Back to Canobie Lake Park
Jul. 25th, 2010 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinIt's great summer fun when you live about 20 minutes away from an amusement park, even a relatively little one like Canobie Lake. Today we went there for my second time this summer and Sam and Jorie's third.
This time, I actually got to ride the Yankee Cannonball, the 1930s wooden coaster, while Sam and Jorie rode the "Canobie 500" two-stroke cars, one of Jorie's favorite rides. It has been a long, long time since I last rode a roller coaster, and an even longer time since I rode a wooden one, a completely different sort of experience from a steel coaster. Twisty steel coasters are better for indulging fantasies of flying; wooden ones shake and rattle and deliver the visceral thrill of the feeling that they're trying to kill you. The Cannonball is not very tall, but I found it surprisingly intense and a good ride, perhaps because I'm not jaded.
I didn't get around to riding the Canobie Corkscrew, the park's steel coaster. I did get a good look at it from the water park. It seems like a pretty short and simple ride by today's grandiose standards, just a lift, a drop and a double corkscrew. I do want to ride the Corkscrew eventually just because of its slightly historic status--it's actually only the second modern steel coaster ever to go upside down (and is identical in design to the first). It was originally built in 1975 for an unsuccessful indoor amusement park/shopping center in Illinois (that's the Canobie Corkscrew, with a different name and paint job, over on the right).
The initial plan, since the day was looking like a really hot one, was to spend most of the day at the "Castaway Island" water park section; I'm not too keen on water parks but Sam loves them, so the idea was that I could splash around in the sprinkler-filled wading pool with Jorie and Sam could actually get in some waterslide time, which she couldn't do when it was just her and Jorie. Unfortunately, by the time we actually got our bathing suits on and worked our way over to there, they were doing a scheduled cleaning and we had to come back an hour later, at which point it was clouding over, there was a nice breeze off the lake and the water felt a bit chilly. Sam got in a slide anyway. I guess we'll have to plan it better next time, though no plan ever survives contact with a 3-year-old kid.
We got rained on a little after that, though it was just a transitory sprinkle and it got sunny again afterward.
Jorie seems to fixate on different rides on different visits. The first time, her favorite by far was the "Jump Around" aka "Baja Buggy", a kiddieland flat ride with dune buggies that bounce up and down to a soundtrack that actually goes "boing, boing, boing". This time, she refused to go on that at all, but demanded to go on the sky ride three times and the Antique Cars twice (another ride with little two-stroke cars, these designed to look like flivvers).
It strikes me that she seems to be converging on the same rides I liked to go on when I was a little kid, though that was when I was a lot older than 3 going on 4. (My little sister Megan liked faster rides, was especially addicted to the Scrambler, and caused me deep shame for my relative chicken-ness. Canobie Lake has a glorified indoor Scrambler with disco lights called the Psychodrome, which I haven't ridden; she'd have been all over that.)
Jorie also seems to have warmed to the "Junior Sports Cars", a somewhat jerky car ride that little kids can actually go on by themselves, since they're basically operator-controlled slot cars scaled up to kid-rideable size.
At the arcade, while Jorie was pretending to play the video games, I managed to get in a game of Canobie Lake's most ancient pinball machine, the 1979 Space Invaders (that backglass design reminds me of something but I just can't place it--wait, where's Jonesy? Jonesy?) Amazingly, it was still a quarter a play. Unfortunately the flipper mechanisms seemed to be disintegrating under the stress of my actually trying to play it. I should have stuck to their Lord of the Rings, which seems to be the only one that is actually in good, playable shape.
This time, I actually got to ride the Yankee Cannonball, the 1930s wooden coaster, while Sam and Jorie rode the "Canobie 500" two-stroke cars, one of Jorie's favorite rides. It has been a long, long time since I last rode a roller coaster, and an even longer time since I rode a wooden one, a completely different sort of experience from a steel coaster. Twisty steel coasters are better for indulging fantasies of flying; wooden ones shake and rattle and deliver the visceral thrill of the feeling that they're trying to kill you. The Cannonball is not very tall, but I found it surprisingly intense and a good ride, perhaps because I'm not jaded.
