Joe Cool Weekend (Sept 7-9)

I did Maverick 5 times during ERT. We didnt do the lunch cause they the park failed to post the E-Tickets thing were we could find it on the CP site. Alot of people didnt know you had to go online to buy it. I wasnt sad though since they had only hotdogs, chips, and pop lol. It was fun riding Maverick at night. We got our 5th ride in and went to make a stop then it poured rain. We heard screaming cause the riders was in the break run when it started raining lol. But it was funny cause the screaming went with the gun shots from the boat ride that was still going lol.
*** Edited 9/9/2007 5:28:27 PM UTC by Dalefan329***

Just got back from Raptor ERT. We got in 8 rides, 5 in the 3rd row and 3 in the front row.

It mist-rained until 10:20 or so, Tony came out to calm the small crowd down, because Raptor was down for Weather.

After the 5th run, it was being announced that Millenium Force was running if we wanted to leave Raptor and go to that, Half the train emptied, and we got in the front row. Never had to exit.

Great Time, don't know how many more runs I could have taken, my head was starting to spin after 5 runs. At 11:00, they made us get out and re-enter even though no-one was in the station.

We headed off to Maverick...

Great ERT on Raptor!

I got Tony Clark to yell at me in front of the whole ERT line, making a total ass out of myself. I consider the night a success. :)

Wandered in about 4:30pm, left shortly after closing after 13 rides on Millennium and 5 on Maverick. Waits were 10 minutes or less!

Not too shabby!

Now I'm disappointed that I didn't go today. When the 8 AM weather showed rain until 4PM, and I had to leave by 6, I chose not to go. Looks like the weather was better than predicted.

I couldn't do Raptor for ERT today, but that is OK, I don't think I could handle an hour of it. 3 rides is my limit. My little buddy (too short for Raptor) and I headed straight for MF a little before 11am and rode 4x before 1130. It was great. We took a quick lunch break and then she was down due to rain. Later we rode MF 11x in the same amount of time it would have taken for just 1 ride on the busy Labor Day weekend last Sunday. 16x total and we were pleased needless to say. We had a lot of nice conversations with a lot of other nice people while in line and I think that was the best part of our trip. Kinda like going to "Cheers" and hanging out! Which one is Norm?

Hope you all had a great JCC Homecoming, we are looking forward to Halloweekends!

Despite the rain, we still had a fun weekend. Great seeing everyone.

Two highlights of the weekend were getting a rollback on the second train out on Saturday morning, and finally getting Brian (Loopy) on TTD!

LOL. Didn't know Brian hadn't ridden TTD before. Not that he was missing much. Oh, and when you guys stopped to talk to Brian and Josh on Saturday, I was the tall quiet guy standing there.

Yeah, we did Maverick/Magnum runs on Friday. Not much on Saturday, but we got in WT, Raptor, BlueStreak, Skyhawk and Gemini (plus others) before the rain hit.

Then Sunday, we got a trimless Magnum ride to start the day, and a great day ride on Maverick. We took our time, didn't have much time to ride and were just taking our time.

I'll get a whole TR in my blog today or tomorrow. So check there if you want more details.

Mark, I'm impressed, I didn't think you'd be able to get Brian on TTD. That rollback was definetly a highlight of the weekend.

It was great hanging out with everyone and it was a fun time despite managing to get soaked on 2 different nights. Hopefully they do this again next year.

My daughter scored coaster #50 on Saturday: Magnum! Going over the top of the hill, she exclaimed, "Yikes!" and basically closed her eyes for the rest of the ride. Afterward, she said it was a little too scary and she wanted to wait a while before riding it again. Still, not bad for a five-year-old . . . :)

It was a fairly short day, considering we got there at 12:30, while rides were still down from the first bout of showers, and only made it to 5:40, when the gully washer hit. My sister, my daughter and I had just gotten off the next to last train on Magnum before they shut it down for the approaching storms. It was our game plan to walk down to Macaroni's and ride out the storm over some tasty dinner. We only made it to Corkscrew when the sky opened in an instant. We ran to Matterhorn and jammed under the platform with about twenty other people. Since we were all totally soaked, we decided just to bag it in and head home. So no Millie ERT for me.

What was interesting was that whenever Ava got measured by the ride ops, she was always a good 1/2 - 3/4 " over 48" -- except at Magnum, where she barely cleared the stick by a whisper. I know, I know, we should have gotten her banded at Park Operations, but we just never got around to it. I just find it interesting that there would be that much variance in metrics from one ride to another.

We were just headed to Magnum when we saw an empty train release from the station. I had commented on Gemini that the temp had really dropped, and Josh had mentioned "tornado"

Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with Bayshore Campground, but their "cabins" are really trailers. Not bad, especially for 59.95 a night.

Anyway, when staying in a trailer, the last word I wanted to hear was Tornado. We got to Magnum, saw the empty train and decided to call it good (we were parked right there). We got to the marina as the wall of rain hit, and pulled into the parking lot where they were setting up for the boat show to wait for visibility to get better.

There was lots of branches/trees down on the causeway, by the dorms, and just about everywhere. Unfortunately, power was out at the campground, so we ended up killing time at Meijers and Chet and Matt's waiting for it to come back on.

Those were some good storms, I'm just glad we didn't get caught out in the open.

I also had an excellent weekend! I will be posting a full TR this week, but some of the highlights were the very light crowds, multiple Maverick ERT sessions due to other rides being down, and a great first time staying at Lighthouse Point! Also running out of the park during a torrential downpour 2 nights in a row was quite entertaining. It was also nice to see alot of PointBuzzers again, and meet some for the first time.

My ride count for the weekend:
Blue Streak - 3
Gemini - 3 (2 trimless)
Magnum - 10 (2 trimless)
Maverick - 18
MF - 3
Raptor - 3
TTD - 3
WT - 1
Skyhawk - 9
Power Tower (D) - 3

We had a trimless on Gemini that reminded me why they should be trimmed.

We were on Red, and I heard the trims hit on Blue (it was a about a length in front). Ours didn't hit, so Jess elbowed Brian in the head knocking his glasses around. ;)

Yay for downed trees and power lines

This explains what happened to our power.

Actually there was a pole sheared on Cleveland Rd. down by the Marathon. It was across the road.

As for the weekend, I've never been so wet so many times and still had such a great time.

Thanks to Jess, Adam, Schuyler and Mark for putting a large enough guilt trip on me to get me to ride Dragster. I had just planned on waiting in line with them and walking through but while I was waiting I just decided to ride anyhow. Afterwards, I found out that Adam and Mark weren't going to let me get through and I was going to have to ride anyhow.

That would have been an interesting scene for anyone in the queue. :)

I'm sure we would have let you through. You were a great sport about it. Sorry you didn't get your second ride though. Now you and Jess can ride together when you're at the park. :)

Well.... What did you think??

John -

That downed line was fun to drive over.

The pole on Cleveland Ave right nearby that was the one causing our power woes. They're cleaning it up in this picture

I saw all the branches and such on the road driving down Cleveland Rd.. had no idea it was THAT bad.