Going Faster Than a Roller Coaster
Jun. 22nd, 2011 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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bethje's cousin and her husband and son were going to Six Flags Great Adventure, we decided to tag along. As it turned out, though, we didn't see a whole lot of them. Her husband is the kind of person who's terrified to ride anything, even the merry-go-round. I can't say that's a fear I can identify with. I've been scared of a lot of things in my time, but amusement park rides never really bothered me. They were just fun, and it was all so tightly controlled that there was little chance of anything going wrong. (Mind you, this doesn't apply to traveling carnivals, and I still AM afraid of most of their rides.) Everyone has their fears, I suppose, but what I find weird is that Beth's cousin-in-law will spend money to get into the park, and then more money than that to play midway games. There are so many places where you can play those without an admission fee. Oh, well.
I think it had been about six years since Beth and I had last been to the park, and they'd put in several new roller coasters since then. Their gimmick is that they're constantly putting in bigger and fancier coasters, many of them named after DC characters. They've had a Batman coaster for years, originally installed to tie in with the Tim Burton film, and around 2003 they put in a Superman one. The newest contribution to this trend is the Green Lantern, which they built where the Great American Scream Machine used to be.
This is actually a stand-up coaster, which is interesting. I remember in the late eighties when stand-up coasters were a big trend, but they ended up axing most if not all of them, possibly because so many people complained that they hurt. I guess they've improved on the technology since then, although I can't exactly say Green Lantern was a comfortable ride. I really felt it in my legs and feet. There's also the Dark Knight, which, oddly enough, replaced another Batman ride. The old one was Batman and Robin: The Chiller, which had two separate tracks, one for Batman and the other for Robin. I believe the original plan was to run them simultaneously, but they apparently decided this wasn't a good idea, as they only ever had one side running while I was there. Instead of building up momentum, this ride launched you at top speed, and sent you along a short track first forwards and then backwards. Since they could obviously only run one train at a time, the line was quite slow-moving even when there weren't very many people there. Perhaps that's part of why they decided to get rid of it, as the new one moves the lines along much more quickly, using four-seater cars instead of trains. It's an indoor coaster with images and sounds, most of them related to the Joker. Pretty short, but fun. And another ride based on a comic character isn't even a new attraction, but simply the Medusa coaster repainted and renamed Bizarro.
There were apparently supposed to be new images and sounds, but I didn't notice any of them, although there WERE flames that shot up at one point. As Beth said, "The only thing bizarro is that they thought that was enough for a rebranding." Speaking of DC, I'm kind of surprised that they didn't rename either the log flume or the rapids ride "Aquaman."
One relatively new ride that doesn't tie in with superheroes (at least as far as I know) is El Toro, a large wooden coaster that was enjoyable. We ended up not going on Kingda Ka, which we rode when it was new and found rather disappointing. It would probably make sense to give it another try, but that's one that, by its very nature, has a very slow-moving line. We'll probably ride it again someday, assuming they don't remove it to put in something even more monstrous. We did, however, ride Nitro, Skull Mountain, Batman, the Skyway, the Runaway Mine Train, and the Big Wheel. It was a fun outing, but Beth experienced some motion sickness, and while I don't think I'm susceptible to that I was pretty worn out by the time we left. I guess that's another side effect of getting older.
The new Weird Al album came out yesterday, but I didn't have a chance to pick it up. Today, I checked Walmart and Target, both of which I'd known to stock his albums before, but I didn't see it at either of those places. I'll check the Walmart where I work tonight, although I'm wary of buying music there since Beth accidentally purchased an edited version of a Ben Folds CD. I don't think there would be any reason to edit Weird Al of all people, but you never can tell with censors. And I can probably hit the music store after my doctor's appointment tomorrow, which would likely be better anyway, since there are a few other recently released albums I'm interested in as well.
bethje's cousin and her husband and son were going to Six Flags Great Adventure, we decided to tag along. As it turned out, though, we didn't see a whole lot of them. Her husband is the kind of person who's terrified to ride anything, even the merry-go-round. I can't say that's a fear I can identify with. I've been scared of a lot of things in my time, but amusement park rides never really bothered me. They were just fun, and it was all so tightly controlled that there was little chance of anything going wrong. (Mind you, this doesn't apply to traveling carnivals, and I still AM afraid of most of their rides.) Everyone has their fears, I suppose, but what I find weird is that Beth's cousin-in-law will spend money to get into the park, and then more money than that to play midway games. There are so many places where you can play those without an admission fee. Oh, well.I think it had been about six years since Beth and I had last been to the park, and they'd put in several new roller coasters since then. Their gimmick is that they're constantly putting in bigger and fancier coasters, many of them named after DC characters. They've had a Batman coaster for years, originally installed to tie in with the Tim Burton film, and around 2003 they put in a Superman one. The newest contribution to this trend is the Green Lantern, which they built where the Great American Scream Machine used to be.
This is actually a stand-up coaster, which is interesting. I remember in the late eighties when stand-up coasters were a big trend, but they ended up axing most if not all of them, possibly because so many people complained that they hurt. I guess they've improved on the technology since then, although I can't exactly say Green Lantern was a comfortable ride. I really felt it in my legs and feet. There's also the Dark Knight, which, oddly enough, replaced another Batman ride. The old one was Batman and Robin: The Chiller, which had two separate tracks, one for Batman and the other for Robin. I believe the original plan was to run them simultaneously, but they apparently decided this wasn't a good idea, as they only ever had one side running while I was there. Instead of building up momentum, this ride launched you at top speed, and sent you along a short track first forwards and then backwards. Since they could obviously only run one train at a time, the line was quite slow-moving even when there weren't very many people there. Perhaps that's part of why they decided to get rid of it, as the new one moves the lines along much more quickly, using four-seater cars instead of trains. It's an indoor coaster with images and sounds, most of them related to the Joker. Pretty short, but fun. And another ride based on a comic character isn't even a new attraction, but simply the Medusa coaster repainted and renamed Bizarro.
There were apparently supposed to be new images and sounds, but I didn't notice any of them, although there WERE flames that shot up at one point. As Beth said, "The only thing bizarro is that they thought that was enough for a rebranding." Speaking of DC, I'm kind of surprised that they didn't rename either the log flume or the rapids ride "Aquaman."
One relatively new ride that doesn't tie in with superheroes (at least as far as I know) is El Toro, a large wooden coaster that was enjoyable. We ended up not going on Kingda Ka, which we rode when it was new and found rather disappointing. It would probably make sense to give it another try, but that's one that, by its very nature, has a very slow-moving line. We'll probably ride it again someday, assuming they don't remove it to put in something even more monstrous. We did, however, ride Nitro, Skull Mountain, Batman, the Skyway, the Runaway Mine Train, and the Big Wheel. It was a fun outing, but Beth experienced some motion sickness, and while I don't think I'm susceptible to that I was pretty worn out by the time we left. I guess that's another side effect of getting older.
The new Weird Al album came out yesterday, but I didn't have a chance to pick it up. Today, I checked Walmart and Target, both of which I'd known to stock his albums before, but I didn't see it at either of those places. I'll check the Walmart where I work tonight, although I'm wary of buying music there since Beth accidentally purchased an edited version of a Ben Folds CD. I don't think there would be any reason to edit Weird Al of all people, but you never can tell with censors. And I can probably hit the music store after my doctor's appointment tomorrow, which would likely be better anyway, since there are a few other recently released albums I'm interested in as well.
