Happy anniversary, dear ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger.
Plopsaland De Panne opened originally something close to a century ago, as a park named Miel. Or it opened around 1951 with that name. Our best understanding based on looking at the signs is that it was a Knotts Berry Farm-like situation where they had a working farm, or bee gleanery anyway, that started putting in amusements until the amusements took over. And then in 2000 Plopsa took over. They're a media company, making a bunch of children's entertainment, so that the park became something like a Nickelodeon Studios park except we know even less about the intellectual property the rides deploy. Well, we know about Heidi, the basis for Heidi: The Ride, which had Nigloland not been closed was the roller coaster I hoped to be my 300th.
Anyway our Saturday opened, after filling up with a lot of continental breakfast, trying to figure out how to get the tram back to the park. We could certainly have walked to the park --- we'd done it yesterday --- but we figured it would be quicker and save energy to let the interurban do the hard work. The catch is there wasn't a ticket vending machine at the tram stop by the hotel, something that seemed to catch the desk clerk by surprise. He suggested an alternate stop that did have tickets, and that we'd been by the previous night looking for the Automat. We bought, I think it was, ten rides, figuring we'd use some that day and then some riding up and down the coast Sunday.
Then we waited for a tram that didn't come. It slowly dawned on us, after a tram going the other way crossed over the tracks and went past without stopping, that this station was out of service, something we could only have guessed if we thought about the implications of the track under construction just beside the station and why there were signs posted all over the next-train time monitors. Or if we had read those signs, which we finally did.
So! Back to the hotel and then a right angle to walk to the hotel's tram stop, meaning that overall we maybe didn't actually save time or energy over just walking to the park in the first place. Also maybe we should have walked along the tram line instead of going to the hotel and back as a way point but I haven't looked up what the track is like so who can say.
The park charmed us with the statues outside of various characters in I imagine character-appropriate poses, and the huge banner celebrating the 25th anniversary of the park's becoming Plopsaland, and we could see the tunnel on Heidi The Ride from out there. As we went to buy tickets from the automated booth a woman came up and, we believe, was offering to sell us spare tickets she had for €20. Which is a pretty good saving from the gate price of €50, if the tickets were legitimate, which we had no reason to think they were, so we feigned not knowing what she was talking about and she went on to someone else. It did remind us both, though, of the time we went to Chessington World of Adventure (London) and someone gave us a couple of tickets surplus from some newspaper promotion. But those were given to us free so there was no way we could have been cheated there; this, we just weren't sure about.
Between starting late and the trouble with the tram we were getting into the park about an hour after its opening, but we didn't think we would need to do an open-to-close day, most likely. And, all going well, you'll learn how that forecast came out over the coming days. (Just fine, pretty much.)
You know what I have to share with you now? If you said pictures of 2024's Calhoun County Fair you would be right, but also, this is the last day you would be right to say that! Unless for some reason I go back and re-share a bunch of pictures or maybe ones I omitted this time around, which I swear to you I did do. But the plan is this is the last batch of them, and they should share the surprise twist of how our night there ended.
Hope the riders have their seat belts on though this.
And here's the Ferris wheel at some speed.
See, we like this ride when it's doing warp five.
And then came rain! A sudden cloudburst came out and down very heavy.
It shut the fair down about a half-hour before it otherwise would have.
And it created ponds and rivers all over the park as we tried to find our way back to the car.
Trivia: Including the price of development, each of the approximately 56 miles driven by rovers on the lunar surface during Apollo 15, 16, and 17 cost something like US$680,000 (in early 70s money). Source: Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings, Earl Swift.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Sundays Supplement Volume 16: 1954, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
