Our first full day of the trip, Sunday, was also the only day we got to the Continental buffet breakfast at the hotel. Shame, as I was into their weird industrial-grade omelet sheets. And any bagel in a storm, after all ...
That first day also saw us getting to know a few basic things about our Bay Area hotel, located almost across the street from the PayPal campus. One is that to go anywhere you have to start in the other direction and make up to seventeen turns. Another is that now and then you just have to wait for the street-level trolleys to go past. Another is that the navigator really, really, really wants you to go on US 101, even if it's just for a quarter-mile. I did see the stop lights at the on-ramps, but they were never turned on while we were driving, so didn't have to deal with that.
We had left the week under-planned, figuring to decide the day before or so what to do. My nomination for Sunday had been going to California's Great America, the reasoning being that since this is the park we're least likely to be able to revisit, we should get a trip in early and have time to come back in case we can't see or do everything we want. So, Sunday would offer the greatest number of possible re-visit times.
The park was just a short drive down US 101, in part because that's how ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger looked for in a hotel. We aimed to get there as close as we could to the start of the day. This for the obvious reasons, yes, but also because it would be a short day, with the park closing at 7 pm. This seems early, but the park was closing at that or at 8 pm all week except for the 4th of July. I suspected staffing issues --- parks have just not been able to get employees since the pandemic began --- but at the park we discovered it was more. The park shares its parking lot with Big Football Stadium, and had to close early for a soccer match. I understand the desire to relieve parking lot pressure, although I'm not sure this actually holds up. The game had started well before the park emptied out, and if the soccer game attendees were arriving while the park was still open ... well, where's the saving, then? But I guess the park crowd dwindling at 6 pm is better for them than the park crowd dwindling at 9 pm.
We got in and parked easily, with plenty of space in the lot at 11 am. What was unsettling was the line: people wrapped around the park, at the limits of the parking lot, going from the opening to a puttering out not far from our car. While bunnyhugger put her contacts in and got sunscreen on and all, I walked over to see just how bad the line was. And saw that the thing I assumed wsa the entrance --- it had a wonderful 80s-style 'GREAT AMERICA' sign in Friz Quadrata --- was only the music pavilion's entrance, and was gated off. The line continued ... and continued ... and continued. I needed quite some time to find the actual park entrance and found just how enormous the line was. Easily two thousand in line.
I returned to bunnyhugger to curse out my rashness and to admit we should have done like she suggested and gone to one of the other area parks. But we were here, and we'd take a good long while driving to anywhere else, so ... let's just commit. In a strange role-reversal, she suggested things might not be as bad as the line looked. She had in mind our day at Darien Lake back in 2019, when the dozens of school buses disgorging thousands of teenagers at the start of the day turned out to be all the crowd, with the actual park itself tolerably, even lightly, crowded.
And as will happen, she was right. The park did take in two or maybe three thousand people ahead of us. But a park like this is designed to hold thirty or forty thousand people at once. It was not --- despite being a hot, cloudless Sunday of a holiday weekend --- a horribly busy day at the park, and the lines were all reasonable or better. Not to spoil things but we got on all the rides we most wanted to, and while we could have easily used another three hours, especially to see the park at night, this was not because we lost the day to queueing. We had picked a right day to go to California's Great America after all.
And now let me take you back to Anthrohio, in photograph form
Already up to Sunday at Anthrohio! And not even first thing in the morning; this is midafternoon already when everybody's milling around like that.
Main Events caught in-between events.
Ah, but people are eager to get to the plushies panel and just waiting for the chance to get into the room.
Here's the centerpiece table, including some of the many, many The Lion King plushes brought for appreciation.
Another view of the centeral pile. The plush panel's end would have everyone encouraged to bring their plush for a group photo.
Here's someone's lovely crocheted ... Pokemon thingy.
Trivia: The United Kingdom struck 40 commemorative medals for the coronation of King George IV in 1821, but only 15 for the coronation of King William IV in 1831. Source: The Invention of Tradition, Edited by Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger.
Currently Reading: Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes - or - Le Mot Juste: A Fresh Look At The Masterpieces of P G Wodehouse, Kristin Thompson. I did not realize how relatively early in the Jeeves/Wooster stories Aunt Agatha stopped appearing on-screen and became just a distant menace who might Act.
