So, now, a mystery, in one of the Snoopy-themed areas of Kings Island. One of the kiddie coasters and one that we had not ridden before was now the Great Pumpkin Coaster, or as ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger remembered it, Lucy's Crabbie Cabbies, which back in the days when Kings Island had the Hanna-Barbera license was called Top Cat's Taxi Jam, a name that at least had any piece of thematic sense. We had never ridden it because it's one of those small rides --- its maximum height is eight feet --- aimed so much at children that unaccompanied adults aren't allowed on it. Except ---
Only ... there wasn't any sign warning you had to have a child with you to ride. Not this time, anyway. The ride safety sign gave minimum heights and minimum heights without an adult but no maximum height. And, what the heck, since there wasn't much of a line we could take a chance on that, right? The ride operator didn't throw us out or even look at us funny. It was the cramped knee-banger I expected but, hey, it's a ride. And so we picked up a third roller coaster credit at Kings Island where I had expected at most one.
So. We are correct in thinking that adults used to not be allowed to ride this. When I entered the ride data in coaster-count.com it popped up a window warning that they'd had reports it was a difficult credit to get and are you sure you rode it? (Remember, coaster-count.com threatens to ban you if you lie about your list of roller coasters you rode on which dates.) Something had changed since 2019 and, at that, changed since the last time coaster-count.com got its ride availability update from Kings Island.
Also, this ride was never Lucy's Crabbie Cabbies. Obviously we were thinking of the ride's twin at Kings Island twin park Canada's Wonderland --- except that that ride has never been called Lucy's Crabbie Cabbies either. That ride has always been Taxi Jam, a name that other Top Cat's Taxi Jams at sister parks took on when the Hanna-Barbera license went away. In fact, the only Lucy's Crabbie Cabbies ever are the ride's twins at California's Great America and, formerly, Carrowinds. Carrrowinds renamed theirs in 2018 to Wilderness Run, another kiddie-coaster name that Cedar Fair slaps on stuff everywhere.
So we are left with this curio. We were there at the right time to get a ride on a coaster that adults have historically not been able to ride, and it's a coaster we both have a very strong wrong memory of the name for, a false memory that predates the time we went to the one park where we could ever have seen that name on any roller coaster. Weird. Yeah, I guess you could call it weird.
What's not weird? That my pictures of Cedar Point, which has never had a twin of this taxi ride themed coaster, continue:
Doesn't it look like you should be able to walk through this big inflatable pumpkin? It totally looks like you should be able to walk through this big inflatable pumpkin. It's fenced off. You can't walk through this big inflatable pumpkin.
Cedar Downs, still being closed. The bunting is nice, though.
Here's a huge sign blocking the view of the Coliseum from Cedar Downs. The drawings on it look much like the ones that used to decorate the County Fear area set up by the Town Hall Museum. They also look a lot like the Halloween decorations bunnyhugger's parents set up in their home.
Realized while Cedar Downs was cedar down I could get a picture of the control station without getting in anyone's way. ... So that's all there is to it, kind of what you might expect.
Low-angle picture of Cedar Downs frozen in place.
Access grate of some kind taken off of Cedar Downs. I'd love to show what it looks like inside the mechanism but there's no photographing that well.
Trivia: 101,000 people attended the Opening Ceremonies of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Ticket price was two dollars. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.
Currently Reading: John Adams, David McCullough.
