You Know It's The Closed Season When...
The closed season is finally upon us. Well, it is for us Brits anyway. And yes I know there are exceptions and special events and blah blah blah but generally speaking, the parks are stone cold closed. And there are certain behaviours that come creeping out of the woodwork that always have me saying 'you know it's the closed season when...'
You Can't Stop Planning Trips
If you're me, and if you're ready this you're probably not, you never really stop planning trips. But come November 1 it shifts from being a tiny part of the hobby to full blown obsession. Every time you open your laptop you have dozens of spreadsheets open filled with dates and lists of parks you want to visit, SkyScanner open in one tab comparing flights and AutoEurope open in another trying to find the cheapest car hire deals.
Of course, most of these trips will never come to fruition, but half the fun is in the planning anyway!
You Suddenly Find Yourself With Loads Of Free Time
You've gone from not having a free date in the calendar to weekend after weekend of sprawling free time and no delicious theme parks to fill it with. How the hell do normal people fill their days off? What do they do? You also suddenly find yourself Googling for any local events that could come under the category of theme parks and costing up just how much money you'll spend if you spend every weekend possible at Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, just to soak in the atmosphere to get your theme park fix if anything.
You're Spending Way Too Much Time On YouTube
I'd love theme park vloggers to release some stats on whether they see a spike in views during the closed season. I know that personally I don't tend to watch a lot of theme park content on YouTube but that does change during the closed season. Watching vlogs is the closest any of us will get to a proper park visit for months so it's a good way of keeping up with the hobby and also reliving fab memories of parks you've visited the season gone by too.
Dirt Is Suddenly Really Interesting
All of a sudden, every minute update from any theme park construction site over the world is hugely interesting. Some random family park in Mongolia is getting a Big Apple you say? How bloody fascinating, tell me more! You become fixated on Screamscape and Facebook and Twitter, desperately refreshing the page for even a glimpse of some kind of behind the scenes activity taking place behind closed doors. And of course, the closed season is a great time to keep an eye on these things as most major parks make their big announcements at this time of year. It is exciting really, but for now it's just scrolling through pictures of dirt and coaster track in car parks...
There's More Than A Week Til Your Next Trip
What do you mean there's more than a MONTH until your next theme park trip?! You stare angrily at your calendar on your phone...surely that can't be right? But yep, sure enough, the old Annual Pass won't be getting much use over these next few months. And it feels weird. For the majority of the year your life kind of becomes structured around park trips and you plan your life around which parks you're visiting and use the visits as a frame of reference for time:
"When's mum's birthday?"
"Oh, it's 3 days after we get back from Phantasialand. Then it's dad's birthday the weekend before we go to Port Aventura"
"Sorted"
You've Started A Countdown To 2018
And yep, the number one telltale sign that it's the closed season is that you've already started your countdown to next season! Only five months to go people, hang in there!
Talk later xoxo,
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