Besides the Exclusive Ride Time offered KennyKon attendees before the park opened there was another hour after the end of the day. So while the normal people were shuffling out, saddened, listening to the Kennywood Closing Theme, those of us with con badges were settling on a handful of attractions still open, and open only to us.
I am not sure whether Steel Curtain was one of them. ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunny_hugger and I got a night ride in, and appreciated its views of the illuminated wonder that is the park. But this was before the park closed. I would imagine the park scheduled only for morning ride time, but it's possible that the ride's being down for some of the morning changed plans.
In the event. We focused first on one of Kennywood's newest rides, and the cornerstone of their new themed place, Area 412. As the Area ___ form suggests this is an alien-themed area. Aliens and science fiction are under-used as amusement park themes so I'm glad for that. (412 is, as you'd guess, Pittsburgh's area code.) One of the Area 412 rides has been around forever, or at least since no later than 2008, Cosmic Chaos. That's a Zamperla Mega Disk'O, a giant disc that rotates while rocking up and down. That was not our ride. Spinvasion, the new ride, was the featured attraction.
This is a new Zamperla Gryphon, a rigid-armed swing ride that can swing the riders several different angles, taking riders from swinging outward a little bit to swinging nearly horizontally. It's also got a great lighting package, no end of colors and color patterns to look at. The photographs I took make it look unearthly and that's what they would hope for, isn't it? This is a fun ride, and if it's not jumping up to be among my favorites now, well, it would have been one of my favorites as a kid. I was always big on swing rides, even when I was shy of the bigger roller coasters. (Or, more, the very long lines for a two-minute ride, is my recollection. But that might have been rationalization.) I could have been talked into a second ride at least.
A good number of the KennyKon attendees took in one ride, although it doesn't seem like many were sessioning it. Later on I could see the ride and see there wasn't anyone on it, or were only a handful of riders, and I felt bad for the Spinvasion operators.
But where we --- and most of the KennyKon attendees --- were was The Phantom's Revenge. This is their tallest steel coaster, the one with the queue that starts from way the heck away from the ride because like an amateur Roller Coaster Tycoon player they forgot to provide space for it. This is a treat of a ride, for a steel coaster, especially at night when you can see the park illuminated below. Even with the park closed up and turning off the lights you could still see a lot and admire it, especially in the reflections that the central lagoon and the pool in Lost Kennywood offer.
We took several rides, each time getting off at the exit that put us down in Lost Kennywood and walking all the way out of that section to get back to the entrance. It's normal to usually be expected to walk back around to the entrance; it gives other people the chance at a good seat, for one, and it guarantees that you're still steady enough to be able to walk. Too-frequent riding can disorient you or worse, especially a coaster like Phantom's Revenge that has a lot of air time and surprising intensity to it. And felt only more intense riding in even more darkness than usual.
As it was, for all the times we went around, I was starting to feel a bit woozy. Plus my feet were hurting, which shows just how long we spent on them over the day. Our last ride or two there were few enough people that they started letting folks re-ride, if there wasn't anyone waiting for their seat. I believe we took that opportunity once, and then --- with another 15 minutes or so in Exclusive Ride Time --- decided we had ridden enough, and would rather get back to a hotel room we assumed would not be chilly and moist.
So we thanked the ride operators and left the ride. I tried getting pictures of the un-lit park but failed to use the low-light mode that I should have. My camera was whining abut its battery, though, and the low-light mode would probably have been too much for it.
We got back to our temporary home at the Red Roof Inn, and couldn't figure out how it wasn't better than this. But it was all right enough for us to go to a good solid sleep.
With today's photos we finish up the miniature train ride around Gilroy Gardens.
Here we pass over the antique car ride, with the 50s and the 20s cars on the left and right tracks.
Not just a warp speed photo; look up some! We're inside the butterfly-gardens building.
Here, you can see the place not over-lit this time around. Unfortunately I couldn't get a picture of the monorail running while we were in the building. That's something it takes lucky timing to photograph.
But here we can look up and see how much stuff there is just inside the building.
And we return to the starting station. (There was a second stop, but we stayed on the train for it.)
And now ... South Country Backroads Garden, eh? Wonder what this could be ...
Trivia: Over its 18 years in production the Model T Ford came in versions that had four dors, two doors, single-door, no dors; as closed cars, as open ones; as sedans, pick-ups, station wagons, and more. Source: Ford: The Men and the Machine, Robert Lacey. This implies there must have been some Gasoline Alley strip in like 1923 where someone was a klutz enough to order a no-door, closed-cabin model, right?
Currently Reading: Kewpee Hamburgers: A Mity Nice History, Gary Flinn. Very startled learning that Lansing had two Kewpee restaurants as recently as 2005 (owned by the same family); bunny_hugger doesn't remember this at all. Also that the family had owned a third, briefly, in 1949, in nearby Grand Ledge. But the franchise rights holder complained and so they just renamed the place something unrelated and nobody seems to know how long the place lasted after that. A lot of Kewpee Restaurants left the chain just by changing their name --- there was never any unifying menu element besides 'hamburg, pickle on top, makes your heart go flippety-flop' --- and carrying on. Also, a surprising number of them didn't offer fries until very late in the game. Like, one made it to the 70s before putting fries on the menu which ... huh? Like, I get in 1925 not realizing that the natural side dish for a fast-food burger is fries, but you'd think by 1965 it would have been pretty settled. What sides were they offering instead? Were they selling anything or just trusting you'd get a burger and then a dessert?
