Our love of amusement parks is well known to our friends and family. There was a time 30 years ago when we left our 4 and 5 year old boys with Karen's parents and headed out across the USA to ride roller coasters for 5 weeks. I know, we're bad parents. BUT, most times we took them with us!
So here we are retired and without the boys again and we are back to doing amusement parks without them. Today we visited Valleyfair!. (Yes, they spell it with and "!".) This is a park we have been to before and with our sons.
There were only a few of us heading for the rides when the rope dropped, signalling the opening of the park. We headed back to a coaster we hadn't been on before and stopped off at the Wild Mouse to get our feet wet in coastering again.
Further on we found the queue line for Renegade. A lone bald guy was riding it as we got up to the station. We hopped on the train in the second to the last seat and enjoyed a most amazing ride on a wooden roller coaster. This thing is 7 years old and it is as smooth riding as the newer steel coasters.
We rode it about 3 times in a row before heading for lunch (Panda Express) and then other rides in the park.
The cool thing about being at a park this time of year is that most of them are enticing fans to attend by having Halloween Haunt Nights with themed Halloween things everywhere. Tombstones in the pathways, special scary stuff in the rides, characters in costumes, themed stuff for the kids to do, and corn stocks everywhere. We aren't fans of Halloween but it did make the park more interesting.
Sundays (today) were reserved for children and Halloween so it wasn't a "scare" day. The kids dressed up and got to go trick-or-treating at the different venues by using their map.
Karen remembered that the last time she'd been here she got heat stroke and had to go sit in the air-conditioned car and drink water. She has such a remarkable memory for the details of our life.
She also remembered that Brian and I rode and rode and rode the Wild Thing roller coaster. So, Karen and I took a couple of rides on it for old times sake.
We found a coaster (Steel Venom) to ride that we knew we shouldn't have, but rode it anyway. I love to find strange new rides that only a teenager would enjoy. This park had two of them. The Xtreme Swing was actually scary (and not in a Halloween sort of way). I usually like to prove how brave and unafraid I am by not holding on. This ride tested my mental capacity to do that.
We arrived at 11am and by 4pm we had done everything we wanted to do. The crowds were very light. We hardly waited in a line for anything we wanted to ride. THAT'S a great day at an amusement park.
When we left, the bald guy (3rd seat from the rear) was still riding Renegade. I'm sure he was trying to set some sort of riding record.
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