Thursday August 6th

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to get up at 4am when you know you’re heading to CP! :)

On the way to the park, hubby and I passed a truck on 71N that looked like it had supports and other steel parts on it. I made a joke that it might be heading to CP. Now, I wouldn’t even bother to mention this except that on the way home we passed another truck carrying similar items heading on 250W. Hmmmm.

We arrived at the park shortly before 9am and once the “rope” was down we headed right for Raptor (gasp-shocker, I know! ;))
Rode 4x before hubby decided he couldn’t ride anymore. He blamed the sausage McMuffin, I blame the fact he’s not a Ride Warrior! I am thankful that he’s at least understanding enough to know I wasn’t going to stop cause he had to! So while he sat in Donut Time, I continued to take advantage of early ride time and kept riding Raptor-managing a total of 13 rides before the GP invaded the park :)
The crew was beyond awesome!! I got to witness quite a few intervals and couldn’t help but shake my head at the usual guest “unable to follow simple directions” moves. Such as despite being told to SIT ON YOUR FLIP FLOPS---the guests would slowly walk to the bins, take them off, put them in the bin and slowly walk back to their seat. DO NOT LEAVE ARTICLES ON THE PLATFORM---I saw shoes being thrown and the best one was when someone left their Diet Mountain Dew right on the platform next to the train **sigh**
Some things never change! The crew took all this in stride, being patient, smiling and placing the misplaced articles in the bin for the guest.
I noticed the crew had received a guest service flag, I am not surprised at all! :)

There were several high school bands walking the midway today, they all sounded super! The weather was outstanding. Alittle cool in the morning but sunny and warm by afternoon.

Hubby and I walked all around the park to Paddlewheel and decided to jump on that. What I’d also like to mention here is that apparently Raptor had really kicked my hubby’s butt cause he didn’t want to ride any other coasters! That of course is ok with me, I have always said I could go to CP and just walk around the park anyway. Its not about the rides for me, it is just the place.
On Paddlewheel, hubby noticed all the torn down land and the missing Bucky Beaver. Naturally it was the same jokes but fun none the less. From there we went to the Antique cars and hubby ended up driving. The car we got was way slow, so much in fact we got rear ended by the person behind us and they hit us hard! :(

By now we were noticing exactly how packed the park had gotten. We did some more walking around, rode the train a couple times and I made us hit all the stores in search of any new model trains (Maverick and TTD) that were supposed to come out this month-big nadda there. My hubby is always pretty happy when I’m not walking out of one of the stores with a handful of stuff I just have to have!

We ate lunch (brought our own cooler full of goodies and ate in the picnic area) and headed back into park. We ended up at the Cadillac cars and hubby made me drive this time. He was getting mad cause at the cobra roll I slowed down to watch Raptor-why should he be surprised by that? ;)
We didn’t get rear ended this time thankfully! Their TL said he had heard I may be coming back to work again this Halloweekends-where did that come from???? I know I was thinking about it, didn’t think anyone but my hubby and I knew about that!

It was hard to tell we are in a recession looking at the crowds today. I was happy for CP-I noticed people were still lining up for food, and all the rides all had pretty hefty lines. After walking the entire park a few times, we decided to head home. Since by now his tummy felt better, I did manage to talk him into a final Raptor ride before leaving. The queues were pretty much all full-the front sign said 1 hour wait but I wasn’t so sure. The line actually was zipping right along and it was exactly an hour wait. Hubby rode with me and was fine-phew! :)

I have noticed in visits past that all the crews have seem to have a different attitude-what a pleasure that is! I cant help but mention that I am still so very impressed by the Raptor crew this season, I can see how they hit a million riders and I would be willing to bet they are going to come close to 2 million before season over, which hasn‘t been done since 2004. I would dare anyone to ride Raptor this season and not say they noticed a big difference in their experience. Whether that be their wait time (or lack there of) or the friendliness of the crew.
But maybe that’s not a fair statement since its coming for me and it is Raptor ;)

The park looked so beautiful today - noticed the flowers were all getting huge. Why can’t I get my flowers to look that nice??? The park was it’s usual clean self and all the guests looked to be having a great time! Thanks to the crews for helping make this such a great day, and a special thanks to my hubby for letting me ride when he couldn’t anymore :)

I am already looking forward to our next visit--next week??? :)

Jo
Lifetime Raptor flights: 2069 :)

Not positive about this and I guess I didn't notice this, but they did take out the Bucky the Beaver thing on PWE when they cleared the land??

CPboy77 said:
Not positive about this and I guess I didn't notice this, but they did take out the Bucky the Beaver thing on PWE when they cleared the land??

Yup :(
No more watching the tree fall down in slow motion, or "nice gnawing you" or his wife "leave it to" :(

Jo