Roller Coasters

For my birthday, we spent the day at Kings Dominion riding roller coasters and water slides with a group of friends. The weather was beautiful which was something of a mixed blessing, since it meant that every single line was absurdly long. But at least we didn't get too grossly hot or overly dehydrated.

We started the day with a couple of roller coasters, both of which were the kind that launch you forward from a standstill. Thanks to lines, it took nearly three hours to ride those two coasters, so after lunch we decided to head to the water park. Lines were still kind of long there, but they mostly moved faster, or at least continuously. We were even able to ride one of the slides twice because the line moved so quickly.

We spent most of the afternoon in the water park and rode almost every ride they had. Then we went back to the park for birthday funnel cake and some more coasters. Unfortunately, the lines hadn't really died down at all. Even the lines that are normally relatively short took us a while to get through. We skipped several coasters because we just didn't want to wait. Finally we decided it was time to seek out the less popular rides.

The old wooden racer had a really short line. We almost walked right on it. Then we decided to ride the really high swings. You corkscrew up and then back down a 300 foot tower and get to see the whole park. We timed that one perfectly, because the flashing lights came on for our ride, but it was still light enough to see everything. After that we went on one more wooden coaster before calling it a day. And my sometimes unpopular opinion that wooden coasters are far superior was definitely upheld. The slightly out-of-control chaos you get on the wooden coasters adds a level of genuine terror that makes the whole experience better.

On the way home we stopped for burgers in Fredricksburg. We didn't get there until ten and then, thanks to slow service, weren't back on the road until after eleven. It was past midnight when we got home, and I was so exhausted that I slept for a solid eleven hours. I felt just like a teenager again.

Kings Dominion was a ton of fun, but the lines are so long that it's definitely a rare excursion. It had been five years since I was last there and it'll probably be five more before I go again. Unless we can arrange it to go in the middle of the week and avoid the crowds at some point.