Zaira and I had the pleasure of attending the opening night (aka Media Event) of the first-ever Halloween Haunt event at California’s Great America. The park has had Halloween events in the past, but nothing of this scale and not for many years.  Cedar Fair is to be applauded for tapping the crew from Knott’s Scary Farm to create Halloween Haunt at Great America as well.

Unfortunately, they barely scratched the surface of the custom, Halloween-themed digital frame.  The only one they had available was for the gate photos which you can see above.  They did go to quite a bit of effort to completely re-theme their Loggers Run log flume ride as Camp GonnaGetcha, but then dropped the ball by only having the standard digital frame available.  Luckily, for Z and I, we still needed to add the official California’s Great America digital frame to our collection.

Still, when it comes to Holiday ride photos, they’ve got a lot to learn from their older brother to the south: Knott’s Scary Farm.  You can read my full review of the event at my primary blog, Philaahzophy.

Much like the photo booth for Psycho Mouse at California’s Great America this photo booth is hidden in the exit path. In fact it’s a good 30 yards or more up the exit path making it near impossible to locate from outside the ride even when you’re looking for it.

Never the less, we did manage to find it, which pleased Zaira to no end as it was a very hot day and we’d simply popped over from a Coin Show at the Santa Clara Convention Center across the street from Great America.   This makes our third different log flume (and the fifth water ride) to be added to our collection.  Not a bad showing given my distaste for such rides.

Photo #067

My favorite photo story yet…

The entire family was having a pretty rough opening day at California’s Great America and we were only halfway through the park when we spotted Psycho Mouse. Since I’d ridden it years ago I didn’t need it to further my Coaster Quest so we sent Gavin and Zaira to ride while the adults rested on a convenient bench.

Suddenly Zaira comes running back towards us yelling and pointing. It took a full thirty seconds or so for either her mother or I to translate that she was saying they had an on-ride photo. She was so excited that she was essentially shouting gibberish! You can’t really see the photo booth from the outside because it’s tucked along the exit ramp on the left side of the building. This is a bad habit evidenced at Great America’s log ride as well.

Obviously I went on the ride with the kids (and loved it, BTW). Although they only had a generic, starred cardboard frame and no digital frame at all, they were still displaying the old Paramount’s Great America ride photo poster so we were able to get a shot of that as well. I absolutely love that digital frame and am really hoping Cedar Fair will revamp it without the “Paramount’s” so we can add it to our collection at a future date.

Photos #065 & #066

Continuing the theme Zaira started on her Disneyland trip, we started getting more and more character photos. The combination of taking my ex-wife and Zaira’s two half-brothers to the parks is probably a big reason this part of our collection is growing as well.

That’s Zaira with her little brother Gavin and Blue from Blue’s Clues on the left.

We also managed to grab some photo opps with Chuckie and Angelica from the Rugrats and my personal favorites Wanda and Cosmo from The Fairly Oddparents. Unfortunately, since Cedar Fair never got their online photo site working properly I wasn’t able to add a photo of me with the fairy godparents to our collection.

It had been 73 days since I’d been on a roller coaster when California’s Great America had its official opening day for 2008. Which made Cedar Fair’s horrible performance all the more irritating. of course, that didn’t stop us from shelling out some cash for ride photos. First up was Vortex. This was our third Vortex picture and, by far, the worst – quality wise.

It looks like it was made on a low-grade printer as both the image and the digital frame have horrible print quality. The generic white cardboard frame does nothing to brighten the imagery either. I tried complaining to Cedar fair management but, as usual, they simply ignored me, not even offering a refund.

We had a couple of gate photos taken as well, but Cedar Fair never posted them to the online photo website, so we were unable to purchase any of those.

Photo #061

Without a doubt, hands down, my all-time favorite on ride photo. Z and her friends had decided that we we’re all going to dress up as Mystery Inc. for Halloween in 2006. Since I always wanted to be Scooby Doo when I grew up this gave me the perfect opportunity. And Z just looked too cute in her Velma outfit for me to pass up this opportunity. We took a quick run up to Santa Clara, changed in the Great America parking lot, then enjoyed the attention as we walked through the park in costume.

In fact, while we were waiting at the Vortex Photo Booth to purchase this picture a group of teenage girls asked to have their pictures taken with us. It was quite a treat

We chose not to have the digital frame applied to this picture in order to more fully show our costumes. It did come in the semi-generic cardboard frame, though.

Photo #008

Not exactly sure on the date of this pic, but I’m sure it was still the summer of 2005 and I know it was the second photo in our collection.

I took Zaira to Paramount’s Great America for the day. It was our first outing entirely on our own. The Vortex has always been one of my favorite rides at Great America and it’s relatively near the front gate, so I recommended it for our first ride. It wasn’t until we were walking down the exit ramp that Zaira informed me that not only was this her first stand up coaster, but also that it was the first time she’d ever gone upside down on a coaster. Purchasing the photo was a no-brainer at that point.

As a side note, I received all kinds of grief from Z’s mother about my “stealing” her first inversion. Oops…

Photo #002

Obviously, that’s not us riding Psycho Mouse. in fact, that’s a photo of a poster that we found in the Psycho Mouse photo booth on the opening day of California’s Great America in 2008. However, in the spirit of this blog we felt the need to share it with you.

Isn’t that a great digital frame? Unfortunately, Cedar Fair has abandoned it in favor of a simple logo placement on the photos. But at least we have this copy to remember it by.

Should you have a copy of an on-ride photo from Psycho Mouse during the Paramount era please leave a comment or drop us an email as we’d love to get a copy of it from you!