If you judged our visit to Michigan's Adventure in mid-August on factors other than how many times we got to ride Mad Mouse? You would also think we had an incredible day. We did. The day was as nearly perfect as we could hope for in this fallen world. Though the weather was gorgeous --- sunny, cloudless, warm --- the crowds were modest and always gone off somewhere we were not. We got our rides on all the roller coasters, except for for the kiddie coaster Woodstock Express (we already rode it, back in June, and it's a knee-banger), just like in the good old days when the park was under-attended.
We also discovered things, which for a park we've visited this often is something else. While sitting on a bench in the Old West area, eating French fries and listening to the speakers play a bluegrass guitar version of the Beatles' ``I Want To Hold Your Hand'' we saw some people sitting in the midst of this tree-covered, bush-surrounded area. We'd always thought it was just landscaping and that people should keep off, but saw there were benches there. This is a shaded spot --- in a park that urgently needs them --- sitting on mulch and ready for people who generally do not know it's there. Now we know and we'll use that, unless they fence off the spot once people discover it. It's special to find a secret place in an amusement park, though.
The petting zoo was open, naturally, and we visited that. Spent a good time watching the two working bunnies, a pair who mostly stayed underneath the bench that gives them a little more shelter from young kids excited to pet bunnies. At one point the smaller, an English spot, decided to be where the larger was, and hopped up and dug/punched her side, in that movement that reminded us of when Penelope and Sunshine would box. The larger rabbit took the hint and moved over some.
We had a little more time than our previous visit, but what really saved us time was that there were such short lines. About the longest thing we waited for was a flat ride, the Lakeside Eagles flying scooters ride. This is a captive plane-type ride, with a large flat vertical surface the rider gets to control. As you'd imagine it's popular with kids. It also only has eight cars so it's a relatively low-capacity ride. So we had to wait through two ride cycles before we were ready to board. And we were near the end of that third ride cycle, but we had just enough cars to make it. Then ... two kids came up to the Fast Lane entrance.
Fast Lane is an anti-democratic scam at the best of times, but at Michigan's Adventure it's generally absurd since besides Mad Mouse and maybe Shivering Timbers nothing gets much of a line. This day, it was just an outright scam since nothing had lines. I hope their parents felt the waste of money --- an appreciable fraction of the cost of the day's ticket! --- on this.
Anyway the kids got to cut in ahead of us, and they took two separate cars. I can't blame them for that; I remember being a kid and wanting nothing more than to be the one in the car. But it did mean there was only one car free. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger and I can't fit in a single car. So, there was nothing for us to do. She rode and I went back to the gate, telling the attendant --- who had counted out the number of people getting on --- that there weren't any cars free. So I had to wait for her ride to end, and then I hopped on, taking the same car she did, for a ride while she watched me. You'd think this would at least give us both the chance to get good on-ride photos of the other but the ride's motion makes it really hard to get a decent picture of anything. Especially from where I had been waiting, since that was shooting into the sun.
We got to see, and to do, everything we hoped for, and spend as much time on them as we wanted. We were even able to get kettle corn, although not from the lone Kettle Corn stand. Each time we passed that stand it was closed, except that sometimes we saw people with bags of kettle corn walking around. Late in the day we saw someone at the kettle corn stand, stirring the kettle of corn. They said the bags were sold at the refreshments stand over near the Wolverine Wildcat coaster. All right, even though that meant it wasn't as fresh and hot as might be. As we passed the stand again, a few minutes later, the attendant was selling bags of kettle corn to people who had walked up. We have no explanation for this phenomenon.
And then there was something weird in the parking lot. It was ... a custom vehicle. Specifically, it was the front end of some airplane's fuselage, mounted on wheels and I imagine a truck or RV bed. The ride, labelled 'The Fabulous Flamingo' and sporting the FAA logo on the driver's door, was sitting there as people came out from the park and slowly walked around, photographing and remarking what a weird thing that was and how did this make any sense. I don't know. Whatever its story is, we can know only that someone wanted to drive a chunk of airplane along the roads, and wanted to get to Michigan's Adventure. What a strange day to visit.
Now I get to Sylvan Beach Amusement Park, in our photo roll. Get ready for a lot of pictures of a park and nearby arcade because, wow, we don't know if or when we'll ever get back to this, although it strikes me that April 2024 might be a good time to visit.
As an ungated, walk-up park Sylvan Beach doesn't have a real front entrance or anything. This was the thing dominating our view as we parked in the lot that also provides for the beach and the boats and all: Galaxi, their lone (adult) roller coaster.
They have a Roll-o-Plane too, just like was at Pinburgh that last time it was held.
Not part of Sylvan Beach! The building houses Carello's Arcade, with that carousel from the 1890s, but it's a separate concern from the rest of the area.
Carello's opening up for the day.
Galaxi is a common model of small roller coaster, very like what the Serpent at Kokomo's was, and not far off, like, the Super Cyclone that we rode at Livonia Spree this year.
Next to Galaxi is this Rotor ride, one of only a few remaining. And here's what it looks like from behind!
Trivia: Alexander Nasmyth, ``father of Scottish landscape art'', is also credited (in his son's biography) with designing the tiered arch iron bridge (the first of which was built over a ravine on the island of St Helena) and with the ``Sunday Rivet'', a method of riveting using the jaws of a vise rather than loud hammer blows (that could be used to repair an iron stove ``in the most perfect silence'' ona Sunday morning). Source: Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering, Henry Petroski. Wikipedia notes that Nasmyth was also one of the crew of the first successful steamship, sailed in 1788. And while mentioning the engineering thing, says he never patented any of his ideas so one may
Currently Reading: High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolotics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945 - 1999, Erik M Conway.
