austin_dern

Sunday, so, how about some more Chessington World of Adventures pictures?

One of a pack of serious business types inspecting rides and referring to sheafs of paper and occasionally iPads. I do not know what he was up to, although I wonder if it wasn't tied to the Alton Towers crash and the working out of (I assume) operational changes to keep that sort of thing from happening.

And then suddenly in the Mystic East section was a Mer-lion. There's a plaque explaining its connection to the actual Singapore Mer-lion/s. There's not, as far as I can tell, iconic references to other former British Empire holdings in the park.

The Dragon Falls log flume. It doesn't mind having a drop that feeds right into the mouth of a Chinese dragon, even though there's really no way to have the car exit again that's logical and tasteful. We got less wet on this than we did on the Monkey Swinger swing ride.

In the Mexicana area, the Scorpion Express powered roller coaster. This too has a water element, shot from the scorpion's tail. There's also a fire column that shoots up. Also, yes, steampunk giant scorpion. It's a nice, speedy ride for all that.

Also, since it's Sunday, how about a review of my mathematics blog posts from the past week?

• Reading the Comics, July 24, 2015: All The Popular Topics Are Here Edition, which is where I left off last week.
• Lewis Carroll Tries Changing The Way You See Trigonometry, by way of some interesting new symbols for the basic trig functions.
• Reading the Comics, July 29, 2015: Not Entirely Reruns Edition. The comics wee reruns, although I don't think I'd discussed them before. The discussion was new.
• What I Learned Doing The A To Z Project, reflections on that 26-part project.
• My Mathematics Blog’s July 2015 Statistics, Plus Their Implications, mostly, that more posts is good up to a point, and daily might be past that point.

Trivia: The head of Father Henry Garnet, one of Guy Fawkes's conspirators, was placed on the London Bridge. It retained its color for twenty days, taken popularly as a proof of his innocence. Source: Old London Bridge: The Story of the Longest Inhabited Bridge In Europe, Patricia Pierce.

Currently Reading: The Complete Dick Tracy Volume II, 1933 - 1935, Chester Gould. Neat expectation-defying moment: the Villain's got Dick Tracy and Tess Truehart tied up in a burning cabin. Henchman suggests getting out of there. Villain acts like that's the craziest thing he's ever heard: he broke out of jail specifically to see Tracy dead, he's not leaving until the cabin's finished burning down. (He's not in the cabin, fair enough since it's rigged to collapse as it burns, but he is refusing to just trust that Tracy can't escape the ropes and fire.)

Chessington World of Adventure has live shows. At least a live show, anyway. That's The Penguins of Madagascar Live: Operation Cheezy Dibbles, based on the Penguins who were part of the extremely popular series of short videos showing the flat-screen TVs at the store were all working. When we were younger bunny_hugger and I were indifferent to the live shows at amusement parks; now, we're more interested.

The show would have the taste of mass-marketed entertainment slathered over it more obviously than did the shows at Cincinnati Coney Island or at Waldameer. Those might have been written by the Amusement Park Live Show Central Command, but they at least had to have the names of local park mascots plugged in. Here, the show starred the Penguins plus what I guess is a regular bad guy from the show, some tall-foreheaded mad scientist who's part octopus or can change into an octopus or something. But what the show loses in home-grownedness, and in being full of the kinds of references that marketing tells management are the sorts of subversive wacky antics all four sectors love, it picks up in having professional voice actors doing the voices, as well as in having costumes and special effects of a higher quality.

Particularly, the costumes were able to do some neat metamorphosis tricks. The mad scientist reveals his octopus side in a flash, live on stage. His jacket had been bundled tight around him, for the popular cartoon ``marshmallow on a stick'' body type. On cue that unfolds and flops out into a bunch of tentacles and this makes for a pretty solid effect. As part of the mad scientist's scheme to uglify the world he zaps the Lead Hero Penguin, who gets uglified on stage. The main trick of that is done by his right wing expanding into an inflatable scorpion claw; while the audience is dazzled by that he turns around and stage minions (dressed as I guess octopus women, though not as elaborately as the mad scientist) run up and velcro on googly eyes and a long tongue and some disturbing-looking green sores. It's a great effect and I expect to see inflating and deflating limbs appearing at furry conventions in the near future. Anyway, all ends with everybody de-uglified and there's a bunch of dancing and that's that.

