Malcolm's Second US Trip

Introduction

2008-06-28T23:50:00.000-07:00

In the Summer of 2008 the European Coaster Club undertook a tour of Middle America running from Texas up to Minnesota. Wanting to see a bit more I added a week beforehand taking in Mexico. The week after which was initially heading into Canada but was changed to head west to Las Vegas. So I would be on the road for an entire month; the longest holiday I'd ever done.

What follows is the inane ramblings of a mad man. There are lots of pictures and quite a bit of text so please don't attempt all this in a single sitting; your family and friends may fear you've vanished.

Lets go...

Flight to Mexico City

2008-06-28T23:40:00.000-07:00

No photos from day 1 as it was all spent flying and I didn't really want to be taking photos inside a 747. Jeppe had set off way before me flying from Copenhagen to Heathrow, and not wanting him to spend to much time bored on his own I headed there quite a bit earlier than I needed to.

Now originally we were due to flight out of Terminal 5, which I thought would have been an exciting start to the trip with the waiting-around-in-the-lounge time spent exploring the new terminal and really putting the security systems to the test :) But due to the opening day debacle where a load of flights were canceled my flight had been bumped back to Terminal 4, which I was already pretty familiar with. I just think BAA and Terminal 5 weren't ready for me, that's all!

It was quite a long flight, around 10 hours approximately, which would give me the opportunity to watch five movies on the flight. I find it very difficult to fall asleep on flights, usually down to the chairs not going back far enough, so I tend to watch the 4-inch screen in front of me for the duration of the flight. It's worth complimenting BA on their new in-flight movie system that allows you to stop and start programs as you want rather than everything being on a loop where you have to wait for the longest running film to complete before all they all start over.

So, in the absence of any pictures here are some movie reviews for those I managed to watch on the flight.

I Am Legend.
The fresh prince finds himself alone in New York following a virus outbreak that has turned most of the population into nightcrawling vampires. With the company of his dog he sets about trying to find a cure and establish whether he's the only survivor or not. This film was really crap, in fact I'd prefer to watch the televised sheep dog trial shows on BBC as that is a better "One man and his dog" program than this film. I've never read the book but if the ending is as abrupt as this movie there needs to be a lot of blank pages at the back of the novel.

Oceans 11
Yes, the movie with Clooney and chums attempting to rob the Bellagio hotel. I only chose to watch this because I was staying there in the final week, and I thought the movie would help get me in the vibe for the trip...and it did. I really liked the movie first time around and enjoyed it again, even though I'd seen the twist previously. The soundtrack is also brilliant and fits with the style and setting of the movie very well.

No Country for Old Men
This is a film I'd missed when it got its cinema release and features Josh Brolin coming across a load of drugs that a cruel assassin played superbly by Javier Bardem, is interested in. Tommy Lee Jones plays a sheriff who also gets involved when he stops searching every outhouse, backhouse, doghouse, wendyhouse etc. The movie is very slow paced, but you'd expect that from a Coen movie, and as such sent me to sleep, which I rarely do on flights. A shame as it was pretty good but the overall vibe from the film coupled with me focusing on a small screen was conducive to putting me under. Ah well, I'll try to catch it properly at home when I'm more alert.

St. Trinians
OK, so wanting to stay awake I thought I'd pick this. I was wrong. I saw some girl arrive at the school and the next thing they had stolen a painting from The British Museum, saved the school and the credits were rolling. The body has a wonderful natural defence system in that it can shut down if external stimula is damaging to it; it's what the experts call "shock". That is the reason for me not seeing any of this movie; it must have been so bad that my body decided to close itself down.

Juno
Figuring I'd save the best for last, again this was a film that I'd missed when it came out in the cinema and had received really good reviews. Ellen Page (Kitty Pride in X-Men 3) plays Juno, a girl who gets up the duff and decides to give her kid up for adoption to Jennifer Garner (Elektra in Elektra) . That's basically it in a nutshell (or in a womb, if you will) and the movie definitely has a marmite feel to it (for those who haven't heard of marmite it's a yeast extract that you spread on toast and that uses the advertising slogan "you either love it or you hate it"). Unlike Marmite that I can't stand, Juno was actually really good with an intelligently written script that doesn't bother with dumbing down with back stories etc. I enjoyed it so much that I'm considering buying a copy for the library at home.

Anyway with the movies watched, it was time to touch down at Mexico City Airport. First impressions were that everything looked pretty clean. My breathing was a little short due to the altitude and I knew that within about 10 minutes I'd be used to it, which I was.

At the airport, there's a little taxi booth where you pay up front and you're given a voucher that you hand to the driver. It prevents unscrupulous drivers ripping the tourists off. However I made a mistake in tipping the porter too much. Rather cheekily because there were 2 of us and he'd carried 2 cases he'd asked for a second payment that I paid because I wasn't familiar with the tipping process. Only when I got to the hotel did I realise I'd tipped him 10 times too much, with the first payment, and then doubled it with the second. He'd obviously seen us coming and I hope he choked on whatever food the money bought :D

Its also worth mentioning the taxi drive from the airport to the hotel. Now I have a licence but the only driving I've done since I passed my test is in video games, so to avoid ending my life prematurely I choose not to drive however I think I'd fit right in in Mexico. Our driver drove like an idiot weaving between lanes and hitting the horn more than he exhaled. But even with his erratic driving there were no accidents and with others driving similarly I guess its safe to drive the way he was doing. I can imagine a tourist in a hire car would stick out and probably cause an accident with their "safe" driving.

Anyway we eventually got to the hotel, the Holiday Inn Express in downtown Mexico City and with us both fairly tired we took a quick walk around the Zona Rosa (the hotel was on the edge of this entertainment district of the city) and had a drink in a sports bar.

Then it was time to get some sleep as the next day we'd be heading off to Six Flags Mexico.

Six Flags Mexico

2008-06-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

First morning in the hotel and we had a wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, some ridiculously spicy mushy nacho stuff, and some refried beans that tasted nicer than it looked.

It was also obvious that we weren't the typical hotel guest. All the other people in the restaurant were smartly dressed business people but the hotel wasn't too expensive to us at about £50 a night.

Following breakfast and a trip to the Starbucks next door for compulsary morning coffee fix we hired one of the taxi drivers touting outside the hotel to take us to the park. In fact we were so impressed with him we used him for the rest of our stay in Mexico City.

Six Flags Mexico is the largest park in Mexico, in Latin America in fact and it seemed to be pretty popular with lots of cars already arriving with ours for the start of the day. We even noticed a Volkswagen beetle with more than a dozen people squeezed into. Alas that was before I could get to my camera out to photograph it, but Jeppe will vouch if need be. Dominating the skyline were Superman, a big steel coaster and Medusa, a large wooden coaster. We'd asked our cab driver to come back in 4 hours figuring it would be enough time to get around the park.

Cute t-shirt in the queue line but still not as good as the kid I saw once in an Italian park who was there with his clearly non-english speaking parents and a hat emblazoned with "Fuckmaster III".

Having entered the park (350 pesos / £17.50) we figured the majority of the crowd would go to Superman, so we headed to the back of the park to ride the Batman Inverted coaster. Hold on, something doesn't look quite right with that track...

Shocker number 1, the coaster wasn't the normal B&M inverted coaster, it was an SLC (which I don't actually mind despite their headbanging reputation)

Shocker number 2, I wasn't allowed to take my backpack onto the station, which meant that I'd have to use the lockers; something I figured I could avoid.

Shocker number 3, the lockers didn't open for another hour so to get around this stupidity one of us had to look after the bags whilst the other rode, then we'd swap; not too different from a baby swap in fact - as long as you kept the baby in a bag.

Shocker number 4, Single people weren't allowed to ride, you had to be paired up. This was just dumb, but fortunately we could get around that by just hanging around the station and waiting for an odd-numbered group then hopping in beside the single person.

A lot of hassle for a fairly average coaster, and a number of issues that didn't appear to be being enforced anywhere else. One extra bonus was that the soundsystem in this part of the park was playing some great trance music including a track by someone I know back in London. So whilst Jeppe rode, I had a little dance around the bat-mobile much to the locals' amusement.

There are lots of SLC coasters around the world, and there are lots of Boomerangs too. So that would be our next coaster to ride. These things are never smooth, and this one was no exception.

Tsunami was down, its the crappy green coaster in the foreground in case you're confusing it with the big one in the background - that's Superman that we'd be riding later on.

Liking the tiki statues

and the pineapple themed breakdance was the first one like this I'd seen

Away from the tropical part of the park into the Western and an opportunity to ride the wooden coaster in the park, Medusa. Rather strangely, the entrance was at the back of the gift shop; you usually just get to endure that when exiting.

The ride was atrocious. We put our hands up for the first drop then braced for the rest of the ride. Really really bad. It sort of does a two lap circuit so as you're suffering on the outer drops you see the inner ones knowing that you still have them to endure.

Rollerskater was much better by comparison and thats just a kiddy ride.

Close to Medusa was the park's big wheel which we rode to get some shots of the park. Here you can see Superman stealing the background.

Medusa is much nicer to look at than ride. In the background you can see the sprawl that is Mexico City going off as far as the eye, could see and the infamous smog would allow. The Six Flags park lies about 30 minutes south of the city.

Hot sweaty staff dressed as pigs with no pants on. The roadrunner was quite cool though. An ideal job for a chronic anorexic perhaps. They could fit up the neck no problem.

We're not sure what this dark ride attraction was but it seemed quite popular. The guess given the way the queue was entering in chunks makes us think it was one of those madhouse attraction where the room rotates and tricks you into thinking you're spinning upside down.

Cute castle in the European part of the town.

Superman is the stand out ride in the park, a big massive red Morgan monster, and I would come to ride many of these rides on the trip. Before being allowed in I had to dump the bag in the locker, which took a lot of translation from a staff member who's English was as good as my Spanish, and therefore took some time to sort out. I'd eventually figured out that in giving the key the time is recorded and you pay based on how long you had the key when you return it.

This ride had the longest queue by far taking us around 40 minutes to get through it. Rather strangely there wasn't much queue forming behind us once we'd joined it, which meant a second go was much quicker. I can only assume we'd joined at the same time a show began, and that's where everyone had gone.

The ride itself is a lot of fun, better to ride in the front than the back. However there are some laterals that throw you into the side of the car if you're not ready. The second ride was much more enjoyable than the first because we'd learnt the layout. No loops or inversions, just big hills and helices. There was also some nice airtime that caused my cap, which I had been sitting on, to float up in front of me.

Oh, a little tip, the Mexican food stand opposite the entrance to the ride served some really nice food, just be aware of the portion size. One of us didn't order enough first time around :D . I was quite impressed with my Spanish here as I was able to order everything, only blowing it when I didn't know how to say ice (hielo).

On the way out we thought we'd see if we could sort of some currency for Jeppe only to find out that we'd stumbled into an commercial shoot. Everyone in this shot is an actor.

Six Flags Mexico isn't a bad park at all, and we'd got around everything in the time we had with the exception of the haunted swing thing. Not getting out of the park properly (public can't leave the driving exit where we'd agreed to meet the taxi driver) we were relieved to see the driver spot us and drive over ready to drive us back into Mexico City.

Teotihuacan and Downtown Mexico City

2008-06-28T23:20:00.000-07:00

The next morning we joined the business people for breakfast and then hired Angel our taxi driver to take us to Teotihuacan, another theme park on the outskirts of Mexico City, actually about an hour's drive to the North.

I lie, Teotihuacan isn't a theme park at all but one of the major historical sites in all of South America. It predates the Mayan civilisation so is pretty damn old. Not wanting to just ride coasters on the trip it was important to me to indulge in some native culture and this place was ideal.

On the way to the site we passed lots of graffiti adverts painted alongside the road. At first I thought they were well produced tags but then I realised it was companies being advertised.

We also passed this line of police getting ready to lay waste to a small group of protestors....probably. We didn't stick around long enough to see exactly what was about to kick off.

Like LA, Mexico City is a bit of a sprawl with the city boundaries constantly being pushed with more and more property being built. Unlike LA however Mexico City is pretty hilly so those developments steal the skyline.

A stone sentry greets us at Teotihuacan. A little tip is to be dropped off at entrance one and picked up at entrance three. That way you don't have to walk all the way back.

This is the view from entrance one. Ahead is the citadel, which we climbed to the top of. It wasn't that high really as its the smallest of the main pyramids here.

A view from the top of the citadel looking down behind it. The excavation here is showing that the temples were much like a russian doll with one temple built over the top of another. As they peel away the layers they discover more about the history of the site. Obviously if they dug all the way through there would be nothing left so for now at least the excavation had stopped.

