You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen

[austin_dern]

We got to the hotel and checked in, and learned the nearest door to our room was number two, around back. This lead to the discovery the Castaway Bay parking lots aren't contiguous --- you have to go around the service road, perhaps because the indoor water park required the hotel to expand in ways that took up parking lot space --- and the doors aren't actually numbered in ways that are obvious from the outside. We found the door in an alcove of parking lot-ness. We also discovered that the hotel's free Wi-Fi, in contrast to my expectations --- that only hotels which don't promise free Wi-Fi actually have it --- was indeed free and very easy to access, and nicely compatible with the web, e-mail, ssh, and everything else we need.

After we checked in to make sure the Internet was all right without us (it was) we went first to the arcade to see what its promised fun was like. Unfortunately, it didn't have any pinball machines --- not a one --- and it defied another rule I thought we could trust in that it didn't have a Ms Pac-Man/Galaga machine. I had believed that Ms Pac Man/Galaga machines simply spontaneously materialize in arcades, whether the owners want them there or not. Also the Dance Dance Revolution game was broken. They had some Skee-Ball setups and that was really about it for appealing to our tastes. Of course there were plenty of redemption games, so that for something like 1,250 tickets you could get the board game Battleship, which is an important game for any child to have so they can learn to lie to their friends and siblings about where their battleships are. Also there's a machine up front which plays the introductory bars of ``Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until the attendants go mad.

For all that, though, the arcade is next to the water park, which promises that it's 82 degrees and doesn't mention the mugginess. That feels really, really good, especially at the end of the winter time (and after walking through the hotel in bathing suit and T-shirt). Since the place is owned by Cedar Point, of course, there's a dinosaur in the entry room. I don't believe it actually moves, but it's there to greet people as they get their wrist-bands scanned.

Trivia: Baseball has been played on ice at least as early as the 1st of January, 1861, when two Rochester, New York-area teams, the Live Oaks and the Lone Stars, played on Irondequoit Bay. The agme included a triple play. Source: A Game Of Inches: The Story Behind The Innovations That Shaped Baseball, Peter Morris.

Currently Reading: The Thurber Carnival, James Thurber.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

The dinosaur was actually moving when we very first walked up, but I never saw it do so again for the rest of our visit.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, good eye. I wonder if we just had bad luck the other times we passed through, catching it during its mandated rests to avoid fire and whatnot.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

The Thurber Carnival

You know, if you come around for Morphicon, and if you like, the Thurberarium (http://www.thurberhouse.org/), where he wrote much of 'The Thurber Carnival', is downtown. It's kind of low-key and doesn't get a lot of visitors, so it's only open 1-4 each day. but on the other hand, because it doesn't get a lot of visitors (and the ones it gets are generally well-behaved academic types) you're allowed to sit in his chairs and touch his stuff and such.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I did not know, in fact, and had no idea. Somehow I didn't piece together the Columbus he wrote about and the Columbus I sometimes see. That's quite interesting and we'll think about it. Thank you.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Aw, no pinball at all? I'm always rather surprised, on the admittedly rare occasions I bother with arcades now, that pinball's almost never there - after all, conventional video games have been brought into the home for many years now, but a pinball machine's a little more impractical to tuck away in the living room, unless you have a particularly spacious warren. (That said, there are a couple very good pinball engines running on the iPad now - but, obviously, there's nothing like an actual pinball machine)

All that reminds me - I need to get along to a good theme park again sometime soon. It's been way too long since I plummeted along rails at speed. ^_^

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

None at all, more's the pity. I've been finding pinball machines turning up in unexpected places --- a bar in Old Town, the loft where we went to a concert --- satisfyingly, but this arcade just had nothing. And didn't have the old mainstays we were expecting either.

The Pinball Arcade app on the iPad is scarily good. I find myself making the same mistakes on it that I make on the real machines.

What part of the world are you in currently? We could find you some park recommendations. Or you could pop over here come spring for Michigan's Adventure, Cedar Point, and a couple other places.