Almost the last thing we would get to --- the park only closed at 5 pm, incredibly, for an early summer Friday --- was the monorail. This was also the hardest thing to find because while it wends through much of the park there's not much hint where the station was. It turned out to be from the castle at Market Square. We also had an odd last-minute delay as for some reason the monorail car we were waiting for had to go out empty; there was some muttering about something being tested, which was as much explanation as we'd get.

But the ride would give us the chance, first, to see much of the park from higher up; and second, to see more of the animal exhibits. We hadn't had the chance to get to the Sea Lion Square, for example, or the areas with large birds or their fossa, large cats, capybaras, or the like. We stil wouldn't get good views of them, since we were on the monorail, but we got to see them at all. Also to see the Aztec Temple hotel that's just off the park, and some of the bungalows where staff stay, according to the prerecorded park tour guide messages. It's a handsome park, and viewing it from above just emphasizes how good the place looks.

The last thing we got to was a final go-round on the Vampire, and the chance to prowl around the gift shop. Sadly the park didn't have what we'd really want, ride shirts or park shirts that we could wear back in the United States to mark us as oh Lord dear those kinds of people to amusement park ride operators. European amusement parks don't have adult ride shirts the way United States parks do, more's the pity.

But that all closed out the park, and we walked as slowly as I could get away with to the exit. There I noticed finally that it was possible to buy discounted next-day tickets, as we had done at Holiday World. I'd have suggested we try that in the hopes that the closed roller coasters would be open, but the ticket booths were all closed anyway. And as it happened the closed roller coasters wouldn't be open on Saturday anyway, and the park would be by reports much more packed. Still, it might've given us a chance to see the animals better.

So we wandered back to the train station, and from there ultimately back to our hotel. We didn't go to bunny_hugger's uncle that day. We did go to a pub, the Eight Bells, that was just behind the hotel. It was a nice place, one we'd kept on seeing, and it felt friendly and open to tourists. It also claims to have been in existence since 1629, which I have to admit is a pretty impressively long streak. The 'T' on the Eight Bells name, on the pub's north end, had fallen over.

The menu had only a couple vegetarian items, but one of them was jacket potatoes and we were certainly up for that. They weren't, though; after some consultation they reported that the jacket potatoes had run out --- they're a lunch item, after all --- and we found other things to order. We would go back to the pub the next day for lunch, figuring to get jacket potatoes at the appropriate meal, but they didn't have them then, either. Perhaps they're less friendly toward strangers than they appear, and the first round of hazing is you have to appear a certain number of times before they'll let you order the jackets? This seems eccentric, but then, what else explains the potato absence?

Trivia: The Burroughs Adding Machine Company saw total sales of $655,329.42 for 1932. By 1937 they had risen to $8,163,404.29. Source: Before The Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created 1865 - 1956, James W Cortada.

Currently Reading: After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, Giles MacDonogh.

PS: Reading the Comics, July 29, 2015: Not Entirely Reruns Edition, second of these since the last roundup. Most of the comic strips are repeats but my commentary is all new.

Though Chessington World of Adventures is divided into multiple themes, they aren't all equally lavish or popular. What looked like the best-developed and best-attended part was Transylvania, filled with child-friendly haunted-type attractions, as well as the lone operating non-powered roller coaster, the Vampire. This is a suspended roller coaster --- the cars hang from the track, above --- and in its original incarnation the cars were bat-shaped. That's long gone, alas, and now it's a floorless, the kind where you sit in swinging seats. This is a pretty good ride, still. It's graceful and smooth and swoopy, and at some parts you go flying just above the ground, making the ride feel all the faster and more thrilling.

It's also beautifully decorated. The launch platform is nearly pitch dark, with a giant animatronic figure of a man playing an organ. It's just as what you would expect from a classic horror movie even if you can't specify what one it did happen in. It swoops through very well-grown trees, always a bonus. And on the return leg it sweeps out over the Transylvania town area. It's gorgeous and well-placed, and a good ride.