In the background are the two major pyramids, the Temple of the Moon and the Temple of the Sun. In the background you can make out through the Mexico City smog the absolutely massive Temple of Pluto, not really that's a mountain.

This is the Avenue of the Dead, the main throughfare running up the centre of Teotihuacan.

Weird cement brickwork and old wall paintings combined.

This is the Temple of the Sun, half way up the avenue. It's the larger of two pyramids and can be ascended all the way to the top as long as you're OK to negotiate around 250 steps, all of which are pretty high. Apparently if you make it to the top you get 10 years added to your life although the cynic in me says you lose 10 climbing it.

A not particular perfect pano of the Temple of the Sun, the smoggy skies making consistent light levels between shots a bit awkward. But you get the idea.

More aged stone work

Just to show we made it to the top here's a photo from there of the Temple of the Moon. The climb was pretty exhausting, I'm just not cut out for steep climbs; London is pretty flat so I'm not used to it. Other tourists were finding it hard too so I took solace in that. What surprised us was that shortly after making it to the top one of those groups of Chinese pensioners made it to the top too, totally fine and not feeling the effects at all. There must be something in that Tai Chi stuff they do.

Descending the Sun Temple, the idea of tumbling down the stairs was considered but deemed a bit disrespectful so wasn't carried out.

At the foot of the Sun Temple, the fence predates the temples by around one million years...or perhaps not.

Heading up the avenue towards the Moon Temple, although it looks bigger, it's actually smaller than the Sun temple. The trick is caused by the avenue actually being uphill.
Although the place was fairly desolate there were quite a lot of vendors selling random trinkets and souvenirs. A polite "no thankyou" was usually enough to get rid of them, but some were a little more persistant tempting you with a bargain price of one peso for their wares.

Another old mural.

A really cool stone dragon head.

Multicoloured structures. Like visiting Japan for the first time its quite amazing to see original architecture first hand, and old stuff like this still standing the test of time.

More ruins unearthed near exit three. The kids in red were a school party here for a few hours history lesson. I was quite impressed that Mexican schools send their kids to places like this rather than theme parks as often happens in the US and UK.

The Moon Temple done in a pano stylee.

Another pano and I like this one. It covers the avenue from the Moon Temple down to the Sun.

The Moon Temple. You can't climb to the top of this one, only the mid-platform in front of it. Having endured the larger of the two I had no urge to ascend this one either.

For those people who missed the chance of buying souvenirs, and how did you avoid the gauntlet of vendors if you are, there's a final chance to buy something at exit three. It's also worth mentioning that if you do, don't carry it in your hand luggage as it arouses the suspicions of security staff, especially if it's a little statuette, which they might think is being used to conceal drugs.

Having had our fill of Teotihuacan we met our driver, waiting patiently at the exit and headed off back into Mexico City for some more touristy stuff.

Now driving back into Mexico City we passed a modern take on the pyramids structures seen previously. It looks like most of the building was up for sale, I don't think they'll sell it until they finish the penthouse floor.

The city of Mexico City (that doesn't read right) has a main square called The Zocalo, in fact this is one of the largest main squares in the world and like the Palace Square in St Petersburg is used for major concerts including the likes of Tiesto and Shakira, who managed to have over 200,000 attendees to see if her hips didn't lie. It looks like some other concert had taken place the previous night as they were packing up some rigging. The wonderful building on the North side of the square is the Metropolitan Cathedral, which looks a bit wonky, not due to my photography but subsidance.

A wonderfully colour street running off the Zocalo. Moneda for those that are interested.

A bizarre serious of sculptures.

A shop that sells uniforms, I only presume so people could pretend to be official for shop robberies etc. Actually although I didn't photography any its worth mentioning that the security forces in Mexico City are usually heavily armed. We saw some very impressive shotguns, machine guns and rifles being carried that would make the trenchcoat mafia jealous. I was scared that if I shot them with my camera their shot back would be a bit more fatal.

Nice frontage, and I do mean the building.

Some random church, and there were many.

Just how many boxes is that dude carrying exactly?

Back at the Zocalo, we'd explored the area to the east, so decided to head west.

The cathedral is a Baroque structure built in 1667 but finished 200 years later. I reckon the Olympic village in Stratford will take just as long.

We stopped off for food in a wonderful Mexican restaurant on Francisco I Madero street. As is ever the case I tried some random stuff from the menu and having been warned what I'd ordered was quite spicy, still went through with it. It was quite hot but not as hot as whatever the hotel served us at breakfast on the previous morning.

I'm quite brave when it comes to food but there was no way I was going to try "She asses of head"

A plant outside the Cathedral. How did they grow that?

I'm usually wary of taking photos inside religious buildings but it was alright here. Quite a lot of gold here and the cynic in me makes me wonder that if religion was so charitable why so much of the money collected was invested in stuff like this. The Vatican is much much worse at displaying its opulancy than here though.

This plumb line shows how much the cathedral is tilting and they mark it every few decades. Rather oddly it seems to be tilting in various directions over time, not just getting worse in one.

A really beautiful piece of sculpture outside the cathedral. I didn't really appreciate the Mary image until I saw the photograph.

The green volkswagen is the city taxi, which makes the city at times look like a Green Hornet meets Herbie convention at times. There are mini cab type taxis such as the one in the foreground, which are cheaper but not necessarily as safe, much like comparing the black cab and minicabs back in the London.

Walking Cinco del Mayo street, which is one of the main shopping streets in Mexico City. We weren't there to shop though, just walking on through.

Nice patterns on the wall, and no tagging over the top of it. Actually I think all the graffiti takes place on the highways out of the city. I was expecting to see lots within the city and didn't.

This is the Palacio del Belles Artes (Palace of Fine Arts to you non-Spanish speakers) and is the premier opera house in Mexico City. Quite an amazing looking building too.

As well as doing the opera, the building also houses various exhibitions. I can't remember what one they were showing on this occasion but we weren't enticed enough to pop in for a look.

Old school tram, no rails though. This would be fun for a joyride.

To the west of the Belles Artes is the Alameda, which is the city's take on New York Central Park but on a mucho mucho mucho smaller scale. It offers the city people a place to escape the heat and relax in an oxygen rich environment. There's quite a number of food stands, which we avoided like the plague, choosing instead to play it safe on the food front.

An interesting idea for a sculpture. It's actually holding a flag, but I couldn't get it and the hands in shot. As we've all seen a flag before I chose to sacrifice that.

Hmmm, anyone fancy a shock?

West of the Alameda the roads meet the Avenue de la Reforma, which is the Main highway that runs through the city. The building on the left is the National Lottery HQ I think, and the yellow structure is a rather dirty statue that advertises a bank I think. The piece in the middle is just a random piece of art.

Loving the wings on the windows.

Heading back down the Reforma, our hotel is on this road but a short walk away, too much of a walk for Jeppe though :) I think I underestimate how much walking I can do in a day. I dragged Keith around the streets of Tokyo and did the same with Jeppe in Mexico. Sorry guys!

There is a great mix of architecture in Mexico City. Some wonderful skyscrapers juxtapose the equally wonderful pyramids. Why does using "juxtapose" instantly give the impression I'm an art-loving pretentious twat?

This is the Monumento a Cristobal Colon, dedicated to the inventor of the enema. Actually its Christopher Colombus the guy who found America by accident when he got his east and west mixed up. Luckily for us my map reading was a lot better than his!

Strange sculpture. We stopped for a Starbucks near here and were soon joined by a couple of business men and their security details who covered the exits and ensured no-one got close. We'd never lunched with mafiosi before :)

Another statue in the middle of Reforma, this one in honour of Cuauhtemoc an Aztec ruler of what was the city in the early 1500s

Woohoo, some urban graffiti. The megaman reminded me of a large scale invader piece and the ghost was pretty cute.

Hidden on the left a Mexican take on the Shephard Fairey "Obey" logo.

A close up of the ghost

This building was next to our hotel. Designs like this must be great in the event of a major evacuation, you just slide down the left-hand side.

Bizarre dinosaur rowing-boat sculpture outside our hotel.

Equally strange, but its great to see so much art on the streets. Mexico City has more museums and galleries than any other city so art is very important to them and its wonderful to see it out on the streets.

Cool building, not so much fun to slide down in the event of an evacuation though.

What was quite weird about the Mexican roundabouts is that traffic doesn't go around it in one direction like in the UK but they close half the traffic and allow one direction to go around it anyway they wish (note the car on the left)

Along the Reforma there was a series of chair installations, which were open for use by the locals, as you can see from these two girls making use of these high chairs. It's not so obvious how they got up there though.

The most famous structure on the Reforma is the Angel de la Independencia. A golden angel not unlike the one I saw in Berlin.

Having seen pretty much all of the main attractions in Mexico City we headed back to the hotel and then went out for dinner. Jeppe, just so you know the walk was only 5 miles :D

Perinorte Mall and La Feria de Chapultapec

2008-06-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

Our last day in Mexico City and we had 2 parks and some more sightseeing to take in. We started the day with a drive to the Perinorte Mall, a 40 minute taxi drive north out of the city. The mall houses a small indoor park called Perimagico.

Well we got there in good time, in fact probably too early. Not only was the park not open but with the exception of the main supermarket none of the shops were open either. So we hung about, and waited and waited and waited. Then a coffee place opened up and we ordered smoothies with cream on top. More on that later.

The park itself is pretty compact, they've done a really good job fitting the wheel in.

Then the park opened but at the exclusive use of a small class of school kids who were taken from ride to ride in small groups. Being on the receiving end of this privilege I fully appreciate why the public sometimes get a bit miffed when they see our club doing the same thing. Unfortunately I couldn't exactly vent at a group of 4-year olds so I bit my lip until it bled. When we finally got in we had to endure the giggles of the park staff who were a little bit bemused at two adults wanting to enter the park, but there was no issue letting us ride once we'd got passed that.

El Huracan is the kiddy coaster and is often the case circles the entire park, one nice touch is the circle around a spin ride. The brake run gives a quick peek behind the scenes, no theming there just maintenance.

Having seen all there is in Perimagico (easily done in around a quarter of an hour, once they let you in) we then headed back into Mexico City. Along the way we passed this strange piece of art, at least I guess that's what it is. From afar it looks like lego skyscrapers. Our driver did tell us what it represents but I've since forgotten what.

More street graffiti along the way

A little piece of England in Mexico City. Sir Winston Churchill's is an English themed restaurant. I guess for Briton's visiting Mexico who don't like Mexican food, this is the safest place to eat. However we merely drove past it.

Soon after we arrived at park number 2, La Feria Chapultapec. This park used to be owned by the government and is located in the Bosque de Chapultapec, the city's main park, home to many galleries museums and this little nugget of entertainment of the thrill-seeking kind.

When we arrived it was the new ride that welcomed us. Montana Infinitum used to be based in the UK under the guise "Magnum Force" being sponsored by an ice cream. In Mexico it's sponsored by a communications company.

We had a little difficulty getting into the park. We bought a ticket but couldn't enter with my backpack. When we tried checking it into the cloakroom the woman wouldn't accept it, and I couldn't quite understand why. It wasn't ticking or leaking anything radioactive. With the aid of a rather bored, but armed, park guard we figured out that to check the bag in we needed to buy another ticket from the ticket booth, so going back there and showing her the bag meant we got the cloakroom ticket, which meant the bag could be checked in. Why don't they teach you this stuff in Spanish class? Much more useful than the rubbish they usually teach you like how to tell a doctor your mouse is sick. So now you know how it works you needn't feel so stoopid!

The park itself certainly looked very colourful but also very empty. Nice! The big wooden coaster in the background is Montana Rusa.

It's one of only three mobius wooden racing coasters in the world (if you start on the left-hand side you'll return on the right and vice versa). Having ridden the other two in Blackpool and Kennywood getting this one would complete the set!

The first ride however we chose to do was Cascabel, the Schwarzkopf Shuttle Loop. I'd ridden quite a few of these around the world and they're fun rides. With the park as empty as it was they weren't launching the train until a sufficient number of people had boarded the train so we may have had to hang about. As it happens I was just about to board when my stomach decided it wanted to do something else. So I had to beat a hasty retreat and sprint out of the station, across the empty park and into the toilets. I don't know what the locals would have thought of
a) seeing someone leg it from a station
b) seeing someone sprint across the park (I don't run that often so its not the most athletic looking technique)
c) hearing someone letting out a loud sigh of relief having made it to the toilet in time

That aside I did make it back pride intact and made it onto the ride, which was pretty good actually. Not the best launch in the world though; the one at Knottsberry Farm is still my favourite.

Coasters aside the park has quite a good selection of kiddy friendly spin rides. There's a clear division between the extreme coasters for the teens and adults and these gentle rides for the children.

Having said that you wouldn't want to put your children in one of these unless you hated them.

