So what can I say about Kennywood that I haven't said before? That we really like its slightly ramshackle, organic layout, and how the most strongly-themed section of park is ``old amusement park''-themed? That the Thunderbolt is as ever a great ride and if they want to call it a century-old roller coaster, well, in light of one of the potential themes for this trip report that wouldn't be bad. That on a hot day it felt like they'd covered the track with fresh grease so it was running really fast? Seriously, we're not going to run out of good things to say about Thunderbolt.

Nor the Turtle ride, which has updated its historic-district signage to reflect that it's the only one of that model still operating. I think when we got on our ride we overheard someone saying it was kind of like a roller coaster and, yeah, you could make a case that the Turtle ride, a circular ride with motors bringing the cars up and down steady oscillations, is a kind of powered coaster. (Also when we got into our car bunnyhugger found a necklace that she turned over to the ride operator.) That's approaching its centennial (2027, all going well), although it only got the turtle shells in 1948.

Oh, how about the Noah's Ark? Which is a walkthrough attraction on a swinging ship prop, with room after room of generally funny animal scenes and then a bunch of funhouse-type attractions, like a room where you walk on a bridge while a lit cylinder rotates around, or where you walk through a Mystery Room at a pretty severe angle. We get to that ride every visit and this time ... we ... somehow did it wrong? Somehow, we missed the whole part of the ride where you go upstairs, to a small balcony, and step onto the swinging part of the ship. I blame myself; I was fiddling with taking some low-light photos and some operator pointed the way for us to get a move on, and I think we must have accidentally followed the wheelchair-accessible or the chicken-exit routes as we were done in barely half the time it should have taken. Confused by how the heck we could walk through what is a twisty but still linear path in a single building wrong we went again and are about 95% sure we spotted where we took the wrong turn.

We were careful about how long a line to get on things, when we could get intelligence on that, because of a terrible fact. Kennywood would, that day, be closing at 8 pm. Not because of weather or even projected poor attendance; they just were cutting the place off before it was even sunset. I blame staff shortages, although it's true that every place has been cutting its hours down. Probably, again, from being short on staff.

As a result, though, we only rode the one side of the Racer Möbius-strip coaster, and that a fair bit after we rode The Phantom's Revenge. On that one, we were foiled by the line-cutter scheme. Phantom's Revenge has a long elevated walkway for the queue and that was nearly empty. Turns out, the junction of the line-cutter queue and the normal person queue is way back, on the ground, hidden from most everyone, and an operator won't let people through until they're satisfied people who paid more have gotten through. So looking at the queue is, in this case, misleading because the real queue has moved.

Well, the most important ride, Jack Rabbit, was there, an unquestionably century-plus-old roller coaster, and I forget whether we got backseat or almost-backseat but it was still a choice position. Again, riding fantastic.

So we did not get rides on Steel Curtain, nor Sky Rocket, and for that matter let the kiddie coaster Lil' Phantom go unvisited this time. But we did get to all the most important to us coasters, plus the Whip. And we even found time for a just-before-closing ride on Thunderbolt before returning to the carousel.

We had ridden the carousel (there since 1927; the Wurlitzer band organ is already over a century old) earlier in the day, when bunnyhugger took what seemed like a long time walking around picking a ride. She was looking for the lion, which was not there, a fact I failed to notice entirely. Turns out the lion was taken off for renovations; Kennywood is (we learned like a decade ago) often renovating its carousel, a couple animals at a time, and it was in the news that the lion was leaving the tiger to sole dominion over the ride back in spring. We just hadn't noticed.

But we got to the carousel for the last ride of the too-short day and, as we expected, there was a long loading cycle as they got as many people as they could on. And they did; the ride was close to full up. What we did not expect was the ride cycle was short. It had barely got up to speed when it began slowing, so abrupt a cut that I assumed there was an emergency and once it was dealt with we'd get the actual ride. Nope; when it stopped, we were to get off, and they shut the power almost immediately. We couldn't square the extremely long loading cycle with the truncated ride cycle. Maybe somebody got unexpected instructions.

