August Long Weekend - August 4-6, 2001.

This past weekend was tentatively planned to be our first visit to SFGAM in Chicago with fellow URC bud, John "Shaggy" Keeter. These plans were changed when I read Raven Maven’s generous offer looking for Raven riders for a Discovery Channel shoot. I was able to get a hold of John who was in Houston on business. John was easy to convince since Holiday World is a lot closer to Louisville than Chicago. The rest of the Reid clan also had no problem with the change of plans. We had originally planned to stay at Holiday World for both days of shooting but changed our plan to only stay for Sunday. Leaving Holiday World on the Monday after a couple of hours at the park and an eleven hour drive back to Canada was just too much.

Most of the preparation and packing was done on Thursday evening. I left work Friday around noon to do the final van prep before picking up Donna at 4:00PM. We already have a 9" TV/VCR combo for the van but we are always looking for different way to keep the boys entertained during the many hours of theme park travelling. I have considered purchasing a SONY Playstation 2 mainly because of its DVD feature. Most people feel it would not operate very well in a vehicle. So instead I bought a 300 watt power inverter to power Nolan’s Nintendo N64. Just before leaving to pickup up Donna and while filling up with gas we blew a fuse in the van. This was a problem because 1) no entertainment for the boys 2) the air condition was not working (+32 C) 3) I have no fuses. I stopped at four gas station before I find fuses. We are only a few minutes late picking up Donna. Takes me a few minutes to figure out where the bad fuse is and replace it. After all our careful preparation we still have to go back to Newmarket because we still forgot something. So instead of leaving at 4:00PM we are leaving Newmarket just after 5:00PM. While driving south on the 400 highway the traffic northbound was unbelievable. There were three lanes of solid stop and go traffic for at least 50 kms. Thankfully we were headed the opposite direction. The traffic in around Toronto at rush hour is brutal and add to it a long weekend the problems are compounded. We arrive at the US border around 9:00PM and get to our Hotel close to PKI near 1:00AM.

This marks our third trip to PKI this year(open weekend April and SRM weekend). We feel so comfortable at PKI and consider it our away home park. We were disappointed that Angie’s smiling face was not at the PKI guest relation window greeting us. The Ries family were already at the ACE plaque waiting for the ACE walk back. With Gold Pass Holders already having Rivertown open we were escorted back to Sonny by Amy of GR. Within a few minutes John Keeter, Roger and Adam Brock joined the walk back.

Adam Reid has just gotten into looping coasters and the coaster counting bug has taken a hold of him. Adam was at 97 and wanted to make SOB his 100 but the walk back changed that so SOB was his number 98. King Cobra was 99 and Flight of Fear became his first launched coaster and his number 100. Adam agreed that Sonny’s loop was very smooth and not near as scary as it looked. After King Cobra we headed to Flight of Fear for Adam 100. The wait was only about 20 minutes which was good because you get to enjoy the theming. This was also Nolan’s first Outer Limit ride. Nolan and Dad waited for front seat while Adam and Evan Ries rode together. Outer Limits is now a completely different ride from just one year ago with the new restraints. Both Reid boys fell in love with Flight of Fear and we did ride it again on Monday.

In our many previous trips to PKI, since 1998, only Nolan and I had ridden the Arrow multi looping Vortex. Adam and Mom we ready for their first ride. Donna rode with John and was not interested in any added tricks that John was willing to offer. Adam Reid rode with Adam Brock in back while Adam B shared the lift your feet trick while going down the first drop trick. Nolan rode with Roger Brock which produced a very funny On Ride Photo. They gave their best Mr. Bean impression by both letting on they were sleeping for the picture. I could not pass on this photo and will have posted on our site soon. Adam enjoyed his Vortex ride while Mom was satisfied with just one ride. The Ries family decided they would try to line up for Face Off and meet us later at Wings. After our Vortex ride the Ries family gave up on Face Off because of the near two hour wait. Roger and Adam Brock had to leave for home after their Vortex ride.

After lunch all nine of us headed over to Beast and on the way passed the construction site for Tomb Raider. Let me say that I have no idea what this ride will be but we could not resist saying to John " Cliffhanger in a building". Our only Beast ride of day was fun.

Before we left for the day we watched the 2:30PM showing of Forbidden Magic in the Paramount Theatre. We had great fun later in the day mimicking the magician’s hand movements and walking like Egyptians.

John had earlier in the day mentioned about hitting SFKK later in the day. We had planned to leave PKI later in the evening but this sounded like a good idea to break up the three hour drive to Holiday World . We left PKI around 4:00PM and John had two extra passengers with him for the two hour drive to SFKK. For the trip to Louisville we were able to keep in contact via the FRS radios. The Reid boys keep John busy with conversation while Donna and I had the van to ourselves.