A bunch of 1st's

OK, so like I said earlier I book at the Comfort Inn to save 155.00 bucks than what our usual tower room at Breakers is. Big mistake. It's not that the hotel is bad. Both indoor & outdoor pools are nice with hot tub, sauna & a cabana. But there I am, 5 miles from my favorite place on earth, wishing I could just wake up & go on the beach in the early AM for some ALONE time which, aint gonna happen. Although the hotel wasn't bad for 90 bucks, some of the patrons of the establishment left alot to be desired. Loud, annoying,...the kind you just KNOW are stealing the towels. ;) So I'm going crazy to be at Breakers, but they won't let us go w/o keeping all the 90 bucks, so we stick it out.

Since I was in a bargin mood, we try to ride the CP shuttle over. Cooler in tow, the driver tells us to place it next to her where, "it'll be safer". She takes the first turn from the parking lot like Mario Andretti & the cooler, takes a dive down the steps, ice & soda falling everywhere. While hubbie & I pick it all up with her apologizing (but not helping pick it up), my husband looks over at our car & sees a window down. Realizing the car is full of ipods, portable DVD players & the like we announce our departure from this experience, & with as much pride as we can muster, drag the dang cooler back to the car. After total embarrassed silence for a good 5 min., we all start laughing our heads off at the ludicracy of it all, & the major hillbilly monent in our lives to look back on.

So I call Mark S. for my son to join up with the Buzzer guys to ride TTD, & they are just sitting down to CoasterMania lunch. I start thinking, hmmm, might be a short wait with all the coaster people engaged elsewear. I was right. 20 min wait for in line for Dragster & I find myself sitting in the second car, second seat, so he doesn't have to ride alone. I CONQUER THE BEAST!!! And WOW! What a rush!! I never thought I'd ride it, but I kept my eyes closed & did so well that I rode it again today (Sat) with my eyes open the whole time!!

My other 1st: I did ride Maverick on Friday. It was a really fun ride, but as I figured, makes me nauseous with all the side windin, so I won't be on that much. The theming was great, but of course I was missing WWL.

Best ride ops go to the guy (forgot his name) on the bumper cars, Ericka at TTD, & all the Sky Ride crew! Fries where perfectly cooked this time (Happy Friar). Midway Market was not good for lunch. Waitress seemed bummed to be there & food wasn't good. (I think I saw a Buzzer there but couldn't remember his name or I would have said hi. Smaller, muscular guy in a tank)

Sorry if I rambled! Just got back & missing it already!

I thought I would just dig out this thread to update my latest trip report.

Sunday the 8th. AM-hot, Noon-hotter, Afternoon-so hot I thought I had taken a wrong turn somewhere in my life & was looking around for a guy with a pitchfork. We enjoyed a wonderful stay in the tower at Breakers on Saturday. Front desk staff was helpful & friendly. Dinner at Fridays was, well it was OK. It's never up to the standards of our local TGIF, but when we sent some food back for not being cooked right, they handled it very quickly & friendly, so I was overall pleased & our server was very sweet.

Sat. night I went in to ride TTD by myself because the family didn't want to leave the AC. While standing in line & watching many trains clear the tower with no problem, they said they had to switch to a spare train, so we waited about 20 min for them to do this. When they tested the new train with the employee only in the front seat, it rolled back twice, but then they proceeded to load the trains & it cleared the tower from then on without any problem. I'm not sure why they had to switch out the trains when there didn't seem to be a problem, but maybe they change them up on a regular basis t/o the day? Also, do the trains more likely make it over fully loaded? I would have thought the opposite. Anyway, I also took a spin (walk on) on Magnum before going back & it was SO beautiful at night looking out at the lake from the first hill. And the tunnels are so cool in pitch black. Feels like DT! (no comments on DT, thank you ;))

Sunday was just so hot. I love it hot, but even I was uncomfortable in the afternoon. We would go into air conditioned places every hour or so. We went to Macaronis for lunch & had some surprisingly good thin crust pizza. It took awhile, but it was quite good & the server, Gerald was very nice. Waiting in line for TTD was the hottest. David, a ride op from Michigan, was a great spieler & kept everyone happy even when we sat in the train for 10 min. waiting on who knows what.

