gucky

We did a lot of ambling around Dutch Wonderland. It's a very good-sized park for wandering around without specific purpose. The attraction we most absolutely had to see besides the roller coasters was the (Dutch) Wonder House, an optical-illusion stunt. It doesn't quite date back to the start of the park --- it opened in 1964, a year after the rest of the park did --- but it's still wonderful. It's a couple benches inside a miniature house and, while you sit, the house starts swinging back and forth and rotating. It's hard resisting the illusion that you're rocking upside-down, and it's remarkably good at that. We've been on a handful of these (they're not so common as they were in the 1960s) but this was the first we'd been on together and it was nice getting back to it. The ride operator assured a worried kid before the ride started that they didn't actually move. It spoils the surprise a little, but it's better than a kid refusing out of fear to ride.

The ride that took us the longest time to get on was the Monorail. We're always going to be interested in a monorail ride, of course, but it had more of a line than we expected and for more of the day. We ended up getting a seat in the front car, just behind the driver, and could see stuff like the security camera and the row of dials and buttons and also the box fan the driver had pointing at them this --- go ahead, say it with me --- hot and muggy day. The monorail is a single-station loop, although it does go past a part that clearly used to be a stop. It's outside the park grounds, though, so it must have been in use before the park became pay-one-price and you could just wander in and buy ride tickets a la carte. The path it follows is a good one, though, taking you through what's now the heart of the park and then outside all the way to the edge of the Lincoln Highway (the park is on US 30 in Lancaster) before coming back inside.

We also took the Dragon's Lair ride. This is a boat trip along a little lake that goes out past the entrance of the park, where you can see the Lincoln Highway and all. We weren't sure whether the giant head of Duke, or of a different dragon, emerged from the central mountain last time. We are more confident that they'd added a bit of a fun search game. There are signs challenging you to find an alligator and a couple frogs and so on, and these figures are arranged along the boat's path. Nicely, they're not all placed right by the signs. A couple are even well past the next sign, so you have a modest but real challenge seeing them all.

If anything was disappointing about the place it was food; we couldn't find vegetarian options and settled for fries, and ended up in a line at the fries place that was very slow-moving as somehow a bunch of groups ahead of us were making 'get a bucket of fries' complicated. While waiting we got to see that one of their live-action shows is themed to Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, complete with Daniel Striped Tiger mascot. That they have this is a spinoff of Hershey selling the park to Kennywood, as that made Idlewild --- which has a Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood section --- a sister park. (In trade, you can see Duke stuff at Idlewild and Kennywood.) We didn't have time to watch Daniel Tiger's Grr-ific Day!, but we saw it happening while doing other things.

Also we learned, later, that we had given up too easily. There's a cafeteria where we went to refill our souvenir drink bottle (the guy I bought it from was definitely caught by surprise by my asking how long between refills and told me fifteen minutes or whatever) and rebuild strength under air conditioning some. On the menu there, turns out, they had veggie burgers. By then we'd already eaten, but if we'd had any idea that this was an option we'd have gone there sooner.

And now even more of that Cedar Point trip taken in early October last year. You know, it's probably a good thing I was without camera for a while as it spares you a bunch of pictures of ... well, mostly Pinball At The Zoo. But it's a while you won't be crushed under my poor ability to leave pictures out of sharing with you.

Further along by Raptor here's a couple of what look like old water tanks, I think props maybe originally from Disaster Transport, done up as jack-o-lanterns, signifying ?? ???? ??? ? ??????.

Though Siren's Curse would not open until this year they were already selling merchandise for it.

And over here's the end of ValRavn's lift hill, and its two very steep drops. Also underneath, some of the grease trucks they had in. They haven't had Cupzilla back and I hope it's still around.

Here's one of the Snake River Falls boats already moved to the Rides Graveyard. Corkscrew's coaster goes by in the background.

Anyway here's the poem written to eulogize Snake River Falls. Also a kid who jumped up on the concrete wall beside it.

This is looking over in the direction of where Siren's Curse would be erected. The building there was for the lighting and audio and stuff for the stage shows.

