Coasting for Kids 2010?

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/coaster-lovers-take...35897.html

Nice article in the Dayton Daily News. Got my photo in the paper. They got my name wrong in the photo caption. I don't care as long as I don't have to buy this Davis guy a season pass.

I was also interviewed by Fox 19, but I haven't been able to find anything from them?

I love the quote "it never gets boring". I was all but napping on Gemini yesterday. :)

It was a great day yesterday at CP. Broke my personal record with 104 laps. 76 straight and then 28 but had to leave for practice for Cleveland's corporate challenge. Good job Jason, wow 142!

Any word on a total raised yet? or do we have to await the podcast announcement? :-)

71 for me on Steel Force. I did the full marathon in the morning and afternoon. Some folks hit 75, but there was a little gap between the first group photo and lunch, so some went back and snagged a few extra.

Definitely a great event, and especially stellar job by Carrie, who dominated the fundraising side of things. According to Dorney's PR guy, Dorney had the highest per-cap fundraising, if you will, which is really no surprise, because Dorney was where it was at. ;)

According to the article Dave linked above, the entire event raised $22,000, but it was the Kings Island spokesperson who said that, so I don't know if that's an official number.

The CP group raised over $17K as of yesterday.

Monday at 2pm Byran Edwards said the group was over $21K with about $12K of it being CP. So, as a group were at a minimum of $26K by now. It wouldn't surprise me if we were over $30K with the walk up donations at all the parks. Last year, we had around $3K in donations that came in after the event and from walk ups. That $17 included any walk-ups from CP yesterday.

Kara suggested to me the other day that we were on our way to exceeding $25k, and I would assume with last-minute stuff that we hit that. I know I had a few come in yesterday as well.

I appreciate everyone putting their time and effort into this, and towing the "company line" for the media. Raising money is awesome, but to intelligently speak about the GKTW makes it that much more awesome. I'm really proud of this community!

sirloindude said:
....because Dorney was where it was at. ;)

Truer words were never spoken, my friend. ;) It was great meeting you yesterday. You're a machine! :)

Carrie is so good at fund-raising I still want to click her link in her sig and donate ;)

...And you can until October 29th, 2010. :)

Haha, Ken. But we both know you've already donated and I'm not even going to give you a hard time for not sponsoring me. ;)

Then again, as Josh point out, it's not too late... :)

Don Helbig told me that KI was 3rd in fund raising behind CP & Dorney.

Our day started at 3:45 getting up to leave the house by 4:15 to make it to KI by 6:00 am when we were instructed to be there.

After check in we were walked back to Racer and after a few minutes we were ready to ride. I was surprised that they didn't have anything for us to eat. Since we had to be there before any of the area restaurants opened everybody was starved by the time the lunch break came. Some Cinnabons from International Street would have been quite welcome.

At this point we were spread out on both trains on the red side. We took a break at 10:30 and got a lap on Beast before heading to lunch above the main gate at 11:00 am.

We got 43 laps of the 50 that they ran in the morning session. The operations dept mandated that we get off the train every 5 laps and they cycled the trains through I don't quite understand why, but the breaks became quite welcome in the afternoon.

We got back to Racer at Noon and started riding again. The blue side had been having some issues with a person getting a nose bleed and spraying blood all over the place, I guess this also caused a couple of people to pass out and to top it off they had multiple other protein spills.

Since the blue queue was nearly full we offered to consolidate to one train and let the GP ride on the other. This seemed to help with the long line, but the GP still didn't get that we were there doing a marathon even though there were signs up and the ride op announced it every time our train was in the station.

We also had a couple of young men that donated $50 and joined us on the Red Train for several laps.

By the time it the event concluded at 5:00 PM they had run 115 laps on the red train and we rode all but 9 of them. When we got off most of us got in line and rode 1 lap on the blue side. :)

Thing that would have been nice:
A lap counter with flip cards in the station
Fluids for the riders, (coffee, soda, poweraid) they told us that there were water fountains near the restrooms and that we could get ice water at the restaurants.
Something light for breakfast since everything was closed when we were supposed to be there. Mini Cinnabons would have been perfect since they have a Cinnabon on property.
A break where they could have taken the group up the exit for 1 lap on Beast in the morning and Diamondback in the afternoon. This kind of break would have been great.
A Blue Ice Cream cone at the conclusion for all those that stuck it out for the entire day.

Did anyone else get their shirts? We were told that they would be mailed. I think that caused more confusion to the public then anything else. If we were all wearing GKTW shirts it would have been more obvious to the public that we were an event.

Josh stood me up for CoasterMania.. I am ignoring his post :)

Btw.. I do like where Google sent me when I wanted to check if CoasterMania was one or two words.

http://www.beercoastermania.com/

^^ We had shirts at CP, but I know at least one person didn't get her size because someone either miscounted or missed her email reply. I was in my Charlie Brown attire until the GP showed up, when I figured it would be better to wear the GKTW shirt to show I was with the event.

[edited to add carets]

ridemcoaster said:
Josh stood me up for CoasterMania.. I am ignoring his post :)

:) You can blame Jen for that. Sorry. Perhaps next year.

Besides, we canceled our whole VA trip because you weren't meeting up with us.

LOL..

touche' ;)

[url][url]Bryan Edwards and myself on Gemini. For those of you who know Bryan, this is a rare photo.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/photo.php?pid=4692880&id=752572856

Looking to keep in touch with Coasting for Kids Kings Island folks

For those who were at the Coasting for Kids charity event at Kings Island, I would love to keep in touch. It was a blast spending the day with you all! If you want to keep in touch, I am on Facebook as well... look me up through email: mmarsha5030@hotmail.com

Looks like our total was north of $30k, with some donations still coming in...