Oh, a small pinball event of note. Last Saturday was the finals for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's women's league and while I was mostly hanging around just in case --- she can't make a ruling on a game she's involved in --- that case came up. In a four-player group on the game Rush, FAE was running way, way past all reason. They'd had something like a billion points on ball one, a thing I noticed as I went off to something else for fun and practice, and I wondered if this were going to be a case of FAE being tapped out for extraordinary play.
Well what do you know but a little bit later, on ball two as FAE topped one and a half billion --- and it's a high-scoring game but not that high scoring for most players --- one of the players in FAE's group asked if I would be willing to rule on whether the game had gone on long enough. I agreed, and thought it had, asking FAE ``Kinda overachieving there, aren't you?'' They demurred that, you know, you never know. But I tapped them, and explained to all what this meant: they were done playing this one game, and had a first-place finish for it. In the event that anyone else reached or topped their current score, those other persons would also be awarded a first-place finish.
No one else did, as it happened. But this was the first time I've tapped someone out. bunnyhugger has only tapped a person out once before (the rule for this is only a few seasons old, though). And FAE was giddy at the event, telling everyone on their socials about it. Well, glad to thrill some folks.
FAE picked Rush again later, in the playoffs to cap the season, and while they won it was with a more ordinary good game, somewhere around 300 million points over all three balls.
Closing out now the August trip to Michigan's Adventure.
This is the area they'd made into the petting zoo for a couple years, and were using as a performance space the two years they did a Halloween event.
This is about as bad as the line for Zach's Zoomer ever gets.
The Tilt-a-Whirl is one of the handful of Fast Pass line-cutting rides. I couldn't resist photographing the informational sign and hey, it's the Tilt-a-Whirl's centennial this year! We'll have to ride one at all the local parks.
The park long ago went to those annoying video menus. This day we noticed they'd left the Windows taskbar around.
Got a nice picture of the evening sun through the Ferris wheel.
And then a slightly different sparkling light.
We finally got to Mad Mouse and saw this cable trying to snake safely back to shelter despite the heat.
As near sunset as we'd get on Mad Mouse for 2025; they didn't have the weekend when the park is briefly open after sunset.
Train going overhead. I don't remember if it had anyone in it.
The Ferris wheel flanked by trees.
And the sun sets slowly somewhere past Zach's Zoomer and the hamburger place.
Outside, a kid was making his own fun climbing the flagpoles. At one point the kid even transferred from one pole to the other from up top of the poles.
Trivia: Silent-comedy star Larry Semon (whose 1925 version of The Wizard of Oz was the first where the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion were the farmhands from Dorothy's Kansas home) was the son of a professional magician, Zera the Great; and was for a while a cartoonist for the New York Evening Sun. Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide. You'll sometimes see Semon's shorts on Turner Classic Movies. He's very much second-tier but you might enjoy. You can easily find his The Wizard of Oz but I recommend reading a bit about it before deciding you want to see it because, uh, there's reasons it's not a beloved classic and flopped on release.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 91: The Parrot with the Gold Doubloons!, Bud Sagendorf. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-14 05:21 pm (UTC)Also, those prices. $15 for a slice and two bread sticks. I presume this is where the park actually gains profit.
Sounds like it was a fun time though.