May 12th, 2001 (10-4pm) [First day of the full season]

I was dropped off at 9:30am and made it down to the Rides Office where I clocked/signed in for the day. My green tag handed me the clipboard for "Pony Parade" [oh joy!] and asked me if I would take the "Granny Bugs" clipboard to the guy that was already down there. After a quick, 'no problem', I was on my way to an exciting day of kids, bells, and ponies.

--"Pony Parade: One of the three kiddie rides in the group near Wildmouse. The children ride in carts behind ponies which bob up and down. All the ride does is go around in a circle, there's no vertical movement at all. The most annoying part of the ride is the little bells that the kids can ring by pulling a string."--

After arriving at my area, I handed my fellow co-worker his clipboard. He quickly asked, "Have you worked these before"?
Me: "Yeah, why?"
Him: "Well, this is my first time working them. What do I do?"
Me: "Turn the key, pull out the E-stop, step down and hold the pedal, push the start button."
Him: "Ok, thanks."
Me: "No prob."

I get to my ride and realize that I have no pen! Oh, the horror! Luckily, I have my backpack with me so I just grab a pen out of there.

I run through a quick check of the ride...
Seat belts: Check
Ride area clean: Check
Lights/sound functional: Check
1 complete ride cycle empty: Uh-oh... this is bad...

The main power switch, which obviously needs to be on in order to run the ride, was locked in the "off" position. Maintenance is supposed to unlock these every morning. Luck was with me today, because the Miniature train was having some problems. A maintenance guy was over there checking it out. After he had finished, I asked him to unlock the ride. He responded with a gruff "yeah, sure" and I was finally able to test and open my ride at 10:15am.

Despite being very, very crowded, the rest of the day was fairly uneventful. There was a 30 minute downpour during the afternoon, but my ride has a roof over it so I didn't get wet or have to shutdown. My breaks were right on schedule today and I had a nice slice of pizza.

At 4:00pm, it was time to head back to the Rides Office to sign out after a hard day of work, ;) , on the "Pony Parade".

At 4:15pm, I met up with my Uncle, Aunt, and 2 cousins for a few hours of ride time...Catch that in the first edition of "At the park"....