Sunday, October 24, 2010

A Sudden Induction

By: Great Biscuit

In my previous installment, the Biscuit clan had arrived at Six Flags Fiesta Texas to find a virtually deserted park. With two rides down and many left to go, we headed over to The Boardwalk area. The girls soon discovered a few kid-oriented rides which had no lines at all.


(What is the deal with the spinning bus?  Why does it seem that EVERY Theme park has this ride?  Do they just give that out free when you puchase three or more other rides of equal or greater value?)

While the girls were thusly engaged and safely under the watchful supervision of First Lady Biscuit and Nana & Papa, I took a side trip to catch me a coaster.

It had been a while since I was able to get my coaster on so I was really looking forward to a chance to ride the rails again. The closest coaster to our location was Poltergeist and it was one I had never ridden.



Because the ride was built after the park opened, the coaster itself is sandwiched in behind some other buildings. To make it accessible from the park, they offset the queue and the loading area quite a ways from the actual track and tucked them between a restaurant and the back side of the car ride. The affect of this is that you cannot see the track from the line or from the loading dock. (This is an important note for later.)

I shuffled my way though the endless rows of empty rails and trudged up the ramp to the loading dock. There was a train waiting when I got there and the gates were all open. I was TOTALLY loving this no-crowd thing! I joined the three people already on board and after a couple of minutes, and a few more folks had wondered up and gotten on, the bored and alarmingly sleepy looking ride operator closed the gates, dropped the restraints, gave a thumbs up and hit the magic button.

It was then that I discovered something. It is probably a good idea to take a peek a coaster in action BEFORE you get on it.

Poltergeist is not one of those normal, haul you up a hill with a chain, type of coasters. No my friends. This bad boy was a linear induction coaster.

Now don’t get me wrong. I LOVE these things and have ridden them many times. However, I do like to know ahead of time so as to properly prepare myself. If there had been a ride video of my face during said takeoff, it would have gone viral by now. My head was suddenly pinned to the chair, my eyes were bugging out of their sockets and my lips were flapping so far around the side of my head that I was experiencing the disconcerting sensation of simultaneously kissing both of my own ear lobes.

While other men may have been reduced to shrieking like a startled school girl, I am happy to report that I bore it with equanimity and quickly recovered. By the time we made it through the first loop, I had reeled in my facial muscles and took to waving my hands in the air and grinning like the Joker on tater tot day at Arkham.

In short, the ride ROCKED!

I pondered riding it again, but didn’t want to leave the girls waiting. Plus I was sidelined by an injury while exiting. I don’t know how I did it, but in the course of making my way out of the queue, I raised my left arm while cornering a turn in the exit lane and somehow managed to smack the tip of my elbow on the edge of a metal bar. This created a chain reaction which shot lighting bolts up my arm and clear around the side of my back. It was about the worse funny bone smack I’ve ever dealt myself. And it totally soured the mood for another ride.

After meeting back up with the family, I discovered First Lady Biscuit had taken the girls on the mini-swings. This was nifty with me as I am much more prone to getting ill on those types of spinning rides as opposed to twisting and turning coasters.

I don’t get it either.

I also discovered that from the vantage point of the bench in front of the Taz swings, you could clearly see Poltergeist.  In fact Nana Biscuit snapped the shot up above while I was riding it.  I guess I should have stuck around over here a few minutes after all.

When the girls were done with their ride, we all headed over to Scooby Doo Ghostblasters and shot ourselves some ghouls. This ride is kind of like a poor man’s Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin. The concept is similar and both are themed. But the comparison pretty well ends there. Scooby is much shorter, a lot cheesier, not as nicely themed and doesn’t allow you to spin. The queue is limited when it comes to looking at anything interesting, and the ride itself seems a bit cardboard cut-outish. It’s a great way to enjoy some air conditioning, but that’s about all it has going for it.

After hanging with Mystery Incorporated it was time to go get a birds eye view of the park. (See panoramic photo in the last installment.) Little did we know that this simple act would become immortalized in the history of Biscuitdom.

11 comments:

  1. GreatBiscuit said "My head was suddenly pinned to the chair, my eyes were bugging out their sockets and my lips were flapping so far around the side of my head that I was experiencing the disconcerting sensation of simultaneously kissing both of my own ear lobes."

    DED!!!!!!!!!! GREAT imagery, GB! That was hysterical.

    Loved the spinning bus theory, too. Buy 3 get one free!!

    And yeah for the Scooby Doo Ghostblasters. The Ashclan love them some Scooby Doo!

    As for the simple act soon to be immortalized in the history of Biscuitdom? Can't wait to hear about THAT!!

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  2. Love the suspense! Great installment, can I have some of your tots? :)

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  3. I am borg with Ash so I say exactly what she said.... minus the Scooby Doo comment.

    Biscuit you had me sitting here, giggling out loud. That sounds like one wicked ride! I'm still shocked that you guys are walking on to everything. Why can't Disney be like that?!?!?!

    I, like you, can not do the round and round thing but I sure can handle some loop dee loops. I have to do the ballerina 'focus on one object then whip the head around thing' when I'm forced on one with my kids.

    Well, when you smacked your funny bone you sure didn't break it because this was full on funny! Great update!

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  4. You rode a ride you'd never seen before? Dude! That's like voting for a guy just b/c he talks about hope and change.

    GB wrote, "(What is the deal with the spinning bus? Why does it seem that EVERY Theme park has this ride? Do they just give that out free when you puchase three or more other rides of equal or greater value?" DED! Since they don't have a spinning bus at WDW or DL, and that are the only amusement parks we ever visit, I can't confirm that the spinning bus is everywhere. But the suggestion that you get one for free was funny. WAY funnier than that crappy, non-picture post of LaLa's!

    Frick: in answer to your Illuminations question, they had a show on the lake back a long time ago, but it wasn't Illuminations Reflections of Earth. That began in the fall of 1999 (not to be confused with the fall of the house of Obama). I'm not sure what the name of the earlier show was, but it occurs to me that there was an earlier Illuminations. However, I don't believe there was a globe until Reflections of Earth.

    Ash: you really don't know what "your mom goes to college" is from?

    Z

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  5. Good Morning GB!!!

    Great installment! I have never seen a spinning bus at all. But just looking at that one, it doesn't seem like I'm missing much.

    However, the coaster looked AWESOME!!! WOW! I love a good roller coaster and...shhhhhh...am kinda looking forward to my son being tall enough for us to go to Universal so I can ride some new ones. I can't do spinny rides either.

    In fact, the GA National Fair just came and went in my area, and I took my son and one of his friends. (My daughter had already gone with a friend a few days earlier.) I thought it would be easy peasy. I'd get the boys a little early from school, drive down to Perry, ride a couple of rides, eat some fair food, come home.

    The Fair could be a blog post all of it's own. Wow. There was one ride the boys wanted to ride, but they are just short enough that I had to ride it with them for them to be able to go on. Let's just say that WITHIN SECONDS of my funnel cake making a comeback in reverse, the ride stopped and I was rescued from the sickest feeling I've had in decades. I kid you not. Terrible.

    All of that to say, GB, I hear ya on the spinning. Can't do it.

    What a fun day! No crowds, a good roller coaster, some AC with Scooby and the gang...I can't wait to hear what happens next.

    ZZUB, you have a hanging parenthesis.

    Y'all have a great day!

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  6. Hey AC! How goes it! Rock on with y’alls Scooby loving selves! Scraggy!

    Motherofboys said: “Love the suspense! Great installment, can I have some of your tots?”

    Way to bring your Napoleon Dynamite!


    Frickles said “Biscuit you had me sitting here, giggling out loud. That sounds like one wicked ride! I'm still shocked that you guys are walking on to everything. Why can't Disney be like that?!?!?!”

    Hey Frick! A Line-less Disney would ROCK! You have to wonder if there is ever that rare off day in the value season where it works out that way. I’ve read a FEW TR’s from late January that seem to report very minimal crowds, but certainly not like we had that morning, and definitely never in the summer time. Glad you got some giggles.



    ZZUB said “You rode a ride you'd never seen before? Dude! That's like voting for a guy just b/c he talks about hope and change.”

    Perhaps in hindsight it was a bit foolhardy. The spinning BUS seems like it is everywhere. The girls rode it at Mall of America a few weeks later.


    Hey NM!

    You are not missing a whole lot in the spinning bus dept. It was an awesome coaster. I enjoyed it immensely. Once I was over the takeoff that is. Another good one there is the Superman Krypton Coaster.

    The last time I went to the fair was when First Lady Biscuit was “expecting”. It was then that I learned rule of life number 2453. NEVER go to the fair with a pregnant woman. EVER. She was having food cravings and over the course of a couple of hours we got grilled pork kabobs, funnel cake, nachos, gyros, burgers, sausage wraps and popcorn. Of course after a couple of bites of each thing, she changed her mind and I was left to “finish” it while she found something new to crave. By the time we got home, I thought I was going to die. Luckily we didn’t do any rides with her being in said state or else I would have “refunded” if I may borrow a phrase from Zzub.

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  7. GB! I get it - I totally get it! Can't. Spin. Period. But I'm all about the coaster, as you know. And Poltergeist is sounding pretty neat. Tell me more about this linear induction stuff; is it anything like the RnR start?

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  8. Hey V! Thou art correct my friend. RnR also uses linear induction to get itself going. Poltergeist is the same way. You go from 0 to STINKING FAST in a real quick hurry.

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  9. Oh, and the WEDway (NoTTA) also uses LIMs but it uses the low velocity type. (Although it would be interesting if they screwed up the lables on the next rehab.)

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  10. Excellent installment GB!

    I loved hearing about your Coaster experience because you would never get me on one like you described, ever, ever. I'm both shocked and amazed when people ride those piles of twisted metal......{{{{shudder}}}}

    I love BTMRR but that is my limit. I did EE once and that was waaaaay enough. Don't like to spin either.

    We were at Disney a couple of times when it was creepy dead. LIke your Six Flags dead. Once was at the old Pirates & Princess party (RIP, P&PP) It was end of August and a pretty bad storm had come through. Everyone left. I counted 50 people standing at the end of Main Street watching Wishes. No one at all on the path between Winnie and Snow. The last week of August, right before Labor Day weekend is the best at Disney for no crowds. Mark that in your calendars!

    Zzub - never fails to bring the funny:
    "You rode a ride you'd never seen before? Dude! That's like voting for a guy just b/c he talks about hope and change"

    Vote for Pedro.

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  11. Hey Yak!

    Thanks for the touring tip. I've filed that one away.

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