Darien Lake Tips (Updated)

My son and I are here at Darien Lake Theme Park on opening day. The weather is gorgeous and we are having a great time. The weather is gorgeous and we are having a great time.      Visiting the park is a little different than camping here, but if you think about it you can take advantage of some great amenities from each to make your stays and days better.

For the coffee drinker, most restaurants offer coffee but you can find the best at Tim Hortons located at the main gate and the other Tim's in the Sweet Tooth Candy Shop. If you go to the main gate for coffee, the muffins there are probably the healthiest and cheapest snack in the park.      Sweet Tooth also has a variety of favored kettle corn. We tried the cinnamon. It was a tad pricey at $5.99 but by the bottom of the bag, we wanted more.

     For people just spending the day, sometimes the Camp Shop is you best options for many things. Their sub shop is easily the cheapest place in the park for food. Also, they sell alcohol, cigarettes and batteries at fairly reasonable prices in addition to fresh food items from local farms.

(New tip! At the end of the last year, they added a Tim Hortons to the camp shop. They also sell apple cider in season!)

    My son and I tried the ham sub and meatball sub. Both were excellent and we paid less than $10 each, even with chips and a drink. We had half subs, but a whole wouldn't have cost more than 12 bucks. He really wanted chips.

Around the corner from the Camp Shop is the camp lounge. It has TVs, sofas, a fireplace, and rocking chairs. They also have electrical plugs and free WiFi. It is fairly spartan, but on a rainy day, it's a great place to wait it out.       On really rainy days, it a great place to play games. They have a giant size chess set which is fun and tables so you can bring your own games. I'm tempted to try a pick up game of D&D here, but the weather hasn't been that bad yet.        One other handy stop is the coin op laundry. Wonderful if you soaked your clothes and need to dry something quickly.

Darien Lake 2018

Darien Lake has new rides for 2018. It´s my mission to hit every one of them. Here is my list broken down by area.

Lakefront Boardwalk:

Redhawk
The Giant Wheel
Blast Off!
Grand Carousel

Midway Marina:
Haymaker
Silver Bullet
Rock Climbing Wall
Pirate

Crossroads:
Predator
Ride of Steel
Lasso
Scrambler

Darien Square:
Motocoater
Boomerang

Fun Zone:
Bear Valley Bumper Buggies
Twister
Tin Lizzy’s
Grand Prix Go Carts

Thunder Road:
Sleighride
Mind Eraser
Corn Popper
Thunder Rapids
Shipwreck Falls
Rolling Thunder

Main Gate:

Slingshot

The Tantrum isn´t on the list, it will not open until May 25th. Also missing from the list is kiddie rides. I´m too tall for many of them. :)

Destiny 2... again.

Well, I have completed Destiny 2 with a Titan, I am now working on my Hunter and Warlock. I can't say this game had the pop of the original. I feel like I am doing it to get my 60 bucks worth. What I find particularly galling is exotic weapons don't feel powerful. I am currently running with two legendary weapons. It's just ok. 

I'll post more later.

Opening Day at Darien Lake

May will be cold and rainy, but that has never stopped us from going to the park opening day. May 5th, 10:30-8 will be the hours. 69 days from today.

The water park opens a few weeks later. We have our season passes and this year we picked the food option. Last year, we spent over 22 days in the park and it seemed to make sense to add in a meal plan. I figured five people dining 22 times a year vs. the $69.99 price tag, that works out be less than 20 bucks a visit. I can't feed a family of five for $20 at McDonalds. We'll see how it goes. 

Today, I am posting some of the nicer images I took over the years. I should create an album for this sort of thing. 

Giant Wheel

The Predator

Tornado

Boomerang

Fractal Logic

This image was rendered for a class on Writing. The red text reads: 

Language holds the logic of 

Why a raven is like a writing desk

Like a piano with 81 keys

Recursion saves the signal

From the lapse of memories

To read the smaller text, I suggest looking at the Google Drawing.

Within each box, is the same text with errors injected. Sometimes on purpose, other times by accident. The first error was that the whole thing was broken down by syllables. However, this is not an accurate rendition of the syllables as the software used was designed for singing, which is wildly different than the more technical definition of a syllable.

Lan-guage holds the log-ic of
Why a ra-ven is like a writ-ing desk
Like a pi-a-no with 81 keys
Re-cur-sion saves the sig-nal
From the lapse of mem-o-ries

I also put in typos and misspellings by going as fast as I could when typing. It was painful not to go back and correct it. I did allow myself to go back and delete incorrect letters, but not actually change them. I mean for this to look frustrating. 

The grid-like fractal pattern was generated on graph paper by the following method: 

Draw a line along one edge of a box on the graph paper.

Toss a coin, heads turn left, tails turn right. 

Repeat.
A lot.

To speed this process, I alternated between cupping a dime in my drawing hand and allowing it move as I drew lines and grabbing a bunch of pennies out of a cup and lining them up dozens at at time. When I reached the boundary of the paper, I would move over into the next blank space with little care as to how it was positioned. 

It was a slow process. Additionally, when I took the pattern to digital, I made more errors. That was something the graph paper was mean to prevent. Oops.