yesterday i ditched work and headed up to knott's for a day of mirth and excitement with oscar and tconwell..
when i arrived at 945 or so my hopes of 'having the park to ourselves" were nearly crushed . even though MOST of the time a weekday is perfect, yesterday was 6th and 8th grade graduation day at knott's. .. suffice to say there seemed to be 1 adult for every 100 kids. this actually didnt turn out as bad as we thought, and to be honest, even though kids annoy me, it actually livened up the park a little..
tj wasnt expected to show till early afternoon , so oscar and i did typical knott;s picture taking stuff, until the lure of ghostrider was unbearable..
listen close people.. get to knotts.. ghostrider should be showing up on lists again.. there was a lot of very visible recent track work. i swear on the calico log ride that it's much much smoother than it was last year, in fact i'd say that i dont remember it being that smooth since aroud '00. to top it off i got to ride the copper train for the first time this visit. sadly ( or happily depending on hopw you look at it) the legendary silver train was not on the track, and that can make a lot of difference.. but i swear that ride fails to dissapoint and yesterday it actually impressed me in a way it hasn't for years.
then we decided to check out pony express. last year when we visited it was a week from it's opening , so we missed it. this ride was, well... "unique". i suppose it can be listed as a "tweener " ride, something between jaguar (which none of us could fit in ) and mmm.. silver bullet .. it was fun but insanely short, and not really too exciting .. if it didnt have such an interesting seating arrangement the word to describe it would be "SUCK" , however the restraint system was interesting enough to make us notice. over all i'd say that it was a good idea, while a little tame and suprisingly short it is innovative and definitely a general public pleaser ..
oscar and i made the decision to ride some flats, including the mexican hat dance.. that's basically an old Chance teacup style ride .. we looked at it and decided "ooh .. that doesnt look like it spins too bad " we forgot to notice that while we were watching it that it was full of little kids with the strength of a hamster.. i think i almost made oscar puke and vice versa.. we had the thing spinning like mad. unlike disneyland's famous arrow built teacups this one does not seem to have a rev limiter. it'll go as fast as you can make it go.. well after that it was time to met tj at the gate, and a
second ride on ghostrider.. tj and i have at least one common ground, and that is this ride .. to top it off my first ride with tj was also my first ride in the eliusive copper train.. the new trackwork is very visible here, and it's effect on the ride experience was ver very noticeable ..
after that xcellerator.. and lunch.. the best part of the day started here . as we walked back from lunch we saw the busses being loade .. the kids all had to go home .. he he .. the line for ghost rider went from 20 minutes to walk on .. and silver bullet was a walk on as well.. in all i got 5 rides on ghost rider,
well thats about it .. heres some photos ..
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oscar has video.. he oughta post that