moonhare

In talking about the Renaissance Center in the past bunnyhugger warned it was really easy to accidentally drive into Canada. My scouting the route we were to take indicated it was really easy to get there --- I-96 to I-696 to M-10 and that drops us off downtown where we can follow the signs, with an icon of the Renaissance Center that does not at all make it look like it's giving you the middle finger. And it was really easy and sure enough, it drops you off in the lanes to turn off into Canada. We avoided this fate --- we had friends who did not --- and got to the parking garage where I had, through the courtesy of a link on the Motor City Furry Con chat, reserved three days of parking with in-and-out privileges. We never once took the car out of the garage until it was time to go home, although I did move it from the third floor to the second, right by the pedestrian bridge to an entrance of the Renaissance Center that was now permanently closed. We'd add a bunch of outdoor walking time hiking over to the bridge from the next parking garage over, so, we could have had a more convenient time of it but the parking charges would have been higher. Something to consider for next year, though.

I had never been to the Renaissance Center before, nor had reason to, so I didn't know what to expect, but ``gloriously 70s architecture'' was what I received and what I would most hope to receive. There were so many oddly placed walls of that staggered-vertical-brick styling, and weird curves, and levels that slowly rose or fell, and it was beautiful. The main tower is a circle, of course, and what we came to realize was that between the elevators at the center, and the conference hall space around the rim, and a ring partway in between, was that the conference spaces had the pattern of a wheel with spokes. And the spokes were not the same on all floors, nor all one over the over. There's hope of telling where you are just looking around, although it could be better. Maybe the renovation will add carpet coloring or something.

We got there with something like an hour before we could check into the hotel, so got our badges and pocket guides and bunnyhugger got the last full program book they had in the room. We figured they'd restock and we could grab another one, and they did restock, and we never got back there. So bunnyhugger has our only tangible evidence of whatever the full conbook looks like.

Checking in led to our discovery of just how aggravating the elevators could be. There's a central bank of a dozen, with half of them going only up to the 40th floor (the fitness center). The other half go through the convention space floors (one through five), and then 40 and up. We were on floor 53, for the record, which meant we got very familiar with that sense of relief that we had passed floor five, or floor 40, and were in the express section, which the elevator labelled 'EZ' for some reason, to the other half of the hotel tower world. Also we got very familiar with the elevator's voice recording about how to access the guest levels, by tapping your key card to this sensor while pressing your floor button.

Or maybe pressing it and then pressing your floor button. Nobody seemed to agree what to do, but some of the time it didn't work whatever you did, and maybe someone would give you helpful advice to do it the other way. Also sometimes it wouldn't let you enter a higher floor if the elevator was going down, or vice-versa, except sometimes it did. It will stun you to know the elevators spent a lot of the convention going slowly, or down entirely. The one happy thing about spending Friday night going out to the car in the vain search for bunnyhugger's hat is I got to experience the thrill of going all the way from 53 down to 1, and vice-versa, without an interruption.

Our room turned out to be on the side with a view of the Detroit River, and the ice flowing past it, all the way into Canada. At night, the farther lights of houses would twinkle, just like stars would. Also we could look down into towers that I suppose were former GM Headquarters places; one was clearly an abandoned office, with torn-up carpeting and construction stuff littering the floors. I loved the view; bunnyhugger, more worried about heights than me, did not, but she got a little more accustomed to it over time. Still, being this high up meant we had an elevator wait and a good-sized ride whenever we wanted to go back to the hotel for anything. This was more convenient than MCFC's where we were at the hotel across the street, but was still a price in time if we wanted to get to the room.

Unpacked and, we figured, prepared, we got

Now let's spend some time with Six Flags America again, back on the 1st of July.

Oh yeah, I realized I should take a picture of the carousel's ride sign. I don't know how far back the sign goes but it seems plausible it's something like a pre-Six-Flags design.

Then to the more clearly Six Flags stuff; here's a water fountain with a heap of Looney Tunes characters.

And the inevitable statue of Pepe Le Pew and Whatsername in the romantic setting of ... outside a Johnny Rockets.

