Fri, Sat, Sun October 10th-12th
Friday October 10th
No work for me, time to play. Headed for some Raptor Joe Cool, and got 6 rides in. Ended up meeting up with Dave (Dodge em Dave) and then the fun began. I guess the most fun I had was the Scrambler ride (personal joke) I was laughing so hard I was crying. The Wildcat ride as always is a treat, the funnel cake was a must have, and we even took time out to watch the Aaron magic show. I had seen his show last year and loved it, and he did not disappoint me this season either. What a great show!! :) We hit up Maggie, Raptor 4 more times (it was HAULING!) and ended the night with the long MF wait.
One of my fav employees works on MF now and when the train came back into the station he said "welcome back blue train, how was your ride?" Then said "Raptor is better!" I loved that! ;) Dave and I pretty much closed the park. Crowd way heavier than I'm used to for a Friday night, and I was furious with myself for leaving all my sweatshirts back at the dorm, so I was forced to dish out $33.00 for a oh so cool CP hoodie. Yes, just what I needed, yet one more CP shirt. Nothing like working for them and giving them their $$ right back! :) 10 more Raptor rides for me! Fun night, had a great time, but NOTHING could prepare ANY employee for the Saturday ahead of us! Yikes!
Saturday October 11th
You know you're in trouble when Red Garter Rob comes to your platform early in the morning and mentioned something about "they're expecting record crowds today"
By record he was talking 40k, I WISH it had been 40k! By the non-stop steady flow of people ALL day I knew we were in trouble. During break and lunch I got to see just exactly how crowded the park was. OMG! Not the smartest of days not to have full crew. It was 4-4 or 8 load/unload ALL day and controls, freeway and entrance were the most desired positions obviousely. I got entrance once and after dealing with that crowd for 20 minutes I was ready to FLEE back to the platform again. People were very pissed off (at me of course) for the crowds and for the fact their kids were NOT 54" tall no matter how hard they insisted they were. The only thing worse than entrance that day was crowd. Blech! These were not Po!nters but 1st time visitors who decided to pick the worst day ever to visit CP. Since other GTTPers have given details about this day from Hell so well already, let me just say this. I reported to park ops at 9am and did not leave Raptor's platform until almost 1:30am. We did not leave the park until 2am in the hopes the traffic wasn't so bad. I can honestly say that if I calculated it correctly I was on my feet around 16.5 hours-there wasn't one bone in my body that didn't hurt! Yea, I'm old but kept right up with all the kids!!! :) The anticipated 40k crowd was more like 52-54k but to us employees it definitely felt like 1 million!
Sunday October 12th
Seemed that alarm went off way too soon for me! ;)
Knowing there was no way this day could be as bad as the day before made getting up alot easier than I had thought. Got an early employee bus and ended up talking to the Nichols bread guy at Midway Market making a delivery. He asked me what happened the night before, explaining to me that they got a phone call that they ran out of bread?? Wow! Headed for the employee caf where I totally chowed down and then headed for Raptor. The day consisted of everyone talking about the day before, some people speculating the crowd was more like 60k. All I know is I was relieved that CP was again back to normal. This day was a cake walk compared the the day before, the guests were great and I got to meet many new GTTPers and some people who just knew of me. I finally got to meet OldCPer which was a real pleasure! :) Also saw many other GTTPers I've had the pleasure of meeting previousely. Every time I wonder wth I am doing there and someone says hi to me it makes it worth it to me. I love saying "Raptor ready" in controls knowing that because of me in 2002, that is why some ops say "Raptor ready" instead of just "ready" How cool is that? :)
Mr Skyward rode 2x, both times being sure he waved at me. I think all the CP employees were very happy to see 8pm roll around. I know I was. I don't think I was ever so happy to wave bye bye to Sandusky before! The most shocking thing to me was when I hit a convoy of like 40 cards on Rte 98 right outside of Sandusky, all heading South. I have NEVER seen anything like that before and can only assume they were at CP all weekend? It pissed me off cause there was no way to pass them (too many) and they were only going 55. My blessing was the 98/4 detour outside Chatfield, the official detour tells them to go one way, I know another. I went 70mph trying to get past the crowd and beat them back to 98 and did!!! :) Hopefully that's the 1st and last time I ever have to see something like that again! So another CP weekend behind me, Friday night was great, Saturday was a killer and Sunday pretty mellow in comparison. Thanks to all the GTTPers who stopped to say hi, it was nice meeting all of you!! :) Now I'm off to Quarter Horse Congress again! Talk about multi-task! :)
Jo
2000 Raptor Crew
2002 Raptor Crew
2003 Raptor Crew
Lifetime Raptor flights: 826 :)
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It's all about getting around the barrels, or over the fences, right leads, no faults, fastest time and looking pretty when done. What's so hard about that? :)
Glad to see you are still working on Raptor.
I was working next door at the Centenial Theater with Aaron Radatz.. Saturday was messed up. We had to load in camera gear and with all the people there is was not easy at all. People don't watch where they are going and I had carts full of equipment. However it was a great day to shoot because the theater was packed everytime.
So you liked the Aaron Radatz show this year...I produced the prediction video with the coasters at the beginning of the show.
Raptor was one of the predictions :)
I made sure of that.
See you soon.
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Gemini 100 - 35
Aaron Radatz Centenial Theater '03
Great TR, I saw you operating Raptor on Saturday and waved. We have never met, but I recognized your face, and it was just cooler than sh#t to finally see you live and in person.
Saturday was definitly out of control for the crowds. We did have an 11PM stamp for MF (which we used), and then headed to Dragster arriving at 11:45. The ride was down until 1230 (saw my first roll back), but in CP fashion, they let us wait and we got our third ride of the day at 1:30 AM (SWEET). Definitly the highlight of our trip, behind our Raptor ride with you at the controls.
The crowds were a challenge this past weekend, but the weather kicked ass. At least I made the treck from Boston to finally experience TTD - and what an experience it is.
Tom
Was nice bumping into you on the way into commons on Saturday after the crazy day. Somehow at Mantis we managed to get out at a decent hour, and we actually got to go eat something afterward.
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Jeff Tobe
tobejeff@pilot.msu.edu
2003 Mantis Crew
Aaron who wishes he lived in Ohio :-P
*** This post was edited by arlok789 10/15/2003 5:44:08 PM ***
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