JUL 30

2023

Sunday: we gathered our things and drove out past Allentown to Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom for the day, though our plan was to confine our explorations to Wildwater Kingdom for the duration of our visit. This was another combination amusement park/water park like Worlds and Oceans of Fun in Kansas City, and Julie told me that the Cedar Fair company operated both locations, along with the Cedar Point amusement park she'd grown up with. While we'd worn sandals, we decided it might be too much trouble to keep track of them as we navigated the park, so we stowed them (along with our towels and other supplies) in a locker just inside the water park entrance.

This turned out to be a park where tubes are circulated within a single attraction, so most of the lines had a staging point where you'd wait for someone coming off to relinquish their tube, which you'd then carry back up to the launch point. The advantage of such a system is that you don't need to worry about having the right kind of tube for the attraction (double, single, or tubeless for body slides), but it does mean most of the attraction lines backed up even worse than they might otherwise. We spent a lot of time standing on staircases holding tubes while listening to the PA system reminders about each ride's characteristics and rules.

Consider the map: within the Wildwater Kingdom quadrant, we walked the circumference clockwise, and wanting to acclimate to the water before we committed to standing in line for a slide, we did a lap on the Wildwater River. This didn't require much of a wait. (It hadn't been apparent to me that there was a completely separate second such attraction in the Runaway River, despite marveling at the line of people waiting to embark on that attraction.) This was the coldest the water felt all day, and we spent our time on the river trying to position ourselves so as to avoid too much splashing from the mushroom waterfalls. We started our tour of the slides with the Snake Pit, riding tubes down the Boa Blaster and Boa Constrictor tube slides. Julie felt like the Blaster she'd ridden had a pretty sharp drop at the end, while the Constrictor I rode was a dark, enclosed chute and had an emphasis on tighter twists. The Python Plunge, by contrast, was a tubeless ride in which we climbed into nearly-vertical launching booths, and when the operator hit the launch button, the floor panel flipped out of the way and you dropped down a fast and winding enclosed waterslide. We liked getting to experience an attraction we hadn't seen at a park before.

We decided to walk back up to the wave pool for a break from standing in lines. Julie was content to stay in the shallows, but I wandered toward the deeper end for a bit until they ended the wave session. Feet freshly scuffed from the rough concrete, we decided to find our way to the group ride, Aquablast, and this was both the tallest attraction on this end of the park as well as the longest wait in line. On the second or third staircase landing, the concrete floor was replaced with this metal bands which allowed water to drain, but which were also a bit uncomfortable to stand on for too long. The band at the edge of each step was widest (and thus least painful to distribute your weight along), so we spent a lot of time standing sideways, leaning against the bannister. This was also the coldest part of the day, as the cloud cover had increased... though it didn't help once it came out, as our tower was situated such that most of the stairs were in shade, and the wind was chilling Julie, whose swimsuit had a lot more still-wet fabric than I had to deal with. We eventually emerged in the sunlight, though. At the top of this tower, octagonal rafts were carried up by conveyor belt, and two to four people could ride in each. The lifeguards would oscillate between providing a raft to our side or the fastpass side, and while getting people situated and pushing them down the slide, they'd often splash the riders or each other. It was cute. The ride itself was nice and long.

Since we'd just been watching the line to Cascade with envy thanks to their sunnier position, we wandered that way, next. This was a two-person ride with double tubes, and considering the map, if the line entrance is close to the 3 o'clock position, the ride exited at 9 o'clock. It was a short ride, but nice, and we went right back up to do the Lightning Falls single-tube rides. Things slowed down again here, but once we got close to the top, we were able to let the woman behind us who'd been complaining about the wait pair up with another single rider ahead of us so that we didn't have to hear her grumbling. I enjoyed this slide a lot—a lot of turns, a mix of open and enclosed portions, and the slide was so close to the line that it had been a lot of fun watching riders on my way up and watching the people in line on my way back down.

Now that we were back near the front of the park, we could see one more slide tower we hadn't tried yet, so we took the bridge across Runaway River to get to Patriot's Plunge. The line for this tube ride seemed to be moving a little faster than it had on the last pair of slides we'd ridden, and once again confronting a trio of slides comprising "the curvy one," "the bouncy one," and "the one with a sharp drop," Julie recommended I ride the latter of these since she'd done that at the Snake Pit. It was indeed a sharp drop. We went right back up, since we'd thought Wildwater Rapids was closed, but while waiting at Patriot Plunge we saw people entering it with nearly no line. There were four body slides at the top: two open and two closed, and we liked our first trip down enough that we both tried one of each. During the course of these rides, we watched a little girl and her dad race each other down a couple different slides. It was, again, extremely cute.

We were starting to get tired at this point, so we hobbled back around to the Wildwater Cove in hopes of getting another wave pool experience. Julie again planted herself in the shallows, and I made my way toward the front as the waves kicked up. It was never especially deep, but I had a good few minutes of bobbing in the waves before they shut them off, again, so I scuttled back to the shallows so we could grab our stuff from the lockers, find changing rooms, and leave.

The parking lots were less of a pain to get out of than I feared, and I drove us to Plaza Azteca for dinner. They'd delivered chips and salsa to the table before we'd even seen a menu, and I haven't felt as at-home at a restaurant since moving to Philadelphia. Julie got chicken nachos, while I had Mexican fried rice with beef, chicken, and shrimp. (Add onions and peppers, and this would have been the Jalisco special from Playa Azul back in Wichita, a dish I have been sorely missing.) Even the Coke tasted better than most soft drinks I've had since moving. It was an excellent end to an excellent day.

I still had to drive us home, though, and apparently my GPS was setup to avoid tolls, resulting in a trip that took longer than necessary. I was tired. After showers and unpacking, I did stay up long enough to watch some more FFXIV videos on YouTube, but before long I crashed on the egg in the living room. I woke up in the middle of the night, got up long enough to post this update, and went to bed!

2022

We got bagels. Julie got an everything bagel. I asked if she'd seen "Everything Everywhere All At Once", and she hadn't, so I pulled it up on a streaming service. She liked it.