silver2005

This just in from Don on Facebook.

To me, the only way to make stand ups 'comfortable' is to limit the size, or make things really drawn out making for potentially boring rides. The bigger ones can be hard on people's legs. To me, its also a bit more difficult to maintain body control standing up in the types of restraints they have to use.

^If that's the case, how come a new one hasn't been built since 1999?

During my last visit, while traversing the Diamondback queue, they had opened the lower queue lanes, and I found a guy...ahem....relieving himself...in line. I notified the attendant where the line enters the station and the Fast Lane users are let in. By sheer coincidence, I rode in the same train as that man and as we got back, park security and Mason PD were patiently waiting to escort him out of the park and I went with security to verify.

I will say that high school was a big social vehicle for me, more so than the material. I pretty much hated my middle school years for various reasons. I actually almost didn't continue band through that point as I was just frustrated at a lot of things. I'm very, very glad I kept doing it, not only for what I got out of it musically, but I felt a lot more comfortable socially as high school went on. I found I fit in with a lot of different cliques. I rather enjoyed that aspect of high school.

Just so people are aware, I have more pictures on the previous page from some other stuff in September. I separated them into 3 posts, and got paged in the middle of it.

UC vs OSU The high school game we were at out of courtesy towards our hosting band. We injected our own cheers in to pass the time. Most of them involve the phrase 'let's go cats', which worked well in our favor as the team was named the Patriots, often called 'Pats' for short. The student crowd was rather rude to us, mainly due to the fact that there was a clear lack of older folks, aka parents, at the game. Some of the crap they pulled would have gotten people from my HS suspended or more. Didn't get too many shots outside the stadium/Skull Session during OSU as we were on the move a lot between getting there and going between performance locations. Here are a few from the Skull Session. This was the high school band that played before it began. They were really energetic and the crowd got into it. They had quite the repertoire for a high school band to fill in 45+ minutes. The high school's tubas having some fun. The place was packed for the concert. OSU's St John's Arena is roughly the size of UC's Fifth Third Arena, though OSU's stacks them up. I think UC's might be bigger. Keep in mind this is their old basketball arena. The one they actually use is much bigger. Its still amazing to see how much support TBDBITL gets. The OSU Band making their entrance. They pretty much crowd the entrance, both here and at the stadium before they enter, drums pounding away. You can be a good distance away and just feel the air pressure off the drums on your chest. They sure let you know they're coming. For their fight songs and Hang On Sloopy, they just fill that arena with sound. A closer look at them, particularly their drum major. UC grad and OSU head coach Urban Meyer. The team comes in and the coach makes a rally cheer before each Skull Session. The band after their infamous ramp entrance. Ohio Stadium is HUGE! It was already full by pre-game. Another band shot. Paying homage to the away team. They may be able to play some of our fight song, but there is a 16th note running pattern which the baritones play which they missed. Hey, gotta poke a little fun at them. In this shot, I was trying to show something weird the OSU band does. I think this is just for Script Ohio, but whenever they turn or make crossovers between lines when writing Ohio out, they made these snappy horn pops. This is probably one of the reasons they have to memorize the steps for this drill. You can see it a little bit in the far left. That entire section at that end of the stadium is the student section. There is a massive wall of sound that pours from that side when the crowd gets into it. I can't imagine what it was like for the UC offense. When the stadium does the O-H-I-O spelling cheer, the students start it with panels in the shape of a big O and the spelling carries out counter-clockwise. Script Ohio. I wish we had seats down the sidelines as I really wanted to see it clearly in person. The I-dotter is announced during the Skull Session and his name and picture are displayed on the scoreboard. They are chosen from tubas who have been in the band 4 or more years. On occasion, special guests will join the I-dotter, but its very rare. The Buckeye football team takes the field. Our director conducted the National Anthem, which made me proud to see. There is a HUGE American flag hoisted by the ROTC in the end zone on the curved end of the stadium, the flag seen in the bottom of this picture. Brutus. The Bearcat! He does come to all OSU vs UC games armed with a nutcracker. Unfortunately, he didn't whip it out until well into the 2nd half while the Bearcats were getting smoked, a point where I stopped caring to take pictures. There were a fair amount of UC fans at the game, though it was this little spot of black next to us in the giant sea of scarlet and grey. The calm before kick off. The score a bit into the 3rd quarter. This was when UC seemed to be getting momentum back, which is a funny thing for a team playing away in an environment such as OSU. I never cheered so hard, at least since I went with the band to see UC play Syracuse in NYC for the Big East Tournament and whipped them. I really thought we could pull off the upset, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Had a great time regardless of the score. I kind of want to be there for an OSU/Michigan game.

