Paramount's Hollywood Stunt Spectacular
Special Visitors


Hey everybody; I'm back in Orlando now and resting up over the Memorial Day weekend at my parent's condo in Daytona Beach. The weather has been very nice, the beach is enjoyable and the temperature is WARM. I've waited for months for this and finally I have to deal with sunburns, Jeep tops and deodorant instead of jackets, rain boots and long underwear.
Thank God!
Looking over the pictures I've noticed that we had a lot of visitors. Yea, I know, you think I'm writing about the visitors that entered thru the gates, sit in the stands, “Oooh” when the bikes almost crash together and react when the flames leap in front of them. Those are fun visitors and we certainly had lots of those, but as you know, they come and go. Other than the money they pay at the front gate and mess that they leave behind in the stands, they are just regular friends and you just come to expect them. In fact, you tend to ignore them when they are present and miss them when they are gone. Funny actually.

The visitors that I’m referring to were not expected and have caused some interesting problems that nobody could have anticipated.

The most obvious visitor was Ricky the raccoon who stayed with us on the site for a couple days, watched a bunch of shows from the third floor roof and generally enjoyed himself. I got the feeling that when Tank 1 and the liquid flame effects went off, Ricky didn’t really like it that much. Since we didn’t bother him too much, he felt comfortable and stuck around even through the commotion.

Unfortunately everyone didn’t feel comfortable with Ricky sticking around as much as he did, so animal control placed a trap full of some yummy chicken (left over from one of the park restaurants…just like he likes it.) The next morning he was safely moved from his third floor perch back to the woods on the far side of the park where there aren’t so many motorcycles and flame units.
Then a visitor that absolutely nobody saw coming made her appearance on the set. She had, in fact, been there for quite some time without any human taking notice. Rich had to fold the crane down because the new flag came in which was to replace the Jolly Rodger at the top of the crane. It was when he got the bulk of the unit on the ground that he noticed our second “Special Visitor.”
In case you’ve never seen a crane folded in half, this image above is of the first knuckle of the crane, about half way up on the vertical support. A bird had come in, noticed a new leafless but very sturdy tree type with some great access to a hidden hole right in the middle. “What a great place to put my spring time egg nest” mamma bird thought to herself as she immediately started shuttling twigs and leaves to the new nesting area. By the way, when Rich was done with the crane, the eggs were left untouched and the crane was stood back up without significant disturbance to the eggs. As far as we know, the momma bird came back and was never the wiser.

Now, here are the strangest visitors we’ve had on the site. Technically, these visitors kept off the site and left us all alone.In fact, we never noticed that they were even here until I looked at this set of pictures with some other people and we then started noticing them.

Yes, this is the SR tunnel and a photo of the biker at the top of the show getting prepped for the first jump between the audience. These riders are here all the time. The visitors that I’m discussing are found in the trees behind him and over his shoulders.

In case you can’t see the faces, I’ve cropped a copy of this photo and circled the faces to make it clearer. Some are easier to see than others but I’ll describe them in the order that I saw them.

1) Bottom right corner, small face with a long nose. This guy jumped right out at me and made me start looking more. He’s a little spooky and has a slightly mean face on him. I especially don’t like his Pinocchio nose; almost as if I expect it to grow the more he talks.

2) Upper right corner. This face is two eyes, no visible nose and a bearded face. It’s a little harder to see but once you see it, he sticks with you. I’m OK with this face – he seems kind and gentle.

3) Small alien center above rider’s head. Nathan my oldest son pointed this out to me.

4) Large alien around the small alien. This is a little obscured but the eyes are clearly visible, possibly even crying about the state of the Earth as humans have left it. Whatever.

5) Motorcycle cop just below Canadian Flag. My father pointed this out to me. He’s wearing dark sunglasses in the style of C.H.I.P.S. and the bridge of his nose is just above head #1.

I’m sure that if you look closely and have a reasonable amount of beer or wine, you too can find even more faces than we have. If I were you, I’d watch out for the visitors. There’s out there and they are interesting in being seen…you just have to know where to look for them.

Sleep well,

Chris Hartwell
Hartwell AVD Inc.