even 2pm yet. But it is time for lunch, so I walk over to the nearby train station, and proceed to probably wait longer for the train than it would have taken me to walk down the Frontier Trail. Well, I can see there may be hope for Kings Islands train ride yet, as Cedar Points train ride has a lot of animated sets along their train ride, with fake gun fire and all, and it's in working order here. Then again the animation on Kings Islands train ride may be too far gone to save. From the train ride, I forget exactly where on the Main Midway the picnic grove is, so I high tail it down the midway. I thought the entrance was by Raptor. Nope, thats not it. Ah, here it is where this lone queue stretching from the grove almost all the way back to the main gate is. It took me darn near 45-60 minutes to get through the serving line. There was one line back to the picnic grove entrance, then that line split into three, and each of those lines split onto two. The lines just kept getting slower and slower the longer I waited. After an eternity I get to the serving line, and what a nice spread it is: Fried chicken, brats, mostacholli, potato salad, baked beans, cookies, ice cream, soft drinks, and cotton candy. I play balance your food, its a game I have become well versed in from going to other picnics where they keep giving you more and more food without a tray or suitable carriers. I quickly find a table and am finshing up lunch right as the presentations start. Wow, 1,700 here today, thanks for the foods crew, reminder to go to Geauga Lake tomorrow, will the people that found the scavenger hunt plaques, please turn them in for your $100 gift shop shopping spree. After lunch I scour the picnic grove to meet back up with Rideman, and I find him in the cotton candy line. "I may have to come back here, I like your cotton candy" Rideman is touring with I think Mike Shutte(?) and after lunch we proceed to wash the sticky cotton candy residue off our hands, the head towards the rides. We first head to MaXair. It was only a 3 to 4 cycle wait for MaXair, but they were loading it funny. They had totally closed off the entrance leading people to line up on the midway, then when the entire queue maze emptied out, they would let another group in from the midway to fill the queue maze. Apparently, this was because they were short a person, so they didn't have a greeter to monitor the queue entrance. Strange. MaXair may look similar to Delirium, but there have been some changes made. One of the more important changes is that MaXair has TWO exit ramps, greatly easing congestion at the end of the ride, it also has a smooth floor instead of the cheese grater floor Kings Island has. Those who ride barefoot must appreciate that. Also the lose item storage is a cleverly designed round shaped cabinet (4 total) with round cubbyholes. As if the asthetics aren't enough, it also seems to run a longer, better program than Delirium. Oh, also to ease congestion, the holding area after you are given your seat number has queue rails that keep you in order all the way till you enter the ride area. From MaXair, we head to Disaster Transport but do a hasty retreat when we read the 45 minute wait sign. I look at Troika, the Troika here has a much better paint job than the one at Kings Island, and wait a minute this one did not get seatbelts like the one at Kings Island did this year. Ah, now to go check out another Intamin coaster I can't ride. I could not ride this one on my last visit, and after some quick research with Mr. Test Seat I still can't ride it. We did go over and take a quick 1 cycle wait ride on Ocean Motion. We started to head back towards the back of the park. We skipped Power Tower and headed to Corkscrew. There was hardly anybody riding Corkscrew, and as we were waiting to ride, the ride went down, and it looked like it wasn't going to be resolved quickly, as evidenced by the fact they didn't cycle the trains to clear the ride of passenegers. We bailed when it became apparent this was going to take awhile. Oh well, for the formality sake, I knew I could not ride Top Thrill Dragster last visit, and guess what, I still can't. We again skipped Magnum saving it for the nighttime ERT, as looking at the ERT schedule, Magnum is my only option. We headed around to Gemini and took an almost no wait ride in the third seat of Gemini. Gemini is stil a very fun coaster, the classic looks of a wood coaster, the smoothness of steel track, and the ride has airtime. What's not to like, except maybe stacking with two trains when they used to run smoothly with three on each side. I noted they have given up on three train operation, they have removed the second turnstile, and the second station entrance. We continue back into Fronteir Trail, where we cram ourselves, quite literally into the back seat of Cedar Creek Mine Ride, cross my ankles, and dang this lap bar's one setting is TIGHT. It's hard to believe they used to run 5 trains on this ride. The rides antique turnstile was replaced with a newer version. Still a solid performer. Next I visited the Frontier Lift restrooms, I mention it because Cedar Point is renovating a lot of their restrooms, and a nice touch for this restroom is since it is the nearest restroom to both of the parks water rides, the front half of the restroom has been outfitted with changing stalls, which means that people are no longer having to use the toilet stalls as changing rooms, and I suspect it helps keep the floor in the main part of the restroom drier. Nice touch. We next headed to the "Unlicensed Chiropractor", yep Mean Streak. To no one's surprise there was almost no wait to ride Mean Streak, and soon we were climbing into the back seat. The belts do seem a bit longer on Mean Steak as it was even easier to get into this train than Blue Streak. We rode in the green train, and proceeded to have a Mean Streak ride which was actually a halfway decent ride. Imagine that. From Mean Streak, we went and took another ride on Maverick, same 45 minute wait, and this time we got sent to Row 4. I still like the ride, but must admit it is more of a headbanger in row 4 than it was in