Grey skies are gonna clear up

[austin_dern]

The trouble was the rain. Roller coasters, particularly, tend to be weather-sensitive, the taller the moreso. And while it really had not rained that much --- it had drizzled a few times, if our drive in was indicative --- the park was really being over-sensitive. The roller coasters were down, though, and were projected to be down until there'd been an hour of dry weather. (It turns out their wooden roller coaster, Thunder Run, probably was running despite this. It's less sensitive to the weather, as is typically true of wooden roller coasters. But we did not know that and just went by what we heard at the gate.) Still, it wasn't like it was really rainy. Just overcast and a bit cool. We could still walk around and enjoy the non-roller-coaster parts of the park while waiting out the weather.

Kentucky Kingdom was owned for years by Six Flags, and while the chain shut the park down, it's not like the work they did on the place was erased when the previous owner bought it back. Many flat rides were taken out, insofar as Six Flags was legally able to (and the court fights over this are dizzying to follow), but that's not everything there is to the park. In particular the front gate and the buildings for the redemption games looked uncannily like those of the midway to Great Adventure back in my former home of New Jersey. Just the various Six Flags logos were wiped off and painted over. We broke the park in with a ride on the Musik Express that was fine enough, although I don't remember it having the backward ride cycle that does so much to make things thrilling.

Nearby --- and nearly everything is nearby everything else; Kentucky Kingdom is not a large park and hasn't got the room to grow, which is part of what makes it weird --- they had the stage for live animal acts, and a promise that the sea lions would be back from winter quarters in a few weeks. There was some kind of maintenance stuff going on inside and of course we peeked through the fence slats at it. This enlightened us by showing nothing we could really understand going on at all.

And next to all of this was the ``5-D'' movie theater promising an Angry Birds experience. It seemed like a safe way to get closer to that magic hour roller coasters would open. And, what the heck, I played the game a couple of times in Like 2009. We could give it a try. It was your classic modern 3-D style movie, with everyone sitting in those moving seats that shake you around during parts of the movie. That seems to cover four dimensions in park speak; the 5 part was still mysterious. We suspect the movie was supposed to have some interactive elements, because there's bits during the movie when Angry Birds Or Pigs raspberry the camera. And if we know anything, a shower of gobs of spit from a comic character on-screen in an amusement park movie theater says there should be drops of water sprayed on the audience. That would be the 5- part of the D. It wasn't working, though, if they even had the setup for it.

The movie was this tolerably well-conceived thing about your standard Wacky Races amongst the various Angry Birds, interrupted by pigs and ending with raiding Pig Castle or whatever it is. The less-well-conceived part is that while the movie starts out first-person, making all your bumping around the seats sensible, it jumps out to third-person and back again some. It muddles the logic of how the seats shake around. This was all fun enough, and ridiculous enough to be funny several times. It didn't inspire us to see the theatrical movie, since nothing would. But it's about right for spending ten minutes at an amusement park.

And then it was drizzling a little again.

Trivia: Flemish artist Antony van den Wyngaerde's 1553 panoramic drawing is the earliest known depiction of the whole length of London Bridge. Source: Old London Bridge: The Story of the Longest Inhabited Bridge in Europe, Patricia Pierce.

Currently Reading: The John McPhee Reader, Editor William L Howarth.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I agree that the inconsistent camera (first vs. third person) in the movie was a problem. It's rare to see something that uses consistent first-person from start to finish, but I admire it when it's done well. The best example I can think of was the 3D (not 4D/5D, just plain ol' 3D!) film we saw at Festyland, which had thieves stealing a pirate's treasure from a museum. It was clear that you were supposed to be one of the thieves, which they communicated by having other characters turn and gesture at "you," etc. (there was no dialogue).

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

The Festyland pirates video was fantastic. Solidly done altogether.

There were some neat stunts in the Angry Birds movie but overall it felt like a lot of action without a clear plot line or focus. The inconsistent camera probably reflected that more than drove it.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

My favorite part was when the pirate ghost made all the skeletons in the museum come alive, including some marine creatures (I forget if it was a dolphin or a fish that I got all excited about).

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Was there maybe some prehistoric marine creature in the mix, or am I just fantasizing again?