Trivia: After a week in which Louisiana governor Earl K Long burst into profanity at least twice in the state legislature, he was flown from Baton Rouge to Galveston, Texas, the 30th of May for mental observation. After medical testimony that Long was mentally ill and likely to injure himself or others, Galveston Probate Judge Hugh Gibson ordered Long into protective custody. The 12th of June, Long charged in a court petition that he had been drugged in Louisiana and bound and taken to Galveston by force. The 17th he was released from John Sealy Hospital in Galveston to enter the Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans, which he exited the next day, only for state police with a court order from his wife remanding him to the Southeast Louisiana State Hospital. The 26th of June, Long discharged the director of state hospitals and the superintendent of the State Hospital, naming replacements who declared him sane and set him free. Source: The Year We Had No President, Richard Hansen.

Currently Reading: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, Clare Hunter.

The not-a-full-day park we figured to go to before Hershey was, of course, Dutch Wonderland. It's maybe an hour from HersheyPark and though they're no longer owned by the same company --- Kennywood's chain bought out Dutch Wonderland, and now Dollywood's company owns Kennywood and Dutch Wonderland --- but they make a natural pair of parks to visit together. We hadn't been to either since that weekend in 2010 when bunnyhugger applied for a community college job she knew she wouldn't get (nor, really, want) but figured was a good way for us to get some parks in.

Something new to Dutch Wonderland's outskirts: the Cartoon Network Hotel (the sign outside says Eat Sleep Cartoon), which had we known was there would have ... probably not got us staying there instead. But maybe we'd have gone to poke around and see the lobby at least. When I say it's on the outskirts I mean, it's literally the next parking lot over, the place to stay if you want to be a short walk from the park. I have no idea why Cartoon Network put their hotel next to Dutch Wonderland instead of a higher tier of park except maybe they figured to work out all the bugs in the concept before it'd be something anyone would notice. The hotel --- which has been owned by Dutch Wonderland's owners since 2018 --- opened in January 2020 so I guess they had a trial by fire all right.

Dutch Wonderland --- ``A Kingdom For Kids'' --- looks like something that opened as a roadside attraction themed to the Pennsylvania Dutch of the area --- the name and some of the older attractions, including animatronics of a quilting bee and of guys gossipping around the wood shop --- that somehow mutated into a fairy-tale-kingdom-themed place. And yet, says Wikipedia, the stone castle facade entrance was built by Earl Clark, the potato farmer who opened the park and ran it for decades, before the park's 1963 opening. We need a fuller history of the park somewhere.

We didn't get in for opening; we'd just been doing too much driving for that. But we were there before noon, and saw in the restaurant/event space as you enter the park's mascots --- Duke the Dragon, the Knight, the Princess, other folks --- doing some kind of get-ready-to-go chant, putting their hands on their head and waving at each other and looking silly the way you expect for some team-building ritual. And then, when we got through the ticket booth, we saw the most remarkable thing ...

They had park maps! And good ones too, on decent-quality paper and folded up with a cover and everything. Not as excellent as the maps at d'Efteling in 2012, but good maps that you could use to get around the park and keep as a souvenir. I snagged one for myself and failed to be clear enough to bunnyhugger that she might want to pick one up herself. But near the end of the day I did snag a couple pristine copies.

Oh also after this? We saw the mascots walking back from the restaurant into the park proper. Considering our good luck with Kenny Kangaroo and Freedom Eagle I leapt at Duke, and got permission to get bunnyhugger's picture with him. But just the one, as he was going in. I had assumed the rally I saw in the restaurant had been a start-of-shift we're-ready-for-this thing but apparently I misunderstood? Maybe it was celebrating that they got through the first meet-the-characters of the day without disaster.

Just before disappearing back into the off-stage areas Duke's straw boater hat fell off and he did his best to recover it but I think finally his handler had to pick it up. He was doing well for being caught in a big purple dragon costume in, have I mentioned recently, brutally hot and humid weather.

