TR - Sunday June 19, 2011 (Father's Day) with little kids

I was at CP yesterday with another family.

The Cast:

Myself - Enjoy coasters but turned into a bit of a chicken when I got older. Started riding again now that my DD enjoys coasters.

DH - gets motion sickness easily so doesn't ride anything that's jerky. Enjoys slow rides and shows and is great at holding bags!

DD9 - fledgling coaster junkie. Nervously testing her wings. Gets freaked out with new rides.

DS8 - doesn't care for thrill rides. Even Ocean Motion is out of his zone. Likes rides like Woodstock Express, Troika, Matterhorn, and those antique cars!

We also travelled with another family. The hubby is a coaster junkie while the wife gets scared...but will try anything. They have DD6 who loves all coasters but is only 45 inches and DS3 who rides whatever he can.

We have our Platinum Passes but they bought the 2 day ticket. We planned to get there for 10am but didn't pull in the parking lot until 11:30 (sigh...we turned into one of THEM). So we decided to tailgate it and eat lunch before entering.

At 12pm, we finally made it into the park (through the Soak City entrance where they had no problems using their online tix). With such little ones, we headed straight for Planet Snoopy and did a bunch of kiddie rides.

None of the other adults could handle spinning. A LOT of those kiddie rides involve spinning. A word to the wise...if you're travelling with little kids under 46 or 48 inches...make sure you have an adult in your party who can tolerate spinning. Most of the rides we went on required a "responsible person over 16" to accompany the kids...even the Carousel!! (still can't believe I can't send a 5/6 yr old on a Carousel without accompaniment!)

None of the other adults could handle spinning so I was elected to go on all the rides with the kids. Balloon Race spun me around wayyyy more than I thought possible. Also, later in the day, DH was forced to go on Woodstock Express with the kids when he was on kid duty because of the "responsible person" requirement. (This one I could understand though).

At abt 1:30pm all of a sudden all the rides in the kiddyland were shut down. An employee told us a huge storm was on its way (but they couldn't wait until the rain actually came?). About 15 mins later, the rain came and we decided to head to the 2pm Everyone Loves Snoopy ice show. Very surprisingly, the theatre wasn't full. At showtime, the theatre was about 3/4 to 4/5 full only.

We picked a perfect time and the rain stopped by the time we got out so we hit the antique cars, the bumper cars, then took a cable car ride to the front. We were all bummed the little kids couldn't go on Cedar Downs Racing Derby :(. At this point, myself, my DD9 and the other couple split off leaving DH with the other 3 kids to do some of the bigger rides. We covered Blue Streak (no wait). My friend thought it was just the one big hill and was completely surprised to see the rest of the ride! We then headed to Raptor which had a 10 min wait. Unfortunately, it started raining and they stopped the cars while we were in line. We left the line and 10 mins later we noticed it started up again (we tried to go back again another time but it was stopped yet again only to restart sometime later. How frustrating!).

At this point, my DD rejoined the other kids because she missed them.

We decided to try Wicked Twister...which was amazing! I've always been nervous of this one but my friends convinced me to get on and I loved it. Fresh from this, we headed to the Top Thrill Dragster...which I had been terrified of!! But riding WT gave me courage to face TTD. After a short 45 min wait...it was our turn. 3, 2, 1......!!!!!!!!!! WOWWWWW...what a fantastic ride! My friend was so scared her face was all screwed up and her hubby insisted on buying the ride picture LOL.

After this we hit the Power Tower...the ride up gives you plenty of time to get scared.

By now it was 6:30pm and it started pouring buckets of rain. We grabbed the kiddos and raced out of the park. There was no point, we were soaked to the bone. Thankfully, us uber-prepared mommies had a change of clothes and towels for everyone. (well...almost. my dd and my friend had to wear their jackets with no t-shirt).

Cici's Pizza was the perfect cheap meal for our hungry crew. We talked abt heading home right after dinner but amazingly enough, we lucked out yet again and the rain stopped during dinner). At 8pm, it was back to CP for us!

We did Iron Dragon next...very low thrill after TTD...but good for us as we were just digesting our meal.

Next up...Mantis. My dd decided to join us for this but was terrified. She started crying while waiting in line the poor thing. Still I knew she would really like it so I coaxed her on the ride. Everyone around must have thought I was a horrible mommy LOL! Anyway, my poor little girl cried the whole way up the big hill......then we went down and all I could hear was screaming for a while (my own!). When the Mantis gave us a breather I looked over and my DD gave me a big thumbs up! She got off thrilled and loving the ride (Mommy knows best after all). My dh told me later a guy had come up to tell him (he was waiting at the exit) how my dd was crying in line. I sure wish i could have shown the guy my DD AFTER the ride!

From there, we decided to go to Millenium Force. Unfortunately at this point, the little kids were hanging on to their mommy and wouldn't go with my dh. So my friend had to go with her kids to the Woodstock Express and my DD decided she still wasn't ready for MF and followed. So it was my friend's hubby and myself who went on MF. It was a super short 10 min wait (this was at abt 9:10pm)Even after loving TTD, MF still intimidated me. The length of the climb up that first hill...YIKES!! He laughed at my fears...until that first drop when he was freaked right out and his upraised hands...grabbed a hold of those handlebars for dear life!!!! It was an awesome ride and we had a blast!

He immediately said his wife needed to ride MF but unfortunately it was getting really close to 10pm and I really didn't think we could make it...especially since she was with the kids on Woodstock Express.

So we ended up rejoining the kids and our spouses at Maverick and my DD, my friends, and I got in the 10 min line. We decided to wait the extra few minutes for front row seats. We loved it...except for my friend who got very tossed around. Her neck really hurt afterwards. I did find it harder to ride at night vs during the day...during the day you can see what's coming and can brace yourself. Maverick is full of a crazy number of unexpected twists and turns.

It was 10:15 when we were done and unfortunately we missed the fireworks which we had wanted to see. We strolled back to our cars (in the Marina parking lot) taking the time to enjoy the Starlight Experience. What a spectacular that is!! My DH said he felt like he was in Disney! The lights, the incredible music,....just the whole experience is breathtaking. I was thoroughly impressed that they lit up such a long path. Basically the entire path from Maverick almost up to Millenium Force.

All in all, we had a great day. The not so fun part was having to split up so much to do the rides. It was disappointing that the 45 inch 6 yr old couldn't go on so many rides. She would have loved Iron Dragon, wildcat, the water rides, the Mine Ride...heck she would have liked to go on the Cedar Downs Racing Derby! It was also rather annoying that kids under 46/48 inches have to be accompanied by a responsible person on so many rides. These are carnival rides that they are more than capable of going on by themselves!

In short, it really is quite worth it to wait till your kids are over 46/48 inches. Still, we all had a good time. Couldn't believe how short all those lines were :)

Wow, it sounds like you all had a really great time! I need to go visit that CiCi's sometime next week. Haven't been to one in years.

As for the rides closing before the rain, it's a safety issue. Lightning can move ahead of the storm, so if they (I believe Park Ops is in charge of weather monitoring) see a storm is coming, they'll close it down regardless of whether or not the rain has arrived yet.