The 2005 Halloween season has been flat in a few ways, sure, but there’s a lot of great, new candy out there. We saw a big batch of it a few weeks ago, but here’s even more new Halloween candy, either completely fresh or in brand new spooky packaging. Or maybe I just didn’t see them last year. On the more depressing side, Lucky Charms cereal is currently available in a special Halloween edition, but it’s the same exact shit as last year, right down to the cutout masks. They could’ve at least swapped some of the marshmallows.
Surrrvey: What are some of the scariest amusement/theme/blah park rides you’ve ever been on? Feel free to provide links if you have ‘em, assuming you know how to do a freakin’ HREF code by now. You’ve already read about my favorite, but here’s another…
The Golden Nugget, also from Wildwood, currently inactive but still standing, so there’s some hope for a revival. My friends and I more simply referred to the ride as “Mine Shaft,” and while it’d later be reformulated with a stupid dinosaur theme, the generalities remained. Riding in a mine cart, you twizzed around a track that had just enough dips and curves to be construed as a roller coasted. The “attractions” inside were greatly varied; some were purely adventure-themed, but others were meant to be frightening. There were a lot of really old, vintage Epcot-style human figurines doing normal mine worker stuff inside, and though they weren’t intended to be scary, they certainly were if you went on the ride solo. All these creepy statues looking at you in the dark. Shivery.
The best part was that, near the end of the ride, you’d actually go outside, on top of the mine. You had a totally awesome view of the entire Wildwood boardwalk from there, and it was distanced just enough from everything else to give you these awesome moments of peaceful solitude, with the ocean winds blowing in your face as various skeletons hit giant rats over the head with hammers in the background.
Posted by Matt. E-mail me!
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Hey Matt- I felt pretty melancholy about my lack of Halloween celebration for a while. Last year it came to a head when I didn’t carve the pumpkins I grew in the back yard. Your writings and ramblings have made me a lot more psyched for Halloween that I have any right to be and I think my enthusiasm has been spreading to some of my friends. Make sure to watch some good horror with your best friends… I think that always helps. And when you pass out the treats (the really good ones that only those of us in the twilight realm between youth and maturity know are *really* the good ones) you’ll see the way the kids look at each other when you hook them up. And even if they say "thanks mister" I think it makes it all worth it! Keep rockin’ Matt!