Favorite Theme Park Thrill Ride in Pasr 23 Years

 Today, 23 years ago back in 2003, I proposed and took Will and Rebecca down to Wild Adventures theme park in Valdosta, Georgia.  My aim was to provide the kids a fun thrill ride experience and to face my fears about the effects that gravitational shifts and inversion made on my body and sense of well-being.  As it was, we all went on Pharoah's Fury, Double Shot, Boomerang, Hangman, and Cheetah.  Seems like they enjoyed themselves, and so did I.  After leaving the park late that afternoon, we got on I-75 south where a concentrated thunderstorm hit us, impeding my vision as I struggled to keep a clear field in front of us.  This experience opened the way for us all to boldly go on as many thrill rides as we could in the two years ahead, including Busch Gardens, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, two more visits to Wild Adventures, and Cypress Gardens.  My favorite destination was Busch Gardens, with Montu, Kumba and Gwazi being my favorite coaster rides( add Scorpion for Busch Gardens).  The Hulk coaster, along with Ice and Fire, were my favorites at Universal, and we got a kick out of going on the Jurassic Park boat/slide ride. Doctor Doom's Free Fall terrified Melissa and made me quite uneasy.  From 2005 forward, our theme park visits slowed down and henceforth so did our venturing out on thrill rides.  When I drove to Hollywood to visit my father, I took pains to stop off at Boomer's on Stirling Road, where I went on their Dania Beach Hurricane wooden coaster until they finally shut down the ride.  My all-time favorite wooden roller coaster was Thunderhead at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, which we enjoyed on our summer 2006 visit there...Boomer's Hurricane was runner-up.

My all-time favorite roller coasters are Montu, Kumba, Thunderhead and Gwazi, but, speaking solely of thrill rides, my favorite in that group has to be Power Surge...found mainly at Wild Adventures and Cypress Gardens.  Well, we'll see if, on any future visit(s), we discover one or more of these fine rides.  The only remaining thrill ride I've gone on in recent years is the Royal Caribbean's Abyss dry slide, which plummets the rider quickly ten levels, from 16 to 6.  Well, maybe I'll try it again should we go on that huge boat again. Oh, and if you see it, put me on Wild Adventure's Aviator again..

About the Possibility of Writing and Posting Retro-Blog Articles

I've been working on this blog of mine since April of 2007, which is well over eighteen years ago...a long time.  Yet I wonder about whether earlier daily journaling, preserved up to the present day, would have been a preferable writing habit.  My memory is still pretty good, albeit with some gaps regarding specific, detailed information.  There are times in my past when I built up some vivid memories of the then-ongoing events and how I handled them.  Times in high school, college, and at theme parks or the post office are all worth documenting, along with my takes on them.  If you access this blog and see the "first" entry going all the way back to March, 1973, you might conclude that I'm suffering from temporal delusions...I just don't write "today I ran the two-mile race relatively fast but finished dead last" in November, 2025 while posting the comment back to the date I experienced it all.  Still, just for the fun of it, I think this just might be worth the effort...

Checked YouTube about Theme Park Rides in General Vicinity

The other day I did a search on various theme park rides.  My all-time favorite one is Power Surge, a circular ride moving around an axis that lifts you up and tosses you around, upside-down and all, in your seat high off the ground as it rotates...satisfyingly disorienting you for its approximately two minutes of duration.  When my kids were growing up, two theme parks we visited had Power Surge: Wild Adventures in Valdosta, Georgia and the renovated Cypress Gardens in Polk County, Florida. It was one of the several then-scary rides at the former on that fateful Sunday in March, 2003 that I braved myself to ride on as a challenge to myself: after all, Will and Rebecca had no problem with them!  Since that time I've completely flip-flopped on theme park rides and became an ardent fan, but the children are grown and going to these parks just hasn't been high on our agenda in recent years.  I think the last roller coaster I've ridden was the Dania Beach Hurricane wooden coaster off Stirling Road on the north side of Hollywood in southern Florida where I grew up and would later visit my father. Now the Hurricane is no more and...correct me if I'm wrong...there are ZERO coasters remaining down there. On YouTube I found a posting that shows POV on all of Busch Garden's major rides, including several newer ones I've yet to experience. I think they're the best Theme Park when I consider their distance from my Gainesville home (they're in Tampa), the number of quality rides, price and their shows and amenities.  But for now I'm glad to see the rides on YouTube.  By the way, Montu, Busch Garden's hanging steel roller coaster, is still my all-time favorite coaster and number two all-around ride, behind Power Surge (which you can also "kind-of" experience in a virtual way on YouTube).     

