Blue Streak crew 92/93 and Cedar Point pictures

Yes the all-male crews were on rides such as Blue Streak, Demon Drop, Mill Race, Wildcat, Western Cruise, Thunder Canyon, Mine Ride, White Water Landing, all the auto rides, Dodgems, Sky Ride, etc. I guess those were considered the "more difficult" rides to operate needing some muscle.

I have no authoritative proof on this but I also think part of the reason for all-female crews and placing them on such rides as Corkscrew, Magnum, Gemini, Avalanche Run, Iron Dragon, etc. was because those "thrill" rides target males, and males like to look at pretty girls (str8 males that is) so it was like they were getting a 2 for 1 at the park. In some way I guess you could call it a subconscious marketing ploy.

Obviously it worked because anyone 40 and older still remembers this!

I trained the first female Captains allowed to work on Paddlewheel Excursions in 1999. It was really nice to see girls wearing the all white uniform and Captain's hat. Some of the girls over the years have been really good Paddlewheel Captains too. It's all about personality.

(Sign of the times here...) I seem to remember that us big strong men were a little concerned that the women might not be able to tie off the boat at the dock. We though that maybe it was too manly of a job. We were very wrong. We discovered that it wasn't such a hard thing to do after all. Some of those chicks were tougher than some of us guys anyways. lol

I'm pretty sure that was the year they began co-ed ride operations throughout most of the park. If I recall correctly, that year a few ride locations still had all male or all female, but not many.

I am going to send you the link to my White Water Landing/Point album from 1990. Let me know if you can access it, and if you know anybody.

Great pictures Agent! I do recognize this guy riding Mean Streak (he is standing at WWL entrance with a green candy cane in your pics). I never knew him but figured he was someone important - maybe Kinzel's kid or something?

His dad was the head welder at Arrow. He built Vortex, Loch Ness Monster, Magnum, etc. Anyway, John worked several summers there I heard. Lots of stories.

I am shocked at the photo from under the track of a moving train. Great. I actually sent Kinzel pics I took that summer with 400 speed film on the Magnum. Even got a thankyou note.

I will send you a link to the Conneaut Lake Blue Streak. Some equally great behind the scenes shots.

On the segregated crew issue...

Someone once told me that there was something like a 180-pound minimum weight requirement to operate Blue Streak on account of the Armstrong-type* brake. Is there any truth to that?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

* That's a joke. Don't go looking it up in your roller coaster textbook; you won't find it.

From my recollection that's about right, Dave, although I don't know if they came right out and said it. I had friends who worked the Streak and they would have been really reaching to meet that minimum. As far as "Armstrong" that is the term that is given to manually operated turntables on the railroads during the steam locomotive era.

^Nahhh.... I was about 165lbs then and we had guys smaller than me.

It's a lever. Who doesn't love a lever? You don't have to be strong!

Gotta love YouTube, where you can spend 15 minutes watching a 3-minute video...

(now waiting for the clip Jeff suggested to buffer. Maybe by the time I finish writing this I'll be able to watch it. And no, it isn't my connection, it's YouTube's.)

You know what is amazing about that clip is that at the end of it, I think I actually recognize some of those people. And I have not watched Sesame Street since before Elmo came along.

Anyway, what I noticed about the Blue Streak is that the operators always operated the levers in a very theatrical way. To watch them and then to watch operations on any other wood coaster with manual brake levers, you'd think that the Blue Streak operators are supplying the entire braking resistance themselves. I'm certain the mechanism was no different.

See, it used to be all about appearance at Cedar Point...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

It's your connection, dude. Google peers with half of the universe, while your pipe probably does not.

I'd expect that except that the behavior seems to be consistent. I'd think it was an OS or browser issue, except that it also seems to happen across browsers and across platforms. Maybe it's an Apple vs. Google thing. The symptom is always the same: the video starts to load very fast, loads up about the first 30 seconds or so, starts playing...then the download stalls, then the buffer runs out. Hate it.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I think you're being throttled or something. Or your neighbors have a porn habit. Or someone in your office has a porn habit. :)

Maybe your neighbors or someone in your office is doing some throttling of their own.

Sounds like throttling issues to me too. I come across the same issue with YouTube if I'm trying to use it during peak usage times. Other sites load fine, even bandwidth intensive things like Netflix and Hulu, but YouTube just stalls out. If only we had Net Neutrality...

Same, here, Dave. I get great YouTube performance 9 times out of 10, from home, work, or through my Verizon 4G hotspot. Doesn't matter.

Hey Coasterbuzzers, I've added a few pictures to the set, including some of my favorite shots (you can see the limitations of a cheap 35mm camera) and the 1992 Blue Streak Crew shirt, which my friend Chris designed and got made for us:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.185509061574734.38271.178...363&type=3

I also added a second Cedar Point set with some cool stuff like "Employee Ride Night" flyers, "Big Bash" cups (do they still have Big Bash?), 1987 promo folder, 1991 employee brochure, Silver Dollar Cafe menu, etc.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.181195212006119.37311.178...363&type=3

(Note: most of the scans are *large* so you can hit "Enter Fullscreen" if you like.)