Cedar Downs was fun, we hadn't riden it yet this season. Turnpike cars were not. You have to put to much pressure on the gas pedal to keep it moving. So much so that you can't relax at all because your leg mucle has to stay contracted the whole time & your not suppose to stop your car, so my leg hurt by the end of the ride. My 6' husband & 5'9 son also hated it because of the scrunch factor.

We paid 3.40 for small soda's at Donut Time & 4.00 for a big snow cone that had hardly any flavor at all. Won't be buying that again. I was really mad at the rude people (guests) at Donut Time taking too long on the free AT&T computers. Both times I was in there this trip, people had no regard for others waiting to get online. They really should put up signs that say "when other people are waiting for a turn at the computers, there is a 10 minute time limit". People were waiting over a half an hour to get on. If you need to spend that much time online, bring your own stinking laptop. It was just so rude I had to leave before I lost my temper & said something.

Well that's all this trip. I'm headed back up this Saturday to take my son & his friends up while I stay on the beach & study. If anyone else is on the beach, stop by & say hello. I'll be the lone blonde surrounded by oncology books. :)

*** Edited 7/10/2007 12:51:31 AM UTC by Good Grief...***

I feel you on the heat yesterday. Definitely the hottest day I've ever went to CP. You couldnt even find a drinking fountain with cold water, because every one of them had a line of people waiting to fill up 2-3 water bottles each. I probably had drank a gallon of Gatorade, and twice that in water, and I still felt dehydrated. Other than the sunburn, and almost getting hit by a water bottle on MF's first hill, it was a wonderfully HOT day!

In my experience at Donut Time, it's usually been all of the foreign employees checking their e-mail. I thought the park provided a computer lab across the road from Wildcat for them to do this, but I guess not.

Mark, Adam, and myself were there yesterday as well Randi. It was scorching!! We went to Famous Daves, Macaronis, and Snoopy's Summer Vacation (Ice Show) to beat the heat! We also made several stops in gift stores... just to keep cool!

We thought we saw you around 1:30ish near Wildcat. We were waiting in line, and saw someone who resembled you walking with what appeared to be their son...

Could it have been you? We quasi-yelled but didn't want to look silly if we were wrong.

Yea that was me! We (younger son & I) had just got off Wildcat & were headed to Snoopy's 2:00 show to get out of the heat as well! It was too hot to wait 30 min. more though, so we went to Macoronis instead. I wish I had heard you because my older son keeps getting shy about me calling you guys. If we had just run into you, he would have joined you. I was looking for you guys around TTD to no avail.

P.S. Wildcat's a fun ride except for those darn hard stops at the beginning & end.

We just missed each other twice! We rode Wildcat, then took a lap around the train, before going to the 2:00 Ice Show ourselves. Mark tried to call your cell, but we never heard back from you.

We hit TTD earlier in the day, and then Adam and Mark went back there after I left for the day around 7ish.

And I agree with you about the hard stops on Wildcat. The one after the final helix is unbelievably sudden!

There is an employee computer lab at Commons that employees can use, but I'm not sure about the one at Cedars. I think that one may just be for training. I believe when you first sign on to the Donut Time computers it does say to limit your time to 15 minutes if people are waiting, but I don't think anybody actually reads/listens to that.

The last time I was there, 3 of the 4 computers weren't connected to the wireless connection, and the other one was in use. I opened up the wireless utility to re-establish the connection, and was immediately told by an employee "Umm, I don't think you're supposed to be doing that." I explained what I was doing, and she said, "Oh. When that happens we're supposed to turn it off and wait for 'the guy' to come turn it back on."

As a soon to be IT professional, it's nice to know that CP apparently needs to hire me to turn their computers on. I should fax them my resume right away. :)