Seabreeze's other significant rides, though, once we get past the amazing carousel and Jack Rabbit roller coaster? Of course we're going to see the other roller coasters as significant. The one we didn't ride was Bear Trax, the kiddie coaster, which in 1997 replaced their former kiddie coaster Bunny Rabbit. (I don't know why they didn't keep that name. The big coaster being paired with a diminutive kiddie coaster is a style ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger and I always love.) But we're both too tall to ride that unaccompanied; you have to be between 36 and 58 inches to ride it on your own.
The less interesting of the other adult coasters --- and one we rode only the one time --- is Whirlwind. It's a spinning coaster, the twin to the Steel Dragon ride at Waldameer. It also was the only specific part of the park we could see from our parking space way below. We were worried about the length of the line. Whirlwind isn't a wild mouse coaster, but it does share a wild mouse's design limit, that it sends out a 'train' of only one car that seats up to four people. But the line was moving, mercifully as the sun was out and quite intent on being felt, and I don't think we spent fifteen minutes waiting for our ride. We got on the side facing backwards, that is, looking down as you go up the lift hill. I'll ride either way, given the choice, but appreciate the backwards-facing seats since that's the rarer thing to do. The ride was good fun, as you'd hope; the only disappointment in the ride's location is that as it's at the lowest part of the park you don't get any good dramatic views of the place. And on our particular ride we didn't really get any of the wild spinning, especially a turn that would let us go down a hill sideways, which you never do except on a spinning coaster, sometimes.
The more interesting coaster, though, is the older, the eighth-oldest steel coaster still standing. (We've ridden three of the ten oldest roller coasters, and seen a fourth, which is really special as most of them are kiddie coasters that adults aren't usually able to ride.) It's Bobsleds, a bobsled-themed little coaster that started out as a simple Junior Coaster, and then got expanded and converted to tubular steel track in imitation of the Matterhorn Bobsleds at Disneyland.
It's a wonderful ride, an example of a ``terrain coaster'' where the ride hugs the local landscape. You don't even start with a lift hill; you start with a slight drop that rolls across the ground in what feels convincingly like a ride starting to go out of control. Then you get to a drop, and a hill, and a lift hill, and several stacks of curves and helixes. It's all quite smooth, the thing that tubular steel track gave to roller coasters; and boy, but it is fun. The ride had lines comparable to Jack Rabbit, and --- like Whirlwind --- has one-car 'trains' that seat four people if two of them are kids. (Each car is also themed to a country --- the United States, Switzerland, Jamaica, and of course Italy(?)).
We would return to it several times. It's just not something we're likely to tire of. And we achieved a new personal triumph during one visit. We were in line behind a guy who had ... something ... pulling away at his attention. He needed to get a message to someone who was out, somewhere in line, or maybe just getting in line. And this went as well as you'd think, one guy shouting from the slight enclosure of the station at someone --- I assume a kid --- who had no idea anyone wanted their attention. To keep Bobsleds moving you need efficient loading and dispatching of trains, or else everything stacks at the station. And here was a guy doing everything but sitting down.
Finally the ride operator got the guy's attention and made him sit down, and sent him out. When that train was dispatched, bunnyhugger and I practically jumped into the car and buckled up, doing our best to clear up the traffic jam. The ride operator told us that it was great to have riders who knew what to do. And that's our achievement: we got acknowledged by a ride operator that we're good at riding things.
Now the only things we have yet, and want, to experience are a walk-down from a point on a roller coaster that isn't just before the station, and a rollback on Top Thrill Dragster/Kingda Ka.
Now that I'm done with photos of the pinball tournament next up on the roll is ... the Lake Ontario Loop trip! Yes, I've been going on so long I'm lapping myself!
The first of our amusement park trip destinations this year! Canada's Wonderland, with the flags of the provinces and territories above the entry gate like that.
Leviathan runs outside the park gates, giving everyone this taste of what's to come if they can get their season passes to work.
The front side of my season pass, which I photographed when I went back to get whatever that issue was cleared up when it got rejected. I did this as insurance in case they decided to issue me a brand-new one and not return the old. The card's in its tenth year and they don't make them like this anymore.
Finally inside! Wonder Mountain serves as the centerpiece of the park. Last time we visited all the levels of waterfall were running and this time only the one biggest level was.
The building housing the carousel, Philadelphia Toboggan Company #84, formerly of Palisades Park.
Angels trumpeting atop the carousel building.
Trivia: The Baseball Encyclopedia was unveiled at a press conference in Mamma Leone's restaurant in New York City on 28 August 1969. Source: The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination With Statistics, Alan Schwarz.
Currently Reading: The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography Of Space, Rip Bulkeley.
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Date: 2022-08-28 07:34 pm (UTC)