King's Island

My friend Tony and I got up at 6:00 and then went outside Boone Tavern.  The college bus was supposed to be there at 6:30 and we would load up and then leave at 7.  As it turned out, the bus did not show up until 7:15.  But we finally left Berea, a good 30 minutes late.  However, it wasn't that bad as the park didn't open until 10.

On the way up we stopped in Dry Ride at a McDonald's.  I got a couple egg bacon biscuits and then we continued on.  After we turned onto I-71 we got bogged down for a while because of construction.  But we finally made it to the park at 10:30.  We didn't have to wait long for our tickets as the college had already bought them.  The trip leader just picked them up from a different window.  And when he passed out the tickets we were free to do whatever we wanted until we had to be back at the bus at 8:30.

So Tony and I went in and looked around.  We decided to go to Drop Zone first.  We got in line with some other Berea students.  I didn't know any of them.  To pass the time we started an estimation challenge.  We would each guess how many rotations the ride would go through before we got our turn.  It turned out we did this on every ride.

When it was finally our turn we got strapped in.  The Drop Zone is this tall 300 foot pole.  40 people strap into seats on the outside of this ring and you are hoisted up to the top of the pole.  The ride up was a nice ascent.  We could see the whole park.  A girl in our group, Zee, was freaking out.  We finally reached the top and looked down 300 feet below us.  We did not know when we were going to drop.  It ran on a random pattern.  So all we could do was wait.  At this time I was thinking to myself why I got on this ride.  It wasn't the height that I hate, but the sensation of falling.  When it finally dropped us I just waited to get to the bottom.  Some huge magnets slowed us down and at the bottom I knew why I had got on the ride.  The adrenaline rush is worth it.  When we unhooked and started walking around our legs and hands were tingling.  Falling that fast must have done something to our blood circulation.  I'm not sure what it is.

Our next ride was the Diamond Back roller coaster.  When it was finally our turn we piled in and started ascending up to the highest point, 230 feet up.  When we reached the top I again asked myself why I got on this thing.  The first plunge was the worst.  But it was a smooth ride.

We were hot by this time so we stood in line for The Crypt.  It was inside a "tomb" or something and was air conditioned. And really, the AC was the only thing worth waiting for.  The ride was really short.  There were two rows of seats on a platform. This platform was swung around on a bar that was swung around.

Next, we went to Vortex.  This coaster wasn't that bad in drops.  There was only one drop that was bad.  And it wasn't as high.  But it was a rough ride.  It snapped you around and was uncomfortable.  But we did go upside down several times and we looped around as we spun.

After that we were tired and hot.  So we took the train over to the other side of the park and entered Boomerang Bay, the water park.  We walked under some fountains and then went into the Endless River.  The recharged us.  We felt so much better.  However, they make you get out after one loop because there's so many people and they're waiting for tubes.

By this time our group split in half.  Some of them didn't want to get wet so they went off to do something else.  The rest of us stood in line for a water slide that had three tubes.  However, when Tony and I got up there they told us to go back down as our swimming trunks had metal rings holding the pockets on.  We didn't get what the problem was.  They were smooth and we're going to scratch the slides.

Then we went and stood in line for Tasmanian Typhoon.  That was a fun ride.  We got to go down in a tube, so they didn't turn us away.  Before we dropped into this big funnel we went over a really steep drop.

After this we were took the train back to the other side of the park.  For about the next two hours we tried to get in touch with the other half of our group who had most of the other people's wallets.  We were starving, and beginning to get cranky.  All I'd had all day was two biscuits.  Later, Zee Tony and I went to the park entrance and got our wallets from the locker we'd rented.  Zee then split up to go find some "cheap" food.  Tony and I split the price for a pizza.  It was 20 bucks.  We also got some bread sticks.  We sat down and didn't utter a word until the whole pizza was gone.  Oh, and we also savored our $3.75 bottle of water.  Then we went and got a smoothie from an ice cream place.  By that time it was just about 8:00.  We had agreed to meet our group in front of the 1/3 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower.  And then, we went and loaded back up on the bus.

I went in and out of sleep.  I'm glad I did because it helped pass the time of the long ride.  We got back at 11:15 and I crashed in bed.