The Bull Pen #17

Well, on Sunday the 11th, I returned from my first vacation in almost a 1 and ¾ years. The destination was the host site of the 1996 Olympics, Atlanta. I mainly chose the destination because of a new B&M roller coaster that was being built at Six Flags over Georgia. However, numerous other attractions, such as the Georgia Aquarium and World of Coca-Cola appealed to both me and my wife as well. We drove down on Wednesday and drove back on Sunday, in both cases, arriving at our destination between 4:30 and 5:30. Six Flags over Georgia was where we spent Wednesday evening and most of Thursday (with a pool break thrown in during Thursday afternoon since our Wingate Inn was within walking distance) and it was quite an interesting park. The park is the hilliest amusement park I have ever been to and makes quite a habit of long queues that you must navigate even if nobody is in line. Goliath, the new star attraction, did live up to its billing and has secured a spot in my top 3 steel coasters, quite possibly tied for #2 with SF Great America’s Raging Bull. The airtime on the ride is incredible as virtually every hill has you out of your seat. Add in a solid setting for the ride at the front of the park and even some head chopper effects on the helix and you get a real winner for Six Flags over Georgia. The rest of the park had a mix of roller coasters that were just enough to keep us interested in the time we spent there. Goliath is a nice ride and coasters like Great American Scream Machine and Mindbender were also unique attractions but the park itself did not take over the title of favorite Six Flags from me (you still have the title Great America).

As for the rest of Atlanta, the Georgia Aquarium was certainly all it was made out to be. Living in Cincinnati, we have the Newport Aquarium as an attraction that we can use as comparison. Well, the two aquariums are just different enough to recommend visiting both. Sure, the Georgia Aquarium is flashier and bigger but there are some exhibits and animals at Newport that were missed at Georgia. For instance, Newport has King and Gentoo Penguins in their own special exhibit; Newport also features a lot more shark varieties than Georgia as well as some special touches that would appeal to a river based resident. On the other hand, the GA takes advantage of its size to showcase Whale Sharks, Sea Otters, and Beluga Whales. The Whale Sharks and Beluga Whales are the two stars and the Ocean Explorer exhibit, which features the Whale Sharks, Hammerhead Sharks, and a pretty sizable population of exotic fish, is the main attraction. GA also has dedicated a lot of space to touch exhibits so you can feel creatures such as sharks, rays, starfish, shrimp, and even anemones. The place did get pretty crowded after about 10 am so we were lucky that we managed to get through the Aquarium in 2 hours and still felt like we had given each exhibit its due course, thanks to arriving around 8:30 (they open at 8 am and have timed tickets for most guests – except that we had AAA tickets that allowed us to enter when we wanted to). It may very well be the priciest Aquarium in existence but I cannot imagine anyone visiting Atlanta and not taking a tour.

The other two attractions we visited while in Atlanta turned out to be semi-disappointments. We probably visited Atlanta a year too early as the World of Coca-Cola is scheduled to move to a new building next to the Aquarium in 2007. Once you visit the old museum, you can understand why the new one is being built as the place is mostly static displays and the gift shop, while featuring a lot of Coca-Cola merchandise, does not have a lot of merchandise that says both Coca-Cola and Atlanta on it. Zoo Atlanta, on the other hand, might be the most overpriced zoo out there. Yes, it does have the rare giant pandas and it also has a pretty amazing gorilla habitat but the rest of the zoo features your garden variety array of zoo animals in exhibits of varying quality. It also has a love affair with turtles as the zoo is filled with them. I am glad that I only paid half price to enter (being a member of the Cincinnati Zoo) as having to pay $18 per person (even though there was free parking) would have almost been construed as robbery. Whereas I was able to make favorable comparisons so that the Georgia Aquarium and Newport Aquariums could each be their own unique entity, I could not help but think of all that I enjoy about Cincinnati Zoo while traversing Zoo Atlanta. Such unique things I enjoy are: the Cat House, the World of Insects (Leaf-Cutter Ants), the various Gibbons, Manatee Springs, White Tigers, the River Otter and Mexican Wolf exhibit, etc. Anyways, the rest of the Atlanta trip can be summarized by stating that Tracey and I managed to use the MARTA trains with utmost efficiency and also took in the local Hard Rock Café (I have my wife hooked on their BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger). We also went and saw Pixar’s Cars at an AMC with a digital projector (awesome stuff).

Custom Game of the Week: I will try to keep it short but the birthday of the Old Men Mafia is coming up and we are going to have a celebration, Halo 2 style. I would like to play an updated version of my Fiesta Grande game, known as OMM Party Grande, but am kind of stumped as to what options should be added or modified from the original game type. I was thinking of making the game 30 minutes and adding a death point loss feature to the game to really throw things out of whack. However, there could be all kinds of suggestions and I think the input of the OMM would be much appreciated. Perhaps a round based version of Fiesta Grande with a limited number of lives per round. Anyways, this should be big fun and it may take multiple party leaders to host it all.