coastering
Aug. 28th, 2024 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishOn Sunday I made it out to Playland / the PNE with Julianne. Post-Emily it's become something of a tradition for us to take a day and go ride a bunch of rides and stuff ourselves on barbecue and mini-donuts. Usually we try to go during the week but Julianne's vacation days are in short supply this year, so a weekend day with the rest of the world it was.
We hit the three things that I really wanted to:
We also rode the brand-new metal coaster whose name escapes me. This... look, it was an okay ride. It might even be a quite good ride. But between the three-hour line, the ride staff insisting that we remove anything not nailed down including glasses, and the fact that it lasts all of about thirty seconds, I am not really able to assess it in a reasonable way. I'm glad to have done it, because now I can say "not doing that again unless the line's way shorter," which will probably not occur in my lifetime because it does look quite fancy.
And I had my first experience being on a ride that got halted for a mechanical failure. The Hell's Gate (two rows of seats that swing around and flip upside down) had some initial problems getting the restraints to latch. Then it went once, flipped upside down, righted itself... and stopped. So they let us all off and shut it down. Boo.
We ate mediocre food, which ended up giving me gastrointestinal trouble that night / next morning, and walked around a lot in the rather nice weather and talked a bunch. I'm glad I went and will certainly go back next year if I can manage it. Good company makes long waits much more tolerable. (I'm still not waiting three hours for the new coaster, though.)
We hit the three things that I really wanted to:
- The Wooden Coaster, which is apparently an exemplar of its kind. It's a lot of fun despite having no loops and also significant lines. The line wasn't as bad as it could have been; only about an hour and a half wait.
- The Tilt-a-Whirl, which is I maintain the best non-coaster carnival ride, for the simple reason that it's one of the few where you have some modicum of control. Half the fun is shifting your weight so you can get the car to whip around super fast several times in a row.
- Bumper cars, which aren't a ride so I don't have to decide whether they're better than the Tilt-a-Whirl. Bumper cars are a fantastic way to vent excess competitiveness, or just annoyance at having had to wait in lines.
We also rode the brand-new metal coaster whose name escapes me. This... look, it was an okay ride. It might even be a quite good ride. But between the three-hour line, the ride staff insisting that we remove anything not nailed down including glasses, and the fact that it lasts all of about thirty seconds, I am not really able to assess it in a reasonable way. I'm glad to have done it, because now I can say "not doing that again unless the line's way shorter," which will probably not occur in my lifetime because it does look quite fancy.
And I had my first experience being on a ride that got halted for a mechanical failure. The Hell's Gate (two rows of seats that swing around and flip upside down) had some initial problems getting the restraints to latch. Then it went once, flipped upside down, righted itself... and stopped. So they let us all off and shut it down. Boo.
We ate mediocre food, which ended up giving me gastrointestinal trouble that night / next morning, and walked around a lot in the rather nice weather and talked a bunch. I'm glad I went and will certainly go back next year if I can manage it. Good company makes long waits much more tolerable. (I'm still not waiting three hours for the new coaster, though.)