The day was a good one, even if we lost maybe twenty pounds of weight through sweating. It was just too short, by at least two hours; from the crowd they probably could have gone three more hours and still have it be worth opening the shops and the restaurants. Still, the first full amusement park day of our trip was quite good. And the next day --- our anniversary --- was going also to be one on the road so maybe a day we could get to bed early was wiser. If we got to bed early. (Kind of, but not really early enough.)

Enough of the long-ago days of June. How about the even-longer-ago days of last September at Michigan's Adventure? That's the pictures for today.

Pumpkin archway set up on the way to the train ride. I believe that girl's a firefly.

From within we could look at Shivering Timbers, but not touch; the bigger roller coasters were closed for the event.

Here's some hay bales and decorations put up in that little spot we had discovered I want to say earlier that summer, that's actually got benches and seating area inside the thatch-lined ground.

And here's the railway, renamed Patch's Pumpkin Express. Besides the ride there's (flat) decorations set up along the way and over the PA system they tell a story that has key moments where you the audience participate.

The exit, and the line-cutter entrance, to Shivering Timbers, closed off for the season. The bit of unswept leaves and mulch does a lot to make the place look haunted and abandoned even though the ride was in operation a whole ... uh ... three weeks before.

So here we've joined the line. The railway rarely gets so busy that everyone can't go in one train load but this was one of those times.

Trivia: In his call to the Apollo-Soyuz crew after docking, President Gerald Ford asked all the list of possible questions that NASA International Affairs Office information officer Dennis Williams had proposed, talking for nine minutes instead of the scheduled five. Source: The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, Edward Clinton Ezell, Linda Neuman Ezell. NASA SP-4209. Apparently Ford was very interested in the flight and it's nice to think of him geeking out.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 67: Dopy Nick or The Pink Whale!!, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Besides living the impossible of walking onto Exterminator and getting pictures with Kenny Kangaroo, what did we do at Kennywood? Well, we drank a lot of fluids. It was a brutally hot, sunny day, I believe in the mid-90s and with just enough humidity to make you think surely there will be rain that takes some of this away. There was not.

We had in two separate past years gotten souvenir drink cups and bunnyhugger brought both. They were supposed to be $4 per refill, which is a pretty fair cost, but we estimated this would likely come out less than the $40 or something that a free-refills-all-2025-season drink cup would be. (We're not sure what the something was; Kennywood's web site was weirdly evasive about it, and searching the web turns up AI slop that didn't even make internal sense, much less have a chance to be right. And yes, we ignore the useless AI summaries, but web sites collecting tourism information don't, so there's no getting basic information about the park anymore.) We did pay less than $40 even together, partly because a couple times we just got water refills (gratis; every amusement park agrees, better to just give people ice water than have them faint on you) and partly because one time the Parkside Cafe cashier didn't charge us. Possibly they didn't realize these were past-year souvenir cups; possibly they didn't care.

But if any piece of not-quite-dishwasher-safe plastic defines a trip, this one is defined by souvenir cups. For ages we didn't bother, seeing them as more trouble to deal with than they were worth and not much of a savings on the pop we usually buy. Last year, though, the heat in Camden Park and Dollywood and Kentucky Kingdom pushed us to cups. This year it was so hot and humid so reliably that we somewhere switched the default to at least seeing what the prices were. Parks have been getting better about having places to stow drink cups, and I discovered I can loop the handle around one of my belt straps and it'll hold on just fine when empty or near-empty.

The other important consumption-based thing to report is they had square ice cream back. Whatever problem caused their cone supplier to take last summer off is apparently resolved, and we were able to get perfectly good square ice cream cones, although from the other side of the Golden Nugget stand than we usually do. It's all right, we can roll with little changes like that. We had a nice time eating them while seeking shade near the Kiddieland and trying to remember if they had the Crazy Trolley last time we hung around Kiddieland. (Yes: Wikipedia says they have had it since 2001 and in fact it's the most recent ride added to Kiddieland that's still there, not counting the short-lived Thomas the Tank Engine area that's been remade as Kennywood Junction. The S S Kenny, a kiddie rocking tugboat, was there from 2007 to 2023.) We also took a moment to appreciate Kenny's Karousel, the kiddie carousel which dates to 1924 and is one of the original rides of the kiddie section. Also the Wacky Wheel, a kiddie Ferris wheel, similarly over a century old.

