Holiday Rides At Six Flags Discovery Kingdom
Cobra, Medusa and Roar all have their own special holiday borders this year at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom and I’m as happy as a snowman in a blizzard. The only thing I like more than a roller coaster picture is a limited frame on a roller coaster photo.
Believe it or not, the Medusa sleigh on the left is only my second favorite holiday ride photo. If the presents across the top were actually in focus it might have actually become my number one photo. The rest of the frame is focused just fine, so it’s neither a printing nor an image problem. Whoever designed this frame (Six Flags? Kodak? Discovery Kingdom?) chose for the presents to be out of focus, though for the life of me I couldn’t tell you why.
The Cobra digital border (pictured right) is actually my favorite holiday ride photo. It looks like the Yeti is actually launching the bobsled. This particular shot is even cooler, IMHO, because that’s Bumbles the Abominable Snowman (from the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer cartoon) hanging out next to Zaira. We won him on the midway. Unfortunately, the photo both attendant claimed she couldn’t make any adjustments to the photo to get both Zaira and I into the frame, but more on that later. On the other hand, this digital border is all the more rare because she damn near refused to sell it to us despite our numerous assurances that we still wanted it the way it is.
In hindsight I don’t think this frame was ever intended for Medusa photos, but one of our regular photo clerks was working the booth and she had no problem selling us both digital frames. Zaira loves this solo picture because of the goofy face made by the kid in the row behind her (top right corner).
Serious kudos must go out to the designer of Roar’s holiday frame. 
Last year Roar was closed for the Holiday In The Park event, so this is the first in what will hopefully be a long line of holiday frames for Northern California’s most popular wooden roller coaster. The snow and ice effects are superbly done and they even made the ice on the front of the coaster appear to be organic by having it streak back away fro mthe front edge. I also think the (relatively) subtle addition of “Roar” around the edges of the photo is a quality touch that I hope to see emulated on the 2009 Roar digital border.
Discovery Kingdom transformed from Sea, Land and Air to Sea, Land and Snow for the holidays. Although the transformation wasn’t impressive overall, Zaira did have a blast sliding down their little snow “hill” and Discovery Kingdom got this one right, having professional photographers taking pictures of every run. We had to kind of nudge the photo clerk at the front gate photo booth to add the snow flurry digital border to this photo although it seemed like a natural match to us.
Tags: 2008, Aahz, Christmas, Cobra, digital frames, Discovery Kingdom, Holiday In The Park, Medusa, on-ride photo, photograph, Roar, Roller Coasters, Six Flags, sledding, snow, Zaira
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