(July 3rd, 10-4pm)

I came into work after a day at Dorney. Tidal Force looks HUGE compared to White Water Landing. I mean -- HUGE! Anyway... I clocked in like normal and headed out to the "morning meeting". Since I haven't really explained, in detail, what these meetings consist of, I'll do so now.

The employees go to the gazebo at the Wildcat entrance and sit down and talk for about 15 minutes until Bill (the supervisor of our group) shows up. He just tells us anything we're doing wrong and reminds us of a few rules and things we can be doing better. Even though overrall, he says, "You guys are doing a great job". He then gives us our ride assignments and out we go. This particular day, I was headed up to Wildcat (yes!).

Or... no! What?! Wildcat was going to be down for awhile. Why?? It was struck by lightning during the storm on Sunday. What storm -- oh yeah, I didn't work on Sunday. My... poor... poor... ride.

Yes, Wildcat was struck by lightning -- the computer was fried, along with a few sensors. Maintenance was working the main control panel when I got up to the station. It was now 10:05am. There were four of us assigned to 'cat. One was at front line explaining our "situation" to guests using the most general terms as possible. "Breakdown -- not sure when we're going to reopen -- etc.."

Around 12:00pm, maintenance got the panel up and running -- but they still didn't have a replacement computer and, therefore, couldn't run their diagnostic software. We were instructed to "just keep sending out empty trains until we get the computer". Around 1:15, they got the computer, installed the software, found that they had fixed everything that was broken, and then [finally] gave us the "go ahead" to reopen at 1:30pm.

The rest of the day was uneventful, but I had lots of fun. The Wildcat is simply a blast to operate! I'm glad it's back up and running thanks to hard work of the Hersheypark maintenance team... or something like that.