The spot where Duke and company disappeared was guarded by a bunch of walls, done up to look like several houses in a vaguely old-timey-German house, painted with windows and balconies and holiday events and such that gave us renditions of Duke welcoming you to the place, and the Princess and the Knight too, and Merlin and the new dragon that we knew was somehow tied in to the new roller coaster the park got since our 2010 visit, and also an Easter bunny, which is how we learned the park now had an Easter event. I don't think we ever got the rabbit's name or saw a plush of them but now we know they're out there.

We also did some rides and stuff too but I'm 800 words in so let's call that enough for one day.

On to the next thing in my photo roll which turns out to have actually happened before that Michigan's Adventure closing day and rainout. Sorry. But are you ready to guess what the day featured? Place your chips please and then we'll show you ...

And here we are, Cedar Point, early October, taking in what we hoped would be a low-key Sunday. It's not as low-key as we had hoped. The spots on the car next to us ar eat least some of them artistically placed; notice there's a smiling cat behind the rear passenger's window. On the bumper was written 'tell your cat I said psspsspsss'.

Gorgeous warm day, though, with the sun nearly six times its normal size in the sky.

Also the lawn to the side of the Midway Carousel was incredible. Look at that putting green!

Oh yeah, did you remember Cedar Point has a swinging ships ride? I forget this every single time even when I see it.

Here's the swinging ship ride --- Ocean Motion --- reflected in its pond.

And here's bunnyhugger getting some quality time in on the Midway Carousel, a traditional first stop.

Trivia: TerryToons's second Oscar nomination was for the 1944 short My Boy Johnny, a string of jokes about what the G.I. could expect on returning to home life after the war, with such modern conveniences as planes with outdoor swimming pools, helicopters for every child, and automated homes with, for example, hands that wash and dry you. It lost to the Tom and Jerry cartoon Mouse Trouble. Source: TerryToons: The Story of Paul Terry and his Classic Cartoon Factory, W Gerald Hamonic, PhD. (That's the one where Tom gets a book about How To Catch A Mouse and, following its instructions, blows up the house, the book, and himself, but not Jerry.)

Currently Reading: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, Clare Hunter.

After our last visit to Six Flags America --- well, this news just came in. Apparently parkgoers have been grumbling about how many times big rides have been down this season and as you'd expect more of them have been doing as the season wears on. One person claiming to have been at the park the 2nd of July --- same as we were --- said they were able to ride every coaster, though, including Batwing. Which if true means that had we gone to the park sooner --- or stuck around later --- we'd have completed the set. Well, nothing to do now except maybe hope that the ride gets relocated or the park gets saved. (There's no reason it couldn't be sold to some other chain or even to independent buyers, after all. I'd say that kind of thing never happens except this is a world with Gene Staples, the guy who saved Indiana Beach and is trying to save Clementon Park and Fantasy Island/Niagara Amusement Park.)

But our next target was driving north to meet up with my brother. Just him, unfortunately; his wife and kids were visiting her family up in South Jersey. He'd found a Mexican restaurant --- a good bet for something vegetarian --- somewhere in Howard County near enough to his home and not too far from our path up north. It was in some kind of shopping/entertainment complex that apparently the whole of the county was attending, as we went through a huge parking lot to find not a single space open, and saw my brother on a corner where he advised us of a parking garage not too far off. I think we ended up on the fourth floor of that.

Also while orbiting the place we noticed a bar with a row of pinball machines and joked that why didn't he have us meet up there instead. We had thoughts of heading over to it but it was crowded, the night ended up being long, and we didn't have the time. It's also possible we forgot about it by the time we were done with dessert.

I did take a selfie with my brother to send my father, who'd spent much of the previous week texting every fifteen minutes to ask if we had figured out when and where we were meeting up. This soothed his anxiety about our rendezvous so well that he never responded to or acknowledged the picture in any way. And we got some time in talking about him, and the rest of the family, including the revelation of why there's one member I just never hear any word about. Unfortunately, the circumstances of why that is preclude my sharing it here so please know that bunnyhugger, on reading these words, gave me a hard time about presenting something as disproportionately mysterious.

