I used to do one major amusement park trip per summer (usually around a week
long, trying to hit a bunch of parks in an area) along with sometimes doing
one minor/long weekend trip also. I didn´t do so in 2020 or 2021 due to
pandemic caution. This year was going to be my return to it, and I was
figuring to do a road trip that hit some or all of the following (asterisks
are places I´ve been to before, others are as yet unvisited by me): the
historic carousel in Albion, PA; Waldameer; Midway State Park; Seabreeze;
Sylvan Beach Amusement Park; Canada´s Wonderland.. I have been to
Waldameer, Seabreeze, and CW before. The rest would be first-time visits.

Unfortunately, plans have been put on hold again because my husband might be
starting a new job soon. So, probably no "major" parks trip for me again
this year. I may have to be content with my usual day trips to Michigan´s
Adventure and Cedar Point (I´ve visited each once so far this season). So
let´s hear about your plans instead. Planning to visit any new-to-you parks
this year or revisit old favorites you haven´t seen in a while?

--
Heather, the Carousel Rabbit

On Sunday, June 12, 2022 at 10:09:05 PM UTC-4, Heather Kendrick wrote:
> I used to do one major amusement park trip per summer (usually around a week
> long, trying to hit a bunch of parks in an area) along with sometimes doing
> one minor/long weekend trip also. I didn´t do so in 2020 or 2021 due to
> pandemic caution. This year was going to be my return to it, and I was
> figuring to do a road trip that hit some or all of the following (asterisks
> are places I´ve been to before, others are as yet unvisited by me): the
> historic carousel in Albion, PA; Waldameer; Midway State Park; Seabreeze;
> Sylvan Beach Amusement Park; Canada´s Wonderland.. I have been to
> Waldameer, Seabreeze, and CW before. The rest would be first-time visits.
>
> Unfortunately, plans have been put on hold again because my husband might be
> starting a new job soon. So, probably no "major" parks trip for me again
> this year. I may have to be content with my usual day trips to Michigan´s
> Adventure and Cedar Point (I´ve visited each once so far this season). So
> let´s hear about your plans instead. Planning to visit any new-to-you parks
> this year or revisit old favorites you haven´t seen in a while?
>
> --
> Heather, the Carousel Rabbit

So far this year we've done 6 major trips involving 48 parks and fairs and 73 new credits:
1. U.A.E. where the highlight was the 2020 Dubai Expo World's Fair, which was absolutely astounding.
2. Florida, where the highlight was the new Iron Gwazi. Very fun ride.
3. Colombia. We visited 4 cities and the highlight was Parque del Café, the national coffee theme park. It's a gorgeous experience and they have some decent coasters.
4. Virginia, where we went to ride Pantheon at BGW and Tumbili at KD.
5. San Diego, where the highlight was the whole fam gathering for my mother's 90th birthday, coincidentally on Passover. We rode Emperor at SWSD.
6. England. We had no idea that the Queen's Jubilee Celebration would be taking place during our visit, but it enhanced the trip, if anything. Everyone was in a good mood, school was out, and many were vacationing, but only Flamingo Land in Yorkshire had uncomfortable crowds and long queues. And the weather was quite nice overall. One of the highlights was Cheryl grabbing her 2,200th credit at a fair in Manchester. Another highlight was visiting Her Majesty's Ship "Victory" in Portsmouth. We snagged one of my bucket list rides, Roller Coaster at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach. I know it's really not worth mentioning, but I'm a bit proud of myself, a New Yorker, for driving all over England on the left side of the road with a steering wheel on the right side while manipulating a manual stick shift with my left hand. Miraculously no one was killed. We picked up something like 46 credits, many at the seaside fun fairs. Paultons Park continues to impress as the most underrated park in England. Many Brits we spoke to in the north had never heard of it. And we finally got the Big Dipper at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, which had eluded us on our last visit there.

For the rest of the summer, we're hoping to meet up with friends at the Alaska State Fair and then visit my dad's alma mater, University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Then we're hoping to pick up unridden credits in the Bene(lux) region and to visit the once-in-a-decade horticultural world's fair Floriade '22, which is in Amsterdam-Almere this year. We went in 2012 in Venlo as well.. This may have to wait until September due to Cheryl's schedule.

Four new credits in Myrtle Beach, so that's a possibility too. I'd love to get to Lost Island in Iowa too.

Best regards,
milst1

On Jun 13, 2022, milst1 wrote
(in article<5ef07d8c-9d0e-448d-afa4-3cac61e4c144n@googlegroups.com>):

>
> So far this year we've done 6 major trips involving 48 parks and fairs and 73
> new credits:

Sounds like a productive year! I have a few different hobbies that compete
for my time and money, so compared to you and probably most others here I am
definitely a small-timer. I don´t remember my exact number of credits but
it´s only around 275, and I´ve been in the hobby since about
2002.

> heard of it. And we finally got the Big Dipper at Blackpool Pleasure Beach,
> which had eluded us on our last visit there.

Glad to hear it because that one I have ridden and I loved it! I have been to
Blackpool a couple of times, but most notably during my second wedding´s
honeymoon in 2012. (My first visit in 2004 or so was truncated by in-laws
wanting to leave early; it´s one of my worst amusement park
disappointment/missed opportunity stories.) I´d sure like to get back to
Blackpool again someday.

--
Heather, the Carousel Rabbit

On Jun 12, 2022, Heather Kendrick wrote
(in article<0001HW.2856D3BD0BF052EE7000062B438F@news.individual.net>):

> I used to do one major amusement park trip per summer (usually around a week
> long, trying to hit a bunch of parks in an area) along with sometimes doing
> one minor/long weekend trip also. I didn´t do so in 2020 or 2021 due to
> pandemic caution. This year was going to be my return to it, and I was
> figuring to do a road trip that hit some or all of the following (asterisks
> are places I´ve been to before, others are as yet unvisited by me): the
> historic carousel in Albion, PA; Waldameer; Midway State Park; Seabreeze;
> Sylvan Beach Amusement Park; Canada´s Wonderland.. I have been to
> Waldameer, Seabreeze, and CW before. The rest would be first-time visits.
Now I´m laughing at myself because I decided not to bother with asterisks
but forgot to remove the remark about putting them in. Guess I´d better
send a cancel message. Har, har!

