Trip reports often compare Camden Park to Conneaut Lake Park. The differences are considerable, most importantly that Camden Park does not look like it's past the point where any rational accounting would allow it to operate. Or the gift shop consisting mostly of things for the park and not remaindered items from a park the next state over that had closed the decade before. (Although the gift shop did have a thousand-dollar plush bison on sale for some reason, in case you needed a figure the size of a subcompact car and that, again, was a thousand dollars. It also had more normal, predictable things, like t-shirts, the best of which they had only in kiddie sizes, or clown mascot plushes.) But there are similarities, in signs of deferred maintenance and, most prominently, in abandoned buildings and places the general public maybe should be roped off from. Also that the park map on the signs set up is inaccurate, partly from age --- it shows the Super Round-Up ride replaced years ago by the Slingshot roller coaster --- and partly from typos --- if you believe it their smaller wood coaster is the Lir' Dipper.
One of the seemingly abandoned buildings is labelled on the map the Discovery Center, and we went over wondering what might be discoverable. The building was shuttered, though, with stuff in the front door and window suggesting it was last used for Halloween. But walking down there was our lead to exploring some of the non-ride areas of the park, finding our way to the treeline overlooking the river below (the Twelvepole Creek, on the edge of the Ohio River).
The Big Dipper roller coaster is, as you expect from a wooden coaster, a big heap of long pieces of timber demonstrating the chapter on truss construction from your Mechanics textbook. Near it, beside the closed Discovery Center, were heaps of new lumber, which looked like it was aimed at repairs to the coaster. But they could have been for anything, really; I'm just guessing from the heap of lumber being near a ride that is almost all lumber.
What we did not expect was that there is no fence or protective barrier between the ground and the roller coaster. You can just walk up to it and touch any of the support pillars. More, we discovered that I'm tall enough and have long enough arms that I could touch the wooden boards that the roller coaster track rides on. After ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger disliked the first picture she took of me touching this, I found I could even touch the strip of metal on top of the wood stack. The train was parked in the loading station when I did this, with the train not dispatched and not having made the slow climb up the lift hill. Even so it felt as dangerous as the time I hadn't quite sat down in Rollo Coaster at Idlewild before the train dispatched, or the time bunnyhugger sat on my suffering knees through a ride of the Wild Chipmunk at Lakeside Amusement Park. I'm not sure I could do that again.
We went over to the spot marked as the Mound Builder Pavilion, to discover that was just a picnic pavilion named after one of the archeological features of the park, an Adena Indian Mound. That is something we went past several times without recognizing, or giving particular attention. It's a mound, as the name suggests, along the treeline and hidden behind the Scrambler and the Flying Scooters. I'm sorry not to have paid attention to this, although I'm not clear that there's anything the non-expert would recognize besides a hill at the edge of the park. This would be a good thing to have shown off at the Discovery Center.
Near the edge of the railroad tracks we did spot a groundhog, though. Always enjoy encounters with nature like that.
Now, the Skyliner. There was never the slightest chance of bunnyhugger taking this sky chair ride, especially as it's nothing but a ride down the length of the miniature golf, Mound Builders Pavilion, and parking lot before turning around and coming right on back. But I like this kind of thing. And she wanted to do her half-hour daily walk so this seemed like something I could do independently of her. It was, too, although by the time I had taken a ride down to the far end of the parking lot and back she was only halfway through her walk. I went for another ride on the Skyliner --- bunnyhugger said afterward I could have gone on a roller coaster or some other ride she didn't care for, such as the swinging claw ride --- but I figured I could ride a swinging claw many places but this sky chair ride only here. Second time around the ride operator told me where to stand so I could hop onto the chair, but said I was an expert in that by now.
What did I see from the sky chair ride? Mostly the less-packed half of the park, from higher up. But some nice moments, too, like noticing one lone guy sitting in the middle of the Mound Builders Pavilion, apparently having had enough of the family outing and needing some time alone. There were a couple people with him the end of my second ride. I also could see people at work on the miniature golf course. Also a couple of goats in a spot that seemed like it wasn't enough of anything to be a petting zoo. Despite being near the Lil' Dipper and train ride and swan boats I couldn't figure how you would even get there, so we never investigated further. Also there were lots of little stuff --- hair scrunchies, coins, that sort of debris --- dropped on top of lampposts, including ones not directly under the path of the sky chairs. The chairs's supports also gave me a surprisingly good view of how they work, like, how the cables connect to the towers and how the rotation at the ends of these paths is done. I'm glad to have taken the ride, and to have done it twice so I knew what to look for the second time around.
This whole report has been out of chronological order, but I hope it's given you an idea of what the park was like and what sorts of things we remember, and are likely to keep remembering, about the day at the park. We closed it with Big Dipper, getting a ride as nearly backseat as possible. When the last ride was done, the park closed up in shockingly little time, just as the lights of the entrance came on. By the time we walked to the car all the rides were parked for the night, and the staff was beating us out of the park.
We drove back to our hotel, stopping at Subway for want of a better idea (turns out we would have had more options if we'd stopped sooner; something to remember next time), forgetting about the DQ Grill and Chill and its offer of strawberry dip cones. It wasn't too late in the night yet, and we'd have time to get a very good sleep in before a long drive.
Now at last let's get back to Cedar Point Halloweekends photos. Still on Friday of our four-day trip here.
Kiddie Kingdom carousel's band organ, which we've never seen in operation. Cedar Fair had been putting their various band organs back into working shape but didn't get to this before the Six Flags merger.
bunnyhugger living up to her name. Note, again, short-sleeved shirts in late October.
The other carousel rabbits keeping a close eye on the lion, just in case of any mischief.
Here's the Kiddie Whip ride. I noticed the streaks where wheels have worn down the metal base (or, I suppose, kept corrosion from covering it). Note that there's a diagonal streak there, in the center-right, in front of the purple car. What's causing that? This is a circular ride; why is a wheel passing over this same region so often? THis is probably obvious if you see the ride in motion and I suspect it's connected to that thin bent rod between the purple car and the wheeled axle ahead of it, but we haven't seen the ride in motion to confirm.
Matterhorn ride, one of Cedar Point's oldest flat rides, spinning in its new location --- something like its third in sixty years at the park --- on the Board/Bonewalk.
Huge line in front of Raptor, a ride whose queue is normally, like, five to ten minutes. (It's a less popular ride than when it was new in 1994 Or So, but it also has capacity.)
Trivia: The initial, 1881, capitalization of Ferdinand de Lesseps's Panama Canal company was for 300,000,000 francs (US$60,000,000), with six hundred thousand shares of stock offered at 500 francs (US$100) each. 500 francs was about a year's wages for about half the French working population. The terms of purchase were for 25 percent down, with the remainder paid off over six years. Source: The Path Between The Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal: 1870 - 1914, David McCullough.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Volume 33: Miss Juice of 1948, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. Catching up on Lost Popeye Zines that for some reason wouldn't display on Mac PDF readers for a while there; some of them are displaying on the Mac now, others are readable on my iPad's Bluefire Reader, a weird little app I picked up back when the University of Chicago's free-eBook-of-the-month was aimed at that.
