It's fun to see all of the photos on Facebook from people attending either Coastermania at Cedar Point or HoliWood Nights at Holiday World. As far as events go, those have always been two of my favorites because of the sheer number of friends you're likely to encounter at either one of them. Some of my local friends have managed to work their way into previews for SeaWorld's new coaster in the last few days as well. There's a lot of nerding out right now, for sure!
I made it a point to get up to Cedar Point for their new ride (photos here), and I'll be checking out the SeaWorld ride next week. It's always kind of neat to get in and experience that new ride smell, with the shiny trains and fresh landscaping. I think I've been to about 15 ride openings, which has mostly been constrained by the fact that traveling to more would have been cost prohibitive. As time has gone on though, I've been less inclined to go unless there is a significant social opportunity. These are mostly about, "Which friends can I see that I haven't seen in awhile?" Obviously, moving out west had a lot to do with that change in priority.
I love roller coasters. Any day I can ride one is a pretty good day. In the early oughts, I traveled a lot to ride new coasters, and managed to get my "track record" up over 100 pretty quickly. But around the time that I started having a big of a life crisis, around 2005, my enthusiasm changed. It started to feel like a lot of the rides were close enough in experience that it didn't seem necessary to travel all over. Between Cedar Point and Geauga Lake, and Kings Island on occasion, I had enough to cover what I needed. More importantly, that's where my friends would hang out. While friends have been on 500+ coasters, I'm at 188, and that's OK.
Maybe what I mean is that I'm still a nerd, but not to the extreme that I used to be. Changing priorities, I suppose. I do think that, once Simon is a little more eager to ride new things, and is a few inches taller, I may want to travel more with him for rides.
I can relate to this 100% - back in the early 2000s my whole life was waiting for my next coaster ride. I still enjoy a trip to any park and will have a few geek out moments from time to time, but not it's all about an enjoyable day in the parks with people that are important to me. I'm just as content to walk around with a friend or a date and people watch than anything else. I still (and will always) love coasters and parks, but real life is far more important. I honestly think it's unfortunate for those who never get to that stage of the hobby, because at that point I feel like the fun can actually be removed.