Camp Groove seems like a name that might predate the Six Flags takeover of the park. There weren't any shows scheduled, of course, as it was the 4th of July week and who goes to amusement parks for shows for that?

I believe the Prop Warehouse was a funhouse and that we were too tall for it, or maybe too tall unaccompanied by kids.

Ah yeah, see, that part of the side is why I thought it was a funhouse and also that I don't have the knees to go on such.

Trivia: The United States sent two hockey tems to the 1948 St Mortiz Winter Olympics, one selected by the Amateur Athletic Union with the support of the United States Olympic Committee, and the other selected by the Amateur Hockey Association with the support of the Ligue International de Hockey sur Glace (the body responsible for endorsing the participation of national hockey teams for the Olympics). The AAU claimed complete amateur status, while the AHA accepted professional players. The controversy over which to accept and which was in line with the Olympics spirit led, briefly, to the elimination of hockey from the schedule and then a compromise where hockey was kept in the program, but the AHA team's games were not counted in the final standings. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

You may ask, ``Austin, isn't mid-February like two or three months too early to talk about Motor City Furry Con, much less attend it?'' And you would ordinarily be right. However, furry conventions are the last part of the United States economy that are actually growing, and MCFC has reached the point where it's nearly as big as Midwest FurFest was around 2012 when we stopped attending. It reached the point where the Eagle Crest Or Whatever hotel complex in Ypsilanti could not really fit it, and they had to go looking for a larger venue.

That search for a larger venue, in southeast Michigan, leads to pretty near exactly one venue, Detroit's Renaissance Center. And so, moving is what they did. The costs could be, besides everything being more expensive, that at least the first year they had to take ``whatever weekend Ren Cen is willing to give you'' rather than ``a weekend we like''. In future years, with good behavior, they might get back to their early-spring weekend.

But this year it would have to be Valentine's Day weekend, which I think went into one of the things that made me angry on Saturday. Also, incidentally, the weekend of bunnyhugger's parents' birthdays, which meant we had to miss, particularly, her mother having a milestone birthday. We hope to make up for that this weekend.

The good side of the move is abundant more space, and space to expand, since the Ren Cen has about seventy floors and since General Motors moved out over eight hours before the con they need stuff to fill the place. There were actually significant other groups at the hotel this same weekend, so there's space for furries to crowd people out. Been ages since MCFC faced that option.

But for now? One of the very irritating constraints is that the hotel was only willing to give the con one floor for event space, which squeezed their panel space down to the point that almost no small events could happen. bunnyhugger's Rabbits-and-Rodents and my Raccoons-and-Family gettogether panels were rejected, rejected!, which is hard to fathom. Well, the Raccoons was probably easy given they did make space for a Trash Animals meetup and there'd be considerable overlap. But there wasn't anything close to Rabbits-and-Rodents on the shrunken event schedule.

Which brings out insult to injury: a couple weeks before the convention, the hotel agreed to give them two floors for event space, so there was suddenly room for way more panels, well after all the panelists had been told no. I don't know how they went looking for people to fill things out but however they did it, they didn't get to us. And the convention would be short of panel events we wanted to get to. As the hat disaster unfolded, that was probably for the best since Saturday we were not in a mood for anything, but a con with too much space feels flimsy.

And despite this space, the convention would not have a fursuit parade, the first time MCFC has missed one. But the convention-specific space on the third and fourth floors didn't have space, they judged, for one. The first floor had plenty of space, but it's also a part of the Ren Cen that prohibits full-face coverings. Even if that could be waived, there's no getting all the suiters down to the first floor except by overloaded elevators and dangerously narrow escalators. Also we never figured how to take escalators from the third floor down to the first (the second floor is a partial floor leading to the Detroit People Mover).

Over time we started to get a handle on where everything was and even got comfortable with the two floors of the event space where the con happened. This could be a comfortable new home for the convention, as long as it isn't hat weather.

