Our next big thing after getting home from KennyKon was ... well, the windstorm that busted up the neighborhood, really. I mean, the couple blocks immediately around our place. But I wrote about that roughly when it happened so never mind. Our next big thing worth mention was our first visit to Michigan's Adventure. We had planned to make our first trip in June, but we lost the time we could have used to our Covid-19 infections.
The perpetual joke about Michigan's Adventure is that it's the least-loved member of the Cedar Fair chain and that their big new thing for the year will be a new bathroom. It turns out this year the joke was true: the main bathrooms along the main midway had been renovated and expanded, taking up the space that used to be the General Store (which sold mostly remaindered and weird, discounted park merchandise) to make a couple things that look more like a modern mall bathroom. Also a Family Bathroom, for when the whole family wants to bathe together at the park.
That wasn't all, of course. They also had maps. Not physical map, like, paper ones that you could take home. I mean like standing boards that you can gather around and look at and use as reference. This may sound ridiculous but the park never had one before this, and it's been an amusement park since ... well, this gets fuzzy. It got its first roller coaster in 1979, and took on its present name in 1988. So for something like forty years, anyway. And not just the one park map stand, but several, in different corners of the park. It's possible that the place is doomed if the Cedar Fair/Six Flags merger goes through --- who knows? --- but at least it's going out as a reasonably full amusement park.
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bunnyhugger and I do not go to Michigan's Adventure for the newest thrills, of course. We go because it's a home of nice comfortable thrills, such as seeing domesticated rabbits in the petting zoo. Or learning just how they're futzing with the big wooden roller coasters this time. This year, it's with replacing parts of the track on Wolverine Wildcat, particularly, replacing parts of the wooden track with some kind of steel track that takes the same kind of wheels and runs at about the same speed as wood track, but is smoother. And it is; when you get to the new parts of the track, it suddenly glides. The roller coaster is very like the Phoenix, at Knoebels, but is markedly less fun, I think because the ride is braked and so slower and rougher. If they go on to redo all the track of Wolverine Wildcat with this --- or at least the roughest parts --- though? I hate to give up a wooden coaster, but a steel coaster that rides like a wooden, with the sorts of movement a wooden coaster implies, might be the best of all worlds together.
Are we up to the fireworks yet? When do we get to the fireworks at California's Great America? Until then, we're in ...
The queue for the Demon, with more people waiting around than had been there Sunday, although it was still moving at a good clip.
Miscellaneous tunnel that's near the Demon (you can see tracks for the roller coaster on the right). Not sure what it's for and it might just be maintenance access beneath obscuring scenery.
Looking from the Demon's exit path over towards Grizzly, the wooden coaster in back.
And here's an even more nightly view of the Grizzly, coaster on the tracks and everything.
The inner entrance to the Grizzly looks brilliant thanks to the bright lights on it as everything else gets darker.
And here's the Character Carousel, with no characters on it, in the Planet Snoopy area of the park.
Trivia: In March 1920 the Radio Corporation of America inaugurated its international wireless telegraphy, charging 17 cents a word. Source: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation, Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A Banks.
Currently Reading: Space Craze: America's Enduring Fascination With Real and Imagined Spaceflight, Margaret A Weitekamp.