--
Heather, the Carousel Rabbit

> Unfortunately, plans have been put on hold again because my husband might be
> starting a new job soon. So, probably no "major" parks trip for me again
> this year. I may have to be content with my usual day trips to Michigan´s
> Adventure and Cedar Point (I´ve visited each once so far this season). So
> let´s hear about your plans instead. Planning to visit any new-to-you parks
> this year or revisit old favorites you haven´t seen in a while?
>

I'm planning to stop at Santa's Village in Illinois and Lost Island in IA to document the dark rides later this year. I'll probably ride a coaster or two at Lost Island, but my neck is in lousy shape and I really shouldn't be going wild with the coaster riding.

TBH, I hit a stage of burnout last year. I've did the hobby for 25 years and rode 1000 coasters, and at this point the terrible operations of parks, the queuing, the heat, the way parks feel like they're extorting me for every last dollar; its all just worn on me throughout the pandemic. I did basically everything I wanted and have nothing to prove. The last thing I've been on was Water Jumping up north in July of 2021 - that's the sort of ride i was told would never open in America and parrotted that belief. And yet here it is, a bigger model than almost any comparable thing people have been on over in Europe, and it operates in my own state for the princely sum of $3 a ride. Kind of amazing when I consider that it must have a capacity of about 30 pph. Thank god for loss leaders.

Maybe one day I'll love it again. Maybe I never will.

On Jun 14, 2022, GodsOnSafari wrote
(in article<acf316a5-2c05-42ba-b4e7-afd16737ff78n@googlegroups.com>):
> I'm planning to stop at Santa's Village in Illinois and Lost Island in IA to
> document the dark rides later this year. I'll probably ride a coaster or two
> at Lost Island, but my neck is in lousy shape and I really shouldn't be going
> wild with the coaster riding.

I can sympathize. I herniated a disc in my neck badly about ten years ago and
it was incredibly painful, though oddly coasters were not implicated in it at
all. Rather, it was probably the result of a lifetime of bad posture and
computer use.

What´s really started cramping my coaster hobby is that my back has gotten
bad. I have lower back arthritis that started getting bad over the last
couple of years, and when it´s bad, I feel like I can´t take the kinds of
rattly wooden coasters that have always been my favorites. It´s sad, but
I´m trying to enjoy what I still can, while I still can. My days of
sessioning Shivering Timbers are definitely over, though. It helps that I see
myself not as a roller coaster enthusiast per se but as an amusement park
enthusiast, so I reassure myself that I will still have things left to enjoy
when I can´t ride coasters as much anymore.

I´ve never been to Santa´s Village. Early on, way back in the early 2000s
when I was first getting into traveling to visit parks, I had wanted to go
there because I´m fascinated by exactly that kind of park. I like the
relics, the small and charming, the odd. Big corporate parks can be a great
time (plus I grew up with Cedar Point and have a sentimental attachment to
it), but they aren´t my main interest. So back when I first started seeing
what was in road trip distance of my house, I discovered Santa´s Village
and thought I needed to get there. But I was too slow and didn´t get there
before it closed down. Since it reopened, I have been wary of going because I
am wary of places like that calling themselves "zoos." I made the mistake
of going to Fun Spot in Angola not long before it closed and seeing two
tigers housed in a corn crib was one of the worst times I ever had at an
amusement park. I´m not even that comfortable with petting farms (too many
kids chasing around and grabbing stressed animals) but I really draw the line
at seeing exotic animals in unaccredited facilities. So that has kept me away
from the "Azoosment Park" incarnation of Santa´s Village. But I also
really, really love themed dark rides, the quirkier the better, so hearing
that Santa´s Village was putting one in has seriously tested my
resolve.

(Side note: my professional area of expertise - I am an academic - is
actually animal ethics. So I really have to try to think about whether I´m
living my professed values, and it gets hard sometimes because of the ways it
conflicts with my hobby. I find most enthusiasts are pretty unsympathetic to
my concerns in this area, though, so I tend not to bring it up much. But it
does have direct relevance here.)

>
> Maybe one day I'll love it again. Maybe I never will.

That´s a shame. Or, it seems like one to me. I suppose if you are fine with
having lost interest, then it might not be a shame to you: more time for your
other interests. I have enough places left I´d like to see - and places I
doubt I´d ever tire of visiting if they stick around - and I have worked
through the list so slowly, that I think it´s much more likely that I´ll
die first than get bored of it.
--
Heather, the Carousel Rabbit

On Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at 3:48:27 PM UTC-4, Heather Kendrick wrote:
> On Jun 14, 2022, GodsOnSafari wrote
> > I'm planning to stop at Santa's Village in Illinois and Lost Island in IA to
> > document the dark rides later this year. I'll probably ride a coaster or two
> > at Lost Island, but my neck is in lousy shape and I really shouldn't be going
> > wild with the coaster riding.
> I can sympathize. I herniated a disc in my neck badly about ten years ago and
> it was incredibly painful, though oddly coasters were not implicated in it at
> all. Rather, it was probably the result of a lifetime of bad posture and
> computer use.
>
> What´s really started cramping my coaster hobby is that my back has gotten
> bad. I have lower back arthritis that started getting bad over the last
> couple of years, and when it´s bad, I feel like I can´t take the kinds of
> rattly wooden coasters that have always been my favorites. It´s sad, but
> I´m trying to enjoy what I still can, while I still can. My days of
> sessioning Shivering Timbers are definitely over, though. It helps that I see
> myself not as a roller coaster enthusiast per se but as an amusement park
> enthusiast, so I reassure myself that I will still have things left to enjoy
> when I can´t ride coasters as much anymore.

I started getting neurological symptoms (most significantly lhermitte's sign) which were tied into the herniation and thankfully not multiple sclerosis. Hopefully I never lost much or any real muscle strength. I can't do anything about it now, anyhow.