So sometime next year, most like, the Renaissance Center is going to be closing for major renovations. Rumors are for things as dramatic as tearing down two of its five towers and chopping a bunch of hotel space out --- the center is an all-hotel-room tower --- for condos instead. Depending on the timing it may be that MCFC will be kicked out of the Ren Cen for 2027, possibly 2028. The old home in Ypsilanti, which they could return to if they shrink the con, is also slated to be demolished for some kind of foundation problems. So the convention might end up anywhere or nowhere, for all that.

Let's take time for more focus on the carousel at Six Flags America, which I imagine is going wherever good fiberglass goes when it expires.

Giraffes aren't unheard-of on carousels but they also really stand out when they are there.

Looking to the inner rows you get eccentric choices like a purple horse or a green tiger.

And now to some control-panel shots. These are, I assume, standardized recordings of loading and unloading announcements and announcements for the case of a weather delay or the ride being shut for other reasons.

And here's the gadgets to count rides and, probably, passengers. I assume this is since the operator came on since it was past 2 pm at this point and there's no way it only rode three times that late in the day.

The main control panel. See? It was like 2:40 pm.

And here's the whole control center together.

Trivia: As teams withdrew from the 1932 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, Sweden and other nations proposed postponing the Games until economic conditions improved, as they could not finance their athletes. Canada, France, and Sweden complained that the Americans were not providing a high enough exchange rate to let them fund full teams. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. Herbert Hoover did exempt foreign participants from the usual passport and visa fees, so don't say he did nothing to alleviate the Depression, okay?

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

This week in my humor blog: a double dose of comic strip plot recaps, some useless home advice, and my dentist gets all clingy. Want to know more? Follow any of these links and you will.

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 4: Host Sketch
• What's Going On In Flash Gordon? Did Ming and Bok get atom-grenade-blasted? December 2025 - February 2026
• Statistics Saturday: Some Things You Ought Not Run Through The Washing Machine
• Robert Benchley: ``Name, Please?''
• Read to the End for the Most Blandly Shocking Revelation
• What's Going On In Mary Worth? What With the Pompous Axx? November 2025 - February 2026
• Keep on Smiling?
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 5: Freddy Gets a Message

Let's see if we can't finish that tour of Six Flags America historical panels and the grammatical problems count.

2014, they add the thing that one goes to a theme park in one of the Thirteen Colonies: a Mardis Gras section. No grammatical problems here but the Bourbon Street Fireball was a Larson Giant Loop and while there are people who call that a coaster we do not invite them to stay for dinner. Eight grammatical problems out of 13.

2016, they impose virtual reality on Superman: Ride of Steel. I'm dinging this for grammar because the phrasing suggests they had a virtual reality experience on Holiday In The Park, and also suggests that the virtual reality roller coaster ran five years. I can't find how long the virtual reality coaster lasted but I'm going to bet not that long. Nine problem panels out of 14.

2017: that elevated swings ride appears. Ten problem panels out of 15, as the sentence about The Wild One's centennial [nb] is a muddle.

2021: Delay from 2020, you say? And Spinsanity too the place of Dare Devil Dive, huh? Eleven problem panels out of 16.

And finally, 2024, the final panel in the park's historical parade, and we return to our old friend, the wrong it's. The tally stands at twelve problem panels out of 17.

There's no grammatical errors here, just a picture including a guy who looks uncannily like one of bunnyhugger's relatives, enough that we texted them to tease about this.

Back to SteamTown. We wanted to get on that weird ride you can see behind the enormous tree, but if I remember right, there weren't any operators around just then.

They apparently had Old West gunfighting shows! But not when we visited.

So back to the carousel, for some more pictures of glossy animals with numbers that suggest some of these mounts have been moved around.

Rhino looks like the sun is just too much for them.

There isn't a full rounding board but there are tiger heads disappointed in you.

There's also elephants who wonder how long this is going to go on.

Trivia: 112 people (athletes, officials, and spectators) received fractures or broken bones while maneuvering on the snow (over fifty inches!) at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

I'll probably start on Motor City Furry Con come Friday. Today, busy but also TCM was showing My Fair Lady, which is the best sort of musical to watch because there's enough earwormy songs that they overload you and cancel each other out and leave your head clear.

