Whenever a celebrity screws up, he or she does the talk-show circuit, apologizing for and explaining his or her behavior, unless he or she is Charlie Sheen. Before I get on with news, I have a few things for which I need to grovel. I throw myself, to paraphrase a certain Lost Boy, at your collective good legs and beg for mercy.

I Didn’t Back Up My Work

Not in the usual way. If you write a column, you should have a couple of spare columns that your editor can pull off the shelf and put up should you find yourself, oh, spending all day in your bathroom doing an imitation of a really disgusting quasar. I did not, so Thursday, there wasn’t a column from me. Not cool. So if you ever see a Fab Knows column that has absolutely nothing current or anything that will link it to a certain date or time, I’m sick or I’m dead. There, that should make everyone feel better!

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Artist’s rendition from the Gemini project. Nat actually me.

I Forgot What “In Order Received” Meant

When I counted the entries for the Mickey giveaway and put them into Random.org, I counted from the top down instead of the bottom up. So the actual winner is Dave Tisue. Dave, check your Facebook Private Messages. Dawn, keep your Mickey. I got another one. Dave, because I screwed up, you’re also getting a Yoda from my personal collection, by way of “sorry I screwed up”. Go big or go home, right?I

Note: I heard from Dave. The figures are on their way later this week and he’s not angry. Phew! Thanks Dave!

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I Totally Blew Off Roller Coaster Day

August 16 was Roller Coaster Day. I love Roller Coaster Day. This one, I’m kind of giving myself a walk on, because I had a death in the family the week before and the D23 EXPO the week after. And let’s face it, for many of us, every day is roller coaster day. As much as I hate the raging heat of California, I don’t think I could bear to live somewhere where amusement parks were closed for the winter. Here’s one of my favorites, Montu at Busch Gardens in Tampa:

Montu2

Onward!

We make mistakes, we beat ourselves up a little, we apologize, we try to make amends, and try to do better in the future, right? Skip right over the tiger blood and the WINNING and let’s get to some NEWS!

Triple Fusion for Fourth Decade

Hasunuma Water Garden in Japan is about to celebrate its 40th anniversary, so they contracted WhiteWater, The ORIGINAL Waterparks & Attractions Company, to do a monster mashup of three of their wildest and greatest experiences: Constrictor™ + Rattler™ + Boomerango™ to create the world’s first triple fusion waterslide, Designed by Slide Path Designer Emily Colombo, the slide features “high-banking turns, crazy oscillations, down scream-inducing drops and into gravity-defying wall climbs” PLUS it’s the first to include AquaLucent rings into a flume of this size – when the sun hits them it creates a dazzling rainbow effect that is amazing. The one thing I don’t know if what it’s proper name will be. I’m looking into it.

So, what does all that falderal mean? Well, here’s the Constrictor, from Wet’n’Wild Phoenix:

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Essentially, it’s a corkscrew, but better. Photo courtesy of Wet’n’Wild Phoenix.

The Rattler is pretty cool; it varies from park to park but has a series of “rattles”, these almost cornucopia-shaped pieces (teardrop? water death trap? fun tunnel?) that you go through and you and your raft, or family raft (depending on size) go nearly vertical, then around and out. The “rattles” vary in, um, pitch and woo(?) so you can go longer or higher depending upon the whim of the water park designer. You can either end up in a pool or a slide end, again, depending upon the water park designer.

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Or even out of a snake’s mouth. Courtesy of WhiteWater

The last of the three is the Boomerango.

, Fab News: The Apology Tour plus a Great Big MCU Tomorrow
It’s like this, but up very, very high.

So, put all those together, plus a bunch of pretty lights. What do you get? WhiteWater says this:

Hasunuma Water Garden - Triple Fusion Waterslide (1) Hasunuma Water Garden - Triple Fusion Waterslide (2)Hasunuma-Water-Garden---Tri

Oscillation? Check. Rattle? Check. Big, swoopy, death-by-height thing? Check. There’s your triple threat, Japan. Maybe when we go there in 2017, we’ll take a day off and give it a try. Maybe.

Feige Lateral

I met Kevin Feige at one of the Marvel events I attended for Jim Hill Media a few years back. They kind of all melt together. Laid-back guy, baseball cap, t-shirt, not the uptight suit-type at all. When I heard tonight from our buds at MouseInfo, where I used to have a column back in the Mike days, that he was able to work things out so that he and co-Marvel Studios prexy Louis D’Esposito are under Alan Horn instead of Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter. It’s better this way for Disney, It’s better this way for Marvel, it’s WAY better this way for Marvel movies, and it is most certainly better this way for MCU Presidential Pair. This is going to be so. Much. Fun. to watch. You know the really awesome Marvel Cinematic Universe movies? Kevin and Louis, under micromanagement and penny-pinching. Let-er rip, fellas!

, Fab News: The Apology Tour plus a Great Big MCU Tomorrow
MCU Prexys D’Esposito and Feige

As a matter of fact, it was Alan Horn, if you recall, who introduced Kevin Feige to the stage for the Walt Disney Studios Live Action session at the D23 EXPO 2015.

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Kevin Feige, Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie and Alan F. Horn

Thanks for sticking around through thick and thin, and thanks for your support. If you want to put your support where your mouth is, or…something, you can patreonize me on Patreon or support me through Square. I appreciate your support, and I appreciate you coming by and reading.

Shelly Valladolid
Shelly Valladolid, aka Fab, has been writing about Disney and theme parks for about two decades. She has written for various fan and pop culture sites, Disney Magazine and OCRegister.com and participated in several books, including Passporter's Disneyland and Southern California and Disney World Dreams. She was co-founder and president of the Orlando, Florida chapter of the NFFC (now Disneyana Fan Club). She taught a class on theme park history at a Southern California University. She is creator and co-owner of Jim Hill Media, one of the creators of MousePlanet and was a consultant on MSNBC, The Motley Fool and others about Disney and various media matters. She was a Heel wrestling manager on TV and a voice artist on the radio in Honolulu, HI, where she grew up. She has a blog and a podcast with her daughter, Mission:Breakout Obsessive Alice Hill. She and her husband, MiceChat columnist Noe Valladolid, live in Southern California with Alice.