Sabbatical 1998 - Day 21

What's my line?

It was probably foolhardy of me to go to a popular California theme park... in the middle of July... on a Saturday.  But there I was anyway, mouth dropped open at the sight of bazillions of people all trying to order that collectable and impossible to carry Riddler's Revenge cup.

The temperatures were in the high eighties and there was very little wind making any activity miserable. I did finally retreat to my air conditioned hotel room for a few hours to regain some strength.

I was able to capture quite a number of fine photos for the web page.  The one at the right is one of them.  Someone at Kodak thought that this would make a good picture.  I'm not so sure.  Perhaps it would have worked better had I used some of their film... or any film at all.  Welcome to the nineties.

My favorite ride today was called Viper.  Viper is a traditional sit-down steel roller coaster but the claimed distinction is that it is "one of the tallest."  I couldn't get an exact figure out of anyone, but my empirical testing suggests that it is tall enough.  You can see the four elliptical vertical loops poking out from the trees.  The final loop has a twist in it so that, as you move through the loop, your car corkscrews around the structure.  You spend much of that loop not upside down but instead on your side.  There is a wicked double corkscrew near the end of the ride that isn't visible in the picture.  I have carefully considered the awarding of Hurl Factor 7.4 to this ride.  It took much research and many trips from the exit to the start of the line to reach this conclusion.

Riddle me this: What has hundreds of legs but never moves? The line for Riddler's Revenge, of course!  Never even got near this thing and the one time that I thought I was going to score, so to speak, I discovered that they had shut it down for maintenance.  Apparently it can only riddle for so many hours before needing a nap.   So, I'd love to tell you about the world's fastest (65 MPH) stand up roller coaster, but I can't because I never got there.  It makes a lot of noise, that's for sure.

Riddler's arch-nemesis is, of course, Batman.  Let me tell you about "Batman: the Line."  The Line starts out at the Ride entrance where a park employee (who looks as if she's about 2 hours late for her lunch break) hands you a boarding pass.   This pass is required if you decide you would like conclude your Line experience with a Ride.

The Line continues along a path in a garden where there is no shade and the sound of really bad synthesizer music is your constant companion.  At a certain point (about 25 minutes into the Line) you become aware that one of the in-ground speakers is blaring out the sounds of people screaming and riding on rides. Someone must have thought that there weren't enough of those natural sounds present in the park.  At about 50 minutes into the Line, the garden turns into a post-apocalyptic city scape: Gotham City.  Trash, broken glass, an overturned police car (all the stuff you'd expect to see in Aloha) are part of the decor.  Misting sprinklers overhead do nothing at all to cut the heat.  Another cheery park employee blurts something incomprehensible from the loudspeaker.

At 70 minutes into the Line you remember that there is an opportunity to participate in a Ride, should you chose to do so. More park employees collect the boarding passes and at 75 minutes you are rushed into a seat and sent on your way.  The Ride itself lasts about 70 seconds and is some of the most unremarkable coaster work I have experienced in my life.  Mind you, there are some twists, it is inverted, and there are a couple of vertical loops, but basically... yawn.  If the Line were shorter by about 50 minutes, it would be worth it. 

Superman the Ride was good.  It also has a high Line-to-Ride ratio.  I happened to catch this one early in the morning so the wait was short: about 45 minutes.  The ride itself lasts about 35 seconds if you don't count the loading and unloading.   Basically it works like this.  You and 15 of your closest friends are placed in a car.  This car is fired aircraft carrier style down a horizontal ramp until it reaches about 100 MPH.  The track bends 90 degrees and the car is thrown some 250 feet into the air where it eventually loses velocity and comes back down the track (backwards).  Hurl Factor 5.  Keep your stomach in a hand bag or back pack because it's not likely to stay with you any other way.

I had some difficulty capturing this in a digital still.  If you look closely at the tower to the left, you will see a dark rectangle about three-quarters of the way up.  That is one of the cars.  There is a track on the other side of the tower as well.

I finally left the park at about 11pm.  My goal was to get back to the hotel in time to order some food.  The hotel kitchen closes at 10pm.  Oops.   Snickers really satisfies.

More stuff (and things only) on Day 22 when available.