What else is there to say about what we found at California's Great America? Given that extracting the Carousel and the roller coasters of note and the Bayern Kurve has made a shambles of a chronological narrative?
Well, we made a discovery we were kind-of expecting but were still surprised by: pinball! Among the cashless, unattended arcades were four modern Stern pinball games, plus a wall painted as a classic 100-points-when-lit pop bumper. We thought seriously about playing, but the games weren't that exciting --- The Sopranos, The Walking Dead, Stern's latest Star Wars, and the 2013 Star Trek --- and we'd have had to get an arcade card and put money on it to play. We kept it in mind, in case we had more time than things to do. Even though we want to always play pinball at a park, to support it, we didn't feel confident in how much time we had, and the extra effort of getting a card made it too much. Please pay attention, parks that are trying to eliminate cash, as if that were a good move.
We encountered a ride called the Tiki Twirl, which turned out to be closed for the season but also nothing like the Tiki Twirl/Calypso at Cedar Point. Their Tiki Twirl is a Disk'O, maybe a Super Disk'O, a spinning circle that rocks on a U-shape track. When the ride opened, a sign at the blocked gate said, it was named Survivor: The Ride, a reminder that this was a Paramount park back in 2006. It also may explain why this has a Tiki theme, and a sign out front that talks about the Maori weather god Tawhirimatea. The sign also has a little bit of explanation, saying he sent the storm gods to ``wreak havoc on his parents for separating their parents''. The ``separating'' is a sign plastered over the original sign, forcing us to wonder what was on there before? What did they have to correct?
A roller coaster we passed a few times while it was closed had the name, I thought, of RAD BLAZER. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger informed me and my ageing eyes that it was more likely RAILBLAZER, and she was right. This is their newest coaster and it's one of a new line of single-rail roller coasters. Imagine a monorail that can do loops. It also seats one person in a row, part of what allows a monorail to do such tight loops, and probably doing awful things to the ride capacity. We happened to be nearby when it seemed to be opening up, and hopped into a line that seemed implausibly short and so got a ride on their season's marquee ride, in-between times that it went down. The park blocks off surprisingly little space for the ride, too; of course you can't actually touch it, but you can come closer than you can on most rides at any other park we've seen.
I also took a bit of time to ride something bunnyhugger would not. The park has an observation tower, your classic old-style one that's an enclosed saucer that rotates slowly as it goes up, hangs around a while at the peak, and sinks back down. We don't see many of them, and I hadn't been to one since our lone ride on Cedar Point's Space Spiral, before its demolition. This was a pleasant ride, by my lights, sitting and listening to tuneless music and watching the Carousel spinning and Gold Striker running its path and, off in the middle distance, the football stadium and, in even greater distance, dry mountains dotted with scrub. I also got a clear view of the pavilion whose entrance I mistook for the park's, at the start of the day.
It was after I took the ride on the observation tower that we ventured to Patriot, one of the roller coasters, and discovered there wasn't a line. This was how we began exploring and finding that the park was not having a crowded day. So I'll close on that, the turning point. And the note that while we would have liked to have stayed at the park a bit longer, until after sunset --- soccer matches between Jamaica and Saint-Kitts-and-Nevis, and between Jamaica and Qatar, demanded the park close early --- we did feel like we'd had the time to appreciate the park.
Still, we did have the time to go back, and the plans to ...
As I've closed out Great America, why not photographically close out Anthrohio? It's my blog and so I choose to do just that, here. Enjoy.
Velveteen walking around for a last tour of the night.
Velveteen evaluates the planter outside. She also had on a new mouth that isn't captured in this picture, sorry.
Morning! It's Monday here, time to move out, time to see the hotel by daylight.
We probably photographed this sign last year too, but it's just getting funnier.
And one last snap of the hotel entrance, as small groups of furries said goodbye and took off.
Trivia: The Skylab 4/3 planning meeting held the 16th of August, 1973, established that observation of the comet Kahoutec would have the highest priority, over every other experiment activity, from 16 December 1973 through the end of the mission. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011.
Currently Reading: The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery Of The World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine, Benjamin Wallace. Now, see, I did not know the slaver Thomas Jefferson took a basically incognito tour of the wine-growing areas of Europe when he was over there in 1787. It makes me aware of how dimly I do know the life of one of the core figures of the American civil religion.
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Date: 2023-08-17 11:27 am (UTC)