Other things done at Kennywood. One was getting to the Old Mill ride, which the updated National Historic District sign explained had been named Panama Canal, Fairyland Floats, and Garfield's Nightmare at different points in its history. Never the Tunnel of Love, though, though it is the sort of ride they're talking about when an old-time cartoon talks about a Tunnel of Love. The ride's post-Garfield scenery is a bunch of funny scenes, centered on the mischief of the troublemaking skeleton shown outside and that you're warned up front to watch for. Also appearing: a lot of skunks, and jokes about skunks, for example, with the skeleton robbing a bank by pointing a skunk at the teller and waring this is a stink-up. The skeleton and skunk get appearances on the Old Mill sign, as does an opossum that I guess shows up a couple places? They're under-applying the opossum, I think. Also in the graveyard scene I noticed a tombstone for G. Nightmare; I'll have to try and see sometime if they have markers for other rides that are gone or re-themed.
And while ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger took her daily half-hour walk around the park, I took the chance to ride something I'd always wanted to. Not their Windseeker; Kennywood doesn't have one. But it has got the Aero 360, this rigid-pendulum swing ride that, unlike Cedar Point's SkyHawk, goes all the way upside-down, and past that. bunnyhugger has preemptively declined the offer to ride this, so, why not split up for a half-hour? Turns out Aero 360's arrows are three seats across in a row, a peculiar number considering how many people go to the park in groups. I guess they figure some folks aren't going to be able to talk their partner in. You sit down in rows alternating forward and back, so you're facing someone else. In my case, a pair of adults were talking with the three kids, not part of their group, about what they'd been riding and what they liked and what their favorite coasters were. Bunch of nice things said about The Phantom's Revenge. And the ride is fun, although it does take a bit longer at the top of the swing than I expected, so you get the sensation of being ready to drop out of your seat. I liked it but bunnyhugger wishes to nope out of this even more. She did suggest I could go on the Black Widow --- without her --- if I wanted, but I didn't feel like it enough to get over there.
One thing we could hardly go to Kennywood without riding was the Turtle, of course, which the new National Historic District sign notes is the last of its kind, ever since the guy who burned down Conneaut Lake Park wrecked the Tumble Bug. The sign also gave a bit more of the ride's history than the old one had, explaining that the ride had picked up the Turtle theme in the late 40s, when the sixth car of the train was added to the ride. And, despite some fears the ride did still have ``turtle, turtle'' callouts, although from a prerecorded loop (including bits of the Turtle Club meme from the unseen film The Master of Disguise) rather than the operator cutting in when they liked.
Prerecorded loops also played a role at another of Kennywood's signature and unique rides, the Kangaroo. This, last of the flying-coaster rides (it's a flat ride, cars going around in a circle) plays a cartoony boing noise as a car goes off the elevated ramp that gives the ride its point and name. But it's clearly triggered by the wheels of the car going over a sensor, rather than the operator's whimsy. Occasionally it does a multiple boinging instead of the single boing, and I didn't catch any pattern there. That might be something the operator sets off now and then, although it might also be the thing is just programmed to set it boinging after 2d4 cars go past.
But there was still disappointment, one so great that we were stunned not to have been warned by outcries and wailings from the roller coaster groups. The one thing we wanted absolutely to eat at the park was their square ice cream, a box of ice cream stuffed into a double-headed ice cream cone and covered with a chocolate shell and sprinkles or nuts. Topped with a cherry, or two if the cashier likes you, or five if you're JTK and unafraid to ask for more. But when we got to the Golden Nugget, the line for square ice cream was nonexistent, and the cashiers were sitting around bored. There was horrible news. According to a sign on the building, the company that makes their double-header cones ``ceased production on them earlier this year'' and ``until production begins again this fall'' they don't have square dip cones. They were offering chocolate dipped cheesecake instead. We didn't have it. It doesn't look like anyone else was having it either. Also, the heck with this story? I would get the cone maker closing down, but how does an ice cream cone manufacturer shut down for the summer months? I would get that if, like, their factory had caught fire or something had forced them to suspend production but surely Kennywood's sign would have said production stopped because of a fire or a bankruptcy or something more convincing than just ``we stopped making ice cream cones for Ice Cream Cone Season''.
And there were delights too. Particularly, one of the kiosks nearby the Golden Nugget was selling ``nostalgic items'' with what looked like stuff left over in the stockroom. Things like coffee mugs with their 2020 ``A Year Like No Other'' logo. Or books of park history or even other park histories, such as a book about the closing years of West View Park, Pittsburgh's other amusement park, sunk in the late 70s when Kennywood was surging. Or a bunch of posters with what looked like concept art, either actually used for old shirts or posters or such, or alternate designs turned down for whatever reason. Exterminator with a different, more menacing-looking mutant rat. Steel Phantom looking more Doctor Doom-y than the Phantom they used. Another Exterminator poster with a fake Arnold Schwarzenegger promising ``You'll Be Back!'' A cute t-shirt of Kenny Kangaroo and a bunch of plushes as ``Kenny and Friends'', the words spelled out in letter blocks.
We didn't get anything there, but, by, I wonder if we should have. I did go back near the end of the day but they'd already closed up the kiosk, and we're not likely to be back this season. Maybe I'll nag one of my suspiciously large number of Pittsburgh-area friends. Maybe we'll go back next year and hope we get lucky. Kennywood is a lucky place, after all.
We're getting nearer the end of our day at Bronner's, but we're not quite there yet ...
Hey, look at that star! It's your very own The More You Know ... ready for you to bring home!
bunnyhugger posing in front of the Santa display near the front of the building. Looking sharp, right?
Here you get to see her wondering why I'm taking the picture from the wrong angle! It's to get a better view of the reindeer's face.
The entry hall has this meeting point, one of several, and it does pretty well show you what to expect within.
Outside they show off lighting displays too, and they shine best by night.
Here's candles and the outlines of trees, or else stars that are shooting Force Lightning down to the ground. Who is to say, really?
Trivia: Though the International Date Line is generally regarded as being created by the International Meridian Conference in 1884, no date line is mentioned in the resolutions of the conference. That the resolutions stipulate defining longitude as measuring up to 180 degrees east or west implicitly defines a dateline at the line opposite the Greenwich meridian. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel.
Currently Reading: Michigan History, July/August 2024, Editor Sarah Hamilton.
