Vacation Thrills

Day 2 of our short vacation was spent at Kings Island, an amusement park near Cincinnati.  I'd been there multiple times as a kid and even went with my then-boyfriend-now-husband exactly 30 years ago.  I was a bit more brave back then.

Upon arrival, Husband and Son headed to the new ride this year, Banshee, "the world's longest inverted coaster."  No thanks!

Middle Child and I headed off to the carousel.  I'm not kidding!  She is not much of a rider, and the rides she does enjoy, I cannot stand.  I did bite the bullet and go to the top of the 'Eiffel Tower' with her:

I am not good with heights.  This involved me getting off the elevator and sitting down on the floor as close to the center as possible, while she lollygagged around the outer edge looking out over the park.

Meanwhile, Husband and Son rode the infamous Beast.  I cannot believe I rode that ride, back in the day.  I must have been insane.

My husband can only take so much of this, so he met back up with us, while my son went off alone to ride the rest of the thrill rides.  Middle Child loves any show involving music, and there were plenty of choices.  Throughout the day, one or both of us took her to a Boys Band show, an '80's Show, and a Rock and Roll Legends show.  After we all met up for lunch, even my son agreed to go to the feature show, Cirque Imagine.  I have never been to a real Cirque show because I've never enjoyed acrobatics.  However, this was fabulous!  They performed with ropes, trampolines, stunt bikes, and a giant hula hoop.  We loved it.

I did go on some rides with my son.  We went on Backlot Stunt Coaster:

and I ageed to go on The Bat, because it didn't look that high:

I've been on rides before where you hang down like this, so I thought I could handle it.

I was wrong!  It jerked you around A LOT.  My neck and shoulders were sore for a few days (though what was coming up could have contributed to that).

In the evening, he and I decided to ride Flight of Fear.  He claimed to have ridden it a few years ago when he went with a group of friends and said it wasn't that bad.  The wait was long . . . like almost two hours.  It is fully enclosed in a building, so you can't see what the ride entails, but the building didn't seem that tall to me, plus the ride is in the dark, so I wouldn't see how bad it was anyway.  We waited in line outdoors for a while, and then got into the building and this is what you see:

There were 1990's computers sitting around and weird messages about security clearances, etc. on the loudspeakers.  I don't know if this was meant to scare you, but we were laughing.  However, I stopped chuckling when we got up into the UFO and saw people ahead of me getting out of line and heading towards the exit.  Then, I saw the sign about removing earring posts and glasses and keeping your head against the backrest during 'launch.'  The woman in front of me was warning her daughter that the ride was short, but terrifying.  I looked at my son and was like WTF?  I thought you said it wasn't that bad?  That's when he decides to tell me that the first time he saw the actual ride, he thought it looked "really scary."  Ok, thanks for that!  We finally got to the top of platform and I saw this:

I will admit that my heart was racing and I was starting to sweat a little, looking around furiously for the exit signs.  But I didn't want to have waited all that time for nothing, so I told my son, "I'm going to ride this and I expect you to be proud of me for the rest of my life!"  LOL.....he told me that would only happen if I rode Diamondback (even my husband wouldn't ride that).

So, I rode Flight of Fear (could be re-named Flight of Whiplash), but I can't say much about it, because even though my eyes were wide open, I couldn't see anything.  We went upside down multiple times and it just seemed really, really fast.  When the ride came to a sudden halt, I remember saying, "Damn!" really loud and laughing hysterically.  I haven't been that frightened in a long time.  But I would do it again, because I got to spend two hours with my son standing in line and talking about nothing, and I think he was maybe a little proud of his old mom!

Right before we left the park, we found this:

and I rewarded myself with some Caramel Sea Salt Truffle gelato.

**Note:  None of these pictures are mine.