Winter Solace, Pt. 4

Cindy had to leave to catch her plane, while I still had a few hours to kill. You know how I spent it. Riding GhostRider!!! The coaster had lost nothing from a couple of days earlier. It was still flying through track and whizzing through the turnaround just before "the drop." I rode it ten times in two and a half hours.

Now, why so few rides in such a long period of time? Well, this is my complaint with GhostRider (other than the rain thing). The dispatch crew chose to rope off the Gold train and send it out empty. Every single time. They only allowed us to board to the Copper train. Why? It was obvious. When I first started the day there was an all male crew. They ran two train operation flawlessly. Then an all female crew came on. They took forever to check the restraints and dispatch each train. But the main reason is that it took them too long to tie down an unused seat if there was no rider. So, rather than have to tie down four or five seats for one train, which took them so long it caused stacking, they simply tied the entire train down and ran one train operation. It was laziness, pure and simple. And even after the crowds warranted two train operation they continued to send the gold train empty, creating a fifteen minute wait for what should have been five. Only when the male crew came back on did two train operation resume.

Montezooma's Revenge was also closed on this day. I wonder if it had anything to do with the coaster overshooting the brakes?

The park was absolutely dead - most stores and attractions were closed, including Monty, Windjammer and Tampico Tumbler, and Supreme Scream barely had any riders, even with one tower. What little crowd existed was at GhostRider, and after five or six more rides I called it a day. I purchased a Chicken Dinner To Go, stored it in my cooler, went to In-N-Out one last time for lunch, and made my way to LAX for the long ride home.

So here's the loot I came away with: A Knotts Chicken To Go chicken dinner (preserved thanks to my handy dandy cooler), a case of 32 oz. bottles of Boysenberry Punch Concentrate, a whole boysenberry pie, a GhostRider sweatshirt, GhostRider golf shirt, GhostRider t-shirt, an engraved block of GhostRider wood with commemorative coin, Knotts Winter Solace patch, Knotts Winter Solace t-shirt, Knotts golf shirt, complimentary admission ticket to Knotts, two Goliath t-shirts, three Disneyland golf shirts, a Disneyland Classics CD, a SCBB 75th anniversary sticker, and a Blockbuster free video rental coupon!

This was a trip I really needed to take. In the last three months I've had to deal with the death of my mother, my father's heart attack and ongoing problems, and the cancellation of our wedding. I'd say I'm just a job loss short of hitting rock bottom! But it's trips like these that keep my spirits up and my attitude positive. Coaster trips reinvigorate me. I get to see a whole lot of the country and meet some incredibly nice coaster enthusiasts that instill my faith in people. I'm grateful to all the people I met and spent time with for being so friendly and fun to be with. I hope you all had as much fun as I did!

Mark