Six Flags Elitch Gardens

[liralen]

For the company picnic, they were able to get tickets to Elitch Gardens, complete with dinner and lots of time for playing.

Jet and I started the day rather a bit too early. 5:30 to be particular. John got up around 8 and made great waffles while I showered. I had one regular and one decaf latte in my new cups and they worked out really, really nicely. My new foaming technique made pourable foam that made it easy to clear out the milk pitcher, and the lattes were beautiful and had plenty of foam on top for supporting caramel. Yum.

During breakfast we discussed arrangement for watering my vegetable garden while we're away, and it took a while. John had bought drip line stuff, but had assumed that he'd find a main drip line near the garden.

Turns out there wasn't anything even resembling a main line by the garden. So, instead, we decided to go and find something that we could attach to the hose by the garden, and add a timer so that it would go for a little bit each morning. Something that would work while we were away AND work for the heat of the summer afterwards. So we hit Home Depot, all together, and got what I needed, on the way out, Jet saw the hot dog man and demanded a hot dog for lunch. So the boys got hot dogs while I took things to the car. After so many waffles, I had no need.

Jet had bought a bag of onion ring shaped and flavored chips. He got three of them at one point and called them the Boy ring, the Daddy ring, and the Baby ring. When asked where the Mommy ring was, he answered, matter of factly, "At work. The Mommy ring is at work." Hee.

When we got home, I went to sleep. I needed the nap and got a few taquitos for lunch and some grapes for the trip to Denver and Elitch.

It's the local Six Flags. The very first thing we did was the ferris wheel, and a nice teenager was paired up with us after her friends had ditched her there. She had a running commentary for the whole park, and Jet was fascinated by everything he could see up there.

There was a Tunetown, and we pretty much headed there and did a bunch of kid rides. Or, rather, Jet did the kid rides and we pretty much watched. It was hot, hot, hot. 93 hot. So hot we went through two bottles of water and no one had to use a potty when we figured out it was time for the free food at the catering tents. MORE hot dogs left Jet cold. He didn't want them. "They aren't brown." he explained. He did eat some watermelon when we explained that he couldn't have ice cream without eating something, and the "ice cream" ended up being juice bars, big ones on sticks and little ones in squeeze containers. He picked a squeezer and ate it right up.

We then hit "Disaster Canyon", a white water river ride, with a round raft on a concrete canyon creek. There were signs all over the place saying, "Say Good-bye to dry" "You're gonna get drenched!" and the brief glimpses we had of people going through it supported the signs. We got on the raft with two other little kids and their parents and friends, and we went happily through the ride and got dripping, wringing, and gloriously wet. It was a very nice contrast to the rest of the day.

It was the only really adult ride we found that would allow him on at all. And he had to be 36 inches to get on while accompanied by someone. That worked out well for that ride, but I could see why someone that short couldn't get on the other fast and terrible rides. So we decided to go to the Batman show from there, and Jet loved the campy thing. I just boggled mildly, but very definitive Good and Bad guys, pewing and plenty of pretty machinery (four motorcycles, an ATV, and the Bat