Anyway it's got me thinking about Henry Higgins's entire deal. He's big on the idea that the English should speak English correctly. He's familiar with all the many varieties of dialect and accent and word choice but the whole plot kicks off with the idea that he can teach anyone to crush their distinctiveness out. But he's also motivated by the idea that this puts all English speakers on an even footing, that speaking Movie Received Pronunciation is a way to demolish the classicism that divides people.

And that's the dichotomy of a standard, isn't it? A standard is freedom; it will work equally for everyone. But a standard is imprisonment; everyone must fit themselves to it. Why can't a thing only have the good parts?

Let me continue the parade of Six Flags America's Grammatically Almost Right historical posters.

So after a spot of trouble the park closed and reopened and got its fourth wrong it's out of five.

Yes, Mind Eraser was the name of Professor Screamore's SkyWinder and the wild thing is it had that name before Six Flags bought the place. I assume the Crazy Horse Saloon is what became the SteamPub. And six panels in they still have only four wrong-it'ses. The -'s are a little dubious but I think we can allow that for the purpose of this text.

Then in 1998 their owners bought Six Flags and we get two error-free panels in a row!

Pausing for a moment here of a map of the park from the days of Coyote Creek. Sometime in the 90s.

And then the totally different look the park had in 1997 as seen in a reproduction of the park guide for the year.

There were a couple little bits of ride pieces; I imagine this was taken off the Pirates Flight.

Concept art for the entrance, which is pretty close to what the entrance looked like when we were there. They mostly changed the approach to the entrance to add metal detectors.

No it's errors on this eighth panel, but ``rollers coasters'' is an unforced error. I assume some style guide required them to put JOKER and TWO-FACE in all caps but that needless space in TWO- FACE is another flop. So that's a count of five bad panels.

Superman brings us to nine panels, only five of them with problems.

2001 saw the introduction of Batwing, a dangling-participle coaster, that we went to the park three days in a row hoping to see open, without success. But we heard later that the final day we were there it had a rare moment of working, so, shame. We missed it. Also, it's sloppy to talk about the end of the early-2000's coaster wars without mentioning the beginning or their existence or anything. Six problem panels out of ten. (Having written that, I'm not sure this really is dangling. It feels awkward to me, and I don't have any confidence that the author of these knows what they're doing, and resolving a thing without introducing it is a problem, so I'll ding it.)

2005 saw the return of our old friend the wrong it's. Seven problem problems out of eleven.

2012 adds another wrong it's, and whiffs on the spelling of Apocalypse. The recent renaming I suppose explains why it was the only roller coaster with specific merchandise but, really, how did The Wild One not get anything? Eight problem panels out of twelve.

Trivia: Sarajevo's original budget for the 1984 Olympic Games was about $160 million. A referendum for higher taxes to pay for construction was supported by 96 percent of the voters. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. The book doesn't say if that was 1984 US dollars or the book-publication-2004 dollars. It notes that about that time Yugoslavia saw inflation of about 50 percent so one imagines any budget figures are really just ``bunches of money''.

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

We went to Motor City Furry Con this past weekend and, not to spoil things, we didn't have a great time. I haven't had the energy to start writing that up yet so you're getting a double dose of Six Flags America photos, from the full day we spent there.

But I can at least share a small side anecdote from today when I went to bunnyhugger's parents' home to pick up our pet rabbit. (bunnyhugger had to work; I had the day off for the state holiday.) Besides getting them a half-dozen paczki to thank them I wanted to get a pop for myself and the nearest Freestyle coke machine --- so I could get a Mello Yello Zero Citrus Twist --- was at Wendy's. The drive-through line was about 362 cars deep so I went inside, instead, and asked for a large fountain drink cup. The clerk handed it to me, I started to pay, and she said ``nah, you're good''.