Rob Dial's Take on Fear and How to Deal With It

For the past few Mondays I've been devoting this blog space to discussing a certain podcast I have recently been following: motivational speaker Rob Dial's The Mindset Mentor...except that Dial doesn't like being called a motivational speaker.  Dude, that's what you do, you're good at it, own it!  The other day he had a show about fear and brought up a few good points.  He said that infants are afraid of basically two things: loud noises and falling...every other fear is something we've picked up later in life.  Fear is a survival mechanism that is supposed to tell us when we're in danger of being killed, but people mostly are afraid of things posing no such danger but rather possible social rejection or humiliation.  Dial says that nevertheless fear in these circumstances is a good thing because it signals that we're out of our comfort zone and are ready for growth.  He also gives three pointers for dealing with fear: (1) change our mindset and determine a course of action in dealing with what's making us afraid, (2) do things in bite-size portions, incrementally, and (3) "dance" with the fear by not avoiding it but rather recognizing it and confronting it (easier said than done).  If these suggestions seem a little obvious, then I wonder why many of us (including myself) tend to succumb to silly fears instead of dealing with them in a constructive manner.  Everybody suffers fear...if you don't, you're in trouble! My own kids, when they were growing up, gave me a lesson in fear whenever we visited a nearby theme park that had several scary looking roller coasters and thrill rides.  They faced their fears and enjoyed the rides. One day I was fed up with my own fear-induced reluctance and decided to take them out there and ride ALL the terrifying rides with them: it was fun as hell and I remember the date: March 22, 2003...I was hooked on theme parks for years afterwards.  Looking back on Rob Dial's three pointers about fear, I guess I skipped past (2) with the coasters...

Quote of the Week...from Dr. Seuss

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient of living.

                                                                                                      ---Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-91), was responsible for much happiness in my childhood of the early 1960s...I regularly checked out his funny books from my elementary school library and wasn't the only one who thought his stuff was the best: my favorite Seuss book was easily The Cat in the Hat, which I was happy to relive through the excellent Cat in the Hat ride a few years ago at Universal Islands of Adventure/Orlando. And regarding television adaptations, is there anything better than the animated half-hour version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas? Well, if the good doctor is right with his above quote, then I must have very attentive, alert brain cells.  For it seems I've spent a great portion of my life bent toward nonsense and fantasy...much of it through Walter Mitty-like daydreaming.  And I have always felt a special bond with fantasy fiction, both the kind that emphasizes kids with special magical talents and that focused on medieval-like societies with archetypical hero types and epic conflicts. But having made my own case of plunging into the world of make-believe, I feel the need to establish one crucial caveat: I always KNEW it was make-believe, never succumbing to any potential temptation to believe that any of it was real.  And that's what I'm seeing others doing with preposterous conspiracy theories and a fantasized reframing of reality pitting the all-good guys against the all-bad guys as if it is all an apocalyptic war between followers of Sauron and Gandalf.  Hey, I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but when the day is done it's just a dumb-ass conspiracy theory and I'd be a dumb-ass to believe it...

My Roller Coaster Years, 2002-2006

It's not that my life from 2002 through 2006 was "roller coaster" in the sense of being turbulent, but simply that during this period I became hooked on roller coasters and theme park thrill rides in general.  This did not spontaneously arise, but rather sprouted from my children's interest in theme parts and their rides.  Will and Rebecca seemed fearless on them, and I had a lifetime behind me of being too chicken to take on all but the easiest rides.  After a couple of visits to Wild Adventures theme park in Valdosta, Georgia, in March 2003 I decided to "face the fear" on our third visit there and stolidly rode every extreme ride they had...and never looked back.  Although I never got to be as much a fanatic of thrill rides as others who traverse the country (and even abroad) searching out new experiences, I did rack up a considerable number of visits to Wild Adventures, Busch Gardens, Universal Studios/Islands of Adventures, the Disney World parks...and single visits to Cypress Gardens in 2005 and Dollywood in 2006.  Since then my only thrill ride experience has been the three times I rode the Dania Beach Hurricane wooden coaster in South Florida...and it's now been gone for a number of years.  Oh yeah, we did recently go back to Epcot Center, where I managed to get on Test Track and Soaring after waiting in line for them half the day...they do offer express passes but had already handed them all out when we arrived that day...

This all came back to me while I was waiting today at Publix for a prescription to be filled and looking at their magazine section.  I picked up one called Theme Parks and looked at the pictures of exuberant roller coaster riders looping and diving on rides in various parks spread out across the country, and it occurred to me that there wasn't a single photo of those horrendously long lines folks often have to stand in just to get their two minutes of thrills.  I never see any lines on Disney World commercials, either...just Micky, Minnie, and company rushing out to personally greet a visiting family.  Once during a stay at Universal Studios in 2003 each of us had a fast pass card that enabled us to quickly go on the same rides over and over again...now that's the only way to go!  Although my home town of Gainesville is within reasonable driving range of several theme parks, the drive to and back can still get to be a little tedious.  Well, at least I still have my fond memories and, what do you know, I can even get on YouTube, search out a favorite ride like Busch Garden's Montu or Island of Adventure's Hulk coaster, press my face to the screen, and pretend I'm riding once again...

