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Somehow we became aware of another of Gilroy Gardens' signature rides, or at least something locals seem to have extraordinary fondness for. This is the balloon ride. Not a captive balloon as in one that goes up a hundred feet or so. This is rather one like you can see at any fair or many amusement parks, the solid tubs that rise a couple feet and swing around a center pole. These are usually kiddie rides, or at least kid-inclined. The one at Gilroy Gardens is not. It's full-sized, with basket-shaped cars that could plausibly hold four adults. And the balloons aren't the sculpted fiberglass shells of a kiddie ride. They're canvas, conveying the impression of an actual hot air balloon.
So you get why this should capture kids' imaginations. And why it would attract a reasonable adult's, such as ours. We didn't guess how popular it was going to be, though; the line for this was shorter than that for the lazy-river boat ride the previous visit, but not by very much. It was also a slow-moving ride and that I don't understand at all. All the cars sit on the ground for loading and unloading, so I'd expect it to be quick enough to do the safety check that everyone's seatbelted in and the door locked. Maybe it's the large number of kids to deal with.
According to the time stamps on my camera, we spent something like 45 minutes between getting in line and getting off the ride. It was a delightful ride to experience, and we do want to see and experience the things that make the park distinctive. We probably could have done three other rides in the time it took for this, though they'd probably not have been ones we'd remember as well.
We might possibly have gotten to some of the shows, though. There are several stages and the suggestion of shows being put on. There's one stage for example that shows off the various stages of planting and growing flowers. We never saw anything happening there, as it happens, but the space must have been used for something. Near the Chinese food stand is what looks like an animatronics show with canned and fresh fruits that pop up and do something we never got to see. Just past the balloon ride was a large swath of the sort of green plastic 'grass' that they make miniature golf courses out of. A lot of the space was concealed behind irregularly-shaped construction fences. I put my hand way up to get some blind snaps of what was behind and couldn't make that out, apart from what looks like a water-feature backdrop that was empty. On the miniature-golf lawn were a couple people laying down and stretching out. I had the feeling that something had just wrapped up and they were left over, but what it was would remain beyond our knowledge.
Doing better than I hoped at getting my trip report going again! Please enjoy some more California's Great America pictures from slightly earlier in the trip.
I don't remember what ride this was, or whether it was just a temporary closure. I also can't explain the crutches any better than you can, seeing this.
A look at the lift hill for the super flume ride here.
Berserker, the Bayern Kurve, as we're finally getting ready to ride the only (current, United States-based) operating example of this ride!
And the ride tears around the track. I believe at Kennywood the ride was powered from a center post that's preempted by the prop building there.
And here we are running up as far as we could to get good seats, which is to say any seats on the ride.
View from just after our ride, getting a peek inside the building. Also apparently an off-model Flash is running to car #1, looks like.
Trivia: In 1850, out of sixteen hundred students at Oxford, the average attendance in the modern history course was eight; at the chemistry courses, five; at botany, six. Source: The Age of Paradox: A Biography of England 1841- 1851, John W Dodds.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 26: Paradise Peak, Part 3, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. I appreciate these, especially since they have to track down strips from what's available from various newspaper scans, and sometimes one or two days is just missing, but how is it the one missing is always the one where, for the first time in four weeks in either direction, something significant happens? In this case it's after the deal of Popeye fighting a giant seems to be resolved by the author getting bored and moving on --- again, your Thimble Theatre Plotting Promise --- Olive Oyl gains the ability to fly in a missing strip. The following context makes it clear she just discovered if she flapped her wrists just the right way she could take off, but we go from nothing particular to Olive Oyl making a lot of trouble with her flying and that's that. (It also makes sense of why Olive Oyl starts the next story in such a miserable state; she sprained her hands in a way that caused her to lose the ``Rhythm Of The Wrists'' that was said four billion times to be the secret.)