The slide was particularly amusing in that it wasn't slippy enough to make it over the steps so if a kid got stuck the operator would descend the slide and kick them over the edge.

We thought we'd give the wooden coaster a go, admittedly we'd not seen it running but when we got near the station we were told it wasn't running and had been down for some time. Arse!

A little disappointing not to get to ride it but it gave us a reason to come back one day and the good thing about being positive like that is that you don't have to commit to any particular day, I don't see it being anytime soon though. That's just me bringing back the pessimism.

The park has a upcharged haunted walkthrough but we didn't fancy checking it out.

Opposite it was the spinning mouse, which used to be situated where the new Schwarzkopf now is. It's now been delegated to the back of the park between the wooden coaster and the main road that bisects the park.

The ride was having issues with constant e-stops and restarts. Having been ejected from the queue when it was almost our turn we decided to stock up on some water and hang about on the off chance that if it reopened again we could get in first. A plan which took some time but did happen, and it broke down on us again too. Rather than evacuating us, we did get to complete the circuit after being stuck for 10 minutes in the heat, fortunately I'd sat on my cap rather than having left it in the station so was able to wear that whilst the engineers sorted it out.

After our failure the engineers I guess had had enough for the day and left the ride out of action for the remainder of our day there, so we were quite fortunate we got to ride it. It makes me wonder if they stuck with it because two tourists were in the queue.

The water splash would have offered some respite from the sun but I was worried that it would wash off the sun cream so gave it a miss. I''m also not a fan of those plastic screens that deflect the water back into the boat.

Some icey themed attraction under the wooden coaster that was also closed. I'm pretty certain that panda should be leaning on something, an over-sized bottle of a well-known fizzy drink perhaps? I'm guessing the park wanted the creature statue for their attraction just not the corporate sponsorship that came with it.

Homeboy hiphop greenfly in the house!

This is not a coaster but that is a dog in spandex.

Onto the other Schwarzkopf now. Being fairly new and perhaps more intense than the other rides in the park there's a pre-ride routine to endure before they'll let you ride.

You have to stand on the markers, those that don't get tazered.

You're made to look at the signs, which indicate how to ride. No hunchbacks or sunbathers are allowed to ride. Only green people who appreciate handlebars allowed.

The ride itself is great if a little intense, particularly in the heat. The ride ops thought we'd appreciate riding in the back, which was a nice gesture but wow was it hard to ride there. The forces are really strong in the rear....of the train I mean.

Still its a great ride and has relocated very well.

Having finished with the park we chose to walk back to the hotel through the Bosque (well to be honest I was up for the walk, poor Jeppe wasn't so keen to do all of it on foot).

Bosque Magico

2008-06-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

A view from an overpass near the park. The funky looking buildings are part of the children's museum I think.

Some South Park inspired mural on a children's school closeby. Soon after this we tried crossing another bridge only to be stopped by two armed soldiers. It turns out the bridge wasn't a public accessible one as it led to the president's residence that is inside the park. Again, not wanting to get shot or deported I didn't bring the camera out.

A weird billboard for eggs in fancy dress. The chickens seem impressed anyway. After a short detour alongside some motorways and under a subway where the smell of urine coupled with the heat made the aroma particularly enticing to the nose, we found ourselves back in the park and under the shade of its many trees.

A squirrel in the park. In the UK we only have grey, here there were grey, black and I swear I saw a red one too.

How many squirrels can you see in this shot? Now, how many ninjas can you see? The two women were particularly popular with the rodents. I'm wondering if they were looking for dinner and baiting the squirrels for that purpose.

They were everywhere, and a couple of them came over to us in the off chance we would offer them food. We never had any though.

This one is drinking water from a leaking tap, ninja style!

A small enclave of shops and eateries in the centre of the park.

Now that's a clever use of plastic, turning the bottles into a bin.

Some statue arrangement on the outer edge of the park.

A strange piece of art, of which there was quite a lot around the city.

Crossing over another overpass. The two guys on the island between the lanes would run out in front of the traffic (when stopped dummy!) and entertain the drivers for cash. We'd seen quite a bit of this on our travels around Mexico City and they ranged from jugglers to tumblers to the typical window washers. These guys would take it in turns to jump up and down on their hands.

As you can see here. I wonder if competition is introduced when the circus comes to town or if these guys go looking for work there?

More skyscrapers

I took this only because there wasn't much stencil activity going on in Mexico City and this was the only piece I saw that day. It looks like Chopper, that Australian psycho guy, but then I wonder why would that feature here in Mexico.

A pagoda in the Japanese garden part of the park. We weren't allowed in as it had closed, this was taken through the outer fence.

Animal topiary

This is the razor sharp tower, home to the Mexican division of Gillette. The building consists of two towers for extra performance, and I think there is an additional building around the back.

After a short walk (I say "short", others might say "bloody hell Malcolm, where the hell are you dragging me. We've been walking for flipping hours and my feet hurt and I have blisters the size of my feet") we arrived at the Anthropological Museum. The museum only had an hour left of opening time and I was in two minds about wanting to go in, but Jeppe convinced me otherwise and I'm glad he did. The place was amazing and the highlight of the day.

The place gives a very good background of the tribes that lived in Mexico from the Mayans to the Aztecs to the Olmecs and include some amazing pieces of art from those periods. What made it particularly special was that they'd designed the grounds of the museum to look like a little jungle so as you walked through you'd come across statues and temples exactly as they would have been originally.

Having seen this sort of stuff at theme parks and in Tomb Raider games it was great to see the original pieces first hand.

Indiana Jeppe emerges from one of the temples.

Bow down before the Gods!

This is an Olmec head. It looks like a boxer I can't quite put my finger on (because we weren't allowed to touch it).

The roof really is only being supported by that pillar. Incredible!

Inside the museum were some amazing pieces of Mexican stuff (how technical does that sound?)

This shows how the temples consisted of layers with other temples within the outer one.

This is the most important relic in Mexican history; The Stone of the Sun. Originally believed to be a representation of the Aztec calendar it was discovered to be a ceremonial Frisbee thrown by giants who stood over 20ft tall...or perhaps that's just the output of my stupid imagination. It takes centre stage in the main hall.

Liking how the colour has been preserved on this one.

Some rich colours here too. As you walked around the exhibits they just seemed to get better and better and a couple of the pieces were actually taking my breath away.

I think this was my favourite piece of all of them. I thought the gargoyle type heads were stunning and the retention colour in such an old piece superb.

The museum was brilliant and I definitely recommend it to fans of Tom Raider.

Back outside the museum, this piece looks like those arty speakers that are sold for a small fortune, or the bad guys from Day of the Tentacle, for those who remember that.

Beware of the elephant, a creature indigenous to the urban Mexican landscape. In the UK we have foxes, in Mexico it is the elephant you may find searching through your rubbish in the early hours. Actually it's a sign for the nearby zoo, which probably has pachyderms in it.

Crossing yet another overpass. The reforma road cuts through the park and we were following it back to the hotel.

The park has a castle within it from which you're supposed to get a nice view up the Reforma avenue. However it was closed when we got to it having sacrificed the trip to this for the museum, which I believe to have been the right choice anyway.

The entrance to the castle is protected by 2 stone lions who shoot laser beams at anyone who tries to enter the park when its closed. Or am I confusing that with the sphinxes (sphinixi?) in Neverending story.

Lazy copper on Segway

A nice art-deco ish looking building that reminded me of the MI5 headquarters in London, although that one is greenish in colour.

Most of the traffic coppers in Mexico City were female. I think they should make a Mexican version of CHiPs. I'd watch it!

Traffic cop with a death wish in the middle of the traffic blowing her whistle whilst her friend looks on.

This is the statue of La Diana Cazadora and when I did a search in Wikipedia all that came up was a page for a female Mexican wrestler. Now I don't quite think the city would put up a statue in honour of a 20-year old wrestler. I mean, I don't think America has one of Hulk Hogan and he's a much bigger superstar. I'm therefore assuming the wrestler has taken her name in honour of some older women who did something notable in Mexican history probably with a bow and arrow, and it is her who is honoured in this statue.

The Angel of Independance, indicating we were nearly at the hotel.

Another stopped traffic vendor, this one was sponsored though and was selling cigarettes and the like.

This had been our busiest day so far with two parks and a 5-mile walk around the city sightseeing, but it was a good way to end Mexico City. With the exception of not seeing any Lucha-Libre and Bullfighting, which I'd like to have seen but which weren't on in the days we were there, I had seen everything I'd wanted to.

The next day we'd be saying "adios" to Mexico City for a very brief and intense day in Guadalajara

Selva Magica & Park Rehilete

2008-06-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

Here's some Mexican notes, note that some of them have little windows that are a little hologramatic. I'd never seen that on a note before!

Bidding a fond farewell to Mexico City it was time to head to the airport for a flight to Guadalajara. As part of the check-in process our suitcases had to be inspected. Whilst those belonging to the locals were thoroughly searched, ours got a mere swab test, which we passed cleanly :D The flight itself was just an hour and we got to fly on an aircraft that was amusing to us Europeans.

Well it made us laugh. I don't think the other people around us understood the hilarity.

We got lucky with taxi driver who took us from the airport to the hotel. He spoke fairly good English, so we hired him for the day to take us to where we wanted to go. We'd arrived at the hotel way before check-in so were able to store the luggage and then get back into the taxi.

I had planned to visit two parks in Guadalajara and see some of the city, but time was tight. We arrived at the hotel just before midday and our flight was the following morning, this led us to have just half a day to get everything done.

A rather overly-adorned truck on the way to the hotel.

Balloons anyone?

Strange little graffiti, I like how the arms of one go through the mouth of the other. Escher-esque you might say.

A quite nice statue celebrating the Olympics which were held here in 1968. Those games were famous for the Black power salute that got 2 athletes banned from the games for life. They were also the first games to feature the Fosbury flop technique of High Jumping which is now prevalent.

This is the main Bullring in the city. Unfortunately there were no events on today.

Our first park is the main park in the city, Selva Magica. It's part of a complex that includes a major recreational park and a zoo. But we weren't there for those. There was a slightly larger crowd than at La Feria but still not enough to prevent us getting around the park quickly.

The park was small enough to not warrant a printed map but they did have a poster of it. You can see that all the coasters are around one part of the park and the kiddy rides around another. You can guess which way we went.

These kids were also seen at La Feria, they must be popular.

One of those weird Top Spin/Rollover variants, which we didn't ride. The coaster track in the foreground belongs to Titan, which we did.

The coaster is a basic oval design with lots of hills, and a rather peculiar straight section. On our first ride we rode it in the front and was surprised at how much airtime we got. On the second ride we were too busy chatting to put the lap bar down, and the ride op didn't check. Fortunately our hands were holding onto the handrail because had we not we would both have been launched out on the first drop. The airtime in the back was immense and we were both out of the car. After both of us panicking and letting out one of those half-scream-half-laugh noises we quickly pulled the bar down and enjoyed the rest of the ride. I think the couple in front were thinking we were a couple of foreign lightweights, they weren't to know we were unrestrained.

Catarina is a caterpillar coaster. It was closed :(

Jubile is a pinfari coaster. It was being hit with hammers :(

Tornado is a Schwarzkopf coaster. It was closed :(

So we weren't doing too well at this park and made do initially with repeat rides on Titan and checking out the rest of the park. We both liked Titan a lot even though it wasn't particularly fast or high and it's layout was as basic as you could get.

You can just make out the strange straight section in the background. They could easily have got an extra camelback hill in. I wonder what the reason is for not.

Bubble Zone was an indoor childrens play area that was playing some pretty strange trance variant.

The park's flying carpet ride. A rink dink dink dink, a rink dink dink. (Fatboy Slim fans, might get the reference)

No idea what ride this used to be, but I didn't fancy a go on it in its current form.

This is the Uma Thurman ride. You can get inside her pants and have a play.

See! I told you. It's some weird indoor playground thing for the little 'uns.

Cartoon child recommends the carousel.

More kiddy rides, particularly liking the Hind Gunships. "Daddy, when I grow up I want to be a Russian Fighter Pilot". "Si son - make your papi proud".

A very boring ride indeed, but I guess the kids would like it.

Now this was very very wrong, at least to us that live in a more politically correct society. But I still took a picture.

Another rather dull round-and-round-we-go ride. As you can see it wasn't manned. Quite a lot of the rides were either not being run or the ride operators were hiding.

The kiddy jumping ride, that statue just walked in my shot, honest!

Casa del Terror is the park's haunted walkthrough, and this park was the first one I'd seen with people hanging from the trees outside it. Simple theming that would probably be too scary back home. It was also the first walkthrough with about a half a dozen exits. The majority of our group pegged it out of the first one leaving just Jeppe and I to negotiate the rest of it on our own. We thought we'd made it all the way round too only to find we'd exited through the penultimate exit. Ah well, it wasn't that scary anyway. Just a bit of a maze.