Our One-Day Visit to Epcot Center Yesterday

Yesterday my wife Melissa, my son Will, and I drove down to Epcot Center at Walt Disney World to spend the day...and close out the park for the night.  When we arrived around noon, the already overcast sky darkened even more and it began to rain.  The park was packed with visitors, and the lines for the attractions we planned on riding were very long...they do have a system to "avoid" lines by making advance appointments for rides, but most rides were already booked that way before we arrived.  We did manage to go on the three we wanted the most: Spaceship Earth, Test Track, and Soarin'...and had lunch at The Electric Umbrella near the "giant golf ball" and dinner in the "countries" section, at the Tutto Italia Ristorante.  There I ordered Involtini Di Melanzane Alla Parmigiana, composed of eggplant, ricotta, mushroom, parmesan, and tomato sauce...ever since I cooked at a Gainesville Chinese restaurant in the 1980s, I've had a thing for eggplant.  This dish was really g-o-o-d!  

As is the case with a lot of visitors, our stay at Epcot was divided into two parts: Future World in the front, northern part by the parking lots, dominated by Spaceship Earth (the "golf ball") and World Showcase, a semicircular trail of national pavilions, restaurants, and gift shops.  It was a bit stressful going through the human congestion in Future World with the long lines for our rides and the difficulty just going down the sidewalk trying to avoid head-on collisions, but once we crossed over into World Showcase, I felt more at ease in spite of the still-maddening crowds.  After dinner, we visited the various nations and enjoyed a spectacular fireworks show at the very end, all-in-all a good visit, and with Melissa and Will the company couldn't have been better...

Melissa noticed that the Spaceship Earth ride, which provides a visual history of humankind's advancement in technology, seemed to taper off after the 1960s and 70s and then jumped ahead into speculation about the future, appearing to essentially ignore the digital revolution that has drastically transformed our lives during the last few decades.  I agree with her assessment and wonder whether the good folks at Disney aren't slipping a little.  But we all agreed that Test Track and Soarin', once we finally got through the excruciating lines and fastened our seat belts, were great experiences.  Overall, though, my preference for the park was in the World Showcase section, where we could browse around and buy food and drink without the suffocating lines.  By the way, the international composition of the visitors was staggering in its degree, with Chinese appearing to be the dominant nationality...

Theme Park Rides: My Personal Favorites

As I mentioned in yesterday's article about theme parks, I have my own personal list of favorite thrill rides, including a few on a more subdued level.  Some of them are roller coasters, some aren't, and some are water park rides.  I haven't exactly been a theme park junkie like some people who travel across the country and even abroad to visit and compare the various parks and rides.  My experience is confined to a few parks within driving range of Gainesville, Dolly Parton's Dollywood in eastern Tennessee, and that one roller coaster in Dania, near Fort Lauderdale. First, I'll rank the parks I've been to (including water parks):

1 Busch Gardens-Tampa
2 Universal Islands of Adventure-Orlando
3 Wild Adventures-Valdosta
4 Disney World Magic Kingdom-Orlando
5 Disney World Epcot Center-Orlando
6 Wild Waters-Silver Springs
7 Dollywood-Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
8 Cypress Gardens (now closed down)-Winter Haven, Florida
9 Universal Studios-Orlando
10 Disney MGM Studios-Orlando
11 Blizzard Beach (Disney World)-Orlando
                                                         
Actually, I've enjoyed all of the above theme parks and have my favorite rides in each of them.  Now, here are my eight all-time favorite rides I've been on:

1 POWER SURGE (Wild Adventures)
This ride superficially resembles a Ferris wheel, but the passengers, securely strapped and fastened in their seats, soon find themselves hurled up and spinning and toppling in different directions as the world around them becomes a chaotic blur.  This has to be one of the more terrifying rides to behold from the ground...it took me a while to muster up the courage to ride it.  And as no two rides are exactly alike, I've never gotten so accustomed to it that riding it hasn't disturbed me at least a little...perfect! Only one problem: since Wild Adventures switched its ownership, Power Surge was removed.  Sometimes it appears at county fairs...it was at the Alachua County Fair two years ago, but was out of service and unavailable.  I also rode it back in 2005 at Cypress Gardens, which has since closed down...

2-MONTU (Busch Gardens Tampa)
Montu is what I call the "Cadillac" of roller coasters, providing an extremely smooth, comfortable riding experience.  But like Power Surge, it can appear pretty imposing from the ground level.  Montu is a hanging steel coaster that undergoes several loops, which for me is a good thing.  When dealing with the "G's" that thrill rides place on passengers, inverting loops can alleviate the effects...I'm not supposed to ride anything that puts an overload of them on me. So Montu and Power Surge work quite well in that regard...