After dinner we all went around to an ice cream parlor around the block and with a line of about six hundred people in it. My brother said it was a good one and it was, and also we hadn't had just a big ol' ice cream cone in ages. (Well, cup, for me, but the spirit was there.) And he's hoping to get on a little trip to Iceland (again) with Dad (again) and I think by the end of the night was proving how reasonable the fares from Detroit were. Also mentioning that if we downloaded some podcasts right there, with advertisers thinking we're in Rich Government People Land, we'd probably get them laced with commercials by weapons makers aimed at weapons-buyers for federal agencies, like, a missile that was faster than a (something)-horsepower motorboat. Credit to the advertising agency for making us realize we always just assumed that any missile was faster than any motorboat, huh?

With the hopes that it won't be an embarrassing number of years before we meet up again, we set back out. An ancient plan of ours, when we thought we might met my brother for a late lunch, was to get up to HersheyPark. Hershey's one of the few amusement parks to offer Starlite admissions, a cut price for the last several hours of the day. And they do something even better, a sneak peek admission . If you have full-day tickets you can use them to get in the last two hours of another day; the thinking is the day before your full-day use but that's not explicitly required. So what we had been thinking was to go to Hershey's the full day of the 4th of July, and --- since we had a partial-day park planned for the 3rd --- get Starlite tickets to go in the last four or so hours that day. And then the 2nd, which this was, we'd get to use the sneak-preview two hours, and maximize our chances of getting on all the major rides given we expected the park to be impossibly busy.

We were hilariously too late for that, though. And it turned out that we spent enough time at the partial-day park on the 3rd that we could only use the sneak-peak admission. Perhaps that would be enough. But as we drove through the Maryland night we couldn't know that.

So to surprise you? We're going back in time! Because I somehow blew right past a couple of pictures, including of our October visit to Marvin's. Please take in a couple views of the Marvelous Mechanical Museum in its old location.

Huh, that's a weird plate! I wonder if it means anything.

So inside the guy who runs the league was working on Ultimate X-Men, which I think was the brand-new game then, and I took a moment when he was away to get some photos from on the playfield. The Sentinel Head there is the thing to bash as much as you can when you start playing.

Ultimate X-Men continues the trend of having fewer pop bumpers; there's only two on the playfield and here's one of them.

And there, on the other side of the playfield, is the other. Although they're separated they do bounce the ball between them some and I like the early-80s-game style of that.

Enough staring close at pinball. Here's our good friend the possibly fake Fake Cardiff Giant.

Another detail photo of Mickey Mouse's Chocolate Factory because my previous one hadn't made clear enough for a friend that yeah, their candy factory is about covering turtles in chocolate and shipping them out. Reflections keep this one from being quite so clear but at least you see the turtles swimming in chocolate there.

Trivia: As many as 170 Cuba-bound ships carrying enslaved people destined for Cuba were organized in New York City between 1859 and 1861. British authorities estimated about eighty thousand enslaved people were brought in during this era. Source: Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, Peter Andreas.

Currently Reading: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, Clare Hunter.

I have told already the disappointment we had at Watkins Regional Park, to which we went after finishing at Glen Echo Park. Since Watkins Regional Park is almost across the street from Six Flags America we did go there for one last trip, and one last attempt to get the final roller coaster of the trip.

That would be Batwing, which we never saw operating on Tuesday. It might have operated on Monday but we never got there. Good chance it didn't, though. Apparently, the ride has not been reliable in forever, with (I had somehow got the idea) a lot of problems with the electrical supply. So we failed once more, and for the last time, to ride Batwing. There's no knowing what Six Flags will do with the park's rides when it closes; it's theoretically possible that they might relocate it to some other park. But the ride is a quarter-century old and it's not hard to imagine management figuring they could just buy a brand-new roller coaster with a different set of problems instead. bunnyhugger rode its twin at Geauga Lake, and we both rode the Geauga Lake twin when it went to Kings Island and became known as Firehawk, so at least we know roughly what the experience would have been.

We didn't figure to spend the whole day at the park --- at one time we had the idea we might get up to HersheyPark for the last couple hours of the day --- but we did want to at least get in some last rides. I got to take time for that Wonder Woman elevated-swings ride, along the way noting that the ride queue went past three signs explaining Wonder Woman's deal. Two of the signs had grammatical errors. Lovely view of the park, at least.

