Total Eclipse of the Point saw only a small segment of Cedar Point opened, but enough for a couple hours to spend there. The first few days a park is open are notorious for operational issues --- mostly, everyone's out of practice --- but we didn't notice any serious issues with the operations. The only hang-up was that the Wild Mouse stopped several times over the day, sometimes long enough that people applauded when it started running again. But that's also something endemic to new roller coasters, and at not quite a year old Wild Mouse is still new.
And there was a treat at Wild Mouse besides that it was up and running most of the day. Outside the ride are panels showing each of the six mice. For the day, these panels had eclipse glasses on.
The park had some educational stuff set up, with posters explaining things like Bailley's Beads and shadow bands and such. Near GateKeeper also was set up a huge table with a craft project, a dozens-of-feet-long coloring-book style rendition of their Total Eclipse ... logo, and the crayons for people to color in. Many of the adults (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger included) took on themselves the task of coloring in the fiddliest boring parts of the outlines, leaving the easier and more fun segments for the kids who were sprawled out over the project.
Most of the midway games were not up and running. There were a couple, though, offering eclipse novelties. These were even set up as play-until-you-win games, ring-bottle tosses and the like, which makes it just a purchase with a game attached. We didn't get to any of those but bunnyhugger did see and buy one of the novelties. This is a tiny plush of their Steve Seagull character. (In the past couple years Cedar Point has started marketing a doll based on the seagulls who are happy to snag fries, or whatever other foods you have. They've gotten a Squishmallow of Steve, which bunnyhugger has, fries in beak; there's also trading buttons with the theme of Steve photobombing the regular button.) The novelty here is that the doll comes in two parts, with a small magnetic base that fits under your clothes so this Steve sticks to your shoulder. Not well enough to endure a ride, no, but well enough to walk around in. Steve has, back home, become part of the small collection of things attached to the fridge and I'm sure he'll get some other outings.
Speaking of fries, we did wonder what food at the park was going to be like. Mostly it was closed, with only the Boardwalk Pavilion open. And there we learned that our season passes were not good for food or drink purchases. (They did offer a discount on merchandise, though, such as the magnetic Steve doll or a hypothetical t-shirt.) The main restaurant on the first floor was badly overloaded. There were snack stands on the second floor, though, offering moon pies and eclipse cakes and stuff like that, which we would end up eating at. Also selling pop.
I think it was while we were atop the Pavilion, seeing how much space had been reserved for people (including news crews) with serious cameras, that we first looked at the sun through eclipse glasses and saw the sun was chipped on one side. The eclipse was really happening, and we could see it.
Fooled you all with the talk about pinball tournaments and amusement park trips. The next thing on my photo roll was our trip to the Gilmore Car Museum so please be ready to see a lot of picture of cars you'll never know anyone who owns!
Going inside. The place turned out to be larger and better-furnished than I expected. You see what a substantial building just the entrance center here is. You can maybe notice how elaborate the brick work is, decorative touches authentic to the early-20th-century era that reflects most of the cars inside this particular building and that an architect of today would probably do without.
Here that cartoon kid from the Fallout video games encourages us to get a museum map. Fair enough; there's a bunch of buildings to see.
They call this exhibit Supercars but I don't remember any of these from any Gerry Anderson show.
I think we all remember this vehicle from the Monopoly board piece.
This may seem like quite a lot of patents to be bragging about on your car frame but please remember that in the early days of auto companies the only revenue stream was suing each other for Selden patent violations.
Either the heavily-patented car from the previous image or possibly a prototype for the George Pal Time Machine.
Trivia: In 1877 --- five years after Western Union implemented a system to transfer money by telegraph --- it was used to send almost $2.5 million in 38,669 separate transactions. Source: The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's Online Pioneers, Tom Standage.
Currently Reading: The Diplomacy of the American Revolution, Samuel Flagg Bemis. Sorry, the book mentioned John Adams's ``umbrageous'' experience wirg Charles Gravier de Vergennes and my goodness how have we not done more with that word over time?