I have loved parks and amusements as a whole; I wouldn't be an editor at Darkride Database or wrote/podcasted for Parkscope if I never did. I still love immersive art exhibits and have made it a point to visit them like Otherworld, Meow Wolf, et al. The problem for me is that I love lots of things, and those other things as experiences are not what I consider to be significantly reduced experiences. Costs may have risen for them, but the experience itself is identical and unchanged vs. 3-4-5 years ago (or more). Theme parks as a whole are not like that. They are almost all in a similar state: prices have increased dramatically and parks have introduced new hidden fees to recover more money from guests. Quality of the offerings is down to early 2000s Six Flags levels except it is across the board among regional parks. They're all full of closed rides, closed food stands, poor capacity, and understaffed everything. It sucks. We all know it sucks.

We both live in the same metro area and Cedar Point is our common nearest "big park". As a big park, hours have been slashed, hotel and entry has increased, it's down two coasters and a car ride for 2022 but up one chicken restaurant, and they're still as understaffed as any other year in the last decade or worse. Then I think about casinos - you know, the casino experience is basically the same as pre-COVID. This year, I've probably budgeted about $2000 for gambling. With that, I've lost only about 1/3 of it in total, and I've gotten 4 nights of free weekend hotel stays, a couple hundred bucks in free food, discounts on fuel, random free gifts like grill lights I could gift/flip, and a free 7 night cruise to Alaska. Cedar Fair has never given me anything, even when they had a rewards program, and I've poured tens of thousands of dollars into them as a guest. Call me entitled if you want: if someone else treats me well and the amusement industry as a whole treats me like a stupid mark, then fuck the amusement industry. I don't owe them loyalty. They owe me for this crappy service they're selling at this price.

On Jun 16, 2022, GodsOnSafari wrote
(in article<5ac9bd8a-e674-43ea-9de8-10a8fb392321n@googlegroups.com>):
>
> I started getting neurological symptoms (most significantly lhermitte's sign)
> which were tied into the herniation and thankfully not multiple sclerosis.
> Hopefully I never lost much or any real muscle strength. I can't do anything
> about it now, anyhow.

Wow, I had to look up what that is and yeah, that sucks. I´m sorry to hear
it. I just ("just") got severe arm pain and hand numbness. Unfortunately
it does flare up without apparent cause sometimes and I´ll go through a
relapse for a month or so. Luckily riding coasters doesn´t have any effect
on it. No, my back´s taken over in that department.

>
> I have loved parks and amusements as a whole; I wouldn't be an editor at
> Darkride Database or wrote/podcasted for Parkscope if I never did.

Of course I know that and didn´t mean to imply otherwise, though I realize
now that it looks like I did. We´ve never met, but we´ve both sort of
been "around" (and oddly, yeah, live in the same metro area) so I´ve
read a lot of your thoughts over the years. We have some similar opinions on
stuff, I gather, though I have a greater (acquired?) tolerance for
Michigan´s Adventure. :)

>
> We both live in the same metro area and Cedar Point is our common nearest
> "big park". As a big park, hours have been slashed, hotel and entry has
> increased, it's down two coasters and a car ride for 2022 but up one chicken
> restaurant, and they're still as understaffed as any other year in the last
> decade or worse.
Yeah, I hear you, and replacing a lovely vintage car ride with another
chicken restaurant is probably my least favorite thing they´ve done since,
oh, let´s say replacing a lovely vintage Enterprise ride with a barbecue
restaurant. But there are also aspects of Cedar Point I´ve been impressed
by recently. I loved their anniversary parade and show, and I´m glad they
decided to keep having parades. That´s the kind of celebratory park stuff
that I appreciate. I´ve been enjoying button trading (I don´t even really
trade but I´m fond of collecting them). They´ve improved their overall
aesthetics. The most significant improvement in many years (in my book,
everyone else´s mileage is going to vary) has been putting the band organ
on the Midway Carousel back into service, having let it fall into disuse in
(I think) the 1990s. It makes night and day difference over listening to the
same single recorded band organ CD that they´d been using for years and
years. (God, if I had to hear "How Ya Gonna Keep `Em Down on the Farm?"
one more time...) They did the same at Kings Island along with a full
restoration of the carousel figures. That stuff really matters to me.

Still, ride operations at Cedar Point are indeed the worst I´ve seen (and
Michigan´s Adventure´s are bad as always). The throughput on rides is
terrible, and it´s hard for me to take because I grew up with Cedar Point
and remember when lines always moved briskly even when they were long. And if
there´s one single thing I could wave a magic wand and change about the
amusement park industry generally, it would be to make it so no one had ever
thought of monetizing queuing. But that´s going back a long way now. So
I´m certainly not sunshine and roses about Cedar Point or the other big
parks. I´m just overly forgiving.

--
Heather, the Carousel Rabbit

On Thursday, June 16, 2022 at 10:29:43 PM UTC-4, Heather Kendrick wrote:
> On Jun 16, 2022, GodsOnSafari wrote
> (in article<5ac9bd8a-e674-43ea...@googlegroups.com>):
> >
> Wow, I had to look up what that is and yeah, that sucks. I´m sorry to hear
> it. I just ("just") got severe arm pain and hand numbness. Unfortunately
> it does flare up without apparent cause sometimes and I´ll go through a
> relapse for a month or so. Luckily riding coasters doesn´t have any effect
> on it. No, my back´s taken over in that department.

Not riding stuff and being more mindful of overdoing things with my neck at work or where ever has really reduced my symptoms quite a bit. I'd consider myself "fine" at present, though I (as is perpetually the case), need to lose a decent amount of weight to get down to a more healthy 180-190.

> Of course I know that and didn´t mean to imply otherwise, though I realize
> now that it looks like I did. We´ve never met, but we´ve both sort of
> been "around" (and oddly, yeah, live in the same metro area) so I´ve
> read a lot of your thoughts over the years. We have some similar opinions on
> stuff, I gather, though I have a greater (acquired?) tolerance for
> Michigan´s Adventure. :)

It's fine. I'm sure sometime I'll go back to get ramen at Avenue Cafe and run into you playing pinball too. I don't know when I'll have free time to do that, but that's my own fault.