Aside from Titan the most popular attraction in the park was actually the Sky coaster with lots of school kids queueing up for a go. Having done a few before including the ridiculously tall on in Kissimee I had no intention of doing any here.

Headed back around to ensure we hadn't missed anything we were pleased to see the caterpillar coaster was open for business, even better the mechanics had stopped banging the pinfari and that was now running, and even better still they'd also opened the Schwarzkopf. So what started out to be a bad park ended up being fine.

At the entrance to the zoo is this pretty cool sculpture featuring the heads of all the animals that had died in their captivity. Not really, just a piece signifying the range of animals that you could see if you could be bothered to enter, which we couldn't. After a quick search of the carpark we located our taxi driver. Rather embarrassingly we'd told him we'd be two hours in the park, we were out in under half that time. He didn't mind, we were paying him by the hour anyway.

This is the entrance to the park, just so you know. Our taxi driver did actually get lost on the way in and had to ask for directions. Admittedly he's used to airport runs and he'd still do a better job than us.

A random church. Go vespa rider, go.

Quite liking the architecture on the corner building, not so sure about the upside down pyramid behind it though. After a short drive and our driver taking us to the wrong park we ended up at the second park. Park Rehilete.

This is a much smaller park, and we were the first club members to visit it. I like it when we do that, and I don't mean for the bragging rights. We'd done it in Russia last year and in researching this trip noticed that this park, which only had a small kiddy coaster recorded, actually had a second. Entrance to the park was very cheap costing around 70pence for the all-rides wristband.

It was instantly apparent that this park wasn't busy at all. There were around four members of staff all pretty bored. The girl in the ticket booth had clearly got so fed up waiting for people coming in that she had left her post to sweep up some leaves. We thought the park was closed until she came running over to let us in.

If the number of staff was low, the number of visitors even more so. There were two having sole use of the boating lake and we later spotted a father and son too, and that was it. Six public (including us) and four staff.

The park didn't really have any theming, just a selection of random items that had probably been salvaged from other parks. Is Disneyland missing an R2?

Love the Liberty paint job. Think if they did this to New York? The ride is called Manhattan.

and it made me giggle that people who point can't ride. I'm sure they could easily accommodate a wheel chair though. There's clear space between the vehicles they could sit in.

This is Rehilete, the coaster that I'd found (I can say that as it was me who got it added to RCDB.com) It was alright actually, nothing amazing, but pretty smooth and a ride I don't think I've seen anywhere else.

Or is it called Montana Rusa? Perhaps they procured that from somewhere else. Actually on their website they call it Rehilete.

We did have to wait a little while for the operator to open it for us as he was dealing with the father and son elsewhere, but to make up for the delay he let the train go through the station a few times.

In all the excitement of finding Rehilete I forgot to take photos of the known coaster at this park. Nessie. The only one I did take was this one of Jeppe enjoying it.

More kiddy rides. What is Orca doing to that poor dolphin?

I quite like the paint-job on this one.

The park has a go-kart track. The two guys from the boat had a race on it and the karts weren't that quick.

The only roundabout in Mexico where the traffic goes around it in the same direction, just like back home.

Doesn't look like this one is running.

I have no idea what this is about.

The Rehilete logo. Quite Mexican methinks...
The park was tiny, and barren and lacked any kind of charm, but we were the first to visit it so that alone makes it memorable. Any concern we'd had about getting around Guadalajara in time were quickly dismissed as we'd got around both parks in less than 3 hours. This left us plenty of time to check-in and have a look around the city.

Guadalajara

2008-06-28T22:40:00.000-07:00

Maths can be fun.

This reminded me of the building from Desperado but there were no machine-gun toting mariachi's here.

This was close to our hotel. I don't think this company trades in Europe :)

It's worth mentioning that our hotel was stunning, and again it was only a Holiday Inn. I really think they're branded up-market in Mexico. It's strange seeing rather affluent clientele.

The bed with a selection of 4 different types of pillow. Still no match for the 7 offered in Tokyo however :)

One of the things I wanted to try in Mexico was authentic tapas, and here they are. Don't they look amazing?

The hairdryer however looks like a souvenir from a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. That one where Nicholas Cage has to escort a bunch of prisoners on a plane and it all gets messed up when they break out. I can't remember the name of it though.

We now had plenty of time to explore Guadalajara so we set out with the obligatory bottle of water and ventured forth.

This is the city cathedral built towards the end of the 16th century. It is renaissance on the outside and gothic on the inside.

and this is a dime bar, smooth on the outside, crunchy on the inside!

There was a small protest event taking place having a go at the local city government. I don't know what it was over though. The bands didn't sound too bad though.

That's the municipal palace with a small group of security outside to protect the residents from the marching protestors.

and here's the marching protestors getting in their faces. I like how the guards have taunted the well-behaved mob by leaving the doors open.

A pano of the square in front of the cathedral and palace. More guards on the bandstand thing in the centre.

A better shot of the cathedral.

One of the restaurants around the square where we stopped off for another drink. The speciality drink here is a pitcher of tea, alcohol and some Mexican spices. We played it safe and went for fruit juices and coca cola, not pepsi.

If you want your shoes shined, Guadalajara is perhaps the best place to go as there are loads of stands here. Admittedly it's a long way to travel though but at least you're guaranteed not to be left waiting.

Liking this piece, I'm wondering if there any shadow animals hidden within the design. I think I can see a dog!

One of the churches, unfortunately the streets are so compact here that its not easy to get a shot of the dome, unless I had some way of getting up onto the rooftops of the buildings around it.

However I saw no easy way of doing that.

Heading further away from the main centre and the buildings got a little rougher so we headed back in, not wanting to stray into the rough part of town.

Another major church in the city.

Here's the place to come for religious statues. I was disappointed that there was no buddy christ.

not available in Guadalajara.

This the cities rotundo, probably just a place to relax.

The Plaza de Liberacion is another main square in the centre of town. There's quite a few of them, giving the whole area quite a pedestrian feeling. The structure in the back is the main theatre building.

No idea who the statue is of or who it signifies.

Heading down towards the main cultural centre of the city. It's worth mentioning that I had no idea where we were going. In places like this I think its always a good idea to use tall buildings as waypoints and see what you come across along the way. Checking in Google Earth it seems to have worked here as we hit all the most touristy parts. However I thought we were heading North on the day when in fact we were going East.

The Spanish for "flags" is "banderas". So by that logic "Antonio Banderas" translates as "Tony Flags". For those smart-arses who respond with "but his name is actually Jose" then that would translate as "Joe Flags", which is even worse.

This is Plaza Tapia continuing East, not North, from the Cathedral.

Dancing fountains. We sat here for a little bit to chill and were sold a couple of tickets for a student fashion show taking place later in the day. We didn't see it but did want to promote the entrepreneurship on the part of the students.

Given the heat the fountains were very popular. The music accompanying the fountains was pretty good too, and whilst I knew when I hit the Bellagio at the end of the trip I'd be seeing the best it was still pretty cool to enjoy these.

Nice looking church structure especially the balcony garden bit. It's the Templo de San Juan de Dios

Mariachi band statues.

I'd waited ages for this horse drawn cart to make its way closer. Initially it was in the middle lane but by the time it got into range he'd pulled over so I lost the effect I was looking for that was to have the horse surrounded by traffic. Nevermind!

Art like this would look great with the sun immediately behind it. Wrong time of day though.

Heading back to the main squares now and the sun was starting to go down giving better photo opportunities.

The sun drops quick in Guadalajara. Actually we'd stopped back at the piazza restaurant for another drinking session, this time in the company of a family musical act we didn't quite understand.

A slightly better shot of the flag carrying woman. Yes we were walking a second lap but this was in searching for an ideal place to eat. This was going to be our last night in Mexico as tomorrow we'd be heading for Texas so we thought we'd find something a bit classy and Mexican. We ended up in quite a nice place not far from this statue where we had a really nice Mexican meal washed down with Tequila, which we didn't ask for btw. The gravel voiced waiter was looking to impress us with it so we'd buy a bottle.

We then headed back to our splenderous hotel where we found a note under the door telling us that the electricity was going to be switched off in the morning due to work taking place in the area and on that happy note we called it a night.

Guadalajara to Houston

2008-06-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

Not much to report today as it was all spent traveling.

This is not a theme park, just a tiny wheel to attract drivers as they travel to the airport.

I'm not sure which route our taxi driver was taking, here's us going past Windsor Castle

We eventually made it to the airport and here was our little plane to take us to Houston. The flight was alright but I felt a bit sorry for the one lady cabin crew. She was very bored and had to put up with a couple of dicks being above their station who thought they could ignore the rules, walking up and down the plane when they weren't supposed to etc. What made it even worse was that these people were quite old, well dressed and looking quite wealthy. I guess being on such a small plane with no business class put them out of their element.

It was also at Guadalajara airport where I got stopped for taking sun cream in my hand luggage even though it had been fine for every flight prior. Oops.

A short while after landing we got through immigration, which I'm never comfortable with. On this time they played some new video welcoming us to America. It was very cheesy but helped to pass the time. The wonderful TSA had also gone through my luggage and left me a note telling me. I wonder if I was a mousetrap salesman, whether they'd be so keen to search my luggage?

From the airport it was a bus ride to the hotel which as you can see wasn't far from the Toyota Center. I had been hoping to go to a sporting event there but there was nothing on for the two days we were staying there. Ah well.

So we used the Houston days as an opportunity to relax before the club trip got underway, which would be a little more intense. Having never experienced Hooters, Jeppe was keen to go, and so after a short cab ride we ate there. In fact we over did it - the portions were massive and there was no way we could manage a starter and main, which we only realised after it had arrived.

Later that night we both got food poisoning. Having played it safe in Mexico, where people usually get it, it was ironic that on our first night in the states we both fell victim. What we couldn't also figure out was that we'd both got it even though we'd ordered different food. It wasn't until a few days later that we were made aware of a bad crop of tomatoes giving people salmonella and we came to the conclusion that as we both had a couple of slices within our salad that it must have been that. Great! Actually it became quite a news story with over 1,000 people in 30 states reporting symptoms.

Houston day 2

2008-06-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

Not feeling too good we decided to abort the plan agreed the previous night to take a helicopter over the city and down to Kemah, instead choosing to just walk around downtown. Although the sadist in me thought it would be a good idea to do the chopper just to dump on Hooters and get them back for ruining our trip.

The Toyota Center, today hosting a graduation ceremony, so wasn't worth visiting.

Don't go to parties with metal detectors, sure it feels safe inside but what about all those people waiting outside with guns? they know you aint got one.

It was a really hot day in Houston, way hotter than anything experienced in Mexico. In an attempt to stay out of the sun we thought we'd look for some shade, but there wasn't much. I certainly wasn't thin enough to get any next to this building.

Nice skyline! Perhaps the only good thing about Houston :)

This is Root Memorial Square given to the city by Mr Root so that dumb tourists like me would take pictures of it and spread the word about him; publicity seeking git!

The tallest building in the city is the JPMorgan Chase Tower given to the city by Mr Morgan. Not really, they own most of the building.

The city does have a tram service. We didn't bother riding it as we were heading west and it ran north/south. Close to here was the downtown mall, which was pretty rubbish due to most of the good shops moving to a larger mall just outside the city. We were served by the most dull shop assistant and I did find a sign on which read "This escalator must be used for the sole purpose of transportation only". Not knowing what else to do with an escalator imagine my surprise when I got home and saw this doing the rounds on the internet.

Cool statue even if it looks like someone has been playing with the clone stamp tool in Photoshop to try to remove the body. It really is like that.

Heh heh!! and this is in his home state. You have to love free speech!

So why were we heading west? To head to that, the city's aquarium and ickle theme park which is actually no more than a couple of rides but since the city got rid of Astroworld (boooooo!!!) this is the only place to go for fun, unless you find poisoned food funny in which case there is a restaurant you can go to.

Interesting art statement or incomplete flyover, you decide.

The aquarium is probably the most popular attraction in the city, not that there is much competition. It's also open quite late so if you want to avoid the midday sun you can go in the evening.

Now prepare for some pictures of fish

A fish

A famous fish from Finding Nemo

Lots of fish

Not a fish but still allowed in an aquarium

Umm not a fish either but perhaps they'll eat fish

Most definitely not a fish

Having endured all we could of the aquarium and really not feeling too good at all we chose to grab a taxi back to the hotel. After 100metres our grip failed though and we fell to the floor. Wanting to get back quickly we then caught another taxi, with the aid of a net, and took that back to the hotel, where we then released it back into the wild.

