“We call it the last ride,” said Krausert with a chuckle. “We bury you in a coffin. You hear sounds — the guys loading you into the hearse, you smell the exhaust from the car, you smell flowers (in the hearse), you smell dirt as you are being buried. It’s a two- to three-minute ride that puts you through the process of what it is like to be buried alive.”

For the fall the park has a new program called “lock-ins,” keeping skaters in the park from 9 p.m. until 9 a.m. These all-nighters, which will also include a pancake breakfast, will typically run once a month, plus once a week during school vacations. Every “lock-in” will feature a specific theme. One theme the park plans to implement is Pirate Night, which encourages participants to dress or talk like a pirate to win prizes.

Flying dogs, and clowns, and elephants, oh my!
No, it’s not a new twist on “The Wizard of Oz,” and there won’t be anu flying monkeys. But The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is coming to town with its all new presentation, Over the Top.

“To me biopics have the added thrill of watching the lines that blur between reality and fantasy, biography and art,” said Film Outreach Coordinator Chris Curtis. “The viewer resides within a mysterious triangle composed of historical account, versus the perception of the filmmakers, versus one’s own biases about what may be true and what may be artistic elaboration.”