Today was a day that I had been looking forward to for well over a year. It had been rumored for quite some time that Worlds of Fun was going to be getting a new wooden roller coaster for the 2009 operating season. Clues gradually started showing up last year with survey flags, construction materials, and labels indicating the manufacturer. On Labor Day last year the press announcement was made confirming that Worlds of Fun was going to be getting a new world-class wooden coaster. I lieu of doing a full on report of the event, I would rather show you everything that was going on. Click on through to see my photo report.

Since we knew the weather was going to be nasty in the morning, but nice in the afternoon Valerie and I decided to sleep in and planned on going to the park later in the day. We weren't planning on making a full day out of our visit. Mainly we just wanted to ride some of the coasters, see some of the off-season improvements, and get as good of a look at Prowler as we could without treading in to forbidden areas. We ended up arriving at the park around 3:30 pm, and our first stop was Patriot The wait for the front row was about 20 minutes, and the rest of the rows seemed to be no more than 10 minutes. One thing that always bugs me is when they don't have the front line open. When they don't open up that line it usually ends up blocking the turnstile for the entrance to the rest of rows. Because it was blocking the view of rows 2-4 more folks were getting in line for rows 5-7, and as a result we saw several trains leave with a much lower capacity than it could have handled causing longer than necessary waits for rows 2-7. As to the coaster itself, it is still just as fun as the first time I rode it. It was running really well, and I heard very little of the clanking that I noticed during some of my rides last season. I have always tried to compare Patriot to Silver Bullet because my first rides on both occurred within a week of each other. I used to think I liked Silver Bullet a little more, but after my most recent ride on Silver Bullet a few weeks ago I can safely say I think we have the better coaster.

Back in October of 2008 I took a tour of the Schlitterbahn Vacation Village construction site. At that time the only major projects that had be done was the pouring of most of the conrete for the Torrent Tidal Wave attraction, and the installation of a large portion of the plumbing system. Since the latter was already buried, there wasn't a lot to see. Flash forward 6 months and the site has changed drastically. A lot of the dirt moving and leveling has been completed, there are concrete footers for some of the water slides (which should go vertical any day now), the concrete for Henry's Hideout (an adult hot tub with a swim-up bar) has been poured, and some of the play equipment has been installed in a few of the kiddie pools.

A few months ago I talked about what my plans were for my novel. Since that time I have finished editing it, and I even printed off a few manuscripts to send for submission. However, like most of the stages of this project that's about as far as I got. I did some thinking and I realized that I really don't care if I get published. I simply want to share my work with others. Initially I was going to put my entire book on this site so that people could read through it page by page on my site. You would then have the option of paying a small few for the .PDF version, or you could buy the paperback through Lulu.com. I got through the first couple of chapters and realized that probably wasn't the best approach. It was taking too much time to convert the text to an reasonable page by page format. Instead, I decided to put just the Prologue on my site with a link to the paperback and the free .PDF. I feel I have already written enough in the past about this novel so without further ado I am throwing my work out to the interwebs. I hope you enjoy it.

Valerie and I's plan for this visit was to get to the turnstiles a few minutes before park opening. We left the hotel around 7:30, but ran in to traffic on our way in. Since I was on vacation I forgot it was Monday and I would have to deal with rush hour traffic. Between traffic, parking, and riding the tram to the entrance we didn't arrive at the gates until 8:30. When we got to the turnstiles we handed the cast member our Walt Disney World Park Hopper tickets with the no expiration option on them. The cast member called someone else over and that person took our tickets and said he would be back in a few minutes. Ten minutes later he came back with our original tickets and a set of Disneyland/Disney's California Adventure 1 day Hopper tickets. This was a tip I found on MouseSavers.com. The difference in cost between what we had paid for our WDW tickets and what the 1 Day Disneyland Hopper tickets would have cost saved us around $100.

Ever since my last visit to Knott's Berry Farm in 2006 I have wanted to make a return visit. Over the last couple years I have wanted to go to their Coaster Solace event for coaster enthusiasts. Mainly, I have wanted to go so that I can get an early start to my seasonal riding. If you live in Kansas and want to ride coasters December-March you choices boil down to going to California, Florida, or Texas. Unfortunately, flying to Southern California is expensive where I live. It doesn't seem to matter whether I try to fly in to Long Beach, John Wayne, or LAX. Most of the time round trip tickets usually run about $300 a person. However, this year we have this great thing called a recession/depression and Valerie and I were able to fly out to John Wayne for less than $400 round trip. We also already had Cedar Fair Platinum passes so our tickets to the event were only $25 a person.

The night before last I had some sort of fever dream/hallucination that Optimus Prime was next to my bed. I'm not really sure what he said, but I do know that once I shook my head, and re-focused my eyes all that was left was an odd silhouette of his head in the adjoining bathroom made from, a cabinet, a light, and some standard toiletry items. This got me to thinking about many of the odd dreams I have had in my life. Most recently was one I had over the weekend. It has the makings of a great sci-fi novel. I would divulge the details, but I haven't decided if I am going to write the story or even if I am going to give the idea to one of friends whom I consider to be one greatest sci-fiction writers I have ever read.