We got a front-seat ride on The Wild One, once more without waiting. And we prowled a little around the Looney Tunes Movie Town or whatever it's named, since that's on the way back to the carousel. I discovered the little fiberglass structure billed as Bugs Bunny's house and it was somehow pleasantly nothing. The big thing about the interior is it had painted on shelves of canned carrots.

After our last ride on the carousel --- bunnyhugger rode one of the camels, which are surprisingly hard to get on despite the fact they're laying down, just because they're also very wide --- we went, at her suggestion, for a ride on The Flying Carousel. This is a swings ride, not so elevated as Wonder Woman's is. Just an ordinary amount of elevation. Also the ride operator, as they had earlier days, was doing some nice crowd work, doing Simon Says games with the riders, that sort of thing.

By then it was past 5:30 and my brother had figured we were meeting for dinner after all. And we were resigned to not getting to HersheyPark that evening. But something appeared to stop us from leaving that early, and it was something we never expected to see.

Likely anyone reading this knows that the legacy Six Flags parks have the Warner Brothers Cartoon character licenses and you can expect to see, like, Bugs Bunny or Sylvester the Cat or Tweety in costume. But did you know they have individual park mascots too? At least some of them do? Six Flags America has a bald eagle, name of Freedom, and Freedom was there doing crowd work and photographs just as we were getting ready to go. We couldn't believe it when we saw Kenny, repeatedly, at Kennywood. But to see and get photos with a mascot we didn't even know existed? Astounding, and I at least wondered if we might see mascots at the other parks we planned to visit. Stay tuned; the answer might surprise you.

Well, it was only about an hour until the park would close, but we didn't think we could stay any longer. We headed out to meet up with my brother, and from there, reach Pennsylvania.

In pictures, now, back to Michigan's Adventure and what we did and could not believe we saw after going to the car.

As we headed back into the park we saw this, something we just never see at Michigan's Adventure: inclement weather!

It wasn't bad enough to keep us from riding Mad Mouse one more time, at least.

But you can see it's already dampened the pavement and the park staff was taking in setups like this taste-the-candy thing.

We were among the last riders on Mad Mouse before the rain would shut it down.

More sensible people --- we thought giving up too early --- exited the park and stayed dryer than we did.

Here's an entrance to Camp Snoopy, under the light rain.

Trivia: James Lovell became prime crew on Apollo 8, bumped up from backup, in the summer of 1968 when Michael Collins needed surgery to remove a bone spur from his spine. Source: Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft, Courtney G Brooks, James M Grimwood, Loyd S Swenson Jr. SP-4205. This brought Buzz Aldrin from Lunar Module to Command Module backup pilot, and made Fred Haise became backup Lunar Module pilot. (Apollo 8, which flew in December 1968, had no Lunar Module but the title was used anyway.)

Currently Reading: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, Clare Hunter.

Wednesday opened, hot and muggy, although a little less brutally muggy than previously. We had three objectives: Glen Echo Park, Watkins Regional Park, and meeting up with my brother. You know how Watkins Regional turned out. We also had a subsidiary objective, after getting to Watkins, of stopping in Six Flags America for one last try at Batwing.

So, Glen Echo Park, first. This used to be an amusement park, a trolley park --- they have a sliver of tracks in front of the gate, although those are ones installed in the early 2000s when they were getting a trolley donated from Philadelphia's transit agency --- on the west side of Washington, so we had to drive about 120 degrees around the Beltway to get there. It's also adjacent to the Clara Barton House, and turns out that at some points in the park's history it tried to harass her out of her home by doing things like building roller coasters right up to and maybe past the property line so she couldn't eat a meal in peace.