Houston day 3

2008-06-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

With the first leg of the trip coming to an end we decided to take the day leisurely by meeting another mate and visiting two small entertainment complexes to count coaster credits. Being a Holiday Inn point collector too it turned out quite nice that Martin was in the same hotel as us and he was happy to drive us to the two locations in the North of the city.

First port of call was the Zuma Fun Center home of Minor Mike, a tiny little kiddy coaster.

No vagabundos! We don't want your sort here :D

A vagabundo yesterday. Remember a vagabundo is for life, not just for Christmas.

Minor Mike was down for maintenance, which is a shame as it looked like it may have been a challenging ride and by challenging I mean trying to fit in it.

Second complex of the day was it'z which is a indoor park with a buffet, that you have to take part in if you're to be let in. The place works by buying a card that you pay to charge up and which is discontinued as you ride. Just like an oyster, although these rides are probably more reliable and less stuffy.

Their coaster is called it'z express and its a rather lengthy kiddy ride.

Just look at the layout! The good news on this one was that the ride was actually running once you'd rung the bell to get the staff's attention to let you in. We were allowed to get to go around a few times, which if I kept a record of total distance covered on my rides would be way down the list.

it'z also has a disk'o ride which are quite fun so we decided to pay for a go on that too.

Yes it really does run that close to the wall.

Proof if you don't believe me! It makes the ride a little different to others I've ridden that are outdoors. Whilst you don't really get that close to the wall you do still try to find yourself reaching out to touch it...or perhaps that was just us.

With both parks hit and a 50% success rate achieved in terms of coasters we then made our way to Houston Airport, dropped off the car and waited for the others to arrive. Setting up base in the bar (where else) everyone started dripping into arrivals like the ending of Stand By Me but in reverse. Soon after the club flight landed and we made our way onto our coach to head to the first park, Kemah Boardwalk.

En route we passed the largest refinery plant I've ever seen. At night I bet this place looks like the opening sequence of Blade Runner.

See what I mean?

Continuing our journey we soon arrived at the Boardwalk, its new coaster Boardwalk Bullet taking the vista away from the sail-less boats. Being welcomed by the park staff, grabbing our wristbands and getting our handstamps (extra security apparently) we all headed straight for the ride.

Misspelling illegal should be made illeagal

A young kid goes through a rite of passage by holding onto only the bar whilst the train thundered past. He got the fright of his life, which his dad seemed to enjoy. He got his comeuppance though when he was told the kid was too small to ride and he had to escort him back to his mother waiting outside. Rather strangely we were well down the queue but when we got to the station all the other members were queuing for the front and back, which meant Jeppe and I were the first in the group to ride it.

The ride itself is ridiculously powerful and a real challenge to ride. It's not rough but it does a lot to you; they've really squashed a lot of track into the footprint. I hope it is maintained well because I feel its ripping itself apart and could become quite lethal pretty quickly in its lifetime.

Aside from the coaster, which was pulling the crowds, the rest of the park is pretty laid back yet quite well themed.

Not surprisingly the water attractions were also popular especially with those too small to ride the coaster.

Oh, haha!! The seagulls are on a diet. You make me laugh (quote Stewie Griffin)

We didn't eat at Joe's. We ate somewhere else then spent the next hour on a toilet tour. I think I managed 5 exclusive sessions there.

I quite liked the boardwalk but if it wasn't for the coaster I probably would have no reason to ever go there. Its a nice area and the people were very friendly but the food portions were huge! There is a saying that everything is bigger in Texas, certainly the appetites are :D

From here we headed to the first hotel in the MiddleOfNowhere, TX ready for the next day where we'd hit Six Flags San Antonio.

Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Kiddieland Park & Downtown San Antonio

2008-06-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

Six Flags Fiesta Texas was one of the big parks on the tour with a total of eight coasters.

and ahead of us welcoming us at the entrance is Goliath, the latest addition salvaged from Six Flags New Orleans where it ran briefly as "Splash Coaster Underwater B and M Aqua Nautica" (S.C.U.B.A. for short).

Cooooooooool, this park has a boooooooooomerang!

The day actually had us being given a rather exclusive photo opportunity. The park is situated in a quarry and we had been allowed to walk around the top of it from where we can look down onto the park. I took the opportunity to take some more panorama shots.

The purple and blue coaster dominating the foreground is their Superman floorless ride. It hugs the quarry wall.

A general view of the park

The wooden coaster Rattler

OK, back to more regular photography.

The drop tower (nice paint job) and Poltergeist behind it.

We had a good chance to freak out the public as they hit the mid-course brakes. They certainly wouldn't expect other members of the public to be up here.

Cliff is a guy who lives just over the edge. He doesn't like people invading his personal space so it was very nice of the park to warn us not to venture too near.

The first drop and loop on Superman. For those interested in such trivia this is the second largest vertical loop. Dominator, now in Kings Dominion has the first. But that one doesn't have a Superman on it.

Superman looked like a great ride and the park had rather kindly allowed us to ride it for an hour at the end of the day.

Loving that first drop

Having finished the tour, we rejoined the public at the Rattler ride so we decided to ride that.

It looked like it had the potential to be a great ride but something must have happened to it over its life. One third was rough, one third was slow and the final third was pretty good. Next door to that was Roadrunner Express a mine train which wasn't all that.

The next ride in the park was the Boomerang, sponsored by Heinz not because the ketchup looked like the blood likely to come out of your ears having ridden it but because its apparently, like its ketchup, its worth waiting for.

It wasn't worth the wait.

This angel has the horn

Rollschcuhcoaster is in the German area of the park. It was just a kiddy coaster; credit - tick - move on.

We were hot, these guys must have been boiling in those suits...what do you mean they're not suits?.....oh! they're real.

After lunch, which was really nice, a small group of us headed into San Antonio to seek out another credit and to see a bit of downtown.

Kiddie Park of San Antonio is a tiny inner-city park in San An. We met Bob the owner who'd given us the OK to ride his coaster.

Usually adults are barred, we were to discover to mitigate the risk of being sued should they get hurt when riding it. Assuring him that we were there to ride and not make money he let us on.

Some big kids enjoying the ride and gaining the bragging rights to getting a credit that isn't that easy to obtain. Actually it is, you just need to ask nicely.

The park is apparently the oldest childrens park in America opening originally in 1925. Not surprisingly its still popular with the kids now as I imagine it would have been then.

Liking the theming outside the park, an interesting take on the hanging corpse seen at Selva Magica. The park's hospitality was most appreciated and we were happy to pose for a photo for the owner to post on his website. Checking it now I'm back its yet to appear. I only hope its not because one week after we rode the ride it broke and he blames us :(

Whilst Martin headed off to visit Hard Rock Cafe I chose to have a quick run around the downtown area. Here's a view from the car park overlooking some of Downtown. Don't worry the quick run wasn't that quick.

A rather lofty church that gets you a little closer to heaven. Now do I mean because its higher or because it would take an effort to get to it? Hmmm!

A rather "green" establishment.

Unlike Houston, San Antonio is a city with a rich history. Here on a bridge one of the original Native Americans has been set in Carbonite and used for decoration for the immigrant residents to enjoy as they eat their McDonalds and drink their Starbucks.

Loving that sculpture! The tower on the right is the tallest building in the city and houses a rotating restaurant at the top.

The citywalk area is full of restaurants, bars and the like. It's a really cool place and if I had more time I'd have investigated it more. As it happens there was a more important place I'd wanted to see in the time it took Martin to find the Hard Rock and drink their bar dry...and for those that don't know Martin, that's not a lot of time.

What is "chicken fried steak"?

This is what I was looking for, the Alamo. This is a very important building in American history. This building was the first car-rental centre in America and gives its name to the chain found all over the world today.

Actually it was here 187 American Soldiers defended themselves against 6,000 Mexican soldiers looking to retake Texas as their own after they'd already lost it. Whilst the defenders of the Alamo failed, it has become a symbol of the heroic struggle against impossible odds and a place where men paid the ultimate price for freedom. There's a couple of obvious Bush references there but I'll ignore them. Inside the building is a small museum of the events and because its a chapel I didn't take any pictures. Is it a coincidence that there were 187 victims on the US side and that number is also police code for a homicide?

This is one of the guys who helped defended the Alamo. It looks like the Indians got their own back for having some of their kinfolk set in carbonite. Here, they've done it back. I only hope when he's finally released that Toribio doesn't find the city too different from when he last fought here.

I've been conned. That high church isn't a church at all. It's just a big hotel type complex. The wall in the foreground is part of the Alamo enclosure.

Having seen all I wanted to see, albeit briefly, I met back up with the others and we were taken back to Six Flags to finish up the rest of the rides there.

First up was Poltergeist, which is the ride on the left not the drop tower.

It is a knot of a coaster and having seen these rides all being down following an accident in another park in 2006, it was good to see this up and running (I didn't get to ride Joker's Jinx at Six Flags America). Load times were pretty good here and I remember the ride having a great launch and not being overly rough. It's one of the better rides in this park.

Another shot of Poltergeist this time from the back. I won't say how I got this shot needless to say it wasn't that obvious :)

There were a few of these signs in the Six Flags parks and they were rubbish. If you're going to number the piece at list have them all in the park so those of us with OCDs can try to find them all. As it happens I think I only found 2.

As well as adding Batman the park had recently opened a new Tony Hawks coaster. Following a trip to Six Flags New England in 2006 (he was there on the same day we were), Six Flags CEO Mark Shapira decided that a similar ride there would be a great addition to the chain and the result of that decision is a spate of Tony Hawk coasters.

I didn't like it, but then I've had an absolutely insane ride on Han Katten, a similar ride at Bonbon Land in Denmark. Until I'm spun around more than then I'm going to be hard pushed to rate any other ride, and if you'd seen how much I'd spun on it you'd understand how difficult that is going to be.

Having said that like the local hooker it seemed to go down well with the locals, and one good thing it had was a camera that filmed your ride on it. Much better than a static one-ride shot.

A couple of old themed cars

Having ridden all the coasters bar the two we were getting for the ERS we decided to ride them anyway. First up was Superman the massive quarry wall hugging floorless coaster. I was having difficulty getting properly exposed shots on my little camera in the Texas heat but I should state the superman logo really was faded and he looked more purple than blue.

Queueing for the coaster took about 40 minutes and I was just about to be let into the station when my stomach decided I needed to be elsewhere. So it was here that I started my love/hate relationship with imodium, which I had brought on me just in case. As it happens it did the trick and I was able to ride.

The ride was a lot of fun, quite intense but not overly. The corkscrews were a bit of a struggle though.

From there we went to Goliath, which having ridden lots of Batman rides already didn't offer anything new, other than a vibrant paint job. In hindsight I realise how my opinon has been tainted by having too much of a good thing. I used to love these rides when I first joined the club but now I've ridden so many the pleasure has become diluted.

Before being our ERSs the park had kindly invited us to two of their shows with a designated VIP area to boot.

First up was "Country Rocks", which I didn't twig straight away was a stage show featuring covers of rock songs done in a country style; the reason I wasn't quick on the uptake was because I didn't recognise any of the tracks they were covering :(
The show was pretty decent I suppose and made a change from young teens doing silly choreography to pop hits. These guys were slightly older and could sing, and they line danced. At least I figured out what happened to one of the guys from The Vengaboys (2nd from right)

The second show was a lights, fireworks, lasers and sound spectacular using the quarry wall as a projection screen. It was a bit overly patriotic but thats just something we as a nation don't do and Americans always do over the top.

The finale featured a series of explosions detonated from the top of the quarry. No wonder Cliff is always angry if he has to put up with that going on every night. IT also highlights why we weren't offered the photo tour at the end of the day :D

Onto the ERS and it was superb. I spent most of the time riding Superman and decided to introduce my alter-ego El Retardo to the club. I'd bought a wrestling mask in Guadalajara and paired it up with a Batman cape I'd bought in the park. I thought it would be fun to wear the outfit during the ERS.

There were however a few problems
1) I couldn't wear the mask and my glasses which meant I couldn't see the ride.
2) The forces would cause the mask to float off my head so I spent a lot of the second half of the ride with my finger in the eyesockets trying to keep it on.
3) Someone called me a gimp

So El Retardo only survived with the club one day before being retired. What was quite odd though was that the ride operators didn't acknowledge my outfit at all, which we couldn't understand. Part of the fun of being a dick is the reaction and I failed miserably there. Perhaps real luchadors visit this park a lot.

A cute sign we walked past on the way out. It's not always the kids' fault.

Six Flags Fiesta Texas is actually a wonderful park, and seems to be putting its customers above its shareholders. The Shapiro effect seems to be working, at least here.

Seaworld and Six Flags Over Texas

2008-06-28T21:50:00.000-07:00

Today we'd be visiting two different parks starting the day with Seaworld before a lengthy drive up to Arlington for Six Flags Over Texas.

