I mentioned not riding the log flume despite its dinosaurs. There were some other things we didn't ride or didn't get to do. The roller coaster miss was Draconis, formerly named Draak. Unfortunately, hanging across the ride's entrance sign was a plaque with this note:
Deze attractie is even in onderhound maar zal snel weer blinken als goud.
The message is repeated in French so as to not sound so much like someone making fun of Dutch. But you get the gist: the ride is closed for maintenance but will soon be back, shining good as gold. (We only got that precisely translated with machine help.)
The change of name from something meaning ``dragon'' to something else meaning ``dragon'' may seem unmotivated. Its motivation: this year they re-themed the ride to the series Nachtwacht. There were statues of what we surmised (correctly) to be the main characters: a vampire, a werewolf, and a girl. (She's an elf.) According to Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database they're a trio of supernatural teens who protect the city from monsters of the week. I believe the dragon appears in one episode. I don't know if the extended downtime of the ride is part of the retheming or if the ride is just having issues.
Also missed: Nachtwacht-Flyer, an elevated swings ride. There was no chance ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger would ride it, but I was up for it. Unfortunately, by the time we felt ourselves free to mess around with optional attractions like that, the ride was closed for weather. High winds, you know, which only reinforced my nicknaming of it as a WindSeeker. We thought to get back to it later, but never found the time.
And the big thing we missed? Shows. We had seen some characters doing happy dances at the park entrance when the day started. But they had events along the way. The most important of those --- a parade --- we caught. But there was some kind of show at the stage up front, a couple of times during the day, and we managed to miss it every time. While stumbling from one attraction to another we saw a bit of it from afar, across the field of water sprays from the concrete, and maybe it might have given us some idea what the intellectual properties we were watching were about. Maybe not. We don't know. We'll only ever know any of these characters and shows from YouTube or people making comments here.
There were other things we didn't get to at the park --- it has way more attractions than we could have got to in one day --- but those were the ones we were most interested in.
Putting aside now Plopsaland De Panne, let's enjoy pictures of Michigan's Adventure from last Labor Day.
The Dock, est 2024, is what they ended up doing with that weird wooden structure they were building at the end of 2023. It's more of a boardwalk than a dock, leading from where the bumper boats used to be to the beer garden. It's no kind of shortcut to anything and it doesn't support any water features we know so it seems like that thing where you have a little spare money in Roller Coaster Tycoon but no idea of anything to do with it.
But here's what The Dock looks like, with a tiny bit of cute bunting where it changes direction.
It's a nice spot to pause and look at the water, at least.
There's this spot where the boardwalk Dock changes direction and that has some space but it's hard to imagine setting up an event here, at least not anything supposed to keep a crowd.
Oh hey, this is nice, they're trying to help prop up a tree using the corpses of other trees!
And here's Corkscrew, the ride that started the deer-petting-zoo's transformation into a modest but respectable amusement park. Note the train is mid-cork.
Trivia: In February 1946 mob boss Charles ``Lucky'' Luciano was released from state prison, given a reprieve in exchange for his support of the war effort (from inside jail) through his Italian contacts and ensuring of no New York City dockworker strikes, on condition that he remain in Italy the rest of his life. He arrived in Cuba the 29th of October, 1946, to reside in Havana. Source: Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer. (Cuba would expel him in 1947, under United States government pressure.)
Currently Reading: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, Keith Houston.
