When ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger ran the Dungeons and Dragons launch party she didn't do particularly well, but she didn't expect to either. This was the open launch, and many of the particularly competitive people from league, plus a couple who aren't in league or aren't any more, like CST, showed up. But she was expecting to do better with the women's launch party, which if like nearly all the women's events she holds at the local hipster barcade would probably see her win.
More people showed up than usual, most of the rare faces Grand Rapids folks who are generally shy about venturing into a barcade. This didn't change the principle of the thing --- people getting paired at random, with people knocked out on their fourth game loss, with one group always being on Dungeons and Dragons --- but it did step up the difficulty a little. Also, this gave PCL the chance to set up his streaming rig and sit down with both MAG and ME in the recording ``booth'' of the long table. As this was a Dungeons and Dragons launch party the rig would stay on that game for good, and it was ... exciting? ... commenting on a game whose rules I barely know, and that as a new release barely exist.
I sat in the booth trying to look like I knew what I was doing through to the sixth round, when bunnyhugger needed me as tournament official to make a ruling on a game involving her. It was on Indiana Jones; player two had started multiball, which on that game shoots the balls through a one-way gate to the right flipper. But this time the one-way gate, as it sometimes does, fails, getting stuck or something and kicking the balls back into the outlane. So the player's reward for getting multiball started --- one of the things players are expected to do --- was no multiball and, in fact, the ball (and game) ending. I had to rule that this is covered by the International Flipper Pinball Association's template rules (which we use for our events) that the mechanical nature of pinball is such that sometimes a part doesn't work as designed and it sucks.
This seems consistent, based on the IFPA Discord and people who love debating rulings, with what most people would do. The argument for ruling this a major malfunction --- giving Player Two a compensation ball for the turn at the game lost --- is that game malfunctions that the player could not possibly control that cause the premature end of the ball are (generally) cause for compensation. I think I could be convinced by that, in time, but I made the call and Player Two did not get the chance to make up the (pretty considerable) gap and so this gave bunnyhugger her first loss. She would not lose again except on Dungeons and Dragons.
How many of those losses there were I intend to share with you tomorrow.
Getting back in pictures to Kings Island and what's at the end of the Adventure Express queue. It's what you'd expect ...
Adventure Express's station. I can't remember what the old looked like, sorry, but you see the Old Timey Cargo Boxes decorating it. The box labelled '138AP23' likely references the ride's original opening date --- the 13th of April, 1991 --- and its 2023 renovation. I don't know the significance of the 8, though if I had to give an opinion I'd say it's that there were eight roller coasters opened at Kings Island before this. It would make more sense if the number were 9, then, I agree. (If it's 8 for the eighth non-family coaster I guess that makes sense but the family coaster --- Woodstock Express, née Scooby Doo --- is not a powered coaster or one only kids could ride or anything like that which would make sense to excluding it from a coaster count.)
So here's the official itinerary of the things we're to see on the Adventure Express, all normal things that either exist at the park or reference things that used to exist, past whatever the S.Y.Overlook means. But, look forward to those!
And here's the terrifying things you definitely will not see when the train suddenly diverts from the real track to go hurtling out of control past the gem mine, the tomb, the arches, the caverns, and the forbidden temple! ... Oh wait! Oh noooo! You surprised us all, ride theming!
Anyway that's all quite good fun. Here's the floral calendar clock so now you know just when our visit was, although there's events that happened that day which would make it easy for you to date that.
Here's The Racer, the racing coaster that was one of Kings Island's originals, and a guy reading a ride sign while using the stance of a guy at a urinal. I mean, there's only so many ways to stand in front of a thing, you know? I'm being unfair.
bunnyhugger delighted by the view of the roller coaster and behind her, the Coney Mall, and also wondering how I got this high in the air to take a picture of her. Was I jumping? Was I just very tall? No way to know.
Trivia: By the end of 1849 Chile's national shipping had been so depleted by sips being taken up to San Francisco harbor and then being immobilized by crew desertions that the Congress authorized foreign vessels to --- temporarily --- take up the intra-national transport (cabotage). Source: The Age of Capital, 1848 - 1875, Eric Hobsbawm.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 57: Pails of Pearls, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. Noelle is just on a tear putting these together lately.
