How Do You Balance Your Amusement Park Hobby With Other Interests?

PS I'm still fairly jealous of sirloindude, I tried my best to get on with an airline but to no avail. I'd love to work for an airline and part-time for a decent hotel chain. I wouldn't make much, but I'd get cheap/free airfare and lodging when I would travel :).

Working for an airline is indeed fantastic, but one thing to keep in mind is that travel is space available. To get from BWI to SFO, I had to add connections in St. Louis, Phoenix, and San Diego. That said, it's a small price to pay. Besides, now I can say I've been to Phoenix and San Diego (been to STL before).

I'm hopefully going to have a single connection in Charlotte on the way from here to Manchester, NH, on the way back, but we'll see what happens.

Hopefully you'll encounter a 5 1/2 hour delay in Charlotte, enabling you to have a "Mastercard Moment" like the one I had ten years ago this August.

Supper -$15.00

Round Trip Cab Fare $30.00

Admission to Carowinds $42.00 (2003)

Riding Five Roller Coasters between Flights - P-R-I-C-E-L-E-S-S!!!

Tempting, but the hard part is that I'm flying in from SFO and there are only so many connections to MHT. Given how early I'm getting up to get to SFO, and given the occasional stresses of traveling space-available, I don't know that I'd chance it.

Well, that and I'm an airplane geek, so I'll probably entertain myself by walking over to the international concourse. I should be getting there around the time the transatlantic flights will be turning.

One of the things I've learned is that going to amusement parks does two things - sucks up time and makes me spend money.

That being said, visiting these parks allows me to challenge my photographic and writing prowess, while at the same time trying to make money either by blogging about my trips or selling my photos over on 500px. (Mostly to defray the costs of going to the parks in the first place!)

Heck, if it weren't for amusement parks, I would have never have found my love for photography - plus it just so happens that I love to fly, so theme park trips + aviation = a good vacation! :)

So, how to balance it out - that's a hard one. Parks take up a ton of your time (on purpose) so it's really all about knowing when "enough is enough." Going every weekend, probably not the best idea, once or twice a month with a season pass, that's more like it.

My other major hobby is working a haunt at an amusement park, so that kind of works out in my favor. :)

In all seriousness though, the amusement park thing is expensive and time consuming. Real life has kept me busy enough (and poor enough) that I haven't been able to justify any of the multi-park trips I used to take just a few years ago. The furthest I've traveled recently is 5 hours to Holiday World. Beyond that, it's just been day trips to CP and KI a few times a year.

Right now, I'm totally out-of-balance. Too much grad school, not nearly enough coasters. NBA playoffs haven't helped a bit. And my family takes too much of my time and attention (niece's graduation means no HWN this year).

Notice I still no have trip report on White Lightning?

Yeah, I noticed. :)

FWIW, just got the invite to the passholder preview of Transformers, also the weekend after this coming one.

Oh, and during a study break, I found that the old Blue Diamond Streak (ex of Del Grosso's) is being reconstructed in Daytona. Missed it on two tries in Delaware. So it looks like FL coasting season is in full swing....now it's just a question of when I get a shot at some of the new goodies!

Wow, I find that a lot of us coaster geeks like to travel. Add me to the list. Most of my trips (except for this year's) is centered on some sort of amusement park. This year we are taking a cruise, and going by the news of late, sounds like its going to be an interesting amusement park excursion. I also a big fan of cars (SLS amg) fitness (P90x) and Politics.

Having never traveled 5 hours at a time in a car in my life, going to an 11 hour trip to Carowinds was a stretch. Now, the trip to CP is a breeze, though.

I find that anymore, trips to parks become the "anytime" filler between all the big immovable objects that crop up in my summer schedule. Last year, my girlfriend and I manged to hit six parks. To her, that was a lot, and to me, it seemed about right; we had fun without burning out.

Looking back, I think a big part of allowing amusement parks to settle comfortably into the background of my life was not renewing my platinum pass in 2011. I had recently begun my current relationship, and you get busy pretty fast. Whereas before, a weekend in which I couldn't drag a friend to the park equated to wasted money, now, an opportunity to go becomes a treat. It's a great value, for sure, but a season pass can become a millstone in a lot of ways, too.

I'm starting to think that a well-rounded life (and especially a well-rounded career, or at least mine) simply cannot accommodate a hobby that asserts so much dominance, and I've made it a point to be mindful of any hobby of mine that starts to squeeze out the others. To answer the original poster's question: I'm into all manner of outdoor pursuits (hiking, skiing, running, cycling), I play bass guitar and lord over a diverse music collection so large I can't even organize it or seemingly listen to all of it. I like the arts, travel in general (and national parks in particular) and I love craft beers (and being smug about it, of course).

Of these, downhill skiing is the most recent infatuation, and so I'm already thinking about next season, where I want to go, and everything, but yeah, I can see how this particular interest could swallow other things up to the detriment of everything. I got a season pass to BMBW so I can take a few turns after work during the winter, so you can see that I'm great following my own advice two paragraphs up. We'll see.

Any actual advice I can give is just to put those people you love first, take care of your career, and be open to a wide range of interests and activities. I can certainly say that I'm never bored, and that one thing I anticipate (new coaster opening, first skiable snowfall, new episodes of Breaking Bad, etc.) is here before I know it, because I'm way too caught up in the other stuff. Never bored, just often very harried!

Break Trims said:

I had recently begun my current relationship, and you get busy pretty fast.

Giggity.

I don't balance it with anything. In fact, I've extended it to trying to recreate my home park (SFNE) in RCT2, which I haven't played in several years. But I consider that a hobby. It's certainly easier than trying to model the park out of sticks or something!

^^ I wanted some of the roller coaster replicas you can buy at the parks, and the eventual goal was to create Dorney Park from replicas. Also wanted to take my amusement park photos, print them out in black and white, and put them in our library over the fireplace. My husband drew the line. *chuckle*

Richie, I say buy the boat. I agree that it is good to keep a wide interest of things going in a person's life, and I think you'll be happy you did it. Just be mindful of all the associated maintenance costs, make sure you have a good place to keep or store the boat, and have fun!

My only other hobby with the same level of obsession is as a gamer, and someone interested in game design. When I try to balance the two. I have up having lost 2 months with this on my hard drive.

Grendel the Return Floorless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GQwrn5JypA

My other hobbies/passions include football (especially college football,) history, water parks, and travel in general (ie I like to go to national parks, new cities, etc.) I try to attend every college home football game my team plays, and occasionally will go to an away game. As you can see my hobbies occur for roughly half of the year (summer/fall.) I save up during the spring and winter to enjoy that time. I literally can become a hermit in the winter, eating in, only going to work and doing little else. While my car gets 4-5 oil changes a year, I usually can go from Thanksgiving to June without a change.

My favorite time of year is Sept-Oct as college football is in full swing, amusement parks are having their Halloween events (my absolute favorite time to visit parks) and fall foliage is occurring. Trying to juggle my competing interests into those quick 8 weekends is difficult but so much fun. Variety is the spice of life.