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[shavethewhales]

I just got back from SDC, and I have about 120 photos to go through and get up on the site. That'll take awhile though, so I'll give you the story now.

As we drove in, I saw them clearing land for the new road re-direct, and I finally got to see for the first time the cleared-out gully where the new parking lot will be. I never thought it was that  huge, but it sure is needed - we had to park way back down the road in JD lot, which is a gravel lot past Deer Run.

Being Black Friday, the park was pretty packed, but I still managed to have a great time. As usual, crowd levels started to drop after the first parade, but it was just too cold for it to be really worth it. In fact, it was cold enough to shut down even Wildfire; I believe it got to around the mid-twenties.

I got one ride in on PK and Electro Spin, several on TGS and FiTH, and quite a few on both Wildfire and ThuNderaTion - and everything was running fantastically. The coasters were rattling just a little due to the cold, but they were still all very smooth. I would have ridden PK more, but the line was 30+ mins long, and I was sure it was going to shut down any minute.

The lights were better than ever, especially on the main square. The new tree complete with the new light syncs was awesome, though there wasn't as much light syncing on the rest of the square as I thought there would be. Still, the new tree was extremely bright and very cool looking.

I got tired of riding marathon riding Wildfire, so I started marathon riding ThuNderaTion Sat. night while the temps were at about 33 degrees. It was... cold, but definitely worth-while. 

Yeah, I can't really think of much else to report on, but here's a short list of things I noticed:
the train added an emergency-stop cord sometime since my last visit this summer (did something cause this?); Grandpa's Mansion had it's effects tuned up and fixed; the tree house looked the same as ever; and they weren't saying anything about either the parking lot or the new craft house. Oh yeah, I looked at their back lot (from atop TGS), but I didn't see anything.

[shavethewhales]

http://www.sdcfans.com/galleries/sdc_xmas_07/sdc_xmas_07.html

I've added photos to the site, though I'm too lazy to think up captions for many of them. Tell  me if you guys have trouble loading the page, it's full of big images so it will take a while for slower computers to load it completely. I have an average machine and it works OK though.

My current camera doesn't work at all at night, unless I use a tripod, so I didn't get many good light shots. I'll have to get a better camera soon.

[Joy]

I learned a trick about getting good light shots without a tripod -- to lessen the amount of shaking in the photo, put it on 2-second timer (if you have it); by doing that, the shake that occurs when you press the button is gone by the time the camera actually takes the picture. It works pretty well.

But actually, I think your night shots turned out pretty good.

Just under 20 days before I get to go! YAY!

~ "Becky" Joy ~