Michigan's Adventure is "fine" and I actively enjoy Shivering Timbers, but the juice isn't worth the squeeze for me now. I think the last time I went was 2019, maybe 2020? I got some nice rides in on a Thursday evening after work and had to hustle back to EL. The thing is....what else is there to draw me there? It's not the food. The other coasters are all bad. The car ride - my favorite non-coaster there - is now a revamped kiddie land featuring most of the same rides as before. If you have nothing else, it's a fine amusement park to have fun with your friends assuming the lines aren't all horrible, which they probably will be on a weekend when you're likely to go. It's very utilitarian, much like the cinder block station of the Corkscrew itself.

> Yeah, I hear you, and replacing a lovely vintage car ride with another
> chicken restaurant is probably my least favorite thing they´ve done since,
> oh, let´s say replacing a lovely vintage Enterprise ride with a barbecue
> restaurant. But there are also aspects of Cedar Point I´ve been impressed
> by recently. I loved their anniversary parade and show, and I´m glad they
> decided to keep having parades. That´s the kind of celebratory park stuff
> that I appreciate. I´ve been enjoying button trading (I don´t even really
> trade but I´m fond of collecting them). They´ve improved their overall
> aesthetics. The most significant improvement in many years (in my book,
> everyone else´s mileage is going to vary) has been putting the band organ
> on the Midway Carousel back into service, having let it fall into disuse in
> (I think) the 1990s. It makes night and day difference over listening to the
> same single recorded band organ CD that they´d been using for years and
> years. (God, if I had to hear "How Ya Gonna Keep `Em Down on the Farm?"
> one more time...) They did the same at Kings Island along with a full
> restoration of the carousel figures. That stuff really matters to me.
>

I will generally give them credit for a lot of positive things that they have done in terms of the environment at Cedar Point. I would attribute the majority of that to the Ouimet years when they redid the Gemini midway, main entrance, created a traffic loop from Blue Streak to the Marina, etc. But they've still made some nice additions. Even in the arcade, where they gutted the classic games, that came with a modernization of their payment system.

However, honestly, they've fallen into the trap of doing things because "that's what's hot in the industry" or what they perceive as moves which will expand the audience. The heart of the park are "big iron rides" and anyone who goes to Cedar Point is overwhelmingly likely to be drawn in by coasters and big flat rides. There's this fascination people have everywhere with trying to do "Disney things" with hyper immersive experiences and games, and at somewhere like Cedar Point, it's not gonna work that well. Not because it is necessarily bad. I think the fit and finish of Snake River Expeditions is pretty impressive given the budget. However, there's no IP tie-in, it's at a competing park chain, and it's surrounded by coasters. Disney people are never going to come see it or Forbidden Frontier or the parade. Meanwhile, they're spending a ton on talent to run those while rides are rotating operation and they're increasingly dependent on food trucks to serve patrons.

My experience, anecdotal as it might be, is that people want to take a boat ride around the lagoon that is relaxing. They don't want a series of preshows and actors and a plot and all the rest.

> Still, ride operations at Cedar Point are indeed the worst I´ve seen (and
> Michigan´s Adventure´s are bad as always). The throughput on rides is
> terrible, and it´s hard for me to take because I grew up with Cedar Point
> and remember when lines always moved briskly even when they were long. And if
> there´s one single thing I could wave a magic wand and change about the
> amusement park industry generally, it would be to make it so no one had ever
> thought of monetizing queuing. But that´s going back a long way now. So
> I´m certainly not sunshine and roses about Cedar Point or the other big
> parks. I´m just overly forgiving.

Lots of people are. I remember before the pandemic when Pointbuzz had a thread in which members chastized each other for not volunteering hours at Cedar Point to help them with their staffing issues in the fall. I have been complaining about it for years and even wrote a long article explaining why those concerns were only going to get worse over time as youth labor force participation fell, wages were stagnant, and reliance on international employees was a fundamentally risky strategy with a highly isolationist party. Then look what happened with COVID.

The funny part was that during the pandemic itself at it's height, Cedar Point was the best it had ever run. I'm not joking. I went in August of 2020 and it was fantastic. I mean, to do this, they had to fly out employees from all their closed parks to run rides, but the professionalism and the efficency was off the charts. Food stands were open. All the rides were going and at full capacity. It was something to behold.

I hate to use this all as an opportunity to stand on a soap box, but think that viewpoint of us "owing" something to Cedar Fair as described a couple paragraphs ago is not novel and I've really been abjectly horrified to see the apathy if not outright apologism for the likes of Cedar Fair being exposed at covering up sexual assaults of their employees, Knoebels and their vendors committing wage theft, etc etc etc. Obviously I as a (possibly) lapsed fan cannot sit here and direct what should happen to the fandom and hobby, but I look at the young folks coming up, and they impress me. They're willing to go out on limbs and confront these things in a way the grandpas who birthed RRC and ran/run ACE were and are never willing to. I never stop hearing complaints about Zoomers and Millennials, but most of it comes from humans who professionally and personally are abject failures in every aspect of their lives and who, if they ever see this, will probably screenshot it and post it in the same private Facebook groups where they discuss amongst themselves how half of Regional Reps are child predators but also why no one should do anything about it. I interviewed Paul Ruben before he died along with a lot of the other early enthusiasts, and I realized that a major barrier between him and the average ACE member is the average ACE member was an idiot and antisocial nerd, and Paul was a guy who wasn't even defined by parks (it was by his research into optics technology at Kodak). They got mad at him in no small part because he was more successful with Parkworld (his hustle) than their's (t-shirts, competing newsletters, VHS tapes). No different than the new generation and their successes on YouTube and Tiktok..

