a thrill a minute

yesterday bryan and i, along with his buddy from college ryan, headed to good ol' paramounts kings dominion. it had been a couple years since i went, but this is a place that brings back tons of good memories for me. i had a season pass to KD probably 8 summers of my life, so i have been a good 100+ times. i must say, though, when you go as an "adult" (i guess that's what i am now...), things are a little different, but still tons of fun.

i won't bore you with a rundown of every ride we rode... no need for that. but i gotta say that the old standbys did not disappoint, and the new additions made for some very amusing times. for example, the log flume. been there probably since they opened the park, but now they have added this exciting little twist. at the end of the ride, after you've gone down the big hill and been splashed just enough that you realized you're on a water ride and as you're heading back into the shelter to get off the ride, they have added hoses. six giant water hoses pointed right at you. so bryan and i got totally soaked--something i was not expecting on this ride. we get off, and what do i see, but a group of people standing near these hoses laughing their butts off. the hoses, you see, are a clever money-making scheme that KD has put in place, which happen to also be the most fun and wicked game ever invented. you put a quarter in, the button lights up, and you wait for the next unsuspecting victim to come around the corner then SHOOT! and soak said victims. and there is the potential for this to happen six times in total. i have never been so freaking giddy in an amusement park as i was dousing random passersby in giant fake logs wtih water. holy crap. that is the smartest addition to the park ever made, i believe.

in time, bryan and ryan had to drag me away to the next rides... we went on to do a few more, then i was somehow talked into one of the newer rides--the tomb raider firefall. i didn't ride roller coasters until i was 17, and subsequently learned to adore them, but i never did much get into the whole upside down spinning around thing, like the berserker (aka the giant boat that flips you upside down and holds you there). this sucker is so hard to explain, but let's just say it flips you around and around upside down while swinging around in a giant circle. holy crap. i kept telling bryan he couldn't talk to me before it started, because i had to calm myself down and have a little chat with me about how this ride was certainly not going to hurt me and i might even like it and if i didn't, well, it'd be over in a minute or so. after we got off, it took me a few minutes to decide how i felt about it, but the final verdict is that it might be the coolest non-roller coaster ride ever made, if not the coolest ride period. good stuff. click on the name of the ride earlier in the paragraph to see a video of it on the KD website.

finally, it was time to head home, and we walked through the kiddie section (i feel like no trip to KD is complete unless you at least walk through the whole park, this part included). here, bryan jokingly asked me if i wanted to ride the scooby doo mystery machine ride. backstory: the last time we went, this was the newest ride, and i insisted on riding it, only to find it is DEFINITELY a child's ride, where you get in a mini-mystery machine and ride (slowly) through a "haunted" mansion while using your laser gun to capture as many points as you can throughout the mansion. the first time we rode this, bryan could not believe i had made him stand in line for an hour to ride this ridiculousness. but i thoroughly enjoyed being the one to collect the most points (because it tallies them up for you as you ride). so when he asked last night, i tried to say that i didn't want to ride... but he could tell by the goofy smile on my face that i really did. i am a competitive person, what can i say... i wanted to show my two companions up! :)

so we rode. and i won. and as you can see by this picture, the most hillarious ride picture ever taken, we were very serious about helping scooby and crew get all the ghosts in the haunted mansion. and no, we have don't have any idea who that kid is or how he ended up in our mystery machine. :)