Jarrett
Most Obnoxious Member 2016
So I've had the idea to do this for a while but I didn't feel like anybody would be interested, but I feel like doing it anyway, so here goes!
This is a chronicle of my 2013 season trips from when it started (May) to when it ended (November). This includes six trips to 4.5 parks (Don't ask about the .5, I'll get to that.
) as well as three non-park based trips.
I went into the 2013 season aware of two details I had my heart set on. My dad had been wanting to use some frequent flyer miles to show me how to travel via airline alone. He had wanted to take me to Tampa to cross Cheetah Hunt, the number one coaster on my bucket list, off. That, and I was aware that my second home park, Cedar Point (3 hours away) was getting GateKeeper, a wing coaster, and knowing how much I liked Wild Eagle, I was determined to get down there to ride it.
Well my first trip was a few days with my grandparents in Columbus. No creds up there, just me hanging out with my grandparents and making French food with them. Well, one fateful night, because my shift work disorder was keeping me up, I was up at 2 am watching the movie Angels and Demons when I decided to try and get to bed and got a text from my crazy cousin. At 2 in the morning. She was wondering if I wanted to ride up with them from Kings Island to Cedar Point on the following Sunday after I got off work. And CF was going to be having a live there on the same day. I told her yes and looked forward to it for the rest of the week.
The following Saturday, I went to sleep after getting off work at my third shift job and went to bed. The next morning, my cousin picked me up in my employer's parking lot and we went! I hadn't gotten sleep since 4 pm on Saturday, so I knew it would get crazy with me running on such a small amount of sleep.
However, the trouble started when the CFer I had swapped numbers with sent me a text saying that the park had shut EVERYTHING down due to wind (yes, those of you who were there, this was THAT day). We swung by a gas station and I had my first Monster energy drink, and was therefore really caffeine hyper and slap happy from sleep deprivation at the same time. Just in time for my first CF live!
We got there and I took possibly the saddest picture of GateKeeper ever. Usually you pull up and hear trains roaring around giant steel structures and people screaming, that day it was just dead. Just a few people milling around a cold, windy park with nothing running. However, I still went over and met up with the few people at the Live, and they were treated to an idiot cracking outlandish jokes and making bizarre remarks after chewing a hole in his finger out of shear nerves on the drive over.
After trying really hard to squeeze two grown men into a Woodstock Express car successfully and goofing off the entire ride, we went our separate ways. My cousin and her husband and I milled around the park for a bit watching for any rides to go back up (though we DID get on Witch's Wheel!) and I got to see the room in Hotel Breakers where they wanted to get married. I was introduced to Famous Dave's while looking out on a zombie apocalypse-esque Cedar Point when I got a text that everyone from CF had left. After lunch, we hit up Blue Streak, Corkscrew, Mean Streak, and they managed to get me on Power Tower, my first large drop tower. Our last ride was Cedar Creek Mine Ride, and in addition to seeing them pull Maverick out of a valley (shown), we saw that Millennium was receiving the same treatment on a turn.
The season had a very Disa-Cedar Point-ing start but we still had fun! Getting to see GateKeeper Plaza empty was sort of creepy but neat too. And the way back was crazy. We were ALL tired, I'll leave it at that.
A few weeks later, the same cousin wanted to hit up Kings Island with me since they hadn't been in years. We had plenty of fun, which included an early morning ride on Diamondback (the best time to ride it in my opinion, seeing light creep over the hilly horizon as you crest each camelback while it's relatively cool out makes for a great ride), a Beast ride at night, my cousin getting terrified not remembering the pyrotechnics on Backlot Stunt Coaster and screaming because she thought the ride was on fire, me facing my horrible fear of heights and being dragged onto Drop Tower (well, fun for anybody that wasn't me or the kid that started crying 1/3 of the way up) and our first time trying out Red's Hall of Fame Grille while we were all really tired.
And then came the biggest goon moment yet. I was about to be dropped off 260-foot tall tower against my will, but when walking to such a bad fate, I FLIPPED when I saw the Banshee construction walls. FLIPPED. And EVERYBODY was staring. My sister still talks about how she'd never seen a "grown man get that excited over DIRT."
Then came our family vacation to Mexico. I honestly had no desire to go there since I didn't like being in the ocean and that was the main reason we were going. However, we did end up spending a day in Cancun (stayed on an island off the coast called Isla Mujeres) and saw the Mayan ruins at Tulum (shown here, this is me being a goon about something OTHER than coasters, I'm a huge nerd about ancient history too) so I enjoyed it.
