Photo TR: CGA's Media Day and SCBB "Farewell to Hurricane"

As you all know, Gold Striker was announced yesterday. I was invited to be a part of the media event CGA put off, along with a few other local TPR members. With this said, I met up with JeffyJosephNorcal and my cousin and I carpooled with him out to the park when we waited for Jeff's guest Skaunit. Once we all got together we got into the park and met up with Coasterpalooza, Rolercstrluver and Robman, giving a pretty solid-sized TPR group. After setting up my camera/tripod (and cracking my tripod , it was time for the moment of epicness to be unveiled! Afterwards, we headed towards Star Tower for an 'elevator-like' ride to check out the construction, and then to grab some food!

After the event wound down and everyone left, we all headed off over the mountains to Santa Cruz as it was Wednesday and we had Pepsi cans on hand. I figured a weekday would be best to get our Hurricane rides done. Rolercstrluver decided to join my cousin, Jeff and I. I'll let the photos go on and tell the rest of the story, there's a lot!

I have a video I shot of the media event that I had edited. You can see it here:

In the mean time enjoy the photos, I'll be working on Part 2 with SCBB now.

Traffic sucks...that's why you carpool!

Finally, we're here!

Greeted by the hard-working miners

The nicely setup stage!

Hi there Snoopy!

Group with Snoopy

Workers working on the track!

"I dunno what's going on!"

It's almost time!

Anticipation awaits...is it going to be Coaster Man Dumping Waffle?

*Poof*

Gold Striker!

Nerd moment, cold shower time coming up soon

The table centerpieces were done up quite nice too!

My 'gold nugget' (USB Flash Drive with all of the media files that were being handed out.

Afterwards, the park told us to feel free and take some gold home

It's "Coaster Man with Revolver and Pick-Axe Dumping Waffle." This dude means business! I call him "Stinky Pete"

Time for some Star Tower ERT!

Closeup of a random 'miner' working on the coaster

Finally, my first shot showing the entire site without having to stitch photos together! They're making great progress!

The "TPR Table"

I was digging for gold and look what I just dug outta there...

Haha!

Alright CGA, thanks for inviting us! I really appreciate it and really enjoyed the event! Part 2 coming up next: Bonus trip to SCBB!

Great update so far! It was really awesome to finally go to a media event at a park. It's truly and experience I will never forget!

Ty for the great media day report!

Part 2: Bonus Trip to Santa Cruz.

So the discussion goes like this...JeffyJosephNorcal and I are texting each other planning out yesterday's event last week, while watching (and missing out on) Wipeout. We then decide we should hit up the Boardwalk after the Au13 event since we're down that way and didn't want to just be out for a couple hours. Plus, with the Hurricane coaster closing this coming weekend, what better time is there to get your last ride on it than a weeknight...a Wednesday night with the unlimited ride Pepsi can promo? Exactly! So after a surreal event at CGA, Rolercstrluver decided he was going to follow us and meet up at SCBB, adding 1 more member to our group! After what felt like an eternity driving through the mountains (and watching the POV on my iPhone while riding through the mountains) we finally make it to Santa Cruz! We had about 3 hours to kill before any riding action could commence so we just hung out, took some photos and messed around in the arcade. Now, enough jabbering, here's some photos!

And a few random videos we shot:

Tornado with Rolercstrluver, Jeff, and myself:

Kiddy Whip ride:

Offride POV Wipeout, just because I love this ride:

Offride of Hurricane (My cousin shot this):

We have reached our destination!

Taking photos of someone taking photos

In the mean time, in attempt to meet up with Rolercstrluver, my pocket decides it wants to try it's hand at sending him a text as I headed towards the 'Walk!

Did I say that the weather down this way was beautiful? All the times I go to Santa Cruz, there's always some sort of fog hanging around.

Time to go into the Casin to hang out and see what games we can blow our money on!

We just couldn't get away from gold now, could we?

Cedar Fair rides at an independent park!

Wheee!!!

Giant Dipper POV! (Located in the Millions o Memories shop)

Hello Hurricane, see you after 5!

Artsy Fartsy stuff

Creepy Sal

Doubleshot!

Hello Hurricane, time for some photos before we ride!

The dreaded dive element. While I had a painless moment, Rolercstrluver came off with a bad 'last ride' as he smacked his head on the headrest.

Final Hurricane photo! Good luck in your new home in NM!

One of the more bizarre amusement park games I've seen.."Sittin' on tha toilet...Sittin' on tha toilet! Now Flush!"

Balls. 'nuff said!

Giant Dipper! We'll be riding you soon!

Evil log ride...more on this later!

And finally it's 5:00! Let's start with Dipper!

Haunted Castle! (This was my first time checking it out...yes I'm a bit behind. Awesome dark ride, a huge improvement over the original!)

60 million riders...let's help to continue increasing that number!

Wipeout!

Cave Train!

Sea Serpent!

Crazy Surf, fun stuff!

