Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Magic Mountain


Back in the 80's there was a movie out called National Lampoon's Vacation.  Chevy Chase was the star and played the role of the father.  The long and the short of it was that the family decided to take a road trip to Wally World, which was a disaster of a road trip, and when they finally arrived at the park, it was closed.  Chevy Chase pretty much went berserk, broke into the park, and they ended up forcing some security guy to take them on all the rides.

It is one of those movies I watched a dozen times as a kid and laughed so hard I almost wet my pants.  Well, "Wally World" was filmed at Magic Mountain (at least we think so), so we long ago nicknamed our favorite amusement park Wally World.  My dad called it that all the time when we were growing up.  We tried to go there most every summer on our annual California trips.

And we are continuing that tradition now in our family. 
We had it planned out for a year.  Fall break = Magic Mountain. 
What we hadn't planned for was Ryan's broken foot, or Grandma Cindy's messed up neck. 
But the kids had long since named our loose coin jar the "Magic Mountain Jar" and were looking forward to cashing in all those quarters so we could splurge on the crazy expensive Flash Passes. 
And we did.
Yes, they were crazy expensive (more than the tickets themselves by a long shot), but it let us skip ALL the waiting and let us ride every ride twice in a row without even getting off. 

It was pretty sweet.
We rode and rode and rode and rode until my eyeballs were about to pop out of their sockets.  Then I bought some Excedrin at the Guest Relations desk and chugged it down with a Coke and then rode some more. 

We seriously had a blast.
Barrett, Randi, Afton & Bryant about to board one of the rides (not sure it this was for Deja Vu or Tatsu)

My favorite ride was Tatsu, which we rode four times, and I thought I might die every single time.   Actually, I only rode it three times.  The kids did the final one without me because I just couldn't take it one more time.  It is insanely scary facing down looking at the ground from oh-so-far above, praying that the contraption that you're strapped into will do it's job and keep you safe.  Really, I am not quite sure why we love the thrill rides so much.  As I write this, I'm thinking we all might be a little nuts.  That is entirely possible.

A little lunch break.  We threw out all logic that would say we ought to wait at least 20 minutes or more after consuming burgers and fries and pizza and soda before boarding the next ride (which I think was Riddler's Revenge), and we just went straight on and starting riding again.  Truth be told, my tummy was slightly on the edge after that, but not close to cookie-tossing or anything.  I kept thinking about Michael's standard "you need to wait 20 minutes after eating before swimming or you might cramp up and die."  Cramp up and die, eh?  Maybe so...


Randi and Barrett outside of one of our favorite old school coasters, Colossus.  When I was growing up, it was one of the biggies.  Now there are at least ten newer, bigger, faster, scarier coasters than this one, but we still love it.  We laughed so dang hard as we shook ourselves silly on the wooden coaster while both Bryant and I tried to get a good video clip.  I have lots of memories on this one.

So sometime around 4:00 (we had two hours left in the park), we had pretty much ridden every single ride multiple times except for X2 and the water rides.  In our infinite lack of wisdom, we decided to ride log jammer.  Bryant tried to exercise his smarts and decline, but we talked him into coming too.  Ryan was the only one who passed (on account of his cast - he used that as an excuse anyway since it can't get wet).  But it's a very good thing he did pass, because we got drenched!  Really, drenched!  But the sun was still out and it kinda felt OK being wet, so we headed to Revolution to dry off before, once again, exercising some strange logic that told us it would be good to do another water ride:  Roaring Rapids.
We didn't get a pic after the Rapids, but it was beyond insane.  Of course we had to do it twice, right?  I mean really...we paid for the dang wristbands and all. The first time was mildly wet, but then two big guys got on our boat and disturbed the natural balance of weight (at least that's my theory), because round two was a bath.  A full on BATH.  I didn't stop dripping for the next hour and then the shivers set in as it started to get cool.  Ahhhh....the things we do for memories with our kiddos.

Finally, we capped off our day with a ride on X2, the most extreme and scary thing I've ever done (again).  So glad we waited till the end of the day to do this one since the ride line was practically nil (about 10 minutes) as our Flash passes weren't good for this one.  It was seriously amazing and crazy scary.  Just the way we like it.

Ryan's butt was sore from riding around in the wheelchair all day, and I was exhausted from both the 2 hour drive there and back (we were staying in Carlsbad) as well as all the pushing of said wheelchair throughout the park.  Thankfully, the kids took some turns pushing here and there, but I had most of the hill duty.  Good leg training I guess.

Thanks to Grandma Cheri for keeping Rowan and Easton at the beach with her all day while we took the bigs to the park.  Rowan is only 3.5 inches away from being tall enough to do all the rides.  We decided that we wouldn't take any of the peeps to MM until they were 54 inches, the height requirement to do all the rides.  And thanks to Mike & Shari for letting Randi & Bryant come over to the beach with us a day early just to play at Magic Mountain, and thanks to Grandma Cin & Pa Steve for helping with the tix.  We missed you guys!  I know how much Grandma Cin wanted to be there - she loves the thrill rides like the rest of us, but her neck was too messed up to tolerate all the whip lashing we endured.  Hopefully we'll be back in a couple of years with the littles and Grandma will be able to come.

2 comments:

  1. I love love love Wally World :) Looks like a blast

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  2. When Abby's tall enough, we're crashing your party. I love MM, but the rest of my family's a bunch of sissies and don't do thrill rides. Looks like fun.

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