ACE PKI Beast Bash 10-1-05

Gotta love PKI!! My hubby and I looked forward to this event after last years GOCC/ACE Fall Freak Out last year.

Arrived at the park (LOVE the drive to the park-it is cake for us compared to the haul to CP and GL) bright and early for registration.

AM ERT on a lit up FOF. Makes for a much different ride being able to see where you’re going. Had NO clue how close everything is in that building! We managed 8 ERT flights and have come to the conclusion we like the last row the best. I adore FOF, anyone who rode it with the over head restraints from Hell back in the day definitely understands what a great ride this ride is now!! :)

SOB on vacation rest of season thanks to winter maintenance, no loss for us since we had no plans on riding it anyway. Delirium was down too, I was very disappointed over that since I had been riding MaxAir I knew I could handle Delirium. Didn’t get to prove that :(

We had our 1st ride on “Italian Job” - wow this was a blast! I think I could do without the pause to get shot at by a helicopter and all the explosions, but as a whole the ride is a lot of fun! The dark tunnel is the best! :) I am all about themed rides anyway!

PKI gave everyone 3 game tickets so we could try our luck at some of the boardwalk games. We suck! Now we know why we don't bother with those things!

We saw the “Fun House” movie which was pretty good. The best part of this was the queue line which was full of things from the old Haunted House. I recognized many of the characters, including 2 of the statues. While you are waiting to go inside the theatre, the speech Mistro used to give at the house entrance plays, and while you’re inside the theatre, the song that played while you were on the actual ride plays. When we left the theatre, I kept waiting to hear Mistro say “so, you thought you got away, did ya? You’ll be back!!!” but sadly, we didn’t.

Not that the Scooby Haunted Mansion isn’t fun (I kicked my hubby’s butt again-1110 to 210) but for some reason the old haunted house was just one of those PKI icons that my kids and I always did. We knew it word for word, character by character and seeing it go was a bummer.

Vortex definitely runs slower in the morning, the corkscrews felt more like Hydra’s Jo Jo roll, that’s how slow it was running. Still fun to me, we rode it 3x before day over.

Lunch was awesome! Funniest thing heard..one of the employees was getting the food ready and she said to another employee, “I was told these people can really eat so make sure there’s plenty” My hubby alone proved that theory true with the main dishes, but I did more than my share on the ice cream! :)

We were taken on a unplanned tour of the train maintenance shed and got to talk to the 2 train mechanics. Interesting stuff, apparently the trains at PKI run on propane and seem to be much less of hassle then coal (CP) trains can be. Also interesting to learn that one of the “fake” buildings in Ghoultown is their office.

Beast walk back after lunch. LOVE this! Learned many new things since walk back last season. I still enjoyed seeing the passengers faces when they come booking out of the cement tunnel, around the corner (before the 2nd lift hill) to see us all standing there waving at them!

Hubby and I took on rest of park while we waited for PM ERT. Although the park appeared to be way crowded, there were no real long lines for anything we waited on. As darkness approached, the fake fog was incredible and a couple times I got the crap scared out of me on “Coney Maul” There is this one guy who slides to scare people. He got me more than once. It is pretty fun to watch other people get scared!! As for the other scary attractions, no thanks for me. I don’t do scary stuff! While on line for “Italian Job” we got to watch most of the action in the “Cornstalkers” area, that was quite entertaining!

Midnight finally arrived and we boarded the Beast for some ERT. We ended up getting 5 rides total, each one better than the previous one. (Rerides were OK and even encouraged!! ) The woods were dark and not a cloud in the sky! The Beast was FLYING! The helix always takes my breath away, I can’t believe how awesome this ride takes that helix! You think any minute now you are just going to come flying off the track! I have been riding this coaster for years and years and still love it. It has always been one of my favorite woodies and always will be! Kudos to PKI for keeping it running as well as they have for the past 27 years! :)

Despite a long day, the Beast crew treated us wonderfully, smiles galore and they really acted like they were enjoying watching us having such fun.

This event makes our ACE membership worth it!

PKIs PR duo, Jeff and Maureen were an absolute BLAST! They are so much fun and just really great and hilarious people!!

Our thanks to them for making the ‘05 Beast Bash such fun for all of us! I can’t wait until next years!

Jo
Lifetime Raptor flights: 1073 :)