Alex, this post is for you, my handsome, pizza-loving, practically grown up, thankfully tall enough to ride the rides, 8 year-old boy.
If there were a way to back-post this a few months, I would try. Alex’s birthday was July 27th. Today is December 9th. Readers, do not judge me.
Alex’s birthday fell on a Saturday this year. His birthday was also during British summer break, which is code for “when all the Brits with kids go on vacation at the same time!” Alex really wanted to go to Alton Towers (a really cool amusement park) for his birthday, ON his birthday. So I figured why not. Let’s brave the crowds and who knows, we might get lucky and actually get to ride a roller coaster or two (I read online reviews and a lot of them talked about the insanely long queues to get on rides).
So we went. In faith. Faith that the park wouldn’t be too crowded. Faith that I wouldn’t get lost on the way (thank you GPS). Faith that Alex would be tall enough to actually ride the cool rides, and we wouldn’t get stuck at the wimpy looking kiddie section the whole time.
I am here to tell you that faith has its rewards. Alton Towers was all that we hoped for and more. Alex was tall enough (sometimes just a few centimeters over) for ALL the rides!! And even better: he wasn’t scared to go on any of them!! (I wish I could say the same for me like when we went on Oblivion, hailed as the first vertical drop roller coaster. Yeah, it was scary.
We showed up at the park just after 9am, which is when the park opens for early admission ticket holders. Guess what, they let us in early. Park was nearly deserted for almost an hour as we got our fill of some of the best roller coasters WITH NO LINES!!
We rode Nemesis three times in a row just to warm up. That set us up to cross the park and take on Thi3teen and Rita. And all that was before 10:00. The whole day was still ahead of us.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention we had a 2 for 1 entry coupon (thank you Rice Krispies box) which I must say made the whole experience even sweeter.
Back to you Alex. Yes, Alex was having an absolute blast. I had no idea he had such a passion for roller coasters.
After playing hard all morning, we finally took a break for some all you can eat pizza buffet!! I don’t know how (or why) we thought it was a good idea to stuff ourselves with pizza and soda at an amusement park, but I’m glad we did, and thankfully there were no catastrophes on any roller coasters as a result of our gluttonous splurge.
We weren’t all about roller coasters though. We took some breaks occasionally, like when we found this pirate ship ride. At first it looked pretty tame; after all, you just rode a pirate ship around a pond, zigzagging through little pirate statues. That is, until you consider the water cannons. Water cannons on the ships, cannons on the shore and the docks. Riders on other ships could shoot you with water. And onlookers along the boardwalk could too. There was one kid in his swim trunks who just stood there cranking the cannon nonstop as we passed by. He didn’t care about getting wet from our cannons. So with no where to hide, we were drenched before halfway through the ride. So we went on the ride two more times.
Getting drenched always deserves ice cream.
Um, this is not a roller coaster. This is fish tank full of . . . Pacific cleaner shrimp (aka Jacque from Finding Nemo). Hold your hand perfectly still underwater and they come up and clean your cuticles. Creepy and cool at the same time.
Back to the rides. For pretty much the rest of the day we never dried off. We rode the bathtub water flume.
Then the river raft. Always gotta do the river raft.
After lunch the crowds started getting bigger and the lines longer, so we weren’t surprised to wait over 20 minutes for rides. We didn’t mind. Honestly, we’d gotten our fill all morning, so any rides in the afternoon were just bonuses for our already fantastic day.
There was one ride that I did not go on with Alex: Enterprise. It spins around and around . . . and around and then upside down and around some more. I can do the scariest roller coasters, but I don’t stand a chance against spinning circles. I happily stood to the side and watched Alex, who of course loved it!
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Our wonderful day together was coming to a close, but not before we tackled one last roller coaster. We saved it till the very end because it had the longest line. We didn’t want to waste our time in lines if we could avoid it, and they say that if you are in line already when the park closes, you can still ride the coaster. So that was our strategy. The Smiler, which was just built, has 14 loops and is as awesome as you’d expect. (here’s the video link)
I mean, just look at the thing – it’s massive (that’s just part of it you see there).
We only had to wait 80 minutes to get on this ride, and the whole time we were in line we were standing beneath the roller coaster with it whooshing just overhead. After watching it for 80 minutes we were stoked when it was our time to get on.
Wow! What a finale to a perfect day. Happy Birthday Alex! I love you. Thanks for being my son.
And thanks for being over 140 cm tall. I know where I want to go for your birthday next year.
Dad
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