I've been way to busy recently with work to post much; but, I wouldn't let a golden opportunity to share a story or two (that until reading the last few posts brought suddenly back to my memory) pass me by.
Disaster Transport.
Having spent two of the best summers of my life working at the Point, I now have 100% crystal clear recollection of two things about the artist formally known as Avalanche Run.
- When you sign up to work at CP, if you are "lucky" enough to have your school schedule get you out early to come to the Point before the season starts, you get "drafted" into all sorts of spring cleaning/maintenance activities. Sometimes those are tons of fun (like say riding Magnum XL-200 for hours on end to help train the ride crew). Sometimes those activities approach Dante's Inferno rings of the underworld levels of monotony. One such activity was having the "joy" of riding Disaster Transport for an entire afternoon OVER and OVER again. When I mean over and over... I mean as in never getting out. We got to stay in from the unload platform to the load platform - you just simply had to duck your head as you went underneath the hanging fabric separating the two sections. I'll never look at the foamy chamois section of an automated car wash the same way again.
- the 2nd DISpatchmASTER Transport memory I have is going to have to be told in a very PC family friendly manner. Back in the 90's CP had this notion that separating the males and females from working the same attraction as the other would be a great way to cut down on fraternization (editor's note - it didn't). So, you'd end up with one ride being all girls and another being all boys. Intamin's bobsled coaster fell under the jurisdiction of the ladies. To play the part in this highly themed immersive landmark attraction, they go to wear a very fashionable orangeish jumpsuit - tres sci-fi. As most garments in the seasonable theme park business, the uniforms eventually get a significant amount of wear and that leads things to become a bit thin and threadbare. The ladies working the attraction liked to have a bit of fun with this and would coordinate a day of the week where they would all wear "special" undergarments that would be easily noted under the stations black lights. You could always count a good turn out from the employees on one of these days.
As a bonus story I just remembered - take the above mentioned spring cleaning exercise of riding a CP attraction over and over and then take it and put it on the Midway Dodgem bumper cars. One afternoon we got the pleasure of riding this... non-stop. It wasn't to train the employees... it was to drive around and knock off an off season's worth of rust from the overhead mesh that powers the cars. Now, before you can think - unlimited bumper car time sounds like fun... I can tell you it is... for about 30 minutes. After that getting a face full of rust everytime you collide with someone loses its luster. That then lead me into organizing bumper car races which worked for awhile until we were told to drive them like normal guests. Then that lead to the very unique non-Olympic recognized sport of Synchronized Bumper Car Driving where the goal was to create elaborate patterns while driving without actually hitting anyone. For some reason... that day I got labeled as a troublemaker. I have no idea why.
