Friday, June 18, 2010

Wild Adventures

Brian was on vacation this week, so we decided to take the kids to Wild Adventures. We spent the first part of our day riding the rides. Owen and Olivia take after their parents in that they like to ride. The height requirement for most of the children's rides was 36 inches. Olivia easily met this height. Poor Owen, though, was right at the 36 inch mark. We tried to get him on the 36 inch rides, but he always had to be measured- and the outcome was not always the same. You could see the conflict in the workers' eyes because Owen's height could really go either way. After an internal debate, most of the workers decided to err on the side of caution. So, Owen only had a 33% success rate at getting on the 36-inch rides. I think it upset Owen a little to watch Olivia ride when he had been turned away. He carried on though. We tried to hit all of the little-kid rides so that both kids could participate, and Owen was tall enough to ride on his first rollercoaster (which he loved).









Around one o'clock it was starting to get really, really hot. The park even started giving out free cups of iced water because it was so hot. We decided that we would go to Splash Island Waterpark (which is attached to Wild Adventures) to cool off. Owen was standoffish and would not get in the water. Brian, who did not bring a bathing suit, spent his time with Owen. Olivia was my responsibilty, and she turned out to be a handful. She literally ran away from me and Brian so that she could get to the water-play structure. She was all over that thing, and she LOVED it! Keeping up with her turned out to be a real workout. Unfortunately, we were only able to stay in the waterpark for about 40 minutes because lightening was spotted in the distance, and they had to shut down the water rides. Since we didn't know how long we would have to wait to get back in the water, we decided to try the waterpark another day, and we headed back to the theme park.















After leaving the waterpark, we rode some rides (those that weren't shut down due to weather) and we spent some time looking at the animals. I really liked the tiger show and was happy that we had a chance to see that. The petting zoo was a big hit with the kids (as always). It's always fun watching those kids try to pet the animals. Some of those animals today just didn't want to be petted. That didn't stop Owen and Olivia from trying. It was like watching two border collies herd sheep. The kids would come, and the animals would run. They did manage to get their hands on several of slower ones, though.
We had a great day at the park. The kids are at the perfect age to enjoy it. I'm thinking that we might get season passes- but we'll wait til next year when Owen is a little taller.

1 comment:

Pam said...

You could try putting Owen in shoes with thicker soles...give him a little boost on the height! :-) I know how it is to have one kid just barely too short to ride the rides. Benjamin was too short to ride a few rides at Disney Paris last month, but he's getting close.