Isla Mujeres was basically a strip that ran parallel to the Mexican coast. From our hotel you could see both coastlines of the island. The bay side of the island that faced Cancun was where all the businesses were and we had to go there to grab dinner and shop and stuff and it was mostly nice (though it had a lot of shady looking buildings made of cinder blocks with no windows that had just the word "HOTELA" painted on them. It was nice, but the Caribbean side of the island (shown) was better. Really sparsely populated except for a few really pretty houses, really local, tourists almost never ventured over there. On the more urban northern part of the Caribbean coast I got the best octopus in garlic sauce ever at a place called La Lonita, and a really nice upstairs cocktail place called Casa Ixchel where I had my first Mai Tai.
Because the drinking age in Mexico is only 18, as opposed to 21 in the US where I live and I'm 19, I was able to try alcohol for the first time in my life. Going into it I actually didn't like it when people had open containers around me because I hate the smell of it, but I was told it was an acquired taste, and boy did I acquire it quickly! I made a mistake getting there and going straight for the mojito on night one and that was WAY too strong (it's so weird, it's like a burning sensation) but I toned it down on future nights and was able to get into the swing of things quickly. I was really responsible about it but my inexperience with it got the best of me twice on the trip. The first time was at an upstairs cocktail bar where I ordered a drink called a Blue Islander that had two ingredients in the description I didn't recognize. I thought the rule would be that a cocktail is just one shot of liquor mixed with other juices and syrups...WRONG!!! That thing had three shots of liquor in it and while I was fine for the most part, it still made me a bit goofy. The second time was after a margarita at a restaurant when I tried wine with my parents. I had two glasses (which I always thought my parents had more than two a night and were fine) but because they have more tolerance for it than I do, I ended up laughing so hard I cried at an infomercial for a frying pan.
Not getting into too much detail about what happened, but let's just say I'll have to grab dinner with some CFers after visiting a park in 18 months...
(I assumed this was okay to post since I've seen people talk about their drinking experiences on here and I was of age in Mexico, if a mod wants to remove this feel free to.)
I got basically cut off from my friends in the States while we were there, but as we were getting ready to leave the really nice villa where we stayed the final morning, I got a text from one of my old high school friends who I hadn't talked to in a few weeks. She hadn't been informed I was in Mexico, but sent me a text the evening before the morning we left. The morning we left, I had forgotten to turn off my alarm to wake us up at 5 to go to Tulum, and that alarm was on my phone, which was out in the foyer where my sister was sleeping. She very rudely opened my door, threw the computer bag that contained my phone into my room, and I took my phone out to turn it off when I got a text from Patricia (my friend). She asked me if I wanted to join her and her parents on their family vacation to Gatlinburg. I got back from one trip and got ready for the next one!
However, this trip did cause me to call off the trip to Tampa as I figured out that my fear of tight spaces combined with my fear of heights makes flying REALLY hard for me.
After that, my cousin had wanted to take me to New Jersey with them to see a new baby niece she had and we were going to hit up SFGAdv, but we were unable to since they were moving, but she wanted to visit a park with me one more time, so we decided to hit up Cedar Point. I got to spend the night at their apartment which got really crazy and goony (stayed up till 2, both of us were laughing so hard we cried at the POV of Full Throttle and nobody knew why, we were just really tired) and had easily the best trip of my season. This is also the trip where the infamous "Maverick Test Seat" photo was born.
Pretty much as soon as we got there, we tried our hand at the plinko game outside the entrance as we waited for the park to open and BAM!!!! We won front of the line passes for GateKeeper first thing getting there! Being able to walk past a 3-hour initial line that had the cattlepens slammed and spilled out onto the MaXair walkway felt great!
While the reviews for this coaster got really really ugly really really fast, I actually thoroughly enjoyed it. We rode in the very front on the left and while they keyholes weren't as frightening as I expected, the Thorpe Park Inversion (an element I had designed on RCT2 since I was in the fourth grade) was great and full of terrifying hangtime, the view of Lake Erie was beautiful, and the ride, while there's nothing insane about it, is just REALLY fun. It's now my sixth favorite coaster, was fifth when it popped onto my top 10 for the first time.
In addition to finally credit whoring Jr. Gemini and eating at that really unique Famous Dave's on the marina, this was my first experience with a hydraulic launch AND a stratacoaster when I decided to put my fear of heights to the test on Top Thrill Dragster. My cousin almost had to make me do it, but I did it, and MAN I'm glad I did! I was actually afraid of the launch bashing my head against the headrest at first but it was nice, smooth acceleration. My ears popped at the top but seeing the entire Ohio coastline and Canada was what made it special, and the drop actually didn't scare me at all. And that was also the ride that cleaned out Cedar Point's credits for me after 2 amazing trips and one awful visit!
