Thursday we went to Paramount’s Kings Island. The powers that be chose to bestow upon me a great honor, a new sensation and experience….ride induced nausea. After riding the Sling Shot twice in a row and then Delirium I was feeling very nauseas for the first time after riding rides. This was not good. Long have I delighed in the great rides of the amusment parks. Long ago I lost the power to not vomit on the spiny rides, but the great attractions? How could this be? Was I doomed to never enjoy the great works of man again? After 32oz of Coke and some rest I’m glad to say I was ready to go again. I think the double Sling Shot and Delirium was a bad combo to do in 30 minutes.
To rest up from the nausea we decided to go visit the water park, Boomerang Bay.
This was the first time I had been to a water park since I was very young so I was looking forward to it even though I’m pretty much in the worst shape of my life, unless “the perfect shape” happens to be an amorphous blob. Anyway, it was quite crowded, wall to wall people, or rather fence to fence people.
The joys of money…. We rented a cabana for the rest of the day, 3.5 hours since the park closed at 7pm. The cabana was great! It has a stocked fridge, munchies, tables and lounge chairs. The cabana boy said he’d take our order for food or bar items as well. We had a base of operations from which to venture out into the hordes of wet people.
The rides were fun even though I swear the water was shipped in from the artic only minutes before we arrived. The last ride of the water park day for us was Tazmanian Typhoon. It was about 6:30 and the line was pretty small since most people were taking off for the day. However this also meant that it was rather cool at the top of the ride. Add to the cool air a breeze that was blowing the icy water off the ride into a nice freezing mist and by the time it was our turn to get into the inner tube my teeth were chattering. The water was freezing and the attendant apologized saying the water usually wasn’t so cold. The entrance to the ride is through a waterfall of nice freezy water. And then it gets dark. Totally all encompassing deep in the earth dark. I had the good fortune to be going down backwards facing Traci, so in addition to being dark every dip and turn was entirely unexpected. I saw Traci’s face light up and hear her say “here it comes” and I knew something was about to happen. We shot out of the tube and into the big funnel and right up one side pretty damn far. We oscillated back and forth a few more times before being shot out the end of the funnel. It was a total blast. One fun ride even if the water was like the hand of death.
After that we cleaned up and headed back into the rest of the amusement park until it closed at 10pm. We managed the front seat, front car of The Beast just minutes before the fireworks went off. As always front car of the beast at night was spectacular. I call it “Being a hood ornament.”