I didn't get around to riding the Canobie Corkscrew, the park's steel coaster. I did get a good look at it from the water park. It seems like a pretty short and simple ride by today's grandiose standards, just a lift, a drop and a double corkscrew. I do want to ride the Corkscrew eventually just because of its slightly historic status--it's actually only the second modern steel coaster ever to go upside down (and is identical in design to the first). It was originally built in 1975 for an unsuccessful indoor amusement park/shopping center in Illinois (that's the Canobie Corkscrew, with a different name and paint job, over on the right).
The initial plan, since the day was looking like a really hot one, was to spend most of the day at the "Castaway Island" water park section; I'm not too keen on water parks but Sam loves them, so the idea was that I could splash around in the sprinkler-filled wading pool with Jorie and Sam could actually get in some waterslide time, which she couldn't do when it was just her and Jorie. Unfortunately, by the time we actually got our bathing suits on and worked our way over to there, they were doing a scheduled cleaning and we had to come back an hour later, at which point it was clouding over, there was a nice breeze off the lake and the water felt a bit chilly. Sam got in a slide anyway. I guess we'll have to plan it better next time, though no plan ever survives contact with a 3-year-old kid.
We got rained on a little after that, though it was just a transitory sprinkle and it got sunny again afterward.
Jorie seems to fixate on different rides on different visits. The first time, her favorite by far was the "Jump Around" aka "Baja Buggy", a kiddieland flat ride with dune buggies that bounce up and down to a soundtrack that actually goes "boing, boing, boing". This time, she refused to go on that at all, but demanded to go on the sky ride three times and the Antique Cars twice (another ride with little two-stroke cars, these designed to look like flivvers).
It strikes me that she seems to be converging on the same rides I liked to go on when I was a little kid, though that was when I was a lot older than 3 going on 4. (My little sister Megan liked faster rides, was especially addicted to the Scrambler, and caused me deep shame for my relative chicken-ness. Canobie Lake has a glorified indoor Scrambler with disco lights called the Psychodrome, which I haven't ridden; she'd have been all over that.)
Jorie also seems to have warmed to the "Junior Sports Cars", a somewhat jerky car ride that little kids can actually go on by themselves, since they're basically operator-controlled slot cars scaled up to kid-rideable size.
At the arcade, while Jorie was pretending to play the video games, I managed to get in a game of Canobie Lake's most ancient pinball machine, the 1979 Space Invaders (that backglass design reminds me of something but I just can't place it--wait, where's Jonesy? Jonesy?) Amazingly, it was still a quarter a play. Unfortunately the flipper mechanisms seemed to be disintegrating under the stress of my actually trying to play it. I should have stuck to their Lord of the Rings, which seems to be the only one that is actually in good, playable shape.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 03:01 am (UTC)Don't ride the Psychodrome if you have respiratory problems; they pump the building full of smoke. I like it, though.
Back about 10-15 years ago, they still had a vintage sit-down Star Wars cabinet out in back in the bingo hall, the old wire-frame game that was just blowing up an endless succession of Death Stars. They'd gotten rid of it by the time I graduated high school, though.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-26 11:59 am (UTC)Regarding Space Invaders (http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2010/06/phantom_fingers_the_series_par_2.php)...
Didn't realize there was a pin adaptation. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Though the art seems to owe more to Alien.
If there's a Pac-Man table, that should actually be rather appropriate as Toru Iwatani joined Namco under the misapprehension that they made pinball tables, and then spent his first several years moping around, trying to fuse pinball with Breakout. Ultimately Pac-Man's design owes a bunch to pinball.
Oh (http://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?any=pac-man&sortby=name&search=Search+Database&searchtype=quick#1639)... Now that I see this, I think I've heard of it before. How very curious.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 05:55 pm (UTC)Ride with dune buggies
Date: 2010-07-28 04:20 am (UTC)Re: Ride with dune buggies
Date: 2010-08-12 03:10 am (UTC)