Glen Echo Park closed in 1969, a rough time for amusement parks. It was a few years early for big regional parks like Kings Dominion or, uh, Six Flags America to eat its lunch. Reading over the history it was probably wrecked first by Washington closing down the trolley lines (1960) and then desegregation, as a lot of parks shut down rather than handle Black people being treated like people. The park was officially desegregated in 1961 and Everyone Knew the park was unsafe by 1966. But the community rallied to save the park as an historic structure, at least, and in 1970 it became a National Park, although only the carousel among the rides was preserved. A great many of the buildings, many a bold Streamline Moderne style, including the gorgeous entrance, survive. And now I regretted that we had left our letterboxing gear behind, since I keep my National Parks Passport with that and I could've got a stamp. Maybe; I never figured out where to go to ask for a stamp, which they'd probably have done on a loose sheet of paper to go into my book.

The park has an historical marker on a stone, noting the sit-in and the Americans arrested for trying to ride the carousel while Black --- on the date that would become our anniversary, it happens --- and how this led to the park's integration in 1961. And the carousel is in beautiful shape, showing what you can do with an antique when the preservers have Smithsonian money. Well, National Park Service money but I imagine they call their buddies at the Smithsonian for advice. It's a Dentzel carousel so yes, it's got rabbits, and you won't be surprised to know what we rode. You might be surprised that the rabbit has pawpads painted on and, bunnyhugger noted on one rabbit, the wrong number of toes. (The carousel also has ostriches, a giraffe, a deer, and a lion and tiger. It used to have the brass ring game, but that doesn't run anymore.)

The carousel also has a horse carved and painted with Indian motifs, with a shield on the saddle showing a long-haired man in feather hat. This is not a rideable horse; Glen Echo Park declared this to be kept in ``ninety percent'' original paint (with a clear coating) and so for preservation purposes, so people could see how actual original paint looks, no one's to ride it, and the sign explaining its Preservation In Action status is attached to the center pole and blocks the saddle entirely. It also contains a note about the indigenous people who've lived in the Potomac Valley for thousands of years, and honors ``the resilience and perseverance of these Nations''. So I'm assuming that as soon as the fascists hear about it riding the Indian horse is going to become mandatory.

It was not yet, though. The carousel was going, not too fast (I think it may have been doing three rotations per minute), although the band organ had a nice, somewhat quirky selection of things. I can't bring any to mind right now but I feel like it was a lot of 60s sitcom themes. They do have a band organ, and a healthy number of scrolls, although I imagine without knowing that they've converted it to MIDI control for the sake of ease for everyone.

The park is not large --- a lot of these really old trolley parks were surprisingly small --- but I managed to get lost from bunnyhugger nevertheless. Well, I saw her going off to look at the arcade building or something (I was fascinated by the Cuddle Up building; the Cuddle Up was a teacup ride and it's now used for art classes and stage performances), and I figured I'd go take pictures of the front entrance and we'd meet back up, and apparently we just kept chasing each other around and past very slight obstructions until she finally caught me photographing the empty Crystal Pool.

We would get a couple of rides in on the carousel --- we worried we might not at all, because there was a school group there when we arrived and the place was packed with your School Group Chaos, hyperactive molecules of children forming unpredictable groups and sometimes filling up the ride; but they didn't stick around long, not by the time we got there --- and also eat at the refreshment stand. They had margherita sandwiches and I told you we had those at several parks, somehow.

And we also had a wonderful surprise going into the bathroom building! We saw a skink on the tile, holding still, trying not to be perceived. From looking over Maryland skink types I think this was a five-lined skink but if I'm wrong, who's to know? I did watch as the creature got out of the cooler confines of the building into the bushes outside so the creature probably knows what it's doing.

After more time than we somehow expected we'd be there, we took a last look around, trying to find particularly the remains of the amphitheater (did I mention the park opened as a chautauqua?) that used to be over a creek. To our eyes, whatever might remain is hidden by regrown nature, so that's probably for the best. But after all this, regretting only that we wouldn't see the park by night, we went off to our second park, way back on the other side of the Beltway.

Let's take in some more Michigan's Adventure Tricks-or-Treats closing day, please:

Camp Snoopy has a couple banners with the various characters and their achievements. I guess I'll accept Peppermint Patty as taking up spelunking, there's no reason she couldn't be fine at that. Lucy, though ... I question whether 'canoe tipping' is something you can get a badge in. Maybe in unsanctioned scout troops.

bunnyhugger pauses to change film from one kind to another. Hope she didn't forget to change her ISO setting to match!