We also had some actual food, don't worry, with lunch at the Parkside Cafe, a building originally built in 1899, where we had ... I want to say margherita sandwiches. And that this wasn't even the only amusement park where we found margherita sandwiches this trip. We're going to encourage that since it's great to find a park with any vegetarian option besides ``fries'' and ``sad sandwich''.

Speaking of impossible sights did I mention we saw the Steel Curtain roller coaster running? The line was longer than we were willing to put up with, but the ride --- which has been snakebitten since its 2019 opening, and spent all of 2024 closed --- was doing fine, looked like. There's hope for Top Thrill 2 yet!

Also along the way we discovered Cedar Point has another mascot. We didn't see the suit, just evidence of the character in merchandise. Kenny Kangaroo and Parker the Arrow we knew, of course. And they've been bringing back Jeeters, a fluffy pink Krofft-Supershow-esque figure forgotten since the 70s when Kenny took over. But this new mascot? Tuft the Easter Bunny, introduced for their first-ever Eggcellent Scavenger Hunt back in spring. We had no idea. I had no idea, anyway. But they've got dolls for sale of him.

Other discoveries? I'm not sure they had new pressed-penny machines, but bunnyhugger did try one she was fairly confident she hadn't got a coin from, and the machine didn't really respond to her tapping her credit card. The park has gone cash-free, so instead of putting coins in a slot that works instantly and pretty reliably, we had to wonder what it meant that this card reader was showing nothing but was counting down from four minutes. While bunnyhugger went into the shop adjacent to see if they knew what was going on (they gave her the pressed penny she'd wanted; they keep a stock on hand for the card reader failing) the reader reached zero and ... ... started back counting down from twenty minutes.

And what the heck, I'll spoil the surprise for what souvenir I brought home, besides the cup. In the gift shop outside Jackrabbit, their unquestionably century-old roller coaster, I found they were selling pieces of the ride! Six-inch squares of replaced wood, specifically. You of course recall we already have a chunk of Son of Beast's track, and some bolts from the Wild Mouse that bunnyhugger and I rode at Casino Pier our first date. How could I not add to the collection out of the wood Kennywood otherwise had to haul off as scrap? I picked a piece that had holes from the metal bolts, and now the mild mystery of wondering just what sort of piece this used to be, one of the ones making up the structure? One of the pieces holding the rail the train actually runs on? Something from the station? No way to know, unless next time we go I sneak it in and start holding it up to various candidate positions until they throw me off the ride.

Now to the photo section of today's entry; it's Michigan's Adventure, on the first of our Halloweekends visits.

Returning here from Camp Snoopy to the ... well, there isn't really a main midway for Michigan's Adventure, but the drag between the main body of the park and where the water park and Thunderhawk roller coasters are. Behind the black temporary fence you can see the cars set up for Trunk-or-Treat. The cars used to be part of the Be-Bop Boulevard car ride.

Skeletons in bumper-boat carcasses set out in front of the carousel. ... I'm sorry, did I call it the carousel? Because it's really ...

... The Scare-ousel! Which, in this case, means that it was riding backwards, like Cedar Point's Midway Carousel. And we would have thought we'd never see a Cedar Fair park deliberately ride something backwards; they've got some historic phobia of that (even on rides like a Musik Express designed to run backwards). So this was a special treat.

Here we are getting ready for a backseat ride in the Corkscrew and oh, did I mention bunnyhugger wore her summer-weight dragon kigurumi for this? Because she did. Also, it was hot enough for summer-weight kigurumis to be plenty.

Costume contest for the kids! Here are the Three Blind Mice. Also someone just wearing ears and a tail like they were hanging out at a furry convention.

Waiting for the winner to be announced, I think this was. It might have been the time a woman asked us to specifically applaud someone who'd gotten nothing from the sparse crowd.

Trivia: On orbit insertion Apollo Command Module Pilot Vance Brand called out, ``Miy nakhoditsya na orbite'', saying ``we are in orbit'' in Russian. Source: The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, NASA SP-4209.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 67: Dopy Nick or The Pink Whale!!, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.