Wednesday 6 June 2012

Day 11 - Idlewild and overnight train to Sandusky

Ok - so as you read on the previous days entry, today ended up at Kennywood instead!
http://rcdb.com/4553.htm

Although I'd rested the previous afternoon, I still needed a bit of a lie in, and by the time I'd got to the giant eagle for my discount ticket, and had the long bus trip - it was gone 12 by the time I was in. I still thought I'd have everything done, including rerides by 6 or 7, and have plenty of time to get my luggage from the hotel and get to the train station, (either way, I'd have to get the 8:50 bus back to Pittsburgh), but it was a lot busier than expected.

First up was skyrocket - a launch coaster, which was pretty good fun, even though the lapbars squished your legs a bit. It was a bit different to have one of these launchers without over the shoulder restraints, had about a 20 minute wait

I then did Garfields nightmare (dark boat ride accompanied by garfield cartoons) and Kangaroo (last one in existence) before lunch.

I almost forgot where I was, until I saw this helpful sign:



I then hit 2 of the park's 3 historic woodies - the historic Jack rabbit, which had really good air for a 1920 coaster, and then Racer, which is a Moebius coaster (looks like a racing coaster, but is one continuous track, So you arrive at the opposite platform to the one you left on)  The loading station is sexyyyy!
The ride itself is rather meh, particularly in comparison to grand national at blackpool! so - I didn't bother about the other side - and it was another 20-30 minute queue.

before the final woody (Thunderbolt), I went on the rather average log flume, and the ace, if very wet, rapids to cool down. And then onto thunderbolt.  This one has an odd "feature" in that because the cars don't have split seats, you HAVE to ride with a partner, or you'll be all over the place, once I'd found a ride buddy, I was just about to board the next train, and looked out of the station - Oh - it's raining, heavily, so the ride was shut down, and then thunder started. The storm lasted about 20 minutes, and about 10 mins after it finished they started the other rides, it was another 15 minutes before they started thunderbolt again, and then they sent about 8 empty trains round. making an overall delay of about an hour - I was thinking this would mean the crowds died down a bit, but no luck there! - The ride was very good.  After this I was rushing again, and didn't have much time for pics!

after that, I rode the turtle/tumble bug for the history, and Ghostwood Estate - an okish shooter

Next was exterminator - an indoor spinning mouse, with a queue of about 30 minutes.  They didn't have it spinning much, which actually helped make it more awesome, and Phantoms revenge - a coaster that was originally made in 1991 with 4 inversions, which were removed for the 2001 season - was great fun if a bit bumpy.

Black widow's queue was about 40 minutes (new ride), so I missed that, and went back to thunderbolt, and guess what - it started to rain again just before my ride!  this time the rain lasted just about 3 minutes - they hadn't closed either phantoms revenge or the turtle, but 15 minutes later and they still hadn't reopened thunderbolt, so I decided to go get in the noahs ark before going back - the queue for that was also about 30-40 minutes so I called it a day and went back to the bus!

I'd read all sorts of bad reports on American trains - mainly cancelations and delays, but I decided to give it a go anyway, was booked on the midnight train to Sandusky.

So - I got back in Pittsburg centre at about 10, and had until midnight to make the 10 minute bus trip to the hotel for my luggage (and buses were every 10 minutes) so I went to MacDonalds for dinner - They took about 15 minutes to get my mushroom and swiss cheese burger, and then I ended up waiting about half an hour for the bus back to the hotel, so by the time I'd got back it was about 20 past 11 - I asked the hotel to call me a taxi - and after trying a few places, they called a man called George, who they sometimes use for shuttles - I arrived at the station about 5 minutes before the train was due, and was sooooo relieved that it was running about 40 minutes late! (the next train was the following evening at midnight, so I'd have needed to get a coach!)

I was really impressed by the comfort on the train though - the seat was huge, and there was a lot of leg room - it was similar to business class seats on short haul airlines!  Due to the delays, my taxi wasn't there - and I ended up in another companies cab to the hotel at cedar point. Even though it was about 5am, the park was well lit up, and I had a sense of the size of the place, it seemed to take the taxi for ever to get round to the hotel! Had a couple of hours wait for the average breakfast in Perkins, and then another hour and a half before the resort early entry started

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