The wait times were modest and we didn't think much about that. bunny_hugger would see on social media that the next day --- Saturday --- there were waits of an hour or more for the ride. I wouldn't have imagined the park would be that much busier on a Saturday than a Friday. Though the roller coaster would also have to do the duty of taking in all the thrill passengers, since the other two roller coasters were still closed Saturday.

The other, powered, roller coaster operating was the Scorpion Express. That's in the Mexicana area, themed to the Old West Or So; lots of Old Missions and Wild West rides and games there. This is a short ride, that goes around its little track, mostly a helix, twice per ride. Again, though, it's well-themed. The entrance queue takes you around the artefacts of an abandoned southwestern mining town and warnings about the weird rumors about what's going on there. The centerpieces are an oil rig, with flame that shoots off at a good moment; and a large animatronic steampunk scorpion. That moves its tail a little bit, and it shoots water from the tail at the train.

Unexpected and not thematically necessary water elements were a recurring theme of Chessington rides. One that got, and horrified, us was on the Monkey Swinger within the Wild Asia attraction. This is your classic elevated swing ride, although rather than being painted garish and bright this was done all in greys and browns. It conveyed the impression of being a stone monument lost to the jungle. There was some water on the swing seats, but we took that to be left over from the intermittent light rains of morning. No; what it was from was jets of water that shot out, mostly at the person in the outer row --- in our case bunny_hugger --- and on every single rotation. Not just a mist, either, but enough to soak us. It wasn't a sunny or hot enough day for this stuff.

They had an air dryer next to the ride, the kind that gives you several minutes of a warm stream of air in exchange for all the coins you have. But we got to that just behind one of those slow-moving confused family packs you seen in amusement parks, the kind where nobody seems to be able to quite coordinate the concepts of ``put in the demanded amount of money'' and ``stand inside the dryer booth''. We would end up spending so much time waiting for them to get started --- never mind to dry off --- that we gave up on mechanically assisted drying and went off on our own.

Threatening us with a water feature, but not actually doing the soaking, was the Rameses Revenge ride within the Forbidden Kingdom (Egyptian) area. This is a Top Spin ride, one of those long benches of seats that are rotated back and forth on an axis that itself spins, so that you go tumbling head-under-heel and vice-versa repeatedly. It's a ride that takes forever to load, but they make up for it with a good long ride time that's actually split in two. The first part locks the seats in place so you roll forward or back with the main axis, and after a few minutes of that they stop the ride and let people get off if they want. A couple people did. The second half of the ride, not just does the main axis rotate, but the seats spin along that axis so that you might be tumbling forward while the ride tumbles backwards. It's rather fun. The pool in front of the ride has jets obviously intended to spray water at people, but those weren't operating the day we went and we were thankful for it.

Bit of a mystery to this is that the ride is set in a pit, so that while you go up a good distance from the launch platform, you don't get very high above ground level. It's like they want the ride to be hidden from passers-by, which they might in fact have been going for.

Tomb Blaster isn't quite a thrill ride, but it's another thing in the Forbidden Kingdom. It's an indoor dark ride. It reminded us of some of the rides at d'Efteling, as it was a train progressing through lightly animatronic scenes. These had targets in them, and passengers are given lasers to shoot targets and maybe even make things happen. The launch station is a bit weird as it includes some voice calling for more civilians to shoot the monsters, which among other things seems to defy the point of something being a civilian. There was something odd about the whole ride --- which lasts seven minutes all told --- starting with the fact the Tomb Blaster name is just on a canvas sign strapped over the name permanently attached to the building. And the animatronics seem to be reacting more to something absent, rather than whatever the riders are doing.

bunny_hugger learned what, later on. The ride used to be called Forbidden Tomb, and it used to outright tell a story. Specifically, it had animatronics that showed a corrupt Arabian tour guide trying to steal treasure, and ultimately being captured by mummies and sacrificed before a hard rock concert finale. The Arabian thief was taken out, but not much of the animatronics changed, resulting in the weird something-is-missing-but-what effect. And the truly delightful part of this is that the Forbidden Tomb existence of the ride ended in 2001. It's been Tomb Blaster for thirteen years now and they still haven't put up a permanent sign. It's delightful seeing that.