The first park was a short drive from the hotel and it looked like it was celebrating a birthday. In amusement park terms though 20 years is still quite young.

Time at this park was pretty tight but to help us get nail everything quickly (the rides I mean, anything else would have got us arrested) the park had given us a morning ERS on their hypercoaster Steel Eel.

and the ride was really good. Made by the same company who built Superman in Mexico City, this was much longer, smoother and overall better.

and one of the reasons why I liked this was that it looked like a good coaster; lots of big hills that went on and on and on.

See! Its a classic out and back design that you could see for miles, how a coaster should be IMO.

Its also worth mentioning that the ride ops were having a great time running our ERS and kept us entertained for the hour we had been allowed to ride it.

This is the water coaster ride Journey to Atlantis, which we discovered was going to open fairly late. Seaworld is one of those parks that has staggered openings, and this ride is the last to open.

Instead we made do with the other rides, the first being Shamu Express. It's one of those little kiddy rides that is like having sex with a big woman. Its a lot of fun but not the sort of thing you want your friends to catch you doing. A little tricky when there's 50 of you with nothing to do because the park isn't really open yet.

Suffering another tomato attack I made way to the toilets where I was surprised to see this. Now either the park gets a lot of diabetics visiting or they're happy to have drug addicts attend. I'm hoping its the former. Even so it's not good to spell "disposal" incorrectly, unless this park also gets a lot of Italians visiting too! Not feeling too good at all I got an exclusive session in one of the parks medical centres. Medicine was prescribed, which sort of did the trick. Thanks nurse!

Great White is the park's B&M Batman clone. After Eel and Shamu this was the next coaster to open. With most of the track lying outside the park I'm sure the photographers ended up taking the same shots.

A crowd had gathered waiting for it to open, most of them club members. The ride was good but just another clone (I hate saying stuff like that)

With time running out I had a choice of Atlantis of the Shamu show. I chose the former and with a few other members hung around in the heat waiting for the ride to open. Fortune was smiling upon us today as the park opened the ride a little earlier than planned. Perhaps there is an advantage to turning up in a group!

Anyway, we got the first boat and got totally soaked, completely expected I might add but an added bonus was that I had time to run over to the stadium and catch some of the show.

It was standard Seaworld schmaltz with one of the trainers telling us about how she had a dream to work with marine animals and now her dreams had come true.

Then the killer whales come out and jump around for fish.

Then the audience partake in a mass blessing by carrying their little ones into the splash zone. Funnily enough most of the kids end up crying.

In some more audience participation they picked on a poor kid and had him tell the entire audience what his dreams were. His answer? To become a professional ten pin bowler. Now that's aspirational and I hope he makes it. Had I been pulled up and seeing some of the girls running around in their wetsuits I'm sure my answer would have been a bit more unsuitable.

With the show over it was time to head on out of the park. Now everyone thinks dolphins are happy because they smile. I can assure you in the Texan heat the people inside probably wouldn't have been.

A hopscotch game outside the park, commonly used for teaching kids how to count whilst hopping. But at this park you'd skip 5 and replace it with another 6. Not sure why it has been set up like that.

After a lengthy drive, where I might add we should have stopped for a toilet break but didn't, we arrived a little later than planned at Six Flags Over Texas. The park had been amazingly hospitable to us, giving us 3 rides for the evening but before we could do any of that there was a mass exodus to the toilet.

First up was La Vibora, the park's bobsleigh coaster.

Now with all the coaster riding I've done getting injured is bound to happen. On the last trip to the US I thought I'd broken my neck on Kennywood's Thunderbolt and the injury on this trip was picked up here. I have no idea how it happened but when I came off it I had a double cut in my arm. Nothing major but it looked like I'd been shanked in prison where they put two blades in a toothbrush so the healing take a bit longer than a single blade would. As for the ride it was OK but in the sections where the car is straightened up you'd come in with a bit of a bang.

Next up was Texas Giant, which when it first opened was a landmark wooden coaster, massive in size and an exciting ride to boot. But the ride had aged very badly and was now really rough. We'd been told not to ride it in the back, so that's where I rode. It was horrible, enough to put me off riding it again. The park would be wise to open a dentists next to this. I'm sure there's money to be made from replacing lost fillings.

As you can see the ride wasn't overly popular with the group, which is a shame. So where were they all?

They were riding Titan, a massive steel monster which had a great mix of positive and negative Gs. We spent a few rides seeing if we could lift our feet from the floor of the car during the helices; we couldn't. At 255ft, I think this was the tallest coaster on the trip, and for me one of the best.

So we'd been welcomed to the park with 3 ERSs. Tomorrow we'd get to do the rest of the park.

Six Flags Over Texas

2008-06-28T21:40:00.000-07:00

The next day and we were back over Texas. One of the worst things about Six Flags parks is the horrible security that "welcomes" you. What made it worse today was that whilst our bags were being searched David Lee Roth's "This Must Be Just Like Living In Paradise".

I hope not, the idea of having a metal detector around the Pearly Gates and St. Peter accompanied by a security detail doesn't make it particularly inviting.

This wonderful plaque makes it clear that concealed handguns are not allowed in the park. Unconcealed handguns however do not get a mention, so I guess that's OK...although I wasn't prepared to put it to the test.

The group make their way to the morning ERS coaster.

Nope, not Tony Hawks. We'd be riding that later.

The day started with Mr Freeze and Batman. As you'd have read from this report I've ridden quite a few Batman rides now so I hadn't planned on spending too much time repeat riding that. Mr Freeze however was a new one and I could see myself spending quite a bit of time there.

Take heed of this sign near the start of the Batman queue line. You do not want to have to walk this line anymore than need be. It was by far the longest queue line on the trip. Fortunately the line was empty.

In an attempt to placate what would be the bored queueing masses the TV show was showing people doing the cha-cha slide, which would drive me nuts...two times.

The ride itself, having finally got to it, was pretty decent to be honest especially given the time of day.

Mr Freeze was up next and was superb, one of the best rides on the trip (didn't I say that about Titan last night?).

You are launched out of the station and through that camelback, which due to it being taken on the inside is full of forces that push against your chest. Then you shoot up the spike before falling back and doing it all in reverse.

An absolutely great ride, and the good thing was that there would be another of these later on in the trip.

Stoopid photo opportunity as I try to get Jeppe under the anvil. Now if I could only have found the release switch.

Liking the theming on the Pirate Ship ride.

This was one of the stands from which you could win a cape. Now the game would probably cost $5 to play and the cost of the cape if bought from the park store....$5 too. So the "Winner Every Time" message is really just putting a positive spin on the purchase of the cape by making the buyer think they're winning something when they're actually not.

Start your season with a dick. Hmmm! They're sponsoring a basketball game where you have to score as many 3-point shots as possible with a limited number of balls and within a pretty tight time-limit. These games were at just about every park and pretty popular with those locals who love the sound of a basketball hitting the ground over and over and over again.

This one's for you Richard!

Inside the kiddy section we'd been allowed to ride the roadrunner ride, usually we wouldn't be. So thanks to the park for letting us do that. We could also see into the car park from the lift hill, and a lot of school buses were on their way in.

A strangely patronising message. Who's family exactly do they mean? The bins?

Tony Hawks was just like the one in Fiesta Texas. Not that exciting at all really. They really need to let these machines spin.

Win "your" ipod. Now if its your's you shouldn't need to win it, just take it. I didn't try that approach as I knew my ipod was back on the coach.

I wonder what these two are trying to take a photo of? No, it wasn't an upskirt opportunity.

They're just attempting to fit all of the drop tower into shot.

Shockwave is a double looping German designed coaster that was a lot of fun. What made this even more interesting was Heather the ride op. Fairly new to the park she was keen to ensure we enjoyed her ride and basically didn't shut up, but in a good way.

She was just genuinely excited to be doing her job and wanted us to know. A refreshing change from the majority of employees at parks who aren't really interested.

The ice cold drinks shop was closed, which was a shame as we needed them. It was ridiculously hot.

Nice theming, I don't think the guy in the foreground is digging for oil though.

Judge Roy Scream (daft name) is an old wooden coaster that is located in a separately fenced area away from the rest of the park. You have to access it via a tunnel.

It's really good and has been very well maintained, much better than Texas Giant.

The coaster seen from the park.

Calling your boomerang coaster something other than "boomerang" doesn't mean it'll be any smoother. It's still a head banger.

The park has two mine train rides. This is the kiddy one.

and this is the bigger kiddy one. Neither were that exciting.

Runaway Mountain is the park's indoor coaster which was closed down whilst we were queuing. Our chatty friend Heather came passed and told us that some one had been sick on it and she kept us entertained with more stories whilst we waited for it to re-open.

The park apparently has a school, so why weren't the kids in there!

Today wasn't June 7th so I have no idea what Texas Justice is. I'm guessing a show but there's a little piece of me that hopes its an electric chair for people who jump the queue lines or come into the park with a concealed weapon.

In the Western section the breakdance has a bovine feel to it.

That chair is actually 5 storeys high. I should have put a person in shot to give the sense of scale, only I couldn't find any midgets (little people for those of you who think that PC term is actually less of an insult than the original).

The Texas Ranger boat ride could easily be missed but shouldn't be. It's quite good and better than most of these rides.

This is the park's interpretation of the Alamo, which they apparently took from a movie set. I'm pleased I saw the original.

Yup, the dumb starburst posters were here too.

Six Flags Over Texas, big park and quite good. Titan, Mr Freeze and Shockwave were my favourite rides here.

Whilst being in Arlington I thought it would be a good idea to visit the military cemetery. That was until I was told that was Arlington, Washington DC, not Texas.

Not in Texas....

Magic Springs & Celebration City

2008-06-28T21:30:00.000-07:00

Heading out of the hot and humid Texas we made our way into the state that gave us that saxophone-playing cigar dealing legend Mr. Clinton and I don't mean George. Arkansas (pronounced Arkansaw, not "Kansas") takes its name from the Red Indian tribe that used to live here and that have probably been delegated to a small patch of land somewhere in the state.

Magic Springs lies about 50 miles from the state capital Little Rock, it originally opened in the 70s but closed in 1995 when the owners ran out of cash. Five years later the park re-opened under new ownership and has been thriving ever since.

We arrived nice and early for a morning ERS on a couple of their rides. The car park didn't appear to have a section for coaches but being the first in we took dibs on the available spaces.

A nice welcome from the park, in fact there were plenty of greeting signs for us including the large freeway side one on the way in.

Within the same site is Crystal Falls the water park, which I didn't make too much use of other than using as a short cut to get from one side of the park to the other.

Had I not been overly tyred I might have given it a go!

That is the X-Coaster a launched single loop track that shares the record with a small park in Germany for having the highest inversion. That record for years stood with the crazy loop on Viper at Magic Mountain, up until these appeared. We were quite looking forward to riding this however a few days before we arrived one of the components on the lift system failed and the replacement wouldn't arrive until we'd left. C'est la vie.

Instead the park offered us an ERS on Arkansas Twister, a really nice out-and-back wooden coaster. It used to reside in Florida before being relocated in 1992.

One of the reasons that the park has begun to thrive is due to this music venue that was built about 5 years ago. Employing the mantra "if you build it they will come" seems to have paid off for the park. The first act to play here was apparently Shaggy he of the classic "Mr Boombastic", although if you asked him who was first he'd probably respond "It wasn't me".

Teacups are given a car theme. I wouldn't want to be the traffic cop in the centre. Perhaps better to bring in one of Mexican policewomen.

I prefer parks that have shade, which this one did. Much better than the ones in Texas where getting respite proved difficult.

Twist n Shout is the parks mouse coaster hat I'm going to remember for one bit where I was launched into the lap bar so hard I thought I'd snapped my thigh bone.

Really really powerful ejector airtime, but I was alright once I'd got out of the car.

Diamond Mine coaster is a little kiddy ride. Whilst a more pleasant ride than Twist n Shout it wasn't as memorable.

The park's carousel.

The park's splash ride and in the background Gauntlet, the SLC that we were also given in the morning to ride for an hour. Yes, it's an SLC and who would want to ride that more than once......hmm?

Gauntlet was originally due to go to a park in New Orleans but when the sale fell through this park snapped it up. SLCs have such a bad reputation but I actually find them alright, which I proved here by being able to ride this 10 times consecutively, something that most people in the group found a little nuts. So to help you all out here's my guide to riding SLCs.

1) Keep your head back. This is paramount for these rides where, not having much space it's easy to get bashed against it. If you keep your head pushed back then you take away the lateral motion that can hurt.

