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I've been teasing the train ride under the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk long enough. Let's look at some of it.
Here's the centerpiece and maybe the raison d'etre for the lower level of the boardwalk: the Cave Train Adventure. We were likely going to go on it anyway but the cute dinosaur peeking over the edge sealed the deal.
The line is long, yes, but the train has a huge capacity. This was about two cycles of waiting.
And yeah, that's a full-size train and it has a brakeman; how often do you see that anymore?
Heading in! It took embarrassingly long for me to remember to switch my ISO to dark light so instead please enjoy the occasional picture that sort of came out as anything; this picture feels like it captures speed
Of course we go in through a spiralling tunnel and ultraviolet lights.
Underneath the boardwalk is fluorescent-painted scenery of caveman antics. Note the lava waterfall and the rotating slab of meat on a bone. Also you can sort of see in the center a cute dinosaur who'll reappear.
Just because they're cave people who live at the beach doesn't mean they don't go to the beach too.
Funhouse? Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Yes, there's a mock amusement park underneath, including a cute little model roller coaster that two dinosaurs ride, in motion.
Several towers of spinning barrels and cavepeople moving make up this part of the ride.
And now we're at the centerpiece, a groovy 60s-style cocktail lounge that, my understanding is, the people of Santa Cruz will riot if they ever update in the slightest.
Hi! Somewhat menacing dinosaur here but that's all right, that'll happen.
Guess who, nearly at the end, remembered about the simulated film sensitivity and so finally got pictures of two of the recurring dinosaurs in the ice cave?
Trivia: Between 1861 and 1886 Queen Victoria opened the British parliament only six times. In the popular press she was identified as ``Mrs Brown''. Source: The Invention of Tradition, Editors Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger. Wikipedia enlightens me about the Mrs Brown thing: this is mudslinging about her reliance on her manservant John Brown.
Currently Reading: The Tale That Wags The God, James Blish. Editor Cy Chauvin. So in writing (around the mid-60s) about art in science fiction and the common belief there'll be art-producing machinery in the future, Blish mentions having had, twenty years earlier, a cardboard-dial contraption to produce music, and he doesn't explain further. I'm imagining something where you have, like, a ring binder where every line of the sheet music can be picked to one of twenty examples and so theoretically produce 820 playable compositions some of which might even have a tune, but I'd like to know how close I am.
PS: Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 5: Junior's Genie and finally we get some Mr Peebles-related content.