3-KUMBA (Busch Gardens Tampa)
Kumba is another looping steel coaster at Busch Gardens, this one where the passengers' feet are firmly resting on the floor within their compartments and not hanging out loosely.  To me, it has a great initial climb...and that dive soon after the apex is epic!  Visually, I prefer Kumba's lush green surroundings to Montu's sand...it is a bit more jolting, though.  Still, it has always been one of the two absolute requirements for me during a Busch Gardens visit....although I prefer Montu by far...

4-DUELING DRAGONS:FIRE (Islands of Adventure-Orlando)
Now known as Dragon Challenge and renamed for dragons appearing in the Harry Potter book The Goblet of Fire, Dueling Dragons features two separate coasters, Fire and Ice, dispatched simultaneously and often hurling themselves at each other like, well, dueling dragons! In one of these high-flying encounters, Fire would momentarily hover over Ice as the latter passed close underneath...giving a sensation of floating weightlessness that Ice didn't have.  I loved this coaster and always sought it out when visiting.  Unfortunately, it's buried at the back of the park and requires a trek to reach.

5-TORNADO (Wild Waters)
I'm not sure whether or not Wild Waters will remain in existence after its adjacent park of Silver Springs became a state park.  In any event, it has been several years since I've been there...it is the closest park to Gainesville that features "rides" and you can't beat the price.  My favorite water ride is here: the tubular Tornado, a ride that requires the participant to cross their hands over the chest and cross ankles...and remain lying still as they steeply slide down into the black tube's opening at the top.  The tube convolutes to where you're actually inverted at one point while blindly sliding within it before being twisted back around at the landing.  Wild Adventures has a similar ride at its own water park (or at least it did a few years ago).

6 AVIATOR (Wild Adventures)
I believe Aviator is still at Wild Adventures, and it is one of the first thrill rides I rode on to any extent. It is more of a panoramic-view ride, with passengers seated at spokes from the center and rising up high from the ground while rotating at a brisk speed in a counterclockwise direction.  I loved sitting high up there in the sky (hence the name "Aviator"), going around like that with such a view of everything beneath...I remarked that I could easily stay up there for hours with a good book in hand and a coffee, only coming back down for refills and bathroom breaks.  But alas, that's not how they run things in these theme parks!

7 SPACESHIP EARTH (Epcot Center)
I like a lot of things about Walt Disney World.  One thing that I DON'T like, though, is having to wait in endless lines to go on any of their rides...often even when I've made an advance "appointment" using their express system.  There is one important exception to this repeated frustration: Spaceship Earth, which is the "entrance" ride to Epcot Center, right underneath the giant golf ball.  You may be standing in a line at the start, but it is constantly loading with its conveyor belt system.  Soon enough, you're on a visual educational tour through the history of humanity's progress in the area of communications...and in the process you get to sit for several minutes in air-conditioned splendor (this can be important during the dog days of summer in central Florida). Spaceship Earth is not exactly a "thrill ride" per se, but it is one that anyone could ride...and as such everyone in your party can experience it and share their reactions...

8-THUNDERHEAD (Dollywood)
Thunderhead is the best wooden roller coaster I've ever been on.  No other has come as close to it for its smoothness...but I still have to place it on my list with an important caveat: I'll probably not ride it again due to the factor of the gravity pressure that rides of this genre inevitably place on the passenger, especially during the tight winding at the end.  But it was by far the best ride in the park (that Tennessee Tornado steel coaster was brutally harsh)...

Well, I think I'll just leave this list at "eight" and move on.  Truth be told, I don't feel any particular urge to go rushing out to any of these theme parks and relive my old experiences...my memory serves me pretty well. I also noticed that, with some of the more well-known rides, you can get on You-Tube and vicariously experience them through the cameras of other riders...                           

Theme Parks...and Me

A tragic event happened at the Cedar Point theme park near Sandusky, Ohio (on Lake Erie) yesterday: a man was struck and killed at the site of one of their roller coasters after his cellphone spilled out while riding it and he scaled a fence afterward and went into the underlying restricted area to find and retrieve it.   A lot of people lose stuff on theme park rides, usually coming out of their pockets.  I have always been careful when attending them to wear a fanny pack and stuff anything I didn't want to lose in it.  But going into an area where the coaster is going to be diving at high speed? Not very wise...

