On Sunday, I was driving the Legoland theme park and I remembered that the park was reopening Coastersaurus wooden rollercoaster, after a very long refurbishment.

While I am certainly nowhere in the league of WGN Roller Coaster Bureau Chief Marcus Leshock, I do enjoy a good rollercoaster, and the chance to ride a true wooden rollercoaster, is getting much more rare.

So, a friend and I stopped into the park to ride Coastersaurus on its re-opening.

While waiting in line, I saw a news crew from a TV station covering the reopening , and I was a bit shocked to see the crew was from Scripps-owned WFTS in Tampa. I was shocked, because I wasn’t sure in WFTS had any staff left as Scripps continues to make cuts.

WFTS Reporter Maya Sargent, who recently moved from the Scripps station in Tallahassee to Tampa and the WFTS Photographer (sadly, I can’t remember his name, but he’s been at the station 10 years) were nice to talk to as they were gathering the story.

I enjoyed the brief conversation and it is sad to think that Scripps has put many people, as nice as these two, out of work.

It’s not often that I get to run into the local news crews here in Central Florida, but it happens from time to time.

As for the Coastersaurus Rollercoaster, it was not that great, although it had that great wooden rollercoaster sound. I would rank it a 4/10.

In other words, the company was better than the ride.