Row 1. Rideman did not appreciate getting stapled into the ride, particularly when he discovered the 4 exposed bolts on the bottom side of where the shoulder bar and lap bar connect. As he said the exposed bolts were pushing through his shirt into his gut. Thats a minor issue the park should address. Put a little padding or something there. From Maverick, we went over to Skyhawk, and after waiting about 10 minutes had wonderful Skyhawk ride, I really like the S&S swing rides. Cedar Point added a short belt and carabeaner that connects to an eyebolt between the seats. I am told the bar is the more limiting factor, and they ask you to lower the bar, and fasten the beaner, then the ride op comes and adjusts the bar by pushing straight down on it. I was actually allowed to ride witht he bar sort of loose, so enjoyed the most delightful odd feeling airtime on the tops of the arcs when your body still wants to go up, and the swing is suddenly going back down From Skyhawk, we hike back down the Fronteir Trail and take a ride on Wildcat, the line was a bit longer than we would have liked, and we also found out that Rideman and I cannot sit in the same seat due to the lengths of the belts. So they sent us out with only 2 in the car, one in each seat. Shame, I remember being able to load 4 heavy coaster crazies into one car and watching that thing FLY around the course. Its still a very fun ride, in some ways more intense than the biggeer coasters, and watch out for those stop-on-a-dime-and-leave-nine-cents-change brakes. At this point we were going to ride a near walk on Iron Dragon, but it was tile to meet April over by Magnum. We went over to Magnum, we waited, we waited, we waited some more. We took a ride on Magnum in the third seat. Magnum still has it all, amazing airtime, and a great layout. Looking down at the waterpark and challenge park going up the lift hill almost looks like a carnival with a grid like layout of attractions below you. We exited Magnum, we waited some more. We headed back to Corkscrew, we finally scored our front seat ride on Corkscrew. Cedar Point's Corkscrew also has the crotch straps that Cedar Fair has been adding to the Arrow multi-element trains, but being the original installation , it was done cheaper and different than the rest. Instead of tucking a restractor under the seat, and putting the buckle on the bottom of the shoulder bar, like most shoulder harness crotch straps, they put a fixed length of belt on the shoulder bar, and mounted the buckle to the front of the seat, between your legs. Not only that, its a lift latch buckle, and to lift up you have to be able to reach the bottom of it. A nice little challenge since you can't lean forward with the shoulder bar strapped down. Even when its unlocked. Still though a loop and corskscrew ride that runs three trains, has an air hill, and has those two photogenic twists right over the midway. I understand it was quite the ride in its day. We had also received a phone call that April was by Wildcat. We proceeded to Wildcat, we looked around Wildcat, no April. We tried to ride Iron Dragon but it was closed for the nighttime spectacular. So lets see - coasters I didn't ride: ------------------------------- Can't Ride: Jr. Gemini Milenneum Force Top Thrill Dragster Wicked Twister Coasters I skipped ------------------ Mantis Raptor Woodstock Disaster Transport It is a sign of an amazing park, when you can fail to ride NINE of its coasters, and still have a great day, getting in EIGHT coasters and other rides as well. We knew we had time for one more ride, and Rideman thought April was wanting to rde Maverick at night, and of the choices another Maverick ride sounded right up my alley as well. We headed back to Maverick where Rideman proceeded to attempt to contact April. I enjoyed some free drinks and we waited just outside the Maverick queue as long as we dared before darting inside before they could cut if off. As it turns out, they were lenient about cutting the Maverick queue, and the ride actually closed 10 minutes after the park did. We also soon learned that April was at Blue Streak anyway. This time it only took about 30 minutes to wait to ride Maverick, and I noted a good portion of the crowd waiting were event attendees. We were assigned row 2. Row 2, while an improvement over Row 4, is not quite as good as Row 1 in therms of smoothness. By the end of the ride, Rideman was expressing his distaste for Maverick while I was still raving about it. He also pointed out a shirt in the gift shop where it compares Magnum to Maverick in states, Magnum beats Maverick in every category except steepness of first drop. We next make our way over to Magnum for Magnum ERT. Ack, Magnum decided it didn't want to participate, and there was a train stopped on the lift getting a pep talk by the mechanics. They didn't get Magnum open till shortly after 11:30, but they did keep it open till 12:30 instead of the advertised 12:00. As a make good, they opened Wicked Twister, which did me a lot of good, not. Since Magnum is the only thing any of us could comfortably ride, if ride at all, we hung out at Magnum talking till they got it open. We then proceeded to cram in several Magnum rides. I must have gotten in 6 or 7 rides in that hour, mostly in the third seat, but I did a middle seat and a back car ride. For the last ride, we noted the mid course trims did not hit, prepare for the most intense airtime laden return run imaginable. We met back up with April at the end of ERT. We then proceeded to head out to Sandusky to haved a particularly slow meal at Steak and Shake, followed by trying to find a hotel. Oh, there were lots of No Vacancy signs up, but Sandusky hotels are as a rule older run down joints. The first one we stopped at was so bad we checked out 10 minutes after checking in. We did find a place that would give us a noon check out time, which was nice since we wound up checking in at 2:30am, and we noted that thy had purposely scheduled no morning events at Geauga Lake. The event flyer even said "SLEEP IN!", we're just following there directions! Stay tuned, next up: Geauga Lake for CoasterEXT.

