amusement parks

We went to King's Dominion amusement park this weekend with our two youngest children. My wife and I went there 25 years ago during the first summer after we got married. I don't remember much, but there were a couple of things I do remember. There was a geodesic dome as you entered the park, where we laid down on the carpeted floor and looked up. A movie was shown flying through the Grand Canyon and that was pretty sickening, even though it did look amazing. The other sickening thing we did was near the back of the park they had a ride where you entered a huge hallow metal drum through a door in the side. You look up and you see the sky as it had no top. You look down and you see a metal floor. There were small seats all around the edge of the drum with seat belts. As you sit down and strap yourself in the music begins, which was Michael Jackson's Thriller. The music gets louder and the drum begins to rotate faster and then the floor drops and you are spinning in a huge centrifuge with your body pinned to the side of the drum. This lasts a couple of minutes until you are so sick you want to vomit. Now that is good times! Actually that is one of the times I have felt the most motion sick in my life. Both of these rides have long been replaced.

Now the "in" thing is very fast metal roller coasters, which the kids really enjoy, but they go so fast it kind of messes up your internal system. While waiting for one ride, the man in front of us had three daughters. We had been waiting for almost one hour, when his daughter started having an epileptic seizure. The man in front of them was right there so he helped the girl's father take the girl downstairs. Somehow they made it through the crowd as it was a very crowded area they had to go through. By the time we got down to the ride, the girl had recovered and walked away on her own, so that is a good thing. I then started talking to the man who had helped carry her down as he looked Indian. The kids had commented about his t-shirt earlier as he had a funny saying on it about pirates and rum. He was upset at me for assuming he was from India as he was from Antigua and Barbuda. He had been in the USA since 1968 and he had no accent at all. Obviously his family hundreds of years ago had moved to the small Caribbean group of islands from India. Trying to insult me, he asked if I were British since my ancestors had come to USA a long time ago, so I understood his point immediately! All of the memorable events happened while waiting forever for this one ride.