Now to the Trunk-or-Treat cars, redressed cars from the former Be-Bop Boulevard ride. Here's the Mummy.

I think this was to be Disney's Cheshire Cat but there's defensible alternatives.

Here's the row, by the way, along the edge of the lagoon that reaches back to the water park.

Pirate ship car is looking pretty seaworthy. Note it's got cannons pointed at the next car over.

Trivia: One of the (several) dockings between Gemini 12 and its Agena target satellite was misaligned. Commander Jim Lovel used a series of firings on the forward and the aft thrusters to rock the Gemini capsule free, just as one might rock a car free from mud or snow, without damaging either. Source: Gemini: Steps to the Moon, David J Shayler.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 69: Pappy to the Rescue!, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

This week my humor blog reached a milestone, something we've been waiting for for a year now. Want to see what it was? Or just to see me say something different about Compu-Toon? Here's what you've missed:

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 51
• Of Course, I’m the One Sitting Watching Both of Them
• Statistics Saturday: The Time
• The Least Inexplicable _Compu-Toon_ of All Time
• Statistics July: In Which AI Screws Up Yet Another Month
• What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Why was that guy stealing art? May – August 2025
• Not the ‘They Are Not Just Plain Deer’ Line, Of Course
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 52

Now in pictures? We're off to ... Tricks-and-Treats at Michigan's Adventure! But this is different in that it's closing day of the season! We had something that never happened to us before that day at the park. Plus we both went in kigurumi. I wore Stitch's Girlfriend Angel, and bunnyhugger wore ...

Cerberus! The first time she's gone to a park while three-headed. People loved it. Since no rides with an over-the-shoulder restraint were running this was fine to wear. (I used Angel rather than the red panda because Angel's tail would fit under a seat in a way the red panda's could not possibly.)

It was only maybe two weeks after our previous visit but already autumn had got much more advanced. The park really shines this time of year.

Why, the leaves are even trying to match the purple pennants!

Here's the path to Mad Mouse, long ago the main midway for the park and now just kind of there.

We didn't catch the One-Room Ghoulhouse during a story time this visit. Did get these skeletons doing farm warm, though.

Also we finally saw this little stage with performers! We ended up hanging out the rest of the show, partly by virtue of being the four or five-person nucleus around whom the crowd gathered.

Nice little monster tree hanging out in front of the Tilt-a-Whirl.

They had a Mummy Pizza as one of the meal options and yeah, it wasn't bad. The sauce on the side is ranch that I used to spruce up the crust.

Skeletons rooting you on to the log flume that's closed for the season anyway.

And now, the carousel. Or Scare-ousel, since it was running backward.

Many people were in costume, not just us, so we had some comfortable cover. The food stall on the left has been rebuilt since last year and now there's a solid, windowless wall there.

Ride operator giving instructions to the riders on the Scare-ousel.

Trivia: For the close of the 1949-1950 season, the NBC Symphony Orchestra took a six-week tour of the United States, travelling in a twelve-car train with Arturo Toscanini (then 83 years old) and his 106 musicians. The largest crowd, twelve thousand people, gathered in Cleveland. Source: The Mighty Music Box: The Golden Age of Musical Radio, Thomas A DeLong.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 69: Pappy to the Rescue!, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Enough of what we didn't ride at Six Flags America the first day of July. What did we ride? And you won't be surprised it was mostly roller coasters. The park has nine coasters and we had got to three of them the day before. Assuming the rain would cut us off at 4 pm that gave us six coasters to ride in about five hours, which we could definitely do at, say, Michigan's Adventure or on a not-packed day at Cedar Point. The park seemed to us not particularly busy, maybe an effect of the heat or that we were there first thing in the morning. Maybe because the Six Flags decision to close the park is justified. Don't care to suppose that.

We went first to Roar, the other wooden coaster at the park. It opened in 1998, one of the first coasters built by Great Coasters International, the folks behind just so many great coasters, including Kings Island's Mystic Timbers, d'Efteling's Joris en de Draak, Dollywood's Thunderhead, and HersheyPark's Lightning Racer. We didn't know just who made it when we were at the park, but looking at it, with some of GCI's signature moves like this way they bank and turn their drops, we knew who built it. Assuming the park closes Roar is most likely to be demolished; moving wooden coasters was a short-lived 80s fad, and while historic preservation might work for the arguably 108-year-old Wild One, nobody's going to put that much effort into a mere 27-year-old coaster however important it might be as the oldest intact ride from a significant modern manufacturer.

Of course we enjoyed the ride. But I pause here to mention that the Roar logo features the letter A in a different color. This typographic choice carried across a lot of the rides, not just roller coasters but anything that could get its own name featured. Eventually it dawned on us the highlight A was for this being the America park. Sorry to spoil it for you.

With Roar ridden, though, we went over to the steel roller coasters, starting in Gotham City with the Joker's Jinx. It's your bright green and purple with yellow cars style of Joker, just to help you place the tone. And the ride uses a linear induction motor to get the train up to speed, not a lift hill, something we didn't think about until moments before launch. I think bunnyhugger made some hurried moves to secure her sunglasses in the last seconds before takeoff. It's your classic spaghetti-bowl track, and the great thing to us is that it uses a lap bar rather than over-the-shoulder restraints. This means our heads were not banged against anything while we rode.

I'm not sure if this was in Gotham City or in an adjacent section, the suburbs, but we did get to Firebird. This ride is, like Rougarou at Cedar Point, a onetime standing coaster converted to a seated one, so while it's a decent enough ride you can also kind of feel how less intense it is than you'd expect, legacy of the days when people had to bear all its stress on their feet and the bicycle seat tucked between their legs. For some reason this is the one roller coaster the park has dedicated shirts for and it's ... like ... an okay ride but why this?

This would be a new coaster credit for me, my 303rd. But for bunnyhugger? Probably not. This ride, in its earlier, floorless, incarnation, was at Six Flags Great America from 1990 through 2011, where it was known as Iron Wolf, and she surely rode it on a trip then. I mention this because I realized I forgot to explain something about Ragin' Cajun the other day.

As that lead-in suggests: this was not a new ride for bunnyhugger. Ragin' Cajun, like Firebird, used to be at Six Flags Great America, where it was known as ... well, Ragin' Cajun also. But she did ride it there. So not only did she ride a crazy-intense spinning wild mouse that bruised her head and arms and shoulders, but she didn't even get to count it as a new ride. At least Firebird offered no injury to add to insult.

And now ... the last of the Michigan's Adventure pictures from September! We'd make another Halloweekends trip, but that's to come later. For now, take a last look at the park and a last look at September 2024 ...

This time I noticed a sign just before the entrance had the important message: [ blank ]. I forgot to check what it says this season. We'll be back, surely.

So, where was it you said Zach's Zoomer was? ... Also you can see those banners I took the obstructed view from earlier in this photo reel.

Here's the Zach's Zoomer station decorated for Trick-or-Treats. Nothing too elaborate but it was nice.

Back to the Scare-o-sel! Here's bunnyhugger riding the dragon.

And I got a picture of the operational report for the ride.

Finally, a closing view of the Mad Mouse, with the giant human skeleton in front calling out to the heavens! Come over here, look at this ride! Isn't that something?

Trivia: Philip Armour was part of the California gold rush before getting into the Milwaukee grocery business, from which he would turn to preserved and canned meat. Source: The Age of Capital, 1848 - 1875, Eric Hobsbawm. Wikipedia says he made a good eight thousand dollars in the sluice-building business by the time he turned 24.

Currently Reading: The Invention of Scarcity: Malthus and the Margins of History, Deborah Valenze. So I get Valenze's point about Malthus having not paid attention to how much food can be grown in ways that do not get tallied in markets, or that don't get rated by scientists as nourishment (except possibly as famine foods, eaten when nothing else exists). But I feel like this is missing the point that ... like, even if Malthus only talks about wheat, what about the argument about agricultural productivity versus population growth is different if there's a larger class of foods to consider? I feel like an abstraction of ``agriculture produces wheat which is eaten by people'' fine enough for a basic model and that Valenze does not.