Kiddy ride time!

Doing it because we can!

Classic Carousel

Kiddie whip ride FTW! (Never underestimate this thing!)

Bumper cars...

And this thing...turned us from champs into chumps in a matter of seconds...never underestimate a log flume's 2-foot pre-drop! It left me with a soaked lap before the final plunge!

Can't get away from western themeing

Dual loading station

Alright, let's go blast some ghosts! (I completely suck at these!)

Yea, I failed horribly!

Kiddy drop tower fun!

More bumper cars! These are quite fun!

On Tsunami...Got to love how they have to explain the principals of force

Force is being applied.

"Ahh....I can breath now!"

Time to ride the George Foreman grill ride, Cliff Hanger!

Sssswooooooshhhh! (Great for night time flights)

Boardwalk comes to life at night!

Time for another session on the Dipper! (For some reason, the ride became slightly brutal at the bottom of the first drop and after the fan curve)

Next in line!

Back over to Wipeout for a last spin

Such a fun ride!

Now for some random evening shots!

Moonlit beach

And 1 last ride on the Dipper, just making it by 9:00!

And I'll end it with a peaceful evening ocean/Monterey Bay shot! Thanks for reading, feel free to comment!

Awesome TR, love those nighttime Boardwalk shots! It looks like you all turned Tornado into a certain Viennese S&M device of hot juicy death. Put it in Wipeout's room, add theatrical fog, increase the volume drastically, max out the bass, make the cycle 6 minutes long and you might be able to recreate the experience!

Great reports, and welcome to Santa Cruz!

Glad you guys got your Hurricane farewell ride. After an ERT session on Monday, and one more ride on Tuesday, I had a more than satisfying farewell. It's definitely time for it to go. I could barely walk the next day!

My brother and I had Tornado all to ourselves on Tuesday. It was also the first time I went on it. Not too sure if going on Rock-o-Plane right after it was such a good idea!

I still haven't been on the new Crazy Surf, it was down when we went, very disappointed.

2013 is going to be awesome, and we still have Haunt to look forward to! It's a good time to be a Northern California theme park fan.

My brother and I had Tornado all to ourselves on Tuesday. It was also the first time I went on it. Not too sure if going on Rock-o-Plane right after it was such a good idea!

It isn't...I've tried that one of the last times I was down at the 'Walk. My brother sitting across from me decided he would be funny and step on my lapbar, stapling me quite hard. Then we got the ride spinning pretty good. After what felt like an eternity, the ride finally ended and we jammed right over to Rock-o-Plane. I decided that I'd attempt flipping repeatedly but ended up just doing a few rotations balancing upside down. My brother was pretty much done with rides for the day, I felt absolutely sick...luckily I was able to shake it off after a couple rides on Giant Dipper. However, the though of deep fried just made me feel worse.

This last time, we headed for Tsunami after aimlessly walking towards it, followed by a ride on Cliffhanger, and back over to Wipeout! After Cliffhanger, I was for the most part fine. We were also beginning to get a little hungry so headaches were beginning to sprout as well.

Crazy Surf...it's a great, fun ride! It's a huge improvement over the old one. The only complaints I have are the restraint system. You have this metal thing that sort of flops down onto your lap and then you're instructed to raise your hands up. The metal post begins to move inwards towards your stomach...and if you're a little thicker like me, the stomach almost practically swallows the metal post! Once that part's done, the ride's very fluid and provides some nice borderline floater-ejecter air!

And back to Hurricane...we only did 1 ride on it which honestly I felt was sufficent. While it wasn't too painful, there were some brutal moments and some head-bashing going on if you aren't watching (space diver drop). I'm really looking forward to Undertow. Speaking of, some GP heard us talking about Hurricane going to NM when he was in shock to hear (did he miss the several months old news?). I was kind enough to show him a photo of Undertow and he seemed pretty excited...even more-so excited when I told him that the cars spin on a horizontal axis, freely.

And want to know something strange about Crazy Surf? Due to the design of the ride, you have to climb on a step stool to get seated! Luckily that process didn't take long at all regardless of the fact there were about 2 stools for everybody to use.

Something I forgot to include in my report which is one of the key things that stands out about the 'Walk. SCBB amazes me with their operations anyway...40-second dispatches on Giant Dipper is an amazing accomplishment, and they have a pretty huge ride crew as well...there's no loading goods in cubbies, you just place your bag by your feet...no super complex seatbelt system on identical trains a certain other NorCal woodie has, and ride ops do the whole push the lapbar down and check for you all in 1 step! Very efficient even for single train mode!

Great report, perfect timing as I'm doing the exact same thing tomorrow. Was initially wanting to time it so that Id be at SCBB at night like you, but since it's a holiday weekend (and I cant wait til next week to ride Hurricane) I'm going to just get to CGA at opening and then go straight to SCBB to avoid as much of the inevitable crowds as possible.

Nice reports. Two parks that I will have to make time to visit next year!