NegativeGLover Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 So first and foremost I must say that if you want a full blown review and pictures from Hall-O-Scream then Chuck's thread on here is a must. My wife and I headed from Morgantown, WV down to Busch Gardens this past Saturday (October 10th) to hit a park that I have not been to in 6 years. I must admit, most of the park is just as I remember, which is a good thing! I absolutely love Busch Gardens (both parks), and feel that next to Disney and Universal, are right up there to being as good as it gets. It is one of those parks that no matter how many times I have went to, or how many times I plan on going, just make me uber happy. Crowds were pretty light early on, allowing us to score lots of coaster rides before 4 or so. We actually had hit almost all the rides at least once, with multiple rides on Griffon and Apollo. As with most parks, around 6 when things got spooky, the crowds got spooky as well. Not Cedar Point on a Saturday spooky, but pretty close. The thing was - most of the ride lines stayed under 30 min (Griffon). The haunt lines weren't too bad early, but we did wait about an hour and 30 min for Bitten/Hunted. So that was the crowd situation. As far as Hall-O-Scream (the mazes and scare zones) is concerned, I feel that is a head or so above most of the Cedar Fair parks, but not quite as good as I expected (I think I had some pretty high expectations though). Don't get me wrong - it was awesome - but I think I just expected a little more in the haunts department. Most of my reviews of the haunts are almost exactly as Chuck describes in his thread, so go there for "my thoughts as well" (hey, it will save me some typing!). As far as some tidbits on the rides, they are as follows: Alpengeist: Ugh, I really want to love this coaster. It's good, but not great. It has always just felt a little forceless to me - like the elements are just too big. Seeing as how they are some of the largest inverted elements, that plays into my theory. Oh well, still worth a ride. Griffon: I liked this better than Sheikra. This could be because it was comfortable on Saturday and when I was in Tampa last summer it was like 98 and I was sweating "just a tad". I like to NOT sweat, so this could influence my decision, although both coasters are really similar when it comes down to it. Apollos Chariot: I think this is a top notch coaster. In fact, I have always like it better than Nitro, Millennium Force, Diamondback, and others. Especially the first drop in the back seat. Night time riding bliss!!! Curse of Darkastle: Good animations, good movement of the car, but I felt the "real world" effects were lacking. Great scenery, but I was hoping for some fog, fire, lights, blood, etc. being thrown at me. Still a good ride, but no where near Spiderman in my opinion. Loch Ness Monster: Great first drop in the back. Lacking other than that, but for a old Arrow, she still isn't too bad. And it does provide every coaster geek in the world tons of pictures - like me! (pictures to follow). So, like I said, pictures are to follow: and here they are! Now I know some other people have posted some pretty killer photos of Busch Gardens, so I felt the need to differentiate (no math jokes) myself a little. To do that, I went colorful-less crazy! My camera has one of the color accent options, so I basically went off on that. Below you will find lots of pictures of color accented photos, so if you don't like those - STOP READING AND GO LOOK AT OTHER PAGES! But if you want a slightly different and more colorful-less photos, then scroll on down my friends. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy! And so, now having 15 chins, we ended our color accented day here at Busch Gardens. Hope you enjoyed! All this spooky stuff is making the number of my chins multiply! Let's get out of this place! *Insert same lyrics as above but 2 times faster* You spin me right round baby right round like a record baby... If I take a color accented picture of Escape to Pompei, does the orange/red in the color magically turn to blood? Bloody ol England is getting all lit up to scare the little kiddies. Oh Alpengeist, why must you not give me a forceful ride? This angle of Griffon makes me happy. We found a bird! A red color accented bird! Hello, I like you. I want to cuddle with you. (Seriously, looking at this guy made me want to cuddle with him) Agh! A zombie stole my TPR 90 degrees shirt and is trying to kill me! Oh wait, that's just me... ZOMG - Monica turned into a zombie! It must be getting near the witching hour! *nom nom nom* says the Loch Ness Monster as it eats up the loops. Yes, you are welcome, I was happy to blow your mind. Like woah The first of 4 really common Loch Ness Monster shots. I'm about to blow you mind with color accenting goodness! If a train makes its way through a cobra roll, and there isn't anyone there to hear it, does it really exist? Self explanatory AGH! I know, no color accenting right? Yeah, but this picture makes me ponder things in life, so I included it. Red color accented drop of BBW - in case you couldn't figure that out. On a side note, this picture makes we weep a little. It also makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It is such a strange world. I'm really sad that I missed some final rides on BBW... I love this shot as the track heads off into the wild green yonder, much like the coaster is going to head off to the scrap heap... that didn't make any sense... We concurred that the Frankenrock show pales in comparison to the EDGE OF MADNESS at Cedar Point. The music choices made us contorte our faces, worse than the torte cake did! Still partially frozen reall super tall torte cake! Next up was the Festaus, which had a few good things going for it, like...(see below photo) Looping the color accented loop Then we moved on over to the slightly larger, more rideable Alpengeist - which happened to be color accented on this day! Next we headed over to mini-Alpengeist Bronzed bronze *Insert naked statue joke as needed* My wife Monica posing in front of a lovely color accented Griffon Look at Griffon getting all Skloosh like First up - Griffon! A must at opening - multiple 5 min waits. Death is watching our color accented selves! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emiroo Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Your photos are always so bad-ass! Keep them coming! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike541x Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Your photo are amazing. Almost less then a week till Howl-O-Scream for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willh51 Posted October 15, 2009 Share Posted October 15, 2009 Nice shot of Griffin's second immelman, that's badass. I was at the Halloween celebration two years ago and it was awesome! Great ride operations and sweet, no-charge mazes and characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedmetal Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Loved your photos. All my memories of the park just rushed back. Oh the memories... Keep up the good work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odene497 Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 The color effects are incredible. I liked the Lockness/BBW pics the best. And also that angle of the Griffon Immelman. Beautifullll. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maximo37 Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Simply beautiful... seriously... my favorites are the Lochness pictures... the BBW ones make me sad on one hand... and smile with great memories on the other... Thanks for posting the wonderful pictures... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VegasCoaster Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 Are those through photoshop or just the normal color accent mode in the camera? Either way they turned out great, just asking since a few of them seem to pick up more than the standard one color. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jds03 Posted October 16, 2009 Share Posted October 16, 2009 That was really, really awesome! I'm not going to lie, those photos were terrific! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derek_lentz Posted October 17, 2009 Share Posted October 17, 2009 Now that was a really cool trip report. Well done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NegativeGLover Posted October 19, 2009 Author Share Posted October 19, 2009 All those were taken with the camera's settings - no photoshop involved. You can pick about any shade of any color you want. Just point the camera and select it. It's usually pretty close, and if it isn't exact, it will still pick up on the color you want. It sometimes seems to be random on picking up other colors. I'm assuming, let's say, if you pick yellow, that red might also show, because it might be of the same color spectrum??? I don't really know, and should look it up, because it seems like it might be interesting. (I'm too lazy to look now). And thanks for all the compliments on the photos ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VegasCoaster Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Yeah I was just wondering since there was one photo you had where pretty much everything other than the people came out in color. My camera has the same setting, but somehow I think yours works better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnumfan Posted October 24, 2009 Share Posted October 24, 2009 That's one huge piece of cake! Pretty cool pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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