I haven’t gotten around to making that Astroland trip report since I’ve been busy lately, however, I did manage to whip up this video of my most recent trip to Coney Island. It features a lot of Astroland’s rides and Coney Island attractions in a video set to “Feels Like Tonight” by Daughtry.
You can download the full quality file here (33mb) or watch the YouTubed version.
This isn’t an amusement related topic but I do feel the need to comment on this…
Shea Stadium closed its doors for the final time on Sunday night. It could have stayed open for a little while longer but my Metsies found a way to screw that ALLLLLL up! Once again the Mets’ season went right down to the last game of the season and ONCE AGAIN they lose on the last day. On the other hand, the Brewers won under a complete game 4 hitter from CC Sabathia, securing them the wildcard spot. The Brewers celebrate, the Phillies and their mouthy fans laugh in the Mets and their fans faces, the spoiler Marlins openly congratulate each other on our field, and the Mets sulk and pout like that bum Aaron Heilman.
The Mets need to do something different next season, not just go out and sign one big name player and call it a day. They need to revamp the entire bullpen, get some bats, and redeem themselves to their disheartend fans. My armchair GM inner senses say that they need to get K-Rod, Fransisco Rodriguez, to fill the closer role because right now we have Lus Ayala. Billy Wagner, our real closer, isn’t coming back. He threw his last pitch with the Mets this past season so we should just up and get a closer. As for middle releif, as least get someone like Brian Fuentez.
AS for starting pitching, since we’ll most likely be without Pedro, why don’t they look into AJ Burnett? He’s a good pitcher but prone to injuries…it’s a risk we should take though. Also, re-sign Oliver Perez, we need him! Considering that signing all those players would cost a ton of money, let’s take cues from the Bronx Bastards across the way and make money a non-factor. Well then Manny Ramierez should be signed as our new left fielder!
Pedro is actually a special case. I think the Mets should offer him a contract for a 1 million with a 10 million incentive if he wins 15 games. If he refuses and wants to same old “Pedro money” then they should tell him to go scratch. This isn’t Montreal Expos Pedro anymore, it’s post surgery Pedro. A Pedro who is still searching for a way to reinvent himself as a pitcher.
As for players that should not see a Mets uniform next year, here’s my list:
Finally I’dl ike to say that I’m going to miss the hell out of Shea Stadium and hate how the Mets are getting a small stadium in CitiField! I saw my first big league ballgame there and have been there many times through the years. People might say that the stadium was a dump, mostly Phillies fans with their little deluxo minor league park. Well Shea was our, the fans, dump! But one thing that put Shea apart from other venues was that the place had such an electric astmosphere. When a go-ahead homerun was scored at Shea, the decibel level from cheering fans was off the scale. Even during one game when the Mets looked dead down by 5 runs in the 9th. I stayed around to the end with maybe 8,000 others and watched as the Mets mounted a rally. They eventually lost the game by one run, but the remaining fans made enough noise to put a full capacity Citizens Bank Park to shame.
I think any website owner likes to pour over stats, I know I do! Besides the fact that it’s fun to see trends it’s also somehting you have to do in order to see what could be improved or what simply should be axed. Luckily for DoD3, I don’t have to worry about the axing part yet as I still have a nice amount of space and bandwidth. So, you all wanna see my stats? No? Well too damn bad, becasue here they are!
Let’s start with some Alexa stats. Alexa runs a ‘traffic ranking’ service that shows what position pages are on the internet. For example as of today, Yahoo has a traffic rank of ‘1’ meaning that it’s the most heavily visited site on the internet. The site Theme Park Review has a traffic rank of 30,342 meaningthat it’s a popular site but 30,000+ sites have a better rating.
That’s shit basically. However in the past 3 months my site has shot up the traffic rankings by 7,178,439! That’s not bad I guess, it means that my site is gaining popularity…but is still sitting around in the internet boon docks.
Here’s a few stats from Statcounter, my page counter of choice.
That’s ok I guess…just ok.
Statcounter also allows me to see what keywords were used to fine my site through search engines. Here are some of them for this week:
Google Devolper Tools has some neat features as well. One particular feature allows me to see what search terms were used when my site gets listed in Google’s search engine, and how often. Unfortunately this is the result…
Ah shit! Er…no pun intended. And before anyone thinks I’m some sick asshole, the reason for ‘scat’ listing my site is becasue I have a WTCR review of the Venture manufactured Scat ride. Luckily my site’s listing is pretty far down according to the stats. Still, I’ve gotten quite a few hits in the past from the keywords ‘scat’ and ‘scat hub.’
So that’s my stats for now! Until next time…
Astroland Amusement Park closed on Sunday and as far as everyone knows, it’s for good. Unlike last year, another year’s lease simply did not come to fruition. It’s sad seeing a piece of Coney Island history closing, especially when the lot may very well sit vacant next year while zoning is still an issue. The Coney Island Cyclone, operated by Astroland, will be staying of course, being a landmark and all.
While I didn’t manage to get there on Sunday for the closing, I made sure to pay my last respects on Friday (as always, trip report will follow.) On that day I arrived at 6pm and stayed till 12 midnight when the rains of Tropical Storm Hanna finally drove me out; much like how Thor Equities is driving out the businesses on the Coney Island boardwalk.
Some might say that Astroland was a hole in the wall; those people are obviously spoiled by Bolliger & Mabillard coasters and Disney-esque themeing. An amusement park doesn’t need to look nice to be great, especially a place like Astroland that had a good length of history behind it. As far as I’m concerned, the rides at Astroland were scores better than any Six Flags or Cedar Fair owned park that I’ve been to. I mean, when was the last time that you could get some 20 flips on a Top Spin or be spun for nearly six minutes at full speed on a Breakdance? You would be lucky to get three flips on a chain owned Top Spin!
A lot of it came down to the ride ops that seemed to enjoy working on the rides. Take the aforementioned Breakdance with its enthusiastic lot of characters; interacting with riders over the mic and giving people their absolute money’s worth with lengthy spins. Or the Top Spin; while the ride operator would never say all that much I seem to remember peering over at him while in line only to see a huge smile slapped across his face as he dealt out a manually controlled series of flips. Whether his smile was for liking his job or delighting in rider torture was negligible because dammit, he was having fun in any case! Or perhaps the Pirate Ship where one could “take it to the train station” with a voyage that would 
make A Perfect Storm look like a sunny day.
This park will be dearly missed; I wish the best for the workers of Astroland, and the future of Coney Island itself. I urge everyone to be there next year on Sunday April 5th, 2009 for the opening of the Cyclone roller coaster.
Here, have a spin on the Breakdance on me…
I took this video of the ‘Cortina Bob,’ a Fabbri manufactured Crazy Dance, on Sunday at the Great Allentown Fair. You don’t see a Crazy Dance ride too often…especially one themed after bobselds. The ride went fairly fast, for Crazy Dance standards, and had some nice effects. The only things I didn’t like about this ride was that the sound system wasn’t that great and that they used the awful “canned mic man” to do all of the announcements.