From the UC vs Miami (OH) game. The Redhawk Band filing into PBS. Some shots of the stadium decked out in red. This was the Ring of Red game. Some shots as it got darker.

Here are some highlight photos of my travels in September. Will separate this into 3 posts. First, I took my camera to Newport when I went to see Lucy.

The only computer 'training' I received in high school was how to type quickly and basic use of Windows XP and Microsoft Word (no Macs at my HS during my time). I did have to do a few papers which required internet sources, but we were expected to know how to do that. High school band was memorable, but other than that, it was kind of 'meh' for me. I didn't hate it, but I'm not ecstatic about it either. It didn't help I had a lot of monotone teachers to put up with, and even one where she was fired after I had her due to her obvious health problems, to put it lightly, keeping her away for more than half the year (for biology). My parents also made me take this ridiculous college preparatory class which 'taught' me things I could figure out on my own like how to pick a college to go to and the like. It did have some SAT prep (no ACT though), but most of that was very basic.

What is it with parks like this and SFA having these huge incidents then not owning up to them? Are they just being blindsided by them and, therefore, aren't prepared to issue proper statements?

If we're going to do Google (which should be capitalized BTW), we'd have to include YouTube in that, which we could be here forever.

And now I want to ride Banshee with no lights from the lighting package on. EDIT: Before I get pointed out for this, I mean at night.

Could you go into detail? EDIT: Yeah, things wear out. Light bulbs burn out. A few burnt bulbs shouldn't be a great concern.

Huh...then where does this '38 extra days' figure come from?

Longer school years do not equate to better test results, especially when most of the time students are studying for those highly flawed standardized tests and are highly unprepared for life beyond high school, particularly those going into college. There are sooooo many students in college today who really, really don't belong there. Also, I hope the addition of a month+ of days is over a period of time and not all at once. You'll have teachers woefully unprepared for the extended time teaching and students struggling to keep their minds engaged for such a large portion of any given calendar year. And for goodness sake, let kids have time to be kids. I feel this thread is in the wrong section. Sure it affects parks, but there are much, much bigger issues with this than how it affects amusement parks.

Or any Six Flags park for that matter. Rarely do I hear the general public refer to each park by the 2nd part of the name. Usually, its just 'Six Flags'.

How much say does the Fair Board have in the Kingdom's operations? I imagine they can't be happy with all the things we've been seeing.

^That's one of the reasons I highly enjoy my October trips. September is usually packed with stuff, like school starting, band filling my schedule and the like. When I do get to go in October after all of that, it just feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders for those few hours. Its like a pressure release on all the stress, especially when I take a seat on a coaster.

This theory may sound ludicrous, but its the only thing I can think of for an explanation. Could Ed Hart be making comments to show, in a way only Mr. Hart could think of, that the park is tougher on its crime problems? Not that its smart by any means.

I just looked at the new rides list for 2015. If that $7.5 million over 2015 and 2016 is correct, then it sure looks like they're dumping a lot of it just for 2015. I mean, you have a new train (trains?) for T3, 2 new fairly large flats which will cost lots of nickles, and the re-opening of 2 rides already on the property, plus I imagine some park improvements on top of that. They are decent additions for 2015, though how T3 turns out is up in the air. I would think that would eat up a large majority of that money figure right there. The question becomes if T3 is enough to bump attendance over 2 years, especially with what they have to put up with from the competition (FireChaser Express, Banshee and Thunderbird and then whatever, if anything, comes to those parks in 2016). If they don't meet their own expectations, what happens in 2016? Beyond? Hopefully, they've hired actual PR and law personnel by then as well. If they continue those fiascos long term, they'll be in a bigger mess.

Maybe that person mistook the characters for Smurfs because they were blue?

I would love to, but UC has a game that night.

Well, if there were, I sure didn't see any, and I was actively trying to find them.

KI's Flight of Fear caught fire as well.