See if we wanna climb to the heavens or shift our gaze

[austin_dern]

Let's see if I can't work on the backlog of events to narrate here. Well, back on Mother's Day we went to Cedar Point, testing whether the place would be deserted or packed for the holiday. Our conclusion: we're not really sure. A couple of things we wanted to get to were packed --- Gemini, particularly, promising a wait of an hour or more --- but that might be early-season glitches. It usually takes a while for operations to get really good, even in seasons when the staff hasn't been decimated by Covid-19. Some of the things we wanted to get on --- Magnum, for example, or Blue Streak --- were walk-ons, or near enough. Blue Streak, their oldest coaster and only wooden one, is usually a short wait. Magnum handles a lot of riders, but it is still a big-ticket ride, even though there's taller coasters and more famous ones now.

But our real goal, besides getting some time in the park before it became packed summer weekends, was the new roller coaster. As part of renovations to the long-neglected Oceana midway there's now no more Oceana midway. There's instead the Boardwalk, an area themed to The Fifties, even though the actual Fifties were a time Cedar Point didn't have any but one kiddie roller coasters and was in real danger of closing. But it's a themed area, not an historical one. The area has new signs for the Troika ride, and a new name and sign for the Tiki Twirl, returning it to Calypso, as though Tiki Twirl would be anachronistic for the 50s. The Himalaya and the Scrambler have moved over here too, the latter taking the new name Atomic Scrambler with a fun 50s viewscreen-bubbles logo design. A big new restaurant that we had thought was going to close off the newly-opened area, and maybe it does, but it looks really good and it squares so nicely with the Ferris Wheel that you can't be upset with it.

And the Wild Mouse. It had a line nearly filling its queue, when we first got there, and there was no sign saying how long that might be. We came back near the end of the day, when we thought the wait might be shorter. Also with funnel cake, because we wanted to eat something, and this was a very good choice that got us some envied questions from onlookers.

Wild Mouse is a well-designed ride. Like, it's got its own little arch, as you approach, like this were Rye Playland or Lost Kennywood or something. The wait queue is ample but not sprawlingly huge; it looks like it could hold maybe an hour's worth of people at a time, but it doesn't take up nearly as much space as the similar area for, like, Gemini or Corkscrew. Assuming that the ride gets to be in less demand as everyone gets their rides on the new thing out of the way, and it turns into a ride for people who like to get on everything or who like roller coasters that aren't intimidatingly high or hostile-looking, it'll probably have a nice short wait and be popular forever.

And it's well-decorated. Like, there are six cars, each themed to a different mouse, and as you approach you hear the recorded voice of different mice giving the safety spiel. There's also a car made up to look like a piece of cheese; apparently there's already a park legend that that one gives the wildest ride, as the the cars spin while following the track. Also, as the coaster climbs the lift hill, the speakers play some of that iambic march from Raymond Scott's ``Powerhouse''. You know, the song for whenever a Looney Tune is in a factory. I loved it but regretted that this is going to make the ride operators hate Raymond Scott's ``Powerhouse''. bunnyhugger wisely observed yes, they will, but only for the two seasons before the sound breaks and Cedar Point never fixes it. There are also fun little cartoon sound effects that break out all over the ride, so it's got a very nice bonus to the fast, dizzy ride.

Also: it dispatches fast! A new car goes out, with its load of four people, every thirty seconds, basically as fast as one car clears the lift hill. The ride doesn't quite reach the wild mouse roller coaster ideal of continuous loading with cars that never stop. They stop you to check the restraints. But you do get onto and off of the cars, in the station, at low speed rather than waiting for those to stop. This is why I feel like once the initial new-attraction rush ends, this should be a popular ride without terribly long lines. It can't handle as many people as Magnum can in an hour, but it can do very well. We were inclined to like the ride anyway but the overall experience --- ride, operations, theming, sound --- left us delighted.

As we left the park for the day bunnyhugger picked up some merchandise, including a Wild Mouse t-shirt, which we never did find once we got home. I thought for sure it would turn up, when we tidied or when I emptied out my car or when we were packing for Anthrohio, and it hasn't, in retrospect assigning the day its only important demerit.

Trivia: The Ming Dynasty, trying to support its paper currency, banned the use of its own coins in China in 1394, and again in 1397, 1403, 1404, 1419, and 1425. Source: 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, Charles C Mann.

Currently Reading: Infinity Beckoned: Adventuring Through the Inner Solar System, 1969 - 1989, Jay Gallentine.