TR: Kings Island - 4/29/07 Trip Report: Kings Island April 29, 2007 Mason, OH ******************* Today was just a quick visit to the park. That's one of the benefits to being a seasonpass holder, I can arrive that the park just before 4PM on an 8PM close and not feel rushed or like I wasted money. My partners for this round of fun are Rideman and April. Accordingly, we arrived just before 4pm, and used assorted Cedar Fair Maxx Passes to park and enter the park. We enter the park, and not wanting to overdo it, we head right to Graeter's for some of their wonderful ice cream. I had the black raspberry chip, if you care. After having our ice cream, we deicded to start in Nick Universe, which would go well since we started in Action Zone last time. For our first ride, we rode the Fairly Odd Coaster (1972 John Allen PTC junior wood coaster) - its the classic PTC kiddie coaster layout, well except for the fact the final dip is missing, a trim brake has been added to the turn over the station, and the station is on the straight track rather than along the curve. It's still the best running wood coaster in the park despite the trim brake. From Fairly Odd Coaster, April grabs a snow cone, then we head to Avatar (Zamperla Skater Coaster). April doesn't like spin rides, so Rideman and I take a ride on this spin ride while April enjoys the snow cone. This time we got an upgrade from last week, we were in row 5 on the end, instead of row 4 in the center. I really do like Avatar, though sometimes I question if it really belongs in the children's oriented section of the park. That ride may be a bit more than some kiddies may have bargained for. From Avatar, April rejoins us, and we head to Rugrat's Runaway Reptar, (Vekoma Junior Inverted coaster). Owing to the awful station design where it can be hard to push through the crowds waiting for the back seats to get to the front, the line took longer than it appeared, even though it spilled just barely out of the station into the queue. We found seats in the middle of the train and rode another solid reliable coaster. April also noted for the first time that the park added Phantom Phlyers (Zamperla Kite Flyer) We were headed to Wild Thornberries River Adventure, it was getting a bit hot, and the line was only through one switchback in the queue house. We wound up not riding, and April needed to take care of other matters. While April was off taking care of other matters, Dave and I started back in Coney where we started with a ride on Vortex. (Arrow 6 inversion multi element coaster) We took a ride in the second to last seat, and confirmed that yes, Vortex seems to be running better this year. Rideman noted evidence of some major track maintenance, and with video camera in hand, walked alongside the ride fence in Coney while I watched Three Point Challenge (aka License To Print Money). After Dave got done taping, we both went for a ride on Shake, Rattle and Roll (Huss Troika) We had heard a rumor that the park had installed seatbelts, and a worse rumor that they were short seat belts. Never fear, while the park did install two individual retracting seatbelts in each car, they are plenty long enough. We figure the person who commented about the belts being short doesn't know how to work retracting seatbelts. We saw a few friends at this point who informed us that Flight of Fear was running an hour wait. We skipped Flight of Fear and headed to Racer. We took a ride in a random seat towards the back of the train. Racer did get some care this year, and I can tell it's trying to perform, it really is. Now lets get some grease on, and the trim brake off. We headed into Oktoberfest and noted the sign for a new Coke Oasis coming soon. We then headed to Adventure Express. We took a ride near the back of the train. Adventure Express delivers an intense fun peepy ride, and today was no exception. We then headed into Action Zone, where we made the trek all the way to the back to ride Top Gun. As usual Top Gun was a complete walk on, so into the next to the last seat we go. Like most of King's Island's coasters, Top Gun delivers a solid ride, just nothing exceptionally noteworthy. Next, we were going to ride Delirium, but we met back up with April, and headed to Italian Job instead. Italian Job had a short wait, it was back just past the bridge over the track. We wound up in the middle red car, which on this ride means its just a fun quick ride, the only airtime is in the blue car. By the time we finished with Italain Job, it was almost time for the park to close, but we still managed to make it down to Adventure Express for one more ride. There was almost nobody riding Adventure Express so we all took front seat rides. By the time we were done, it was time for the park to close. So following what has become usual tradition for a Kings Island visit, a trip to Culvers was in order. That's all the park outings for April, next scheduled outing is Holiwood Nights!