Trivia: Colorado and Wyoming are both four degrees of latitude from their northern to their southern borders. The northern border of Montana is also four degrees of latitude from its main, latitudinal, southern border. Source: How The States Got Their Shapes, Mark Stein.

Currently Reading: After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, Giles MacDonogh.

PS: Lewis Carroll Tries Changing The Way You See Trigonometry, talking about some neat symbols he proposed for the basic trig functions. First of these since the last roundup.

We stopped for a little snack at the central Market Square. This would be hot doughnuts and coffee and tea and inspection by a crow hoping for doughnuts and coffee and tea. It also saw us through a light rain, the worst the day would have to offer. At the center of the Market Square is a nice compass rose, with rough directions to the Explorer Gate and the Lodge Gate (we'd come in through the Lodge Gate), and pointing to the various themed worlds of adventure --- Pirate's Cove, Trail of the Kings, Transylvania, Sea Lion Bay, Africa, Amazu, more. This is a park that takes its theming quite seriously, and it pays off. The park might be small but it's worth taking in, slowly.

Still, there was something worrisome when we entered the park. A sign warned that among the rides not operating were Rattlesnake and Dragon's Fury. These would be two of the park's three roller coasters. (Four roller coasters, if you count the powered Scorpion.) While we can enjoy a lot of a park, especially a strongly themed and well-kept park, to have two-thirds of the roller coasters down was heartbreaking. I hoped for the best: perhaps they might open later in the day. Just this happened to us at Holiday World, when the Raven started the day closed.

This especially hurt because the rides looked great. Dragon's Fury is some spinning car ride that looks quite promising. Rattlesnake is a wild mouse that's more heavily themed than we'd ever seen before; it's built into what looks like a Old West Mission building, and rides that roll into and through buildings are special thrills. We kept watching the monitors listing rides that were closed, and some went on and some went off, but these never came back on. A guard stood outside Rattlesnake giving people the sad news the ride wasn't open and he had no information on when it might be. We would have to leave the park without riding them, and goodness knows when we might ever get back to Chessington. I'd suggested we might go back, buying tickets, if need be; we would have two more days in the area.

As it turns out that wouldn't have helped us any. It transpired that Merlin Entertainments, the company that owns Alton Towers, had ordered the shutting of many of its roller coasters across all of its parks. This was apparently a response to something discovered in the wake of the Alton Towers roller coaster collision the week before. What's crushing is they had only ordered the shutting effective that day. If we'd gone to Chessington the day before, rather than see bunny_hugger's uncle, we'd have been able to ride everything. I'm not sad we did spend the first full day in town with him, but it is a shame to have so much unfinished business at Chessington.

bunny_hugger, as ever more perceptive of the ways of the amusement park industry, realized the probable reason for these rides being closed while we were still at the park. But she kept it to herself, not bringing the accident up where anyone might overhear her. Not obvious to us is why these rides and not the other roller coaster, Vampire, were closed. None of them are the same kind of roller coaster as the Smiler, on which the accident happened, nor made by the same company or anything. Our best inference was that they used the same kind of braking system, or perhaps used the same operational procedures, and that was the real target of the shutdown order.

While a big disappointment, admittedly, this was also the only one we had. And the park filled in the last bit of ``we always thought Roller Coaster Tycoon made this up''. The video game lets you put up scrolling-message displays just to report park names and whether the ride is open or closed. We thought that an understandable natural bit of fancy. Well, this really happens. Gorgeous.

More park reporting to come.

Trivia: Forrest Mars, cofounder of the Mars Candy company, would reconcile with his father when Frank Mars bailed him out of prison in Chicago in 1923. Forrest Mars had been arrested for plastering the streets with Camel cigarette advertisements without permits. Source: Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between The World's Greatest Chocolate Makers, Deborah Cadbury. Also, as ever, a reminder: if someone's looking for a story pre-adapted to be a great dramatic soap-operatic mess, look to the Mars clan.

Currently Reading: After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, Giles MacDonogh.

PS: Reading the Comics, July 24, 2015: All The Popular Topics Are Here Edition, getting a little rowdy, inviting friends, that sort of thing. Four.

PPS: Happy birthday Marissa Picard! I guess also skylerbunny, but he'll never see that.