I used to be very averse to riding theme park rides of any kind...well, I WAS brave enough to ride Dumbo, It's a Small World, and If You Had Wings at Disney World back in 1973...and the Congo River Rapids at Busch Gardens in '86.  But I avoided the more serious ones until my own children were of age to ride them (which they boldly began to do)...and so I decided to "face the fear", as my son Will then liked to put it.  We started, in late 2002, going to Wild Adventures just southwest of Valdosta, Georgia, and in the next few years also visited Busch Gardens, Universal Studios of Orlando (both parks contained within), Walt Disney World (Epcot, Magic Kingdom, MGM Studios, and Blizzard Beach...we never got around to Animal Kingdom), Dollywood (in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee), and Wild Waters (a water park feeding from Silver Springs).   Will, Rebecca, and I would go on the more challenging rides while Melissa would gamely ride on those a little more subdued (like Ant Farm at Wild Adventures, ET Adventure at Universal, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney).  I got over my fears of inversion, extreme heights, and sudden changes in gravity during this time...and built up a list of personal favorite rides (maybe I'll write about them in some future post).  When I went down to visit my father in Hollywood, I stopped on a couple of occasions in Dania and rode South Florida's then only roller coaster: the wooden Dania Beach Hurricane off Stirling Road next to I-95 (it's since been dismantled and moved to another part of the country).  From 2002 through 2006, my family together regularly attended theme parks and I went on most of the rides...some many times (e.g. I've ridden Busch Garden's Montu 26 times and Kumba 22).  But since that time, the kids have grown up and Melissa isn't really a "thrill rides" kind of person...understandable: before 2002 I was downright phobic about them.  So I haven't been to any theme parks in the past few years.  Still, Melissa and I could still go to places like Universal and Disney that have lots to offer visitors besides the rides...

There are also a couple of factors that have diminished the quality of our theme park experiences.  One is the travel to and from the park site, usually on the Interstate and for around two hours on the average in each direction.  That can get to be tedious whether you're a driver or a passenger.  The other is the problem these parks have with long lines for their rides.  For a two-to-three minute roller coaster experience, it simply is not worth the aggravation to have to wait upwards to an hour or more to have the opportunity.  Once we stayed at one of Universal Studio's hotels for our vacation (July 2003) and as a side benefit each of us received an express pass for the many rides.  Now THAT was great, almost running through the express lines and getting to ride our favorites many times!  But that experience was also a bit more expensive, too...

I'd like to attend some of the better theme parks again with a more balanced approach: don't just concentrate on the rides, but take in all of what they have to offer.  Still, there are some rides I'm sure I couldn't resist going on again...unless of course that entails having to wait 1-2 hours in line beforehand...

Attended the 2013 Alachua County Fair Thursday Evening

Yesterday evening I did something special to my home town of Gainesville that I could have done during each of the last 36 years but never did: I went to the Alachua County Fair, taking my son and daughter along for the experience.  It was a good opportunity to visit this event, held northeast of town just south of the airport: the autumn cool had finally set in and temperatures were in the comfortable fifties, with no mosquito in sight. The parking was only $3, admission per person was $5, and the rides and refreshments were quite reasonably priced.

Upon entering the grounds, we found ourselves facing a building. We found that it housed assorted vehicles on display and a line of tables promoting various causes.  We finally made our way through it and were back outside, walking toward the main part of the fair.  On the right was a little arena for a show we would later attend featuring two baboons, a baby monkey wearing a diaper, a dollar-snatching bird, a dog trained as a mailman, the able host trainer, and his trainer wife, whose English could barely be understood behind her incredibly thick Russian accent.  Good little show.  Further down from this was an alligator-wrestling show that we missed and an ongoing karaoke contest.  We passed them by and went deeper into the park.  As we walked further, we saw booths all over the place selling different kinds of refreshment.  One type that particularly stood out was the one that sold deep-fried foods of seemingly any kind: deep-fried Oreos, Milky Ways, other candy bars, apples, pickles, butter...even Pepsi was available in this weird form.  Later the three of us would sample some of the deep-fried Oreos, to a wide range of reaction (I didn't care for them).  We also got a funnel cake which I thought was scrumptious.  But the eating actually came at the end of our visit.  The main thing there was the rides. 

I expected a Ferris Wheel, which there was (and we all rode together).  I didn't know what more to expect in the area of rides and was quite surprised to see so many quality ones there.  There was the typical swinging boat ride, a straight-up-and-down pole ride, some that played with your sense of gravity, an O-shaped looping ride, some peewee rollercoasters, and some rides that were very similar to those I had encountered at the Wild Adventures theme park in Valdosta, Georgia.  They even had a small version of that park's "Yo-Yo" swinging ride...unfortunately down for repairs.  But I guess I was ultimately the most disappointed in the broken down state of my favorite ride, Power Surge, which was there!  So close, and yet so far...

I ended up going on just a couple of rides, while my "kids" (ages 18 and 23 now) went on several more.  I had a lot of fun watching them have fun on their rides, though.  Maybe next time I go to a county fair I'll try out some more (and maybe Power Surge will be there, actually functioning).

Oh, and what would a county fair be without the farm animals? There was, on this evening, a small section devoted to them.  Cows, goats, and ducks abounded.  I saw one horse, and one pen contained the following strange assortment of animals, all of which seemed to be getting along quite well together: one mother cow, one calf she was nursing, one calf that was sleeping, one white duck off in the far corner, one cute little black pot-bellied pig incessantly sniffing and wagging its tail, and one big ol' turkey that seemed intent on having a staring contest with me up close.  The animals were fun to look at, although I think the main animal contests and displays which typify county fairs must have been scheduled for a different date...