We WANTED to get on GateKeeper at night (those twinkling train bodies at night are beautiful when they go through the keyholes!) but it broke down around 6, but Millennium Force, my at-the-time favorite coaster that had spent the afternoon being an Intamin, was opening back up! We darted back to it and got in line. It said an hour on the sign, but we waited 90 minutes since they weren't accounting for Fast Lane. But it was worth it! There was a full harvest moon out that night and being able to see the entire park lit up as we stormed around the woods (and not seeing those tacky dinosaurs) was incredible! Still the best roller coaster experience of my life!
A few weeks after getting back from my cousin's, it was Gatlinburg time! I got picked up from my house after getting off work (which ended with THEM getting to see the whole "sleep deprived Jarrett" that every CFer at Cedar Point got to saw, I went on a rant about why people decorate with hornet's nests since we're supposed to run when we see them, had a bad moral conflict because I didn't want to buy something at a souvenir shop because I felt I would need the money for later, and got terrified at a knife store we visited because they had taxidermy animal heads on the wall and I felt like they were all staring at me). We spent the first night at the Fairfield Inn in Gatlinburg and ate at an Irish restaurant and hit an arcade where I beat Patricia in air hockey because I understood the physics behind it better than she did.
The next day we drove to the cabin where we would be spending the remainder of the trip. It was a really beautiful place to stay since it was out in the middle of nowhere and was decorated with all sorts of woodland decorations (no hornets' nests, didn't need to rant again) and each room had a little theme. My bedroom was bears, the loft was fishing, the like.
The view was breathtaking, but we had our share of issues with being out in the boonies like that. All sorts of critters (one of which was a caterpillar that Patricia named Ricardo and wanted to take home as a pet), the night before we went to Dollywood it stormed and a tree knocked out the power line, so we were trapped out in the middle of nowhere with really crappy phone reception, no power, and bears. And on top of that, we had to call maintanence out numerous times since the air conditioner stopped working (Patricia's dad works fixing them so he found the problem, we just needed them to fix it), some of the TVs didn't work, and our dishwasher exploded and spewed foamy soap all over the kitchen.
On the second day there we hit up Pigeon Forge, ate at a catfish place called Huck Finn's (and they had a hornet's nest on a shelf in the corner, they gave me SO much crap for the sleep-deprived rant two days earlier!), went go-karting, souvenir shopping, and the highlight of the day, the Titanic museum. You can't take pictures there but some of the stuff was so cool! The original blueprints for the Titanic (they practically had to pull me away from those, being an engineering student I found it SO cool to be able to see how they designed things back then!), a piece of wood from the Grand Staircase, a reproduction of the Grand Staircase, props and costumes from the movie, a diorama of a cutaway of the ship, a room where you could put your hands in water that was the temperature of the water in which the Titanic sank, a thing where you could climb a small ship deck at varying angles as it tilted before sinking, a room with artifacts recovered from the ship by divers, plenty of cool stuff. The coolest thing was that upon arriving, a staff member gives you a card containing a bio of someone on the ship and you have to figure out what happened to them in the museum. Patricia and her parents lived, I was the only one who died. More grief for that ensued, considering how Patricia always seems to be around whenever I have strokes of rotten luck.
The next day was Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies and shopping at the Gatlinburg mall. The aquarium was really cool, but we got trapped in the gift shop by some rain. Luckily that passed and we were able to go back to the cabin. And THAT was the infamous night of the power going out and the delivery boy for Cobbly Nob Cafe downhill from us unable to find our house to deliver our dinner! He eventually found it and we ate by flashlight, but we ended up just watching Firefly on Patricia's iPad before the power came back.
D-Day (Dollywood day) followed that crazy night in the dark. Patricia got to see me being a goon for the first time when we passed the park and I saw Wild Eagle track sticking out from the trees. They were amazed that it was invisible from Pigeon Forge, as I had explained that it was surrounded by mountains concealing lift hills, but it's still pretty impressive.
Patricia had always wanted to ride a big coaster but wanted to do it with someone since she didn't feel 100% comfortable with the concept, so she was excited about getting on Wild Eagle, her first big coaster, with me. Note that this happened after the NTG accident and she was really paranoid about making sure she fit in and wasn't going to fly out of those staple-happy restraints.
She had a love-hate relationship with that experience. The whole ride was full of "I'M GONNA KILL YOU, JARRETT!!!! AS SOON AS WE GET OFF OF THIS THING!!!!! [approach next element] I'm gonna KILL YOU!!!!!" but after we got off and she caught her breath, she said she'd be happy to do it again. We ended up double riding Thunderhead later that day and once on Mystery Mine.