I offered again to pay and she said nah, she didn't care, it's just the cup. Part of me wanted to protest that I was also getting the pop but I finally remembered I could act like a normal person instead and say thank you and maybe that's kind of you. And to appreciate that sometimes something's going on at a Wendy's and the cashier just does not care about collecting money for the pop machine. Lucky break, huh?

As promised, Six Flags America pictures:

The seats for the Firebird ride, which much like Mantis-to-Rougarou was converted from a standing train to a floorless. Here, the floor's in hiding.

Track of Firebird, with The Wild One behind it. In the middle you can see the miniature railroad, which wasn't running any of the days we visited.

Six Flags America logo that finally shows some localization to it.

The entrance I mentioned that goes underneath The Wild One, into the inevitable Gotham City part of the park.

I was excited to see they had a super-round-up ride; I always like those. Ah, but ...

That's right, the ride wasn't running. The promise it would open later in the season seemed touching; we wondered how much effort they were putting into getting a ride open for at most three months or so.

Riddle-Me-This's ride inspection sticker and certificate, showing the ride was looked at that year at least. The Certificate of Inspection lists as governor Larry Hogan, which was most recently true in 2023.

bunnyhugger pointed out the Joker's Jinx ride had some nice HA decorations around it. Or, from this point of view, a bit AH on top of these poles.

The elevated swings ride was not as tall as Windseeker, but was down part of the day anyway.

And the ride is Wonder Woman themed --- the ``Lasso of Truth'' --- with an entrance that kind of suggests Wonder Woman unwisely gazed upon Medusa and got petrified. Although I guess she was created from stone originally? In some versions of the story? So maybe she's just being normal.

Here I noticed there was a good angle to show what kind of a spaghetti bowl the Joker's Jinx was, and now you see it too.

The last big bit of money put into the park was for Steam Town, a redevelopment of the western area into something More Steampunky. There's a roller coaster in there too, so we're in there.

Trivia: Germany's team won the four-man bobsled team in the 1952 Oslo Olympics with a team weighing a total 472 kilograms, about 1040 pounds. After this the international federation for bobsled and tobogganing limited the weight of future teams to 400 kilograms, 880 pounds. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. (They actually voted for the limit shortly before the games --- team weights had been spiralling --- but it did not take effect until after.)

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

With pictures, I've got into July, and the day we planned to spend nearly open to close at Six Flags America. Please remember while looking over these pictures that it was incredibly freaking hot.

Six Flags America started as a much smaller place and that's probably why the entrance was such a nothing exit on a four-lane highway.

You could easily drive right past and not even know it was there, in a way that reminded me of Canada's Wonderland.

The entrance, and parking lot, had plenty of trees and nice pleasant tall ones though.

I realized afterward we were never going to get a good picture of the entry booths, so here, have this zoomed-in picture instead. Also note the parking lot locator signs have ride pictures.

Again, you claim to be Six Flags America but I'm only seeing eight flags.

One of the midway buildings with Looney Tunes characters done up as founding fathers.

Oh, they ... didn't take down the National Ride Operator Day sign. All right then.

Evidence of park history: the entrance midway ends at a creek, with a good-size footbridge over it. But there's also this closed off and much narrower bridge that ends at nothing, now. What purpose did that serve, and when did it last serve that?

I wonder if it wasn't the queue for a ride, and that it was more trouble to remove the bridge than to just block it off. But how long ago must it have been that the ride was removed if the ground is that much reclaimed by grass?

On to roller coasters! The other wooden coaster they had here was called Roar, and how could an old furry not like that?

Some of the big ol' heap of wood that makes up Roar. It almost looks like a demonstration of truss design.

Roar's loading station. Note that the A gets a different color, in color logos, a thing we noticed in several rides before we figured out what that might be for.

Trivia: In the 1924 Chamonix Winter Olympics women were allowed to compete only in figure skating; other events were judged too strenuous and perhaps dangerous to their ability to bear children. Women were finally allowed to compete in skiing events in 1948, and in speed skating in 1960. In 1998 women debuted in ice hockey, and in 2002, bobsledding, all events from the first winter games. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 84: A Man in a Moon, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.