Halloweekends Friday was a pretty good day for riding, at least the things that were open. The first day of Halloweekends had always been one of limited rides, and the expansion of the weekend to include Thursday I had thought just pushed the limited-rides-day back. But Friday, though less limited than Thursday, still saw surprising numbers of rides including big ones not running. Gemini, for one, and Blue Streak, which I believe we ended up seeing open only on Saturday. The general difficulty of getting staff since the pandemic began, what with the disease having killed so many otherwise able-bodied persons, can't be helping them. Also not helping, as ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger pointed out to me: Cedar Point has always drawn people from outside the United States to staff the park, and I sure wouldn't come from another country to work in this version of the United States. It's amazing they could get as much staff as they have, given ICE's eagerness to just shoot people.
Not everything we did required a lot of staffing. We stopped in by the petting zoo, for instance, and while there was a disappointing shortage of rabbits and turkeys, there was one of the goats in a dress, with a skirt featuring black cats and witches and that sort of thing. The goat, eating hay, seemed unbothered by this. I'm curious why there was just the one; the only goat they could put something on, or the last goat they had to take things off from?
We happened to be in the Kiddie Kingdom when I noticed a parade of the Peanuts character mascots heading out toward the midway stage, and I called bunnyhugger over, telling here, Peanuts! But there would come disappointment ahead: because of circumstances beyond their control, they explained, they had to cancel the Peanuts Halloween spooktacular show or whatever its exact name was. This seemed odd; I wondered if they had information that a big storm was rolling in. But surely they'd have said it was because of weather if that were the problem. While they did the consolation meet-and-greet with the kids who'd gathered for the show and costume contest I noticed the immediate problem: no Snoopy. From this we infer that their Snoopy performer wasn't available and I guess they didn't have an understudy?
Also we had some time trying to figure out, again, what Charlie Brown's costume was. We would find out another day that weekend, when we did catch bits of the show, that he was dressed as Frankenstein's Creature. The show was something about going trick-or-treating at the weird house on the end of the block with a Legally Distinct From Willy Wonka And Besides She's a Girl at the door, and also something about Snoopy going crazy when he knows there's candy around and this all adds up to enough of a plot for a mascot characters song revue.
Once again I was in Kiddie Kingdom just as they finished a ride cycle on the Junior Whip, and the ride operator rotated to other rides, and I still don't know how it whips. I have hypotheses but someday I'm going to see how it actually does operate.
Friday we got to ride Iron Dragon finally, and even got to wait for a front-seat ride since they weren't assigning seats for a change from recent operations. Similarly we got a back seat ride on Raptor. And then, according to my camera's timestamps, that's when we went to Siren's Curse for our first night ride on it, and for a decently short wait for an after-closing-hour ride. Really good experience. We haven't been lucky enough to get a front-seat ride on it, so we haven't had the experience of looking out and seeing nothing in front where the track should go. But we have gotten seats farther back where you are higher up and have a farther drop when the track finishes its hinging and lets you drop straight down. Really looking forward to how this ride develops.
And that's more or less enough detail on Friday. Soon: Saturday.
Bit more Motor City Furry Con, Saturday edition, now here.
Here a noodle dragon asks to speak with someone's manager.
The big crowd after the parade, though; it was tough moving through the halls.
I believe this is ... uh ... Paul Digimon giving some high-threes out.
There wasn't a big gathering outside after the parade because of the wet track conditions, as you see.
Back inside. One of the panels we attended was this furry comics history thing with such figures of legend as Steve Gallacci and this 'Albedo' thingy.
The organizers had a table full of furry comics, some of them books I'd collected in the 90s, and invited people to come up and carefully look through them.
Trivia: In 1700 Britain imported about 10,000 tons of sugar a year. In 1800 it was importing 150,000 tons. Source: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire, Roy Moxham.
Currently Reading: The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, Kevin Baker.