That was the least productive day of the season, but we did do a lot of shopping. Here's Patricia and I in the wagon shop. Craftsmen's Valley is really cool, I love seeing all the stuff made.
Can I pull it off?
And then THIS goonfest happened...
Basically they nearly had to drag me out of there. So many models, a shadowbox of Opryland stuff, old coaster cars, I FLIPPED.
Credit whore! :goon2:
We double rode Thunderhead next and Patricia seemed to be more comfortable with it. Still had my life threatened a few times, but she did put her hands up and smile towards the end.
Afterwards was Mystery Mine. I had specifically told Patricia to avoid this hunk of junk since she was new to it but decided to go ahead with it. Death threats ensued. Hated the overbank, hated the drop, HATED the hangtime. After we hit the brakes, I got, "Jarrett, I'm gonna kill you..." I reminded her that she got on it even though I advised her not to, and got, "I am SO stupid."
We then went to Dixie Stampede. Great show, the competition was a lot of fun and our side (North) won because we were better at passing flags around. And their barbecue chicken and vegetable soup are AMAZING!!!
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And on our way out EMS pulled up! Someone either hurt themselves on the stairs out of the theatre or ate too much and exploded.
I went to Dollywood alone the next day but this brown recluse spider was on our cabin that morning! So scary!
Got some good construction shots of Firechaser Express!
I got in a total of four rides on Wild Eagle. Not bad for the best coaster in the park, though its days on my top 10 are numbered.
This was also the day I saw the only celebrity I've seen in 2013, Dolly was there shooting something for TV!
As a thank-you gift I bought Patricia's family some cinnamon bread and some for me to take home. So good!
A few weeks later, there was a guy from another site that was going to Kings Island and was offering people on that site a trip down there with him and his friend if they were on the way. It was a smaller trip but it was post Banshee announcement so I got to see some good construction...and get rained on and be forced to sleep in the Flight Deck station.
I LOST IT when I saw this...
My breakfast that day? Eat an entire Banshee twist! Good ice cream, but too much and I REALLY don't trust that blue color.
They were still working on the structure for the coaster barn, but I did see some pieces for the drop in place.
If you're getting strange looks for contorting yourself into strange positions to photograph around that construction wall...you might be a goon.
It doesn't open until next year and I already have my tat!
We tried to get on Flight Deck but a storm hit...so we just all three power napped. In a coaster station. Nothing odd about that.
One of the last pictures ever taken of this.
My home park is about to change forever and it's the most anticipated 2014 trip for me.
After that was supposed to be it for 2014, I decided to suck it up and do Tampa. While I did freak out on the flight over, it was worth it!
Not exactly a dream vacation spot but the park was nice. Somebody had tried to steal the neighborhood watch sign (not sure what's worse, trying or not succeeding), the Red Lobster two doors down had a sign saying that selling certain illegal substances would get you kicked out, roadkill in the streets all three days we were there, and some brilliant engineer threw this speed limit sign in the middle of the sidewalk.
Easily the most beautiful park I visited in 2014!
2 years of wanting to and five pounds of pretzels had lead up to my first ride of Cheetah Hunt, TOTALLY worth it and more! It's my new favorite coaster, rode it six times, and it ROCKS in the front!
Montu was the next coaster to climb into my top 10 on that trip. Great Egyptian theming, and if Banshee's anything like this seemingly similar coaster (loop, batwing, immelmann/dive loop, zero-g roll, terrain action and footchoppers) it'll be successful.
This trip yielded both my new favorite and new LEAST favorite coasters. Gwazi needs RMCed. Badly. Great concept, if it had the same texture as Thunderhead it'd be a great ride, but it's SO rough. Reprofile it and use I-box track painted the respective colors of each side and it'll be amazing, right now it needs burned down.
My dad actually skipped SheiKra since it seemed a little high for his taste and he didn't like Griffon.
Closed out the season on my new favorite coaster, Cheetah Hunt. Because the ride ops weren't looking for single riders, lines moved slowly there, but I told them and they found me an open seat RIGHT up front! At sunset. Such a great ride!
Overall, an amazing season. My next season should be great too. Over the course of this season, I had two life changes. I got my drivers license (I'll be able to go on credit runs alone now!) and we got a new puppy (her name's Zoey and she's a Great Dane if anybody was wondering). Next season is still being planned (though I need to have a minor surgical procedure done on my back between now and then...yuck!) and I need to be able to drive to at least Kings Island alone.
See you in 2014! Though I'll still be on here enduring the offseason so you'll still see me, but you'll still see me again in 2014! As in, until 2014 AND in 2014, so you'll not stop seeing me...GAH I'm done! :evil:
This is a chronicle of my 2013 season trips from when it started (May) to when it ended (November). This includes six trips to 4.5 parks (Don't ask about the .5, I'll get to that.
) as well as three non-park based trips.
I went into the 2013 season aware of two details I had my heart set on. My dad had been wanting to use some frequent flyer miles to show me how to travel via airline alone. He had wanted to take me to Tampa to cross Cheetah Hunt, the number one coaster on my bucket list, off. That, and I was aware that my second home park, Cedar Point (3 hours away) was getting GateKeeper, a wing coaster, and knowing how much I liked Wild Eagle, I was determined to get down there to ride it.
Well my first trip was a few days with my grandparents in Columbus. No creds up there, just me hanging out with my grandparents and making French food with them. Well, one fateful night, because my shift work disorder was keeping me up, I was up at 2 am watching the movie Angels and Demons when I decided to try and get to bed and got a text from my crazy cousin. At 2 in the morning. She was wondering if I wanted to ride up with them from Kings Island to Cedar Point on the following Sunday after I got off work. And CF was going to be having a live there on the same day. I told her yes and looked forward to it for the rest of the week.
The following Saturday, I went to sleep after getting off work at my third shift job and went to bed. The next morning, my cousin picked me up in my employer's parking lot and we went! I hadn't gotten sleep since 4 pm on Saturday, so I knew it would get crazy with me running on such a small amount of sleep.
However, the trouble started when the CFer I had swapped numbers with sent me a text saying that the park had shut EVERYTHING down due to wind (yes, those of you who were there, this was THAT day). We swung by a gas station and I had my first Monster energy drink, and was therefore really caffeine hyper and slap happy from sleep deprivation at the same time. Just in time for my first CF live!
We got there and I took possibly the saddest picture of GateKeeper ever. Usually you pull up and hear trains roaring around giant steel structures and people screaming, that day it was just dead. Just a few people milling around a cold, windy park with nothing running. However, I still went over and met up with the few people at the Live, and they were treated to an idiot cracking outlandish jokes and making bizarre remarks after chewing a hole in his finger out of shear nerves on the drive over.
After trying really hard to squeeze two grown men into a Woodstock Express car successfully and goofing off the entire ride, we went our separate ways. My cousin and her husband and I milled around the park for a bit watching for any rides to go back up (though we DID get on Witch's Wheel!) and I got to see the room in Hotel Breakers where they wanted to get married. I was introduced to Famous Dave's while looking out on a zombie apocalypse-esque Cedar Point when I got a text that everyone from CF had left. After lunch, we hit up Blue Streak, Corkscrew, Mean Streak, and they managed to get me on Power Tower, my first large drop tower. Our last ride was Cedar Creek Mine Ride, and in addition to seeing them pull Maverick out of a valley (shown), we saw that Millennium was receiving the same treatment on a turn.
The season had a very Disa-Cedar Point-ing start but we still had fun! Getting to see GateKeeper Plaza empty was sort of creepy but neat too. And the way back was crazy. We were ALL tired, I'll leave it at that.
A few weeks later, the same cousin wanted to hit up Kings Island with me since they hadn't been in years. We had plenty of fun, which included an early morning ride on Diamondback (the best time to ride it in my opinion, seeing light creep over the hilly horizon as you crest each camelback while it's relatively cool out makes for a great ride), a Beast ride at night, my cousin getting terrified not remembering the pyrotechnics on Backlot Stunt Coaster and screaming because she thought the ride was on fire, me facing my horrible fear of heights and being dragged onto Drop Tower (well, fun for anybody that wasn't me or the kid that started crying 1/3 of the way up) and our first time trying out Red's Hall of Fame Grille while we were all really tired.
And then came the biggest goon moment yet. I was about to be dropped off 260-foot tall tower against my will, but when walking to such a bad fate, I FLIPPED when I saw the Banshee construction walls. FLIPPED. And EVERYBODY was staring. My sister still talks about how she'd never seen a "grown man get that excited over DIRT."
Then came our family vacation to Mexico. I honestly had no desire to go there since I didn't like being in the ocean and that was the main reason we were going. However, we did end up spending a day in Cancun (stayed on an island off the coast called Isla Mujeres) and saw the Mayan ruins at Tulum (shown here, this is me being a goon about something OTHER than coasters, I'm a huge nerd about ancient history too) so I enjoyed it.
Isla Mujeres was basically a strip that ran parallel to the Mexican coast. From our hotel you could see both coastlines of the island. The bay side of the island that faced Cancun was where all the businesses were and we had to go there to grab dinner and shop and stuff and it was mostly nice (though it had a lot of shady looking buildings made of cinder blocks with no windows that had just the word "HOTELA" painted on them. It was nice, but the Caribbean side of the island (shown) was better. Really sparsely populated except for a few really pretty houses, really local, tourists almost never ventured over there. On the more urban northern part of the Caribbean coast I got the best octopus in garlic sauce ever at a place called La Lonita, and a really nice upstairs cocktail place called Casa Ixchel where I had my first Mai Tai.
Because the drinking age in Mexico is only 18, as opposed to 21 in the US where I live and I'm 19, I was able to try alcohol for the first time in my life. Going into it I actually didn't like it when people had open containers around me because I hate the smell of it, but I was told it was an acquired taste, and boy did I acquire it quickly! I made a mistake getting there and going straight for the mojito on night one and that was WAY too strong (it's so weird, it's like a burning sensation) but I toned it down on future nights and was able to get into the swing of things quickly. I was really responsible about it but my inexperience with it got the best of me twice on the trip. The first time was at an upstairs cocktail bar where I ordered a drink called a Blue Islander that had two ingredients in the description I didn't recognize. I thought the rule would be that a cocktail is just one shot of liquor mixed with other juices and syrups...WRONG!!! That thing had three shots of liquor in it and while I was fine for the most part, it still made me a bit goofy. The second time was after a margarita at a restaurant when I tried wine with my parents. I had two glasses (which I always thought my parents had more than two a night and were fine) but because they have more tolerance for it than I do, I ended up laughing so hard I cried at an infomercial for a frying pan.
Not getting into too much detail about what happened, but let's just say I'll have to grab dinner with some CFers after visiting a park in 18 months...
(I assumed this was okay to post since I've seen people talk about their drinking experiences on here and I was of age in Mexico, if a mod wants to remove this feel free to.)
I got basically cut off from my friends in the States while we were there, but as we were getting ready to leave the really nice villa where we stayed the final morning, I got a text from one of my old high school friends who I hadn't talked to in a few weeks. She hadn't been informed I was in Mexico, but sent me a text the evening before the morning we left. The morning we left, I had forgotten to turn off my alarm to wake us up at 5 to go to Tulum, and that alarm was on my phone, which was out in the foyer where my sister was sleeping. She very rudely opened my door, threw the computer bag that contained my phone into my room, and I took my phone out to turn it off when I got a text from Patricia (my friend). She asked me if I wanted to join her and her parents on their family vacation to Gatlinburg. I got back from one trip and got ready for the next one!
However, this trip did cause me to call off the trip to Tampa as I figured out that my fear of tight spaces combined with my fear of heights makes flying REALLY hard for me.
After that, my cousin had wanted to take me to New Jersey with them to see a new baby niece she had and we were going to hit up SFGAdv, but we were unable to since they were moving, but she wanted to visit a park with me one more time, so we decided to hit up Cedar Point. I got to spend the night at their apartment which got really crazy and goony (stayed up till 2, both of us were laughing so hard we cried at the POV of Full Throttle and nobody knew why, we were just really tired) and had easily the best trip of my season. This is also the trip where the infamous "Maverick Test Seat" photo was born.
Pretty much as soon as we got there, we tried our hand at the plinko game outside the entrance as we waited for the park to open and BAM!!!! We won front of the line passes for GateKeeper first thing getting there! Being able to walk past a 3-hour initial line that had the cattlepens slammed and spilled out onto the MaXair walkway felt great!
While the reviews for this coaster got really really ugly really really fast, I actually thoroughly enjoyed it. We rode in the very front on the left and while they keyholes weren't as frightening as I expected, the Thorpe Park Inversion (an element I had designed on RCT2 since I was in the fourth grade) was great and full of terrifying hangtime, the view of Lake Erie was beautiful, and the ride, while there's nothing insane about it, is just REALLY fun. It's now my sixth favorite coaster, was fifth when it popped onto my top 10 for the first time.
In addition to finally credit whoring Jr. Gemini and eating at that really unique Famous Dave's on the marina, this was my first experience with a hydraulic launch AND a stratacoaster when I decided to put my fear of heights to the test on Top Thrill Dragster. My cousin almost had to make me do it, but I did it, and MAN I'm glad I did! I was actually afraid of the launch bashing my head against the headrest at first but it was nice, smooth acceleration. My ears popped at the top but seeing the entire Ohio coastline and Canada was what made it special, and the drop actually didn't scare me at all. And that was also the ride that cleaned out Cedar Point's credits for me after 2 amazing trips and one awful visit!
We WANTED to get on GateKeeper at night (those twinkling train bodies at night are beautiful when they go through the keyholes!) but it broke down around 6, but Millennium Force, my at-the-time favorite coaster that had spent the afternoon being an Intamin, was opening back up! We darted back to it and got in line. It said an hour on the sign, but we waited 90 minutes since they weren't accounting for Fast Lane. But it was worth it! There was a full harvest moon out that night and being able to see the entire park lit up as we stormed around the woods (and not seeing those tacky dinosaurs) was incredible! Still the best roller coaster experience of my life!
A few weeks after getting back from my cousin's, it was Gatlinburg time! I got picked up from my house after getting off work (which ended with THEM getting to see the whole "sleep deprived Jarrett" that every CFer at Cedar Point got to saw, I went on a rant about why people decorate with hornet's nests since we're supposed to run when we see them, had a bad moral conflict because I didn't want to buy something at a souvenir shop because I felt I would need the money for later, and got terrified at a knife store we visited because they had taxidermy animal heads on the wall and I felt like they were all staring at me). We spent the first night at the Fairfield Inn in Gatlinburg and ate at an Irish restaurant and hit an arcade where I beat Patricia in air hockey because I understood the physics behind it better than she did.
The next day we drove to the cabin where we would be spending the remainder of the trip. It was a really beautiful place to stay since it was out in the middle of nowhere and was decorated with all sorts of woodland decorations (no hornets' nests, didn't need to rant again
) and each room had a little theme. My bedroom was bears, the loft was fishing, the like.
The view was breathtaking, but we had our share of issues with being out in the boonies like that. All sorts of critters (one of which was a caterpillar that Patricia named Ricardo and wanted to take home as a pet), the night before we went to Dollywood it stormed and a tree knocked out the power line, so we were trapped out in the middle of nowhere with really crappy phone reception, no power, and bears. And on top of that, we had to call maintanence out numerous times since the air conditioner stopped working (Patricia's dad works fixing them so he found the problem, we just needed them to fix it), some of the TVs didn't work, and our dishwasher exploded and spewed foamy soap all over the kitchen.
On the second day there we hit up Pigeon Forge, ate at a catfish place called Huck Finn's (and they had a hornet's nest on a shelf in the corner, they gave me SO much crap for the sleep-deprived rant two days earlier!), went go-karting, souvenir shopping, and the highlight of the day, the Titanic museum. You can't take pictures there but some of the stuff was so cool! The original blueprints for the Titanic (they practically had to pull me away from those, being an engineering student I found it SO cool to be able to see how they designed things back then!), a piece of wood from the Grand Staircase, a reproduction of the Grand Staircase, props and costumes from the movie, a diorama of a cutaway of the ship, a room where you could put your hands in water that was the temperature of the water in which the Titanic sank, a thing where you could climb a small ship deck at varying angles as it tilted before sinking, a room with artifacts recovered from the ship by divers, plenty of cool stuff. The coolest thing was that upon arriving, a staff member gives you a card containing a bio of someone on the ship and you have to figure out what happened to them in the museum. Patricia and her parents lived, I was the only one who died. More grief for that ensued, considering how Patricia always seems to be around whenever I have strokes of rotten luck.
The next day was Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies and shopping at the Gatlinburg mall. The aquarium was really cool, but we got trapped in the gift shop by some rain. Luckily that passed and we were able to go back to the cabin. And THAT was the infamous night of the power going out and the delivery boy for Cobbly Nob Cafe downhill from us unable to find our house to deliver our dinner! He eventually found it and we ate by flashlight, but we ended up just watching Firefly on Patricia's iPad before the power came back.
D-Day (Dollywood day) followed that crazy night in the dark. Patricia got to see me being a goon for the first time when we passed the park and I saw Wild Eagle track sticking out from the trees. They were amazed that it was invisible from Pigeon Forge, as I had explained that it was surrounded by mountains concealing lift hills, but it's still pretty impressive.
Patricia had always wanted to ride a big coaster but wanted to do it with someone since she didn't feel 100% comfortable with the concept, so she was excited about getting on Wild Eagle, her first big coaster, with me. Note that this happened after the NTG accident and she was really paranoid about making sure she fit in and wasn't going to fly out of those staple-happy restraints.
She had a love-hate relationship with that experience. The whole ride was full of "I'M GONNA KILL YOU, JARRETT!!!! AS SOON AS WE GET OFF OF THIS THING!!!!! [approach next element] I'm gonna KILL YOU!!!!!" but after we got off and she caught her breath, she said she'd be happy to do it again. We ended up double riding Thunderhead later that day and once on Mystery Mine.
That was the least productive day of the season, but we did do a lot of shopping. Here's Patricia and I in the wagon shop. Craftsmen's Valley is really cool, I love seeing all the stuff made.
Can I pull it off?
And then THIS goonfest happened...
Basically they nearly had to drag me out of there. So many models, a shadowbox of Opryland stuff, old coaster cars, I FLIPPED.
Credit whore! :goon2:
We double rode Thunderhead next and Patricia seemed to be more comfortable with it. Still had my life threatened a few times, but she did put her hands up and smile towards the end.
Afterwards was Mystery Mine. I had specifically told Patricia to avoid this hunk of junk since she was new to it but decided to go ahead with it. Death threats ensued. Hated the overbank, hated the drop, HATED the hangtime. After we hit the brakes, I got, "Jarrett, I'm gonna kill you..." I reminded her that she got on it even though I advised her not to, and got, "I am SO stupid."
We then went to Dixie Stampede. Great show, the competition was a lot of fun and our side (North) won because we were better at passing flags around. And their barbecue chicken and vegetable soup are AMAZING!!!
And on our way out EMS pulled up! Someone either hurt themselves on the stairs out of the theatre or ate too much and exploded.
I went to Dollywood alone the next day but this brown recluse spider was on our cabin that morning! So scary!
Got some good construction shots of Firechaser Express!
I got in a total of four rides on Wild Eagle. Not bad for the best coaster in the park, though its days on my top 10 are numbered.
This was also the day I saw the only celebrity I've seen in 2013, Dolly was there shooting something for TV!
As a thank-you gift I bought Patricia's family some cinnamon bread and some for me to take home. So good!
A few weeks later, there was a guy from another site that was going to Kings Island and was offering people on that site a trip down there with him and his friend if they were on the way. It was a smaller trip but it was post Banshee announcement so I got to see some good construction...and get rained on and be forced to sleep in the Flight Deck station.
I LOST IT when I saw this...
My breakfast that day? Eat an entire Banshee twist! Good ice cream, but too much and I REALLY don't trust that blue color.
They were still working on the structure for the coaster barn, but I did see some pieces for the drop in place.
If you're getting strange looks for contorting yourself into strange positions to photograph around that construction wall...you might be a goon.
It doesn't open until next year and I already have my tat!
We tried to get on Flight Deck but a storm hit...so we just all three power napped. In a coaster station. Nothing odd about that.
One of the last pictures ever taken of this.
My home park is about to change forever and it's the most anticipated 2014 trip for me.
After that was supposed to be it for 2014, I decided to suck it up and do Tampa. While I did freak out on the flight over, it was worth it!
Not exactly a dream vacation spot but the park was nice. Somebody had tried to steal the neighborhood watch sign (not sure what's worse, trying or not succeeding), the Red Lobster two doors down had a sign saying that selling certain illegal substances would get you kicked out, roadkill in the streets all three days we were there, and some brilliant engineer threw this speed limit sign in the middle of the sidewalk.
Easily the most beautiful park I visited in 2014!
2 years of wanting to and five pounds of pretzels had lead up to my first ride of Cheetah Hunt, TOTALLY worth it and more! It's my new favorite coaster, rode it six times, and it ROCKS in the front!
Montu was the next coaster to climb into my top 10 on that trip. Great Egyptian theming, and if Banshee's anything like this seemingly similar coaster (loop, batwing, immelmann/dive loop, zero-g roll, terrain action and footchoppers) it'll be successful.
This trip yielded both my new favorite and new LEAST favorite coasters. Gwazi needs RMCed. Badly. Great concept, if it had the same texture as Thunderhead it'd be a great ride, but it's SO rough. Reprofile it and use I-box track painted the respective colors of each side and it'll be amazing, right now it needs burned down.
My dad actually skipped SheiKra since it seemed a little high for his taste and he didn't like Griffon.
Closed out the season on my new favorite coaster, Cheetah Hunt. Because the ride ops weren't looking for single riders, lines moved slowly there, but I told them and they found me an open seat RIGHT up front! At sunset. Such a great ride!
Overall, an amazing season. My next season should be great too. Over the course of this season, I had two life changes. I got my drivers license (I'll be able to go on credit runs alone now!) and we got a new puppy (her name's Zoey and she's a Great Dane if anybody was wondering). Next season is still being planned (though I need to have a minor surgical procedure done on my back between now and then...yuck!) and I need to be able to drive to at least Kings Island alone.
See you in 2014! Though I'll still be on here enduring the offseason so you'll still see me, but you'll still see me again in 2014! As in, until 2014 AND in 2014, so you'll not stop seeing me...GAH I'm done! :evil:
