At the time, I thought about maybe a season passport for the following year. Instead of one big, long marathon day, make it something we hit once a month or a little more than that. If all the out-of-pocket for the day was parking and we took a picnic (they have an area for that, in fact) it'd be doable.
My only reservation was, really, if we went too often it'd quit seeming special. Like I say, that was August of 2008, and the recession hadn't really hit me—yet.
I have nothing to complain about in the past three years, not compared to a lot of people I know. I didn't get laid off, though I had my hours cut by 20% for seven or eight months, meaning my income was about what it'd be on unemployment except that I still had health insurance. Season passports to Worlds of Fun weren't on the menu, though.
2010 was a better year economically, but the Ghost of Refinances Past was rattling the chains loudly around my house and my personal financial situation was more and more a Christian Scientist suffering appendicitis: did I want an ineffective cure or an unpalatable one?
But that's not really what I came to talk to you about, as Arlo Guthrie would say. I came to talk about what a great day I had with my daughters and fiancé getting a major fix of thrill rides.
I'd been planning this trip sooner, actually. I had $85 in an envelope earmarked for it in the center console of my car when it Bermuda triangulated. The cash was easier to replace, of course, than the car. And while I still haven't got my transportation situation ironed out, my inner child made an executive decision.
Worlds of Fun would be open two more weekends that I had my kids, and that would be it for this year. And the weather last weekend was stellar; no guarantee about the last weekend of the month. And I've skipped every carnival ride opportunity all year: JoCo Fair, Santa-Cali-Gon, Old Shawnee Days, etc.
You can often buy unlimited ride wristbands at those affairs for $20 or so, and we love carnival rides (I think things like the Zipper seem all the more thrilling for being maintained on the road by alcoholics and drug addicts), but $60 for ride wristbands is about half way to a day at Worlds of Fun and nowhere near the value.
The deal I got was the same I got back in '08. You book in advance for a specific date, no refunds, but it's ten bucks cheaper than the regular gate and includes a very good, all-you-can-eat buffet meal in mid-afternoon. Which, if you price grub out there, makes it more like a $20 discount, maybe a little better than that even.
The weather was absolutely perfect. If you've seen Defending Your Life, it was Judgment City weather.
I think the first ride we got in line for was the Detonator. Em won't ride it, for some reason, but it's Corinna's favorite and I'd have to say it's probably my favorite if you exclude roller coasters.
If you've never ridden this one, you strap in to a seat on a 180 foot tall tower. You do zero-to-45mph in roughly a second up, get weightless for a split second, then kind of bounce back down. Four and a half G's, it's a very astronautical experience.
I thought the Mamba was my favorite coaster: so fast and smooth. And I always think I'm going to get decapitated in the turn, even though I know those supports are probably ten feet out of reach. I try, but I can't take that turn without ducking.
I kept seeing these Rastafarian bananas. Several sizes, some bigger than me. I wondered how much they cost, but it turns out their price isn't fixed: you have to win them. Meaning you can get one for a buck or spend $150 failing to get a softball to land in a dairy canister and never get one.
I admit, I ponied up six dollars in an effort to win one, though with the four of us and Corinna's bike in her Corolla, I'm not sure how we'd have gotten him home. I'm pretty sure tying a six foot banana with dread locks to the fender of your car will get you pulled over on the interstate.
We'd arrived at 11:00 a.m. and thought it seemed like a busy day. The ride lines weren't exactly epic, but there was a wait.
Then, as it got into the evening hours, somebody unleashed a sort of teenaged humanitarian crisis on the park. I gather it was a record attendance, and it was back to back, belly to belly.
Very cool in all this mayhem to recognize a familiar face. I knew Gretchen was going to be out there with her family the same day, and I'd wondered if I'd see them. But it's a big park, lots of people. At one point, I thought I saw her daughter waiting in line at a concession stand next to me, but I've only met the kid once and that was a couple of years ago.
The Amazon waiting in line while I waited to refill Snoopy (they got me on an $11 souvenir cup because refills are a buck) was far too tall to be Gretchen's kid. I don't know why I thought that, Gretchen is tall by Gen X standards, as is her husband.
It was her daughter, of course, and when I saw the whole family together, she took a pic of us with my camera.
I wished I could introduce Corinna but she and Em were waiting two and a half hours for one of the haunted house attractions.
I'd never been out to Worlds of Fun for their Halloween themed stuff, but it's pretty cool. Not exactly scary, the chainsaw guy you can hear a quarter mile off and you know they wouldn't let him have a saw with teeth in it.
The smoke machines were going full bore, and they have all sorts of lights up, it really becomes a spooky-poo wonderland of sorts.
Actually, I'd never been in the dark. Ridden roller coasters in the dark. I think me and Mo waited around 80 minutes for the Prowler, but that is one freakish ride in the dark. I think it only goes about 50 mph, much slower than the Mamba's 75 mph, but the way it shifts directions and twists, and the racket of the wood, makes it an intense ride.
As I felt my brain pushing against my skull, I realized that as much as they might like to market roller coasters and thrill rides as the most extreme yet, they really can't push them much farther without inflicting traumatic brain injury on the average rider.
That goes double for the Timberwolf in the dark. That's a violent ride anyway, and in the dark you can't see where you're at in the park as well. I thought it was almost over, then realized we were at the half-way speed check.
At one point, earlier in the day, Em had gotten cranky and I told her that we wouldn't have our money's worth until everyone was exhausted and hating each other. "I'm about there," she said. And I replied, "But the rest of us are still fine, so we're not done yet."
Believe it or not, that actually worked, and she got back into the groove all the way into the dark. But by the time she and Corinna were done with the haunted house, Mo was on strike. We'd gotten in line for the Mamba yet again, and she'd been grabbing at her feet and ankles and saying 'ouch' a lot in line for the Prowler. And trying to sit on the middle bar of the railings.
After maybe a minute in the Mamba line that reached all the way down to what is supposed to be an open area unrelated to the ride, she bolted from the line and sat on a park bench a few feet away.
A twelve hour shift is a long shift, even if you're playing and riding roller coasters.
The amazing thing was, besides the epic crowds in the park, as we left, nearly midnight in the car, there was a stream of cars a mile long still trying to get into the park. A park that would be closed by the time the ones at the end could get parked and pay the gate.
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