2) The handlebars for these rides are attached to the over the shoulder restraint in a V formation and you're expected to hold onto them by bringing your hands up to them from below and holding from underneath as if you were lifting weights. Don't do this, instead bring your hands over the top of the handlebar as if you were riding a bike. Doing this drops the shoulders so giving a little freedom within the restraint. I call this the "Harley Grip"

3) Rev the handlebars like a motorbike whilst the ride is running. Although it makes you look pretty stupid it actually focuses you onto doing something other than worrying about your head taking a pasting, and you'll come off the ride smiling for acting like a twat rather than in pain because you let the ride beat you up.

4) Ride it more than once. This is the hardest step to overcome especially if you got hurt on the first run. The human body quickly learns and adapts and you'll find you'll have the layout learnt pretty quickly making subsequent rides easier.

Who smokes with their feet? People with no arms of course, but you don't have to worry about them as they're harmless.

Watson Falls is a small ornamental water feature built in honour of Bob Watson, one of the park's employees. He must have done something pretty good to have been given such an honour.

Big Bad John is a large mine coaster built in honour of John Jones, one of the park's employees. I don't think he did anything good to have got the moniker "Big Bad" (actually I made that all up). In the UK we had adverts for a bleach that used the slogan "Big Bad Dom" based on the country song by Jimmy Dean from which this ride takes its name.

The ride, whilst being hard to photo because it goes away from the accessible areas, wasn't too bad.

Is this guy riding the rocket or humping it?

A list of the bands due to play at the park. Morris Day and The Time was the surprise act as I hadn't realised they were still around. Famous for being Prince's backing band I had heard some of their tracks being played in several parks previously visited as well as here.

For the same reason it was a surprise to see Spin Doctors too. I bet they're still singing that "Two Princes", name me another.

On leaving the park we made our way out of Arkansas into Missouri to Celebration City.

Not sure what happened here, carnage en route.

Celebration City is located in Branson Missouri and is paired with Silver Dollar City that we would be visiting tomorrow. SDC is the daytime park and this is the evening park and you can travel between the two on some amphibious vehicles. But as we were doing them the other way around we wouldn't get to ride them.

No confusion over concealed and unconcealed here, although its not clear if a water pistol is considered a firearm.

One of those giant spinning marbles that people always try to spin so fast in the hope it'll dismount and crush young children.

Lots of coverage again meant that I was liking this park early on. The theming didn't look too bad either.

Liking the 50's vibe spoiled only by there being a perimeter wall between this and the car park that prevents you actually driving in.

In fact the 50s theming was around the park, not just at the diner.

That's Thunderbolt, a weird and slightly noisy coaster.

Unlike every other park on the trip so far that relied on a local workforce, this one had a lot of foreign students working. The Thunderbolt ride had 2 chinese girls running it under the tutorage of a senior manager. They were ever so polite, which led me to believe they hadn't been in the US for long.

Jack Rabbit looks like someone decided to build their own coaster out of Meccano.

and as such lacks the sensibilities found in most. It's a little insane, which makes it fun.

Guys waiting for their insurance paperwork to be complete before giving the OK to ride.

The park claims to have the Ultimate Dog Show and include a dog catching a frisbee. I would challenge this as that's what all dogs do. Many years ago I visited a park in Germany who's animal show was so bad that their couldn't catch a frisbee and they even had audience members throw them only to watch it bounce of his face. That to me is the ultimate show.

Onto the Ozark Wildcat, the park's wooden coaster a ride I'd known nothing about.

It certainly looked impressive, I'm just wondering how it rode, and I wasn't disappointed.

A nice twisty track with some great pops of airtime, the best bit being a triple jump section towards the end. It looked like the ERS was going to be great!

A strange robot punching game where you drive around and thrown uppercuts at the opponents head to score points.

One of those Mistral rides and with trees around we did of course do our damnest to hit them. Like the disk-o at Zuma having things come close to the ride makes it more interesting.

The park has a magic shop, which is a little bit different. It was closed though but then when I looked back it was open and a rabbit was coming out of the entrance.

Bow down before the Creepy Cymbal Monkey

At the end of the night the park put on a music and light spectacular not too dissimilar to the one at Fiesta Texas. However one part of this that I did like was the projection of You've Been Framed clips up on the rock wall. Being a fan of schadenfreude I love those shows and I'd have quite happily watched an extended version of that.

Finally with the public clearing out we were allowed to ride the Wildcat for an hour. I didn't take any photos as I was too busy riding, when my stomach let me that is. The ride as expected was great but the ride ops, clearly unfamiliar with ERSs killed the atmosphere and caused some upset within some of the group.

Celebration city was an OK park, not too big and with a couple of good/unique rides.

Silver Dollar City

2008-06-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

Silver Dollar City is the bigger of the two Branson parks.

Almost immediately it reminded me of Dollywood in Tennessee with plenty of trees and lots of theming such as this water powered clock. If the similarity is strong its because the same people own both parks.

Checker games in abundance, a nice touch, I just wonder how many pieces they lose each day.

It's not the park asylum, it's a shop that sells nuts.

Our morning was to begin with an ERS on Powder Keg, the park's launch coaster.

It's themed around a scientist's experiments with gunpowder. The launch is based on the explosion from one such test.

The launch was quite punchy but not overly so. The ride was retro-fitted onto the parks water splash ride, making it fairly unique.

and the rest of the track not too bad either. Not the standout ride I thought it would be but good all the same.

Heading back into the park, western theming in abundance, but then we are in the right part of the world for that :D

The biggest roller coaster in the park is Wildfire, a large custom built monster.

One cool thing about the location of this ride is that the queues to it are all near the highest point of the ride rather than the lowest. This gives you a unique perspective literally.

The cobra roll element. You don't get this high usually.

The large loop in the centre of the ride, rather than the beginning. The ride was a lot of fun and we had a good couple of goes on it. It was amusing seeing one of the club liking it so much that he'd jump straight back on if there was a spare seat on the train he'd just left. Naughty but funny!

A good sign of a park taking its theming seriously as they do here is when they spend money on things nowhere near rides or where the public can get to. The sort of thing you might overlook if you weren't paying attention.

A rolling pin shop for those wives whose husbands never get home on time. From the top you can also see that they also lathe baseball bats for those men who need to defend themselves from wives with rolling pins.

Thunderation is a lengthy mine train with a twist.

A couple of the rows face the wrong way, so of course you have to ride it more than once, and we did choose to ride backwards first. A really fun ride and an easy modification that other parks could make to get people to ride a coaster they're already familiar with.

Liking the signs in the station, I'm wondering if they're made on-site.

Another example of good theming, why just have a water fountain when you could filter it through a sock.

Heh heh!

We didn't see any snakes.

The Grand Exposition part of the park is full of rides designed for the youngsters and as such would prove difficult for all of us to ride the one coaster in there.

It was a bit of a squeeze but we were able to fit in.

Do they rebuild this every day or only when the fruit goes off.

In addition to the rides and the craft shows there are also bands such as this quartet who were doing Beatle covers of all things.

Having ridden the waterboggan at Dollywood and getting totally soaked I chose to give this one a miss.

However I was unable to avoid the water entirely as I got completely soaked in their water playground.

and it was this that got me the wettest. A simple game where hitting the targets causes another cannon to fire back and the small red paddles beneath the targets rotate those cannons. So the challenge is that whilst you're trying to take other people out, they're doing the same to you. The fact I got so wet can only mean others were playing it better than I was.

The rapids looked quite wet in places, mostly around the upcharged water cannons where people could pay to shoot at people they don't know.

Another children's playground. Now having seen those rope bridges in Europe and saying you'd never see them in the US and UK it was nice to be proved wrong by this park.

Fire in the Hole is a dark ride/coaster variant where you board a fire engine and spiral to the top of a building passing many vignettes before shooting back down to ground level. Quite a fun little ride.

I was wearing this T-Shirt and the ride op after staring at it for a while asked if I was a fireman as there was one on it. I didn't want to upset him by telling him that he'd missed the point of the t-shirt, which I'd chosen to wear especially being in the Kansas area.

The newest ride in the park was the Giant Swing, which wasn't easy to find; the only downside to a park buried in the trees.

We saw this on the way to the swing. It makes a change from panning for gold I guess.

Liking the signs found in the queue line for the swing.

The swing itself is alright but given the time spent searching for it I came away a little underwhelmed.

Chris can't read the sign.

The park has a stream train, if you can find it.

Along the way there's a scene played out with Sherrifs and train robbers. It killed 10 minutes I suppose.

After a wonderful lunch (the best food of the trip) and a fun competition held by the park we said our goodbye ready to head for the next park.

Worlds of Fun

2008-06-28T21:10:00.000-07:00

Heading East we crossed over the Kansas river. Rather amusingly we were crossing from Kansas City, Kansas to Kansas City, Missouri literally crossing a river and ending up where we began.

Worlds of Fun is a fairly big park and belongs to the Cedar Fair chain of parks (those guys that own Cedar Point). It originally opened in 73 with their waterpark "Oceans of Fun" opening about a decade later.

The park employs a ski-rating type system for their ride. I would imagine we'd be visiting the higher end of the scale, with the odd ride at the lower end. I was wondering if by Aggressive Thrill Rides you get beaten up and shouted at - I have an idea for slap-coaster which would fit into that category for sure (for those that aren't familar with the concept just before the ride launches you get slapped in the face by the ride staff - it makes re-riding a true physical challenge)

For the morning ERS the park had us take part in the birthday celebrations for their big steel coaster Mamba. Like Celebration City, 50s theming was in abundance.

Balloons, party hats and party whistles were out. The park had also made some pretty caek, so I can confirm it is real and is not a lie.

Clearly proud of the ride the park had also laid out a gallery containing 10 years of ride photography.

The ride is another big Morgan steel coaster and now my third of the trip, I was fairly knocking these up. This ride was really good too with similar pops of airtime and I particularly liked the helix at the far end which gave Titan type positive forces. The ride staff were superb sending us off with a ridiculously quick safety message and a mamba strike bite dance routine.

Having finished with the Steel coaster we made our way around to the wooden coaster Timber Wolf.
Umm, this looks like a bit of a foreboding ride. How can WOF shirk on their responsibility for their ride maintenance and pass it off as "normal ride sensation".

and as if to scare you a little bit more they don't mind having "chicken exits".

So how was the ride? Exactly as the ride said, full of "jostling" although I'd go a bit further than that. I only rode this coaster the once, you can call me a chicken but I'm a chicken with all my internal organs intact.

One of the French contingent playing one of the games. In this one you pitched 2 baseballs and got the speed displayed. Then you have to guess the speed of the third before you throw it. With a little translation needed it was good to see him win, his prize? A baseball cap.

Coaster number 3 was one of the less extreme rides we'd be riding here. A simple caterpillar coaster situated at the back of the Camp Snoopy section of the park.

Snoopy says "hi"

We had no idea what "Cyclone Sam" was so being the naturally curious creatures we are myself and Jeppe decided to ride it. It's actually a Wipeout ride, which is a ride that spins and then lifts up at an angle, oh too hard to explain so here's a picture of a similar ride.

What makes this different to most is its enclosed, dark, simulates lightning strobes. Basically a storm in a barn. The ride is also pretty intense, no bad thing. One of the things I liked was the UV-lit pictures on the side of the barn that would look like they're whizzing around you. One of those pictures was of a cow, which reminded me of that scene in the film Twister where a cow gets picked up by a cyclone and still has the wits to go "mmmmooooooooooooo". Would it really bother? This is a really good ride, which the park should promote a bit more.

Their skycoaster is different to most as it only has a single pillar. When you release yourself you have to throw your weight to one side so that you go around the pillar rather than back into it.

Spinning Dragons is the park's spinning coaster.

It made a refreshing change from having it themed around Tony Hawks. As with those rides, whilst being a fun ride still wasn't as good as my experience in Denmark.

Some other fools attempt the single-post skycoaster.

The final coaster of the day was Patriot, another inverted coaster that I hoped I'd enjoy more than the ones on the trip so far. Perhaps I'm just growing out of these rides now.

Patriot was built a few years ago and celebrates being an American Patriot. So the theming includes a red, white and blue paint job, a bald eagle outside, lots of rock music etc.

There are lots of good vantage points for taking photos, they ensure the queue line goes under most of it. You can't get all the way out but its much better than say Great White at Seaworld. I understood the theming, but wasn't sure about the yellow on the trains. Does this symbolise America having a yellow streak?

The ride was so really good actually, much better than the generic versions ridden earlier. However we got unlucky with the people riding with us. The first was a total redneck who whooped and hollered expletives all the way around and on the second we had a mental kid who became quite attached to us. Due to those experiences we renamed the ride "Patience".

Woohoo!!! The first time I've seen the Lion Rampant in a theme park.

Later in the day the park allowed us a behind the scenes tour of the park, which gave us some unique photo opportunities.