I felt that the people working at this fair were friendly and contributed to the festive atmosphere.  We went on a Thursday evening, and although there were a few families with little children sprinkled in along with seniors, most of those attending seemed to be high school students.  Most also seemed to be having a pretty good time!    Here are a few pics (one showing a view from atop the Ferris Wheel)...

Vicarious Planetary Thrill Rides in Planetarium

It's been years since I've ridden a roller coaster, or any other theme park ride for that matter.  I miss those experiences, but not the lengthy travel times to and from the parks, not to mention the tedious, long lines for different rides once I manage to finally get inside a park.  But earlier this afternoon, I managed to get back at least of little of those old thrills without the long travel, long lines...or even the expense.  How? I paid a visit to my local Santa Fe College planetarium, where they were presenting a show titled SpacePark360: Geodesium Edition. It consisted of a set of nine imaginary thrill rides, one on each of the major planets (or one of their moons) starting with Mercury and going further out, with an extra one on "the way back" on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io.  Some of the rides were swinging rides, other were "twisters",  and the best were roller coasters.  Nine pretty cool rides set on exotic worlds.  Most of the planets and moons depicted as sites for the rides were interesting, although Venus and Jupiter were mostly a bunch of clouds...while Earth's rocket launch pad setting, coupled with the limited ride, wasn't very impressive.  But the scenes depicted for Mercury, Mars, Saturn (from Titan), Uranus (from its ring system), Neptune, (from Triton), and that finale on Io were vivid and memorable.  James Albury was there at the planetarium again, narrating the show...and he took my money at the entrance as well, automatically giving me the "senior" discount.  Oh well. 

I suppose that this vicarious thrill ride experience is probably going to be the way to go for me in the foreseeable future. The roller coaster on Neptune's moon Triton was a hanging coaster very similar to Montu at Busch Gardens, which incidentally is my favorite roller coaster ride of all time (I've ridden it 26 times, I believe). The others were more like that same park's Kumba coaster, also an old favorite.  I wasn't as happy with the non-coaster rides, although the opening one on Mercury reminded me of Pharaoh's Fury at Valdosta's Wild Adventures (I've ridden that one 27 times).  At the close of the show, Mr. Albury hinted that the company that produced this show is soon coming out with a sequel: I can hardly wait!!!

Cool Disney Promo Video in Orlando

In the hotel I am currently staying at in Orlando, Channel 42 has instantly become my favorite...and all it does it play the same short program repeatedly.  But the subject and tone of this program has great appeal: an introduction to Walt Disney World for visiting tourists.

No, this time around I'm not visiting Walt Disney World.  But I have some pretty vivid memories of past visits, starting back in 1973 with my sister and some of her friends and progressing through the years to times with my adult family.  Looking back, it's been a while since my last visit, back in 2004.  Since that time, according to this little TV show, the Magic Kingdom added a New Fanatasyland section while the MGM Studios Park name was changed to Hollywood Studios.  And it looks as if that Downtown Disney section has grown, although I've never visited it.

But aside from the positive vibes I got from the announcer as she presented the different attractions (and going on many of the rides), I got a kick out of reliving some of those experiences in the parks I enjoyed.  Like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Splash Mountain in the Magic Kingdom and the Tower of Terror and Rock & Roller Coaster in "Hollywood" Studios.  Plus, I was reminded of other rides that the video didn't show, like those cool ones at Epcot (especially the ride inside the big golf ball) and the Blizzard Beach superslides...

10th Anniversary of Special Theme Park Visit

Today is the tenth anniversary of a fun, diversionary trip to a theme park with my two children.  My wife was busy at the time, so I took the kids to Wild Adventures theme park on the outskirts of Valdosta, Georgia.  Will and Rebecca were both pretty much fearless with the thrill rides there, but I wasn't.  But I resolved to tackle all of them, no matter how daunting. 

So I rode scary coasters like Boomerang, Cheetah, Hangman, and Bugout.  I went on the straight-up-and-down exercise in terror known as Double Shot (Universal's Islands of Adventure has a larger, but smoother version in their Doctor Doom's Fear Fall ride).  And I partook of what scared me the most, looking up from ground level: Power Surge, a "circle" ride quite like no other, being tossed about and inverted in my seat far above the ground.  Oh, and let's not forget the gut-wrenching gravity torture machine, Pharoah's Fury, a boat-shaped ride that swung back and forth in ever-increasing swoops.  All of this I conquered on that day, a day in which I repeatedly faced my primordial fears and pressed on.  To others, this may sound a bit laughable...but it was a big deal to me.

After that trip, for about two or three years, I made a point of visiting theme parks to ride roller coasters and other thrill rides.  I had a great time with my children...but they were growing up and weren't as interested in the thrill ride experience as before.  And Melissa NEVER was.  So here I am, now, having gone for a few years since going on a thrill ride at a park.  The last time was in south Florida, in the city of Dania on a fantastic wooden rollercoaster appropriately called the Dania Beach Hurricane.  But I've heard this this great ride has been dismantled...so sad.

I don't know about the future for me and theme park thrill rides, and I only got out to a few parks in the Southeast.  Plus, I have to keep in mind that one negative drag on my enjoyment was the often inexcusably long time I had to spend waiting in line just for one ride.  Also, I tired of the long driving to and from the parks.  O.K., so I'm getting old and impatient.  Wait, I've always been impatient!

The Rise and Fall of My Thrill Ride Hobby

It is interesting, looking back now on my thrill ride "hobby" in the previous decade, how my feelings toward riding roaster coasters and other rides that either flipped me upside-down or severely tested my bearings with sudden, steep drops and turns have evolved. At first, I was one of the adult family "heads" taking my kids out to the park, with little desire to get on any of the rides. Many of them seemed outright terrifying to me, but late in the summer of 2002, at Wild Adventures theme park in Valdosta, Georgia, I decided to try out some of the more sedate-looking ones. This included coasters designed for little children like Ant Farm, Gold Rush, and Tiger Terror. These I managed to survive by shutting my eyes tight and repeating to myself "Safe, safe, safe..." throughout the ride. Later, I took it as a personal challenge to "face the fear" (as my brave son Will put it) and tackle some of the more scary rides, and with my eyes wide open. By the spring of 2003 I had become a thrill ride addict, and wondered to myself how anyone could truly enjoy life without a regular diet of roller coasters and rides that tossed and turned every which way but (thankfully) loose. After all, we're all astronauts in the sense that we're on "spaceship" Earth, hurtling through space: why not take the role to its proper end and undergo astronaut training?

My theme park fascination continued through 2004, but it began to fade the following year. Our attendance began to dwindle until, in the past few years, we hardly ever visit one. Why the drop-off in interest?

Well, for one, "conquering" a ride by experiencing it enough times for any apprehension to be gone takes the "thrill" out of thrill rides to a great extent. Also, I am not too keen on having to drive the distance involved in getting to a theme park like Wild Adventures, Busch Gardens, Universal, or Walt Disney World and then driving the return trip home. I don't like to pay the entrance fee, either, although an annual pass can sometimes be a good deal if we visit the same park a number of times. Going through a park for hours on end can be grueling in itself, and especially during the hot Floridian summertime, which can span from spring through most of fall (and seems to have already begun in late winter this year). But what sets me the most against theme parks is the idea that I usually have to wait for long stretches in long lines just to enjoy a two-minute ride. That I have totally lost my patience to withstand.

To top all of these drawbacks, I have a medical condition that won't be helped any with the kind of gravity manipulations and stress that many thrill rides emphasize. So even if I lived right across the street from a good theme park and had a lifetime free pass for it, as well as an express pass that allowed me to bypass the long lines, I still wouldn't be going on most of the rides. So at least for the indefinite future, I'm afraid that I will be cutting even further back on my theme park visits. But that's already been happening anyway during the course of the last seven years...

Video Games Unworthy of My Fanaticism...Yet

I have to admit it: I never could get into the video game phenomenon. Although there are individual exceptions, I think that becoming a video game fanatic (or not) is largely a generational matter. And I may have just missed the "cut". I know that my children sure were (and still are) big video game players. I keep telling them, in reference to my relative lack of interest in the "activity", that I am waiting for virtual reality technology to take hold. But in spite of the fact that Walt Disney World's Carousel of Progress show's vision for the near future features Grandma sitting in the living room engaged in playing a virtual reality space battle game, nothing of the sort has yet "materialized" in the "real" world of the marketplace. Instead, we just keep getting more realistic looking flatscreen games.

Maybe we need a Steve Jobs in the gaming industry to come out with a vision that pushes the technology and software designers into the virtual world that I myself would clamor for. But then again, maybe that's the point: virtual reality could possibly be made so alluring that its participants might just decide to spend their waking hours completely within its fantasy lands, and that wouldn't exactly be a good thing for society in general, would it? Come to think of it, that's just what happened in a Star Trek: the Next Generation episode: one of the crew went overboard with his holodeck (virtual reality room) sessions to the exclusion of his duties, even losing touch with reality itself (which was actually complete fiction, but in the context of the show it was reality).

After all, it is clear to me that this is already happening to an extent with flatscreen games. There is even a company called GameFlight that allows video game fans to be able to afford to spend just about every waking moment of their lives completely immersed in them. I've seen the commercials: the "satisfied customers" kind of creep me out with their fanaticism, I have to say. Have you seen any of these ads?

