Way back in August we decided to resume a pre-Covid tradition: the Halloweekends visit to Cedar Point. Friday to Saturday at the park. We'd be taking a risk, certainly. But we mostly stay outdoors, usually going inside only to warm up at a show or the Coliseum or something like that, and we could mask up for that. We're vaccinated, of course, and bivalent-boosted. We picked closing weekend for the park, figuring the most-likely-coldest weekend of the season would be the least-crowed. A worry that turned out to be needless: what if I had a new job? Well, if they wanted to hire me they wouldn't let a preplanned vacation stand in the way. Nobody wanted to hire me, of course, but it was a nice fantasy while it lasted.
Also forgotten: Halloweekends has gotten 33% bigger this year. They open in the evening Thursdays, now, with full days both Friday and Saturday before closing at 8 pm Sundays. If we'd known we might have booked an extra day. Maybe not; we were booking before we learned ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger would need to teach an extra class, eating up Thursdays. Though I guess she might have cancelled class, or we'd have got there Thursday night and got into the park early Friday. Something to consider for next year.
This has been a warm October. Pleasant to live through, as long as you ignore how this reflects the climate collapse. But weekends particularly at Cedar Point have been warm and sunny and not too windy, and the park's gotten full of people. Fan forums have been even more full of people complaining what Cedar Point is doing wrong, mostly, selling too many season passes to people who use them to go to the park a lot. I am a bit more sympathetic to the park --- October is when they pay for the rest of the year --- but still have the amusement-park-enthusiast wish that the park have a thriving busy season except for the days I visit. Then, I want the park to be all-but-deserted. You know, like our day in September which was an exquisitely good riding day. (Sad to say that same day next year the park is closed, bought out for a private event.) So, we watched the forecast with a slight disappointment as the weather promised to be better and better. Well, we would brave whatever happened, that's all.
The other thing is we planned to go to the Merry-Go-Round Museum, again for the first time since the pandemic began. I've said sometimes we should make a trip just for that, since it's, you know, a pretty spacious place that's never crowded. But it's also a four-hour drive for a place that's maybe two or three hours' wandering around. Anyway, we always fit a side trip to the Merry-Go-Round Museum in to our Halloweekends visit, so we could plan on that.
Given the threat of warm, good weather all weekend we feared that Cedar Point would be packed on Saturday and Sunday. Past experience tells us on good-weather October weekends it could take one or two hours to drive the couple miles from downtown Sandusky to Cedar Point. So we planned to go to the museum Friday, and stay entirely at the park Saturday and Sunday. Friday's always the least-crowded day at the park. It would force us to get up and leave earlier in the day, though not worse than we had done for our September trip to the park. And if all were well, we'd brave the least-bad traffic and spend a pleasant-weather weekend at the park. With Sunshine dropped off at bunnyhugger's parents the day before (I went alone, because bunnyhugger was teaching), we were reasonably set to go.
I have, of course, many more Michigan's Adventure pictures, but let's spend today looking at pictures of (non-wild) rabbits at the park.
One of the two working bunnies, if you call it working, at the petting zoo in Michigan's Adventure.
And here's the two rabbits together, wondering what my problem is. I wonder too, bunnies, I wonder too.
And here's the album cover for the two rabbits.
Got a snap of the English spotted rabbit grooming a paw!
English spotted rabbit deciding they want to be where the larger one was.
They've found a new equilibrium in a slightly different position, underneath the table, as far from grabby human fingers as possible.
Trivia: Mars candies launched Maltesers in 1936, initially labelled as low-fat ``energy balls''. Source: Sweets: A History of Temptation, Tim Richardson.
Currently Reading: Meet Me By The Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, Alexandra Lange.