Oh my god, he's coming right for us!

The first drop and first loop are the bits you can't get to from the queue line as they're at the back end of the park.

Mamba's first camel bump

From behind Patience we made our way into the centre of Timberwolf.

It all gets too much for David who decided to re-enact The Sound of Music

The last thing riders on Timberwolf need is a group of tourists trying to get them to pose whilst they're being jostled.

and finally we got close to the first couple of drops on Mamba, get out of my shot camera people!!

The coaster making its way back to the station

It was very nice of the park to let us see their rides from angles that aren't usually captured.

The final coaster of the day was their boomerang coaster which is called ..... drum roll......wait for it......."Boomerang". I did eventually ride this after 3 toilet trips, not because I was scared of the ride but because of the pesky food poisoning.

A rather strange themed car, which I could understand being out at Halloween but this was June so the skeleton should be packed away. Or perhaps some teenager climbed on top, got stuck and the excessive sun burnt the flesh from him. Yes that'll be it.

A shot of Mamba taken from the freeway as we head out of the park and East to St. Louis. Nice park with some great staff!

Six Flags St Louis and Holiday World

2008-06-28T21:00:00.000-07:00

Starting today in St Louis and the city's Six Flag run park.

Papa John's the ride is an Italian themed attraction that takes you through the pizza making process. A nice touch is that at the end of the ride you can purchase the pizza you saw being made; you do have to pay though.

Liking the Taz themed tea cups ride.

A rather unfortunately named attraction at the back of the park. Probably popular with the gay contingent.

The first coaster of the day was Screamin' Eagle, an old school wooden coaster buried right at the back of the park.

and just like Judge Roy Scream at SFOT this ride was a lot of fun and a pretty decent ride especially considering its age. It was built in 1976. It was very re-rideable and most of the group stayed on the ride for the full duration of the hour, a good sign.

After the ERS we ran down to yet another Tony Hawk's ride as being the new ride in the park this would be the one that the public would run to. Fortunately we beat them, unfortunately the ride wasn't all that.

Next up was The Boss, a coaster that people said used to be good but had suffered the ravages of time, unlike the wooden coaster ridden previously.

I wasn't disappointed at all, I loved this ride. Not knowing much about it I was surprised by the start, which I'm not going to spoil here for those that haven't ridden it yet.

The park had just finished building a third wooden coaster rather unfortunately named after Evel Knievel, who had died soon after the ride was announced. However it was just entering its testing phase and wouldn't be running for us today.

Mr Freeze is a similar ride to the one in Six Flags Over Texas. When we got to it was had just gone down. Later Martin had told us he was on the ride when it broke. It didn't get the full launch so he was quite chuffed to have got the rollback. However I made him aware that every ride on this was a rollback. I was more upset about not getting to ride this right now than I was about the Evel Knievel coaster.

The Batman coaster had quite a long queue being the big coaster near to the entrance. We persevered and got the credit even though it was just like every other Batman but at least the queue wasn't as long as the one in Texas.

I'd ridden a Ninja coaster in Six Flags Over Georgia and hated it, so wasn't looking too forward to this either.

Another Heinz sign, somehow I had the impression that it wouldn't be worth the wait.

With our necks getting jolted at this point where the train connects with the lift hill our suspicion of the ride being a piece of crap was justified. I think that of the 100+ coasters being ridden on this trip this was the one that I needed to brace for most.

Close to the Ninja is the River King Mine Train, which I don't remember at all, so can't be that great.

There was an amusing conversation between 2 girls sitting in front of us as the train left the station.

"I'm scared"
"Why?"
"Because I'm Catholic"

Nice paint job but I suspect not done by the guys on the Pimp My Show ride.

Somehow I don't think that statement is true.

Lunch was in the Japan pavilion and was the obligatory burgers and salad. We had some of the senior management join us for a Q&A. Not sure why one of us came dressed as a cheerleader today, we did keep reminding her of that and the costume never reappeared on the trip.

A pano of the Evel Knievel coaster, does look good but it gives us a reason to revisit, although there's no real urgency for me to do so as I've ridden an identical ride in Finland.

Later in the day we took the train ride which goes around the back of this coaster.

After lunch we saw Mr Freeze running again so headed over to ride it. There was quite a queue for it which split to fill both sides of the station, but most of us failed to find the route to the quiet station meaning that some of the group got 2 goes to our one.

A rather peculiar addition to the ride rules. How can someone have fake legs and real feet?

Queuing aside, the ride was just as good as the one in Texas.

The park has a Scooby Doo ride but unlike most this one uses boats. Its actually really good and I recommend riding it if you fancy a break.

Six Flags St Louis was a strange park. It has a decent selection of rides but lacks character, it could be anywhere. This park also had the worst humidity of the trip which didn't help me have a good impression of it.

The arch of St Louis as we head east out over the Mississississippi river (I think that's how it is spelt), our destination Holiday World in Indiana.

Having been here before I could relax a bit. Whenever you hit a park for the first time the focus is on getting around the rides. On subsequent occasions that pressure is off. Being the only park on this trip that I'd been to before I took the opportunity to breath, however the coasters in this park are so good I did still choose to ride everything.

However Raven and Legend could wait for tomorrow, with only a short amount of time left to enjoy the park tonight I spent it on one ride.

The Voyage was an absolutely amazing coaster when I rode it a few years back. It is still very good but a little rougher at the turnaround than I remember. Even with its faults its still way better than most coasters and even better we made sure we got a ride on the last train!

Holiday World and Indiana Beach

2008-06-28T20:50:00.000-07:00

The next morning the club headed off the park for a morning behind-the-scenes tour and as it was only down the road Jeppe and I decided to have a lie in. Partly because I'd been to the park before so wasn't overly interested in doing the tour and also because the night before we'd stayed up quite late, not in the bar but in the laundry room. We had a wonderful plan of washing and drying the clothes then heading to the bar whilst they were running. The plan went well up until the point we left the bar and realised I'd not hit the start button on the dryer. So I had to spend an extra hour waiting for that!

This is Santa's Lodge where we stayed. We stayed towards the back where it is quicker to walk than to drive a coach.

Santa's Lodge is easy to find, just look for the Santa

Indiana is quite a beautiful state, and rather disappointingly not Eerie at all.

You lied to me!!

The last time we were here we had to have a police escort to stop traffic so that we could walk to the park because doing so just isn't the done thing in car-dependent USA. I'm not sure if the club had this when they made their way to the park or not but we got the escort again!

This is the entrance to the park. Another little tip for those walking to the park is that you can only access it on foot from the car park across the road. Don't do as we did and try to walk up the road to the entrance, a chicken-fence prevents you from doing so. Fortunately for us a park employee spotted us wayward tourists and recognising our trip badges let us sneak in the side entrance.

Raven still running very well.

Divers still diving well

The Legend still running OK. I'm not really a fan of this one

Lunch was this way and we were joined by the Koch family for an informal Q&A session.

The Voyage was still as good as the night before

The old biddy with the turkey caller still looking as old as ever.

Saying farewell to Holiday World we then boarded the coach and headed North through the state of Indiana. Whilst still quite hot the humidity had dropped caused by a storm front that was making its way across the mid-west.

It soon became apparent that the weather had had an effect on the area.

Starbucks was offering a special on its Coffee Float

Eventually we arrived at Indiana Beach and checking into our chalet style rooms we headed into the park to enjoy the evening there. As all the coasters were running we decided to get them out of the way. Doing this would make the next day, also being spent here a little bit more relaxing.

The Hoosier Hurricane is the large out-and-back coaster that runs the length of the park.

You can ride it for $5 or if Supernanny thinks you've been good then you can cash in two gold stars for a ride.

A pano shot taken from the far bridge.

The Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain, hereafter known as Loco Sumo looks like a school project and turned out to be the most fun ride in the park, once you got use to the bone rattling, which is actually true.

The wheel at the far end of the park from where we tried to get some nice photos of the Hurricane but the timing was always out and we'd be at the bottom of the wheel whenever the train came past.

Some shots from the wheel. In the distance to the left is the park's latest addition Steel Hawg, which was planned to be open but had fallen behind schedule and not finished.

The Hurricane in action, not from the wheel though.

If the ramp isn't suitable for wheelchairs how would they have got to this side of it to read the sign?

The most pointless attraction ever! A Russian swing leading to nowhere but water. I can only assume this is for some stunt show or something.

Having quickly covered the park we spent the rest of the evening in the bar and restaurant where I had a really nice steak and managed to lose the strap for my glasses.

Indiana Beach and Kiddieland

2008-06-28T20:40:00.000-07:00

The next day I don't think I rode any coasters at all instead choosing to just sit down, relax and take in the park ambience.

The Cornball Express is the twister coaster in the park. Pretty good but not as good as the Hurricane.

Today was the club's T-shirt day where everyone wore the offical club merchandise making it very easy to spot the members on the rides.

Which one isn't the club member?

A near take-over of the Cornball Express.

Tig'rr is the strangely named flitzer type coaster and its alright.

A really nice ride op gave me a ticking off for snapping the cables on this.

The haunted walkthrough was pretty lengthy but not exciting. I was expecting live actors to jump out but there weren't any. One good bit was a church themed night club with echoing rock music, something I hadn't seen before.

I can only assume this is for a diving show otherwise its quite expensive theming.

Loco Sumo was the most popular ride of the day, at least based on the queue length but I think that's more to the throughput being quite slow. You have to cram yourself inside small trains.

The cars that hurtle around some insane hairpin bends and drops that come out of nowhere.

Am I seeing double?

That's the boat we'd be riding later this morning. It goes up-and-down the lake and offers a nice view of the park.

See!

Buried in the center of the water slides is another coaster, a real brute of a coaster in fact. Riding it once was enough. I'm not really a fan of these Galaxi rides.

Monster Ride 3D, a simulator ride, seemed out of place at the end of the water park section of the park.

Jazz cows, moooooooooooombop!

Lots of hungry fish that apparently always hang here wanting to be fed and when you feed them they just remain with their mouths open wanting more. Interesting that they can remember where to go but can't remember when they last ate.

You can buy Steel Hawg merchandising to celebrate another piece of the ride being added.

You must adhere to the signs or Indiana's finest will beat you to death with their nightsticks.

This man is still on the run as they couldn't catch him.

This man was caught for running illegal moonshine over the state line

and this man was arrested for carrying a blade......I think.

Basically if you are going to risk running you're going to get caught unless you're Dwain Chambers.

Steel Hawg construction, the ride actually looks quite nuts.

Look at how twisty that piece of track is!

Another piece is added and with a few good blows of the hammer goes into place. Lets celebrate by buying some merchandise!

Soon after we left the park which I enjoyed for its tranquility more than its ride. It has a similar vibe to Lake Winne in Georgia. I think being beside a large body of water automatically gives any park a more chilled atmosphere.

From Indiana Beach we continued a drive North into Chicago where we stopped at a little surprise park.

Kiddieland is a small city park, not as small as the one in San Antonio but still quick to get around. It can be found in the Melrose Park part of Chicago, which looks to be a little run down part of the city but its alright really. The park originally opened in the 20s so must be doing something right to still be around.

The park's circumference can be traveled on the parks mini-train ride. I'd be riding this later.

The reason for stopping here was to ride Little Dipper, the park's wooden coaster that opened in 1950.

The coaster was a lot of fun, quite short and well maintained. Like a comedian midget in a suit perhaps. Oh, the guy in the yellow shirt at Indiana Beach wasn't a member of the public. He was a club member who had already wore the club shirt earlier in the trip (in his defence because his luggage got lost on the flight).

The park has a good selection of rides but what stands out is the high level of maintenance and care that had been given. Steel was polished where possible, and you could tell that the park staff really had a pride in their rides. Some of the rides were quite old and still running well.

Riding the train around the park, which I thought was quite fun and pleasant.

That was until I discovered this scary monster had boarded the train just before it entered a tunnel.

Umm.. cross eyed elephant.

Some club members enjoying the kiddy whip, and rather surprisingly it didn't break.

After our brief stopover at this really charming park we headed deeper into Chicago and to our hotel. Closeby there was a mall where we were challenged by security after he saw us walking, clearly not the done thing. Realising where we were from he then stopped us a second time to help him with his English ancestry but we couldn't help him; England isn't that small.

We found this shooting game inside the mall, not in the children's play area but inside a shop that specialised in hunting equipment. We then bought some food, I bought new glasses straps as I'd lost mine at Indiana Beach and then we went and ate in the Rainforest Cafe, where the food was nice but too plentiful for us. A friendly deadhead (I mean fan of the Grateful Dead, not as an insult) providing some good service and stories of his trip to England.

A view from the hotel and way in the background is Six Flags Great America, our next park. Raging Bull can be seen.