Maybe the current generation(s) of video gamers will eventually reach the point where the two-dimensional game image becomes a bore and they collectively begin to demand high-quality and readily available virtual reality. If that happens and the industry responds with some good reality-emulating products (and not those cheap, inadequate 3-D simulations), expect yours truly to join the ranks of creepy video game fanatics...

Theme Park Weariness

From late 2002 through 2006 I was an avid thrill ride fan, enjoying theme parks like Busch Gardens, Universal Studios Orlando, Disney World, Wild Adventures, Cypress Gardens, and Dollywood. Before this time I had been afraid to ride any roller coaster, and any ride that flipped me over or dropped me quickly? Forget it! It took my two fearless children to shame me into gutting it out through some scary rides, and before I knew it I was hooked on them. But my children have since been growing up and now have other interests. The rides never did take hold with my wife, so it often seems that I am the only one left with a real desire to visit a theme park. And even with me, I am not 100% on board with it, either.

For one, just to get to one of the relatively close parks involves some tedious long-distance driving for 100-140 miles. That, simply put, is not a fun ride for me! Then, when I'm finally at the park, there is the chronic problem of having to wait in long lines just to enjoy a ride that often lasts only a couple of minutes. On top of that, it seems that usually several of the rides are in disrepair at any given time, and some of them are my favorites.

So when I read about some of the new rides coming out at places like Busch Gardens, Sea World, and Universal, I wonder to myself whether I really want to invest the time, effort, and expense to go try them out. Shoot, I haven't even tried out any of the rides at Sea World, but I don't see any visits there in the foreseeable future.

Years ago I saw a promotional show on TV about Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia. They had a wonderful steel coaster called Alpengeist (similar to Tampa's Montu), and a man who liked this ride so much he had ridden it more than 500 times rode it again for the cameras. I bet that dude probably lived across the street from the park!

When I occasionally go to South Florida for family reasons, I check out a place in Dania called Boomer's, which is primarily a large arcade building with a whopping giant wooden roller coaster towering over it. I just drive over there during my visit, park my car for free, buy my coaster ride ticket, and walk right up and get on the coaster with nary a wait nor hassle.

Why can't other places be like that? They wear me down.

Happyland in Vietnam

Yesterday I read a short article in the Gainesville Sun about a project on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam: the resort theme park Happyland. Construction on the $2 billion complex of five-star hotels, shops, and a full theme park has just begun and is slated for opening in 2014. Joe Jackson, Michael Jackson's father, is a major investor and attended ceremonies there marking the start of the construction. He stated, among other things, that he wanted to bring happiness to the Vietnamese people with this park, apparently patterned to a degree after Michaels's private Neverland park in California.

I say "fine" to all of this, with one caveat: it seems to me that the "happiness" that the Vietnamese people will ultimately derive from Happyland will be from the money that foreign tourists shell out there that in turn goes into the Vietnamese economy, further stimulating tourism and related businesses. This doesn't seem like Disney World to me, where one can find ordinary working people spending some time with their families. They will want to generate a lot of revenue from the park, and the price will most like reflect what relatively wealthy foreign tourists can afford, not what the average hard-working Vietnamese person has to offer. I'd like to think otherwise, but this seems awfully exclusive to me. But I could be proven wrong.

The Aviator at Wild Adventures

I miss the enjoyment of sitting through simple theme park rides like this one, The Aviator, at Valdosta, Georgia's Wild Adventures. This park is slightly less than a hundred-mile drive from Gainesville and is the closest theme park with roller coasters and other thrill rides. Perhaps later this month I'll see if I can't steal some time away from the elements in my life that are stealing it from me and go there for a few hours of fun.

Wild Adventures (Valdosta) Visit

Today I took my family with me on an excursion to Wild Adventures theme park on the outskirts of Valdosta, Georgia. I've been there many times (going back to 2002), but not recently. I read somewhere that Wild Adventures had fallen on lean financial times and that closing it down had been considered. But they seemed to still be hanging in there, although they had redesigned the place somewhat with several of the old rides gone and a few new replacements. I miss the now-gone Power Surge and Inverter, two of my all-time favorite theme park rides. Also missing were the Gauntlet, Sindwinder, Gold Rush, and Tiger Terror rides. The latter two I had a rather fond attachment to as they were "baby" rollercoasters that helped me to gradually overcome my fears until I was ready for the "big guys". Also, Double Shot was shut down but not removed (yet). Hopefully, they'll keep this fun ride for the future. Wild Adventures did add some new rides, although the only one I really cared for was the thoroughly awesome Rattler.

We bought season passes for Wild Adventures that will last through the year 2011. This park, which is a manageable 90 minute drive north from Gainesville on I-75, also contains a nice water park within its borders that runs from mid-spring to early fall. And they have concerts as well (the Doobie Brothers are one of the featured coming attractions). All of this is covered by the discounted passes we bought. Hopefully, the company will stay in business long enough to cover their duration!