Other than 2020, the last few years my annual regional park trip was to go to Kings Island for a few days. Due to flight and rent a car prices, that won’t happen this year (a shame because I’d love to see KI’s 50th celebration). But I am going to make a long drive to Carowinds for my second ever visit (first was in 2015 weeks before Thunder Road closed). Looking forward to Copperhead Strike and a new-to-me Top Scan.
Since I live in central Florida, I regularly visit the parks and fairs here, so I’ve gotten on all the new for 2022 coasters here (except the Peppa Pig one) and am looking forward to Halloween events here, of course.
I’ll also be visiting family in the northeast and have plans to go to Coney for the first time in a few years (hopefully Luna’s new coaster opens by then), also Adventureland for Fireball, and a visit to Great Adventure.
Also have a potential road trip to the Atlanta area this fall for some haunts in the area and quick visits to Fun Spot Atlanta and the alpine coaster in Helen.

So not a bad year for coasters, should end up with 10+ new credits (already got 4 in Florida) this year hopefully. If travel wasn’t so out of site costly, I’d do a little bit more.
It took me 11 years to go from 400 to 500 credits (finally hitting 500 last year), hoping I can reach 600 in much less time. Though I don’t make plans based on credits, more just for what I like and what is more relaxing as a trip as well, so however long it takes, it takes.

On Jun 17, 2022, Surf Dance Chris wrote
(in article<7b7c7139-e637-428b-84d5-28f4cac471a5n@googlegroups.com>):
> It took me 11 years to go from 400 to 500 credits (finally hitting 500 last
> year), hoping I can reach 600 in much less time. Though I don´t make
plans
> based on credits, more just for what I like and what is more relaxing as a
> trip as well, so however long it takes, it takes.

That´s my philosophy too. I didn´t used to keep a count of them but at a
certain point I started because I did think it was fun to figure out how many
it was and because people would ask me. And I admit I´ve probably ridden
kiddie coasters I might not have otherwise since I started counting. But I
don´t plan my trips based on that. Like I said in my other post, I´m
definitely a small-timer compared to many here.

Now that you mentioned fairs, that does remind me that I was going to go to
Livonia (Michigan) Spree again this year. I arrived in the closing hour or so
last year after also getting a coaster (a Crazy Mouse) at Howell Balloonfest
the same day, and I wished I had devoted an entire evening to it, because it
turned out to be a pretty big and nice carnival. Last year they had a fairly
big portable coaster, Wade Shows´ Super Cyclone, but it was closed down for
the duration when we got there and so we missed out.

--
Heather, the Carousel Rabbit

On Jun 17, 2022, GodsOnSafari wrote
(in article<102c0631-e4da-4783-ac1d-b63a85120028n@googlegroups.com>):

> It's fine. I'm sure sometime I'll go back to get ramen at Avenue Cafe and run
> into you playing pinball too. I don't know when I'll have free time to do
> that, but that's my own fault.

I don´t know if I mentioned this before but I run the pinball league now so
if you are there on a Tuesday night and see someone giving directions to a
crowd at the pinball machines that´ll be me (or my assistant director, but
that´s my husband and we´re easy to tell apart).

> work and had to hustle back to EL. The thing is....what else is there to draw
> me there? It's not the food. The other coasters are all bad. The car ride -
> my favorite non-coaster there - is now a revamped kiddie land featuring most
> of the same rides as before.

I´m sorry they removed their car ride, but the improved kiddie area does
make sense for them. And I could never get that excited about the car ride
because it just drives itself. If the gas pedal doesn´t do anything, I
don´t feel like it´s a proper car ride. I miss Cedar Point having three
of the good kind.

What draws me to Michigan´s Adventure is that it´s far closer than Cedar
Point, it doesn´t require an exhausting all-day trip (I´m getting kind of
old to really enjoy getting home from CP at 2 or 3 am dog tired), and I´m
really not picky about roller coasters. I´ve said before, it´s a
blessing, like being a cheap drunk. Having any non-kiddie coaster and being
less than two hours away is going to be more than enough to draw me to a
place. The only thing that makes a coaster bad to me is if it´s so painful
I can´t take it, and the only coaster there that is on the cusp of that is
Wolverine Wildcat, even though I actually used to enjoy it quite a bit in the
2000s. (It´s really weird now, by the way, with the steel track only on the
first hill; it goes from so excessively smooth it doesn´t feel right, back
to being almost unbearably rough the rest of the ride.) I enjoy junior
woodens a lot generally, so I like Zach´s Zoomer and just wish it had full
sized trains so I could sit side by side with my riding partner. Shivering
Timbers is Shivering Timbers, of course, and the rest of the coasters I find
enjoyable enough to be worth riding. Actually, I´m pretty keen on Mad Mouse
too, but it´s just the horrible operations that hold it back since they put
the seatbelts on it and changed the loading process. It always used to be
good for one or two rides for me in the old days, but lately it´s either
down all day or has a ridiculous line. If not for that, I enjoy it. I like
wild mice.

When I said I had an acquired tolerance for Michigan´s Adventure, I was
referring to the fact that I used to go there a heck of a lot, back in the
early 2000s. My ex-husband and I had a few years, around 2001-2004, when we
would go there probably every other week in the summer. We would spend about
two hours riding everything multiple times, then go to Grand Haven afterward
and eat ice cream on the boardwalk. In those days there was never a line for
anything. We considered it a "busy day" when cars were past Mad Mouse
(and back then the first cars in would park right in front of the front gate
instead of wrapping around to the other side of the gate like they do now). I
never saw a day with an actual crowd until the mid-2000s. It was like having
free rein to just walk on and do whatever I wanted as soon as I wanted to for
a few hours. That made it really appealing as a very low stress, low key
summer activity. Now probably every time I go I have to tell my current
husband (who didn´t see it in the old days) how much I still miss what it
was like 15-20 years ago and he is remarkably tolerant of this (as he is with
most of my foibles). But I still have this fondness for the place that got
cemented back then and that´s probably part of what keeps me going back
even though it´s a qualitatively different experience now.

> they've still made some nice additions. Even in the arcade, where they gutted
> the classic games, that came with a modernization of their payment system.

Yeah, the end of the last sad pinball games at Cedar Point is another one of
my less favorite moves in recent years.

> The heart of the park are "big iron rides" and anyone
> who goes to Cedar Point is overwhelmingly likely to be drawn in by coasters
> and big flat rides. There's this fascination people have everywhere with
> trying to do "Disney things" with hyper immersive experiences and games, and
> at somewhere like Cedar Point, it's not gonna work that well.

