A surprising absence once we got through the gates of the park was nobody from the park offering to take and sell us our picture. The entrance has a large reflecting pool, along with a floral arrangement of the park's name, much like at Kings Island or Canada's Wonderland, parks which were not in the same chain when Great America was built. The ground plan was just in the air back then.
At the other end of the reflecting pool was the first thing we would ride; not the small-scale Eiffel Tower of Kings Island or the artificial mountain of Canada's Wonderland but instead ... the world's tallest carousel. Carousel Columbia --- its slightly shorter twin in Chicago's Great America is called the Columbia Carousel --- is a double-decker carousel. And not like the carousel at (say) Freehold Raceway Mall, with a small lower floor and a half-size upper. This is two full-size carousels, one on top of the other, both levels with mounts that rise and fall. And the animals are fiberglass replicas of golden-age-of-carousel animals.
Of course we rode it, starting with the upper level as when do you ever get to ride the second level of a carousel? We were still fearing the day would be packed and we might only get a couple of rides on anything, so this was high priority.
The drawback of the double-decker carousel is that it's slow. Parks have been running carousels slower and slower, possibly out of some idea that it's safer, plausibly to put lighter demands on the ageing motors. Put double the load on the motor, and you get something that doesn't quite get out of first gear. The novelty of the height, of looking so far down at midway or the pond, balances this some, but it's not hard to regret that it doesn't go faster.
We would go back several times for rides, for the wonder and to start wondering things. Like: why does the ride operator announce, as the ride nears the stop, to not get off the ride until it completely stops as it may go backwards? Or, something I thought about on like our fourth ride, since there's a railing all around the second level of the carousel, and it rotates with the platform, how did we walk on?
The answer to the second: there is a sliding gate on the upper level of the carousel, one that they open to discharge and load passengers. And this provides the answer to the first as well: there is only the one gate on the upper level of the carousel, so the ride can only load and unload if the ride is in the correct position. On one of the last rides we took the ride did overshoot a small bit, and the ride operator warned us it was going backwards, don't get off the horses, and they did run it backwards for a little bit. I failed to pay attention to whether the horses reversed their up-and-down motion, and I'm sorry for that. When will I get another chance like that?
Well, whenever we get to Chicago's Great America, of course. It's on the far side of Chicago but still, both Apple and Google Maps think it's a maybe four, four and a half-hour drive one way. That's so very close to day trip range. Certainly weekend trip range. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger has been there. A picture she took of its Columbia Carousel hangs in our kitchen, blown up to poster size and looking just amazing for it.
As mentioned, we did get multiple rides. The park was less busy than we feared, and we were able to get back and even do repeated rides, and not just the Sunday.
Speaking of Sunday, how was Sunday looking at Anthrohio? And how's that for a segue? Knew you'd like it.
And here we get plushes brought together for the group photo.
Complete with that wagon of rabbit plushes which the guy who had that really hard-luck time of things wheeled around and occasionally lost dolls from. Note the big rabbit in the dunce cap has some kind of seat belt rigged up now.
Deer resting underneath a deer plush.
Back outside. Here's some more space frog eggs at work.
I don't know about this one, though. Sees sus.
Wait, closing ceremonies? Already?!
Trivia: Sea-Land Service sold six of its high-performance SL-7 container cargo ships to the US Navy in 1981 for $203.4 million, and its two remaining ones for $65 million in 1982. They were converted to fast supply ships. Source: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J Cudahy. (The ships were designed and started before the Oil Embargo, when everyone figured oil would be cheap forever.)
Currently Reading: Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes - or - Le Mot Juste: A Fresh Look At The Masterpieces of P G Wodehouse, Kristin Thompson.
