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hrrytraver
Posts: 1270
Registered: 7/16/2005
Rank: Platinum Critic
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 8/15/2006 12:30:24 AM
greetings lads and lasses-
i am quite late in posting a trip(py) report based on my brief visit to wildwood, nj, but here it is, in all it's tardy and digitally modified glory. it was a very unique night, strangely cold for july, and a very relaxed and sparse sunday crowd on the boardwalk lent a surreal air to the whole thing. with a brilliant full moon hanging over the sea and the stiff breeze pushing the clouds around, it felt more "edgar allen poe" than "beach blanket bingo".
myself and ms. traver (not married, btw, but seems like it after 7 years) decided to hop over to wildwood from cape may after sunset to grab a few rides and a face full of junkfood. we were short on cash, so we did more ambience soaking than riding. but it wasn't actually too important after a long weekend to have our bodies manipulated in extreme ways by amusement devices.
wildwood provides a sharp contrast from cape may. both are nostalgic destinations, but where cape may excels at turn of the last century ambience with gingerbread victorian homes, leftover horse-hitching posts on the sidewalks, and still operating gas lamps on the side streets - wildwood explodes retro-futuristic with george jetson styled neon sputnik motels on every corner sporting dramatic angular glass lobbies like miniature dulles airports and all the "shangri-la" kitsch you could ever want glows all night long in the miles of corny 50s signage.
i went to wildwood last year and i wasn't terribly impressed with morey's piers, although it does indeed have more variety and more grandiose attractions than my old standby, trimper's rides in ocean city, md. but the prices are very high at morey's and the rides are not run too good. perhaps the big letdown was the great white. it didn't seem to me to be nearly the great wooden coaster it could have been. overall i found the piers to be sort of slick-yet-seedy at the same time. i'm more of a scruffy-yet-seedy kind of aesthete and not a slick-yet-seedy type. there IS a difference between the two, i swear it.
with that said, things were quite different on this particular sunday and i got an entirely better hit off the place. just being there at night with everything floodlit, the cold mellow ocean air, and the full moon spying down on everything made me relaxed and perceptive. in spite of so much sensory overload from the bright lights and colors and strong fry grease odors, it felt tranquil.
this foto basically sums up how i felt all night.
firstly we rode the great white twice. it gave me such a better ride than last year! i think great white is a fine coaster, and it totally deserves it's majestic spot over the beach. it still feels a bit bumpy but it's so fast and it has some gorgeous laterals on all three turnarounds. the final leg of airtime hills were really cookin'! it just felt so nice to be slicing through that cold air in a PTC coaster train.
at night it hovers over the piers looking sublime, like a space station...
the floodlighting on the coaster totally erases any "eyesore-ness" i get from the steel superstructure. during the day it is a bit ugly up close. i strongly recommend riding great white at night. it is then transformed into oscillating spacecraft...
even ms. traver, who doesn't enjoy a rough woody none too much thought that great white kicked ass that night.
we then enjoyed some arcade games and lemonade. there was a nice display of stuffed froggy carcasses which i've tranformed into a kaleidescopic magic carpet for your psychedelic perusal.
[img]http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m286/thlomasborax/fro
Message updated 8/15/2006 1:13:37 AM by hrrytraver
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adriahna
Posts: 4692
Registered: 6/4/2003
Rank: Site Moderator
Skooter Junkie
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8/15/2006 8:48:07 AM
Awesome... I love your altered pics, traver - meant to respond to the amazing one that you sent me about a week ago, from Russia. Very, very inventive. All you need to do now is apply that creativity to the "wildlife" pic... now that's what I call fun stuff. Great TR.
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hrrytraver
Posts: 1270
Registered: 7/16/2005
Rank: Platinum Critic
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8/15/2006 10:15:58 AM
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erinys
Posts: 230
Registered: 9/28/2005
Rank: Bronze Critic
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8/15/2006 10:20:28 AM
Great photo TR, as well as comparison of Morey's to Trimper's. After living near Atlantic City for a time, I think that's part of what contaminates the area, although certainly the 'Doo-wop' history is slicker than the OC I grew up with up. I still go for clapboard over cyan sheet metal, but that's purely my taste.
Darn, you beat me to it, so I took down my meager attempt at distortion! You've got me on the psychedlia front, ht. Love the frogs!
Message updated 8/15/2006 10:23:04 AM by erinys
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adriahna
Posts: 4692
Registered: 6/4/2003
Rank: Site Moderator
Skooter Junkie
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8/15/2006 11:26:40 AM
Verrrrrrrry nice, traver...
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