I think there´s a good bit of room between being narrowly focused on
coasters and being Disney. My earliest memories of Cedar Point are of riding
Earthquake, the Mill Race, and the Western Cruise with my parents when I was
very young. They weren´t roller coaster people then (or now), but they
still enjoyed being at an amusement park. As you said, people don´t
necessarily want live actors and a "plot" on Snake River Expedition. (I
could do without that myself.) They want to enjoy a boat ride around the
lagoon, though. I feel like that´s the gap between Disney and a pure thrill
park and I´m happy to see them take up a little more room there.

[Regarding my self-described `forgiving´ attitude]
> Lots of people are. I remember before the pandemic when Pointbuzz had a
> thread in which members chastized each other for not volunteering hours at
> Cedar Point to help them with their staffing issues in the fall.

I´m glad I missed that. I read the Pointbuzz forums intermittently, but
when I do I sometimes wish I hadn't. Believe me, I´d never say something
like that. When I say that I´m forgiving, I should clarify what I mean by
that. I don´t forgive the corporation in any literal or moral sense. I´m
quite ready to criticize them, even if one could argue it´s toothless when
I still give them money. But I am certainly not one of those people who rush
to defend park ownership no matter what, and in fact that behavior by
enthusiasts drives me crazy. It´s not just enthusiasts, of course -
there´s a big streak in American culture of thinking a business can do no
wrong as long as they´re not overtly breaking laws (and maybe not then
either) - but enthusiasts have a special brand of it. I think it´s a
combination of kissing up, and the fear that acknowledging bad behavior by
park ownership might disrupt their hobby in some way.

No, when I say I´m forgiving, what I mean is just that I´m usually pretty
good at focusing on things I did enjoy or things that did go well, so I am
able to get to the end of a day with a lot of objectively disappointing or
frustrating stuff happening and still think, "I had a good time," and go
back again. In other words, it doesn´t take much for me to feel like I had
a worthwhile time at a park. I just wanted to make sure you didn´t mistake
my attitude for one of apologism toward the parks on a moral plane.

--
Heather, the Carousel Rabbit

This year has been relatively calm for me, with 35 coasters so far.

1) Gran Canaria in January – one coaster
2) France in April – mopping up more or less everything I still had to do there.
3) Poland in June – as above.

I'm going to do a few more this weekend, basing out of Vienna for four days – and I'll be at Grona Lund in July, but after that who knows?

I have other priorities in my life now. I spent almost a week in Malta with my partner without a single coaster.

-
www.superiorsolitaire.com

> I don´t know if I mentioned this before but I run the pinball league now so
> if you are there on a Tuesday night and see someone giving directions to a
> crowd at the pinball machines that´ll be me (or my assistant director, but
> that´s my husband and we´re easy to tell apart).

You had not, and I'll keep that in mind. In the "everyone shares about real life" stuff, here's also a paper I contributed to (I helped design the survey) which it seems like you might care about on some level given your interests. Right now the only citation calls our group "colonizers", which sure is fun given that this was intended to be supplementary data for funding requests from donors, not necessarily a paper onto itself. We have an actual inpatient survey going oversampling minorities intentionally to actually achieve the goals our one critic suggested we should have, but it turns out that trying to go room to room in a pandemic involving airborne viruses isn't something the IRB is enamored with. It was this or nothing and it's still just about the only lit on the subject. But I guess that would involve emailing anyone on the team instead of just trying to dunk on us.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23743735211046089

> I´m sorry they removed their car ride, but the improved kiddie area does
> make sense for them. And I could never get that excited about the car ride
> because it just drives itself. If the gas pedal doesn´t do anything, I
> don´t feel like it´s a proper car ride. I miss Cedar Point having three
> of the good kind.
>

It was weird. Basically a dark ride but outdoors. And weird beats "good" sometimes because novelty means something after thousands upon thousands of rides.

> What draws me to Michigan´s Adventure is that it´s far closer than Cedar
> Point, it doesn´t require an exhausting all-day trip (I´m getting kind of
> old to really enjoy getting home from CP at 2 or 3 am dog tired), and I´m
> really not picky about roller coasters. I´ve said before, it´s a
> blessing, like being a cheap drunk. Having any non-kiddie coaster and being
> less than two hours away is going to be more than enough to draw me to a
> place. The only thing that makes a coaster bad to me is if it´s so painful
> I can´t take it, and the only coaster there that is on the cusp of that is
> Wolverine Wildcat, even though I actually used to enjoy it quite a bit in the
> 2000s. (It´s really weird now, by the way, with the steel track only on the
> first hill; it goes from so excessively smooth it doesn´t feel right, back
> to being almost unbearably rough the rest of the ride.) I enjoy junior
> woodens a lot generally, so I like Zach´s Zoomer and just wish it had full
> sized trains so I could sit side by side with my riding partner. Shivering
> Timbers is Shivering Timbers, of course, and the rest of the coasters I find
> enjoyable enough to be worth riding. Actually, I´m pretty keen on Mad Mouse
> too, but it´s just the horrible operations that hold it back since they put
> the seatbelts on it and changed the loading process. It always used to be
> good for one or two rides for me in the old days, but lately it´s either
> down all day or has a ridiculous line. If not for that, I enjoy it. I like
> wild mice.

The log flume at the park isn't bad either. Not a lot of places have three wood coasters and it does, but there's some major flaws with one of them, and the third is basically intended for someone who isn't me (e.g. children).. Their carousel is wack. The arcade is wack. The train is kinda interesting except for the time I was told to hand over my cell phone for taking a photo of Shivering Timbers from it (I opted instead to immediately leave the park). Ultimately, I think to myself, "Will I enjoy myself as much as I would if I just went for a walk?" You pointed out that there was a time 15-20 years ago when attending the park wasn't an exercise in lowering expectations and trying to avoid conflict in unmoving queues. That's arguably the worst thing when it comes to being a "fan" with MiAdv in their backyard - you can't converse about it without running into someone who hasn't gone in a quarter century who has very strong opinions about how not busy and leisurely it is.

> I think there´s a good bit of room between being narrowly focused on
> coasters and being Disney. My earliest memories of Cedar Point are of riding
> Earthquake, the Mill Race, and the Western Cruise with my parents when I was
> very young. They weren´t roller coaster people then (or now), but they
> still enjoyed being at an amusement park. As you said, people don´t
> necessarily want live actors and a "plot" on Snake River Expedition. (I
> could do without that myself.) They want to enjoy a boat ride around the
> lagoon, though. I feel like that´s the gap between Disney and a pure thrill
> park and I´m happy to see them take up a little more room there.
>

If I think about it in design/architecture terms, the experience of riding a roller coaster is somewhat emotionally constraining. It's just like raw joy/fear for however long it runs. You need spaces to decompress in, and being thrust into activity and paying attention is not really the best way to go about that IMO. The Disney thing right now is highly structured play intended more for adults than children - that's how I perceive Snake River Expedition. It serves more the people who designed it than it does the actual audience. Same with Forbidden Frontier - that money could have been invested in a really great show area for their nighttime spectacular whether on the island or not. Having one of your primary arteries for foot traffic go directly through the middle of a big show always seemed like an intensely stupid thing to do, but they were unwilling to alter things to push the crowd behind the grandstands or whatever. That doesn't mean you can't have "theming" or "family attractions", but the perception you see is that this is the market expectation in spite of the market never seeming to react that strongly to any of it. Even Galaxy's Edge opened to an attendance stumble.

>I think it´s a combination of kissing up, and the fear that acknowledging bad behavior by
> park ownership might disrupt their hobby in some way.

The clubs in the US have transitioned away from any sort of overarching societal good through their influence (the preservation mission) in parks to one in which opinions and values are mediated by the parks themselves. We are to act like good little children and assume that they are, in fact, always right. They aren't, obviously. If they had been, Six Flags never would have needed to go into Chapter 11 Bankruptcy nor SeaWorld become overly reliant on what turned out to be phantom Chinese investment. Again, because this has come up before, I'm always struck by the people who aren't regularly attending events or even going to parks who feel the need to chime in with what and how ACE or the ECC or any other club should conduct business and how we should relate as enthusiasts to the parks. And I guess I soon will fall into this group as well. I only hope to have enough self awareness to not continue arguing about it should I just not "return".

> No, when I say I´m forgiving, what I mean is just that I´m usually pretty
> good at focusing on things I did enjoy or things that did go well, so I am
> able to get to the end of a day with a lot of objectively disappointing or
> frustrating stuff happening and still think, "I had a good time," and go
> back again. In other words, it doesn´t take much for me to feel like I had
> a worthwhile time at a park. I just wanted to make sure you didn´t mistake
> my attitude for one of apologism toward the parks on a moral plane.

Gotcha. I don't want to ascribe to you any motivations that aren't there either.

On Jun 21, 2022, GodsOnSafari wrote
(in article<6406854e-7ef6-43cf-b1cf-7cb0f0df006fn@googlegroups.com>):
On Jun 21, 2022, GodsOnSafari wrote
(in article<6406854e-7ef6-43cf-b1cf-7cb0f0df006fn@googlegroups.com>):

> > I don´t know if I mentioned this before but I run the pinball league now so
> > if you are there on a Tuesday night and see someone giving directions to a
> > crowd at the pinball machines that´ll be me (or my assistant director, but
> > that´s my husband and we´re easy to tell apart).
>
> You had not, and I'll keep that in mind. In the "everyone shares about real
> life" stuff, here's also a paper I contributed to (I helped design the
> survey) which it seems like you might care about on some level given your
> interests.

I have a Usenet history going back to 1993 under my real name(s) that´s now
immortalized by Google, so obviously I´m not too worried about spilling my
real life details anymore. I checked out your article. It looks like
important work. The stuff I do is obviously not as empirical.

[Regarding MiAdv´s car ride]
>
> It was weird. Basically a dark ride but outdoors. And weird beats "good"
> sometimes because novelty means something after thousands upon thousands of
> rides.

I have to give you that, and it´s made me rethink my negative assessment of
Be-Bop Blvd. I do tend to like uncommon, weird, and oddball rides. I´m not
sure why this one didn´t do it for me. I think it´s because it sort of
felt like they couldn´t quite be bothered to put in an actual car ride and
half-assed it. It was meant as the replacement for a traditional car ride
that was wrecked by the derecho, but seemed like a poor substitute, kind of
like Luna Park putting in a Motocoaster and calling it Steeplechase.
"Close, but no cigar."
>
> The log flume at the park isn't bad either. Not a lot of places have three
> wood coasters and it does, but there's some major flaws with one of them, and
> the third is basically intended for someone who isn't me (e.g. children).
> Their carousel is wack.

The carousel is only wack because it´s not hand carved. Obviously that´s
a big deal and a big difference, but almost no parks put in wooden carousels
(anymore). A bunch of zoos and public parks and the like put in Carousel
Works carousels starting in the 90s, but no amusement parks I can think of.
Amusement parks put in fiberglass carousels and as those go, this is a good
one. It´s run too slow (like nearly all park carousels) but it has nice
features, particularly the fine hand painted details on the figures. They
aren´t period authentic, but they´re really interesting and imaginative.
Someone who had been at Chance back in the day once told me that they were
really proud of the hand painting they did on those animals back in the day.
I don´t believe the newer ones have that. Plus it is populated with a
really nice variety of fiberglass molds of famous antique carvings including
a big bunch of menagerie figures. For contrast, look at Waldameer´s Chance
carousel, which lacks the detailed painting and has only two dragons to serve
as non-horse figures. I admit, I have a personal preference toward species
variety on a carousel, which not everyone does. But I think that, _for a
fiberglass carousel_, Michigan´s Adventure´s is one of the nicer ones. It
needs a better location and setting, more speed, and a band organ and then it
would be a respectable modern carousel.

(I can´t believe I´ve just mounted a spirited defense of a fiberglass
carousel. I have really gone soft.)

> The clubs in the US have transitioned away from any sort of overarching
> societal good through their influence (the preservation mission) in parks to
> one in which opinions and values are mediated by the parks themselves.

That´s too bad, if true. I really care about historic preservation. I care
about it more than I do about the latest and greatest, by far.

--
Heather, the Carousel Rabbit

> I have a Usenet history going back to 1993 under my real name(s) that´s now
> immortalized by Google, so obviously I´m not too worried about spilling my
> real life details anymore. I checked out your article. It looks like
> important work. The stuff I do is obviously not as empirical.
>

We try, you know?

> I have to give you that, and it´s made me rethink my negative assessment of
> Be-Bop Blvd. I do tend to like uncommon, weird, and oddball rides. I´m not
> sure why this one didn´t do it for me. I think it´s because it sort of
> felt like they couldn´t quite be bothered to put in an actual car ride and
> half-assed it. It was meant as the replacement for a traditional car ride
> that was wrecked by the derecho, but seemed like a poor substitute, kind of
> like Luna Park putting in a Motocoaster and calling it Steeplechase.
> "Close, but no cigar."

I thought it was stupid at first too, but rode it and was like "This is really bizarre. And...interesting." But I can see your perspective on this.

> (I can´t believe I´ve just mounted a spirited defense of a fiberglass
> carousel. I have really gone soft.)

On the upside, I learned a lot of minor details about fiberglass carousels!

> That´s too bad, if true. I really care about historic preservation. I care
> about it more than I do about the latest and greatest, by far.

Ask yourself what ACE's statement is in relation to Great America's closing; "it's sad it's going away but CoasterCon 44 is gonna be great there!"

On Tuesday, 21 June 2022 at 14:28:38 UTC+1, GodsOnSafari wrote:

> The clubs in the US have transitioned away from any sort of overarching societal good
>through their influence (the preservation mission) in parks to one in which opinions and
>values are mediated by the parks themselves. We are to act like good little children and
>assume that they are, in fact, always right.

ACE has always been a bit like that. I remember being surprised that members are expected to always speak positively about coasters. That's one of the things I like about the ECC; if a ride sucks, we will say so in First Drop.. I have done so more than once.

-
www.superiorsolitaire.com

On Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 5:40:31 PM UTC-4, Richard Bannister wrote:
> On Tuesday, 21 June 2022 at 14:28:38 UTC+1, GodsOnSafari wrote:

> ACE has always been a bit like that. I remember being surprised that members are expected to always speak positively about coasters. That's one of the things I like about the ECC; if a ride sucks, we will say so in First Drop. I have done so more than once.

Well, as I'm sure you've noted at some point, I'm a member of ECC (and too have contributed to First Drop), and not one of ACE, so I agree about that categorical difference in the mentalities of both pretty strongly! That said, I don't know if ACE has always really been like that. I get the sense from old timers that it wasn't always the case, but you know, people say things and in time you find out they're completely wrong. There's still people who claim that Beast ran untrimmed even though there's video evidence of the trim brake being present before opening day.

On Wednesday, June 29, 2022 at 12:23:33 PM UTC-4, GodsOnSafari wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 5:40:31 PM UTC-4, Richard Bannister wrote:
> > On Tuesday, 21 June 2022 at 14:28:38 UTC+1, GodsOnSafari wrote:
>
> > ACE has always been a bit like that. I remember being surprised that members are expected to always speak positively about coasters. That's one of the things I like about the ECC; if a ride sucks, we will say so in First Drop. I have done so more than once.
> Well, as I'm sure you've noted at some point, I'm a member of ECC (and too have contributed to First Drop), and not one of ACE, so I agree about that categorical difference in the mentalities of both pretty strongly! That said, I don't know if ACE has always really been like that. I get the sense from old timers that it wasn't always the case, but you know, people say things and in time you find out they're completely wrong. There's still people who claim that Beast ran untrimmed even though there's video evidence of the trim brake being present before opening day.

Maybe it was there but sometimes not used? I’ve been on coasters before where that was the case.

The thing with ACE and criticizing coasters or parks is not "don't to it", but do it constructively. Write a letter, or email, be smart about it, don't air it all in public and yes that also means on the internet and social media. Tell them why you don't like something or a specific ride, coaster, or change. Tell them why it might make the public happier to not do what they did, or attempt to come up with some valid reaason that mike actually make sense to a business like an amusement park. It's fine to say you don't care for something or it's not your cup of tea, just be respectful with your criticism.

Ted

On Friday, 29 July 2022 at 06:35:31 UTC+1, Ansley wrote:
> The thing with ACE and criticizing coasters or parks is not "don't to it", but do it constructively.

The code of conduct explicitly says:

"...they are to avoid negative criticism to representatives of the press or media."

I don't like that, and never have. As someone who has ridden a lot of coasters over the years I think it is beholden upon me to say when a ride is not good, not least because if I extol the virtues of (for example) an extremely rough coaster it's entirely possible that my words will make someone think that all coasters are extremely rough. I won't do that.

-
www.superiorsolitaire.com

They even find good things to say about every SLC made.

On Friday, July 29, 2022 at 1:35:31 AM UTC-4, Ansley wrote:
> The thing with ACE and criticizing coasters or parks is not "don't to it", but do it constructively. Write a letter, or email, be smart about it, don't air it all in public and yes that also means on the internet and social media. Tell them why you don't like something or a specific ride, coaster, or change. Tell them why it might make the public happier to not do what they did, or attempt to come up with some valid reaason that mike actually make sense to a business like an amusement park. It's fine to say you don't care for something or it's not your cup of tea, just be respectful with your criticism.
>

Yeah, fuck that shit. The idea that I can't say "Jeff Henry from Schlitterbahn is a scumbag" anywhere publicly online in spite of multiple crimes committed and convicted is preposterous. Or that if I write a trip report, I can't provide my actual thoughts about anything if I didn't like it. ACE is doing it because they want to protect their precious access to ERT; access which is generally out of their hands increasingly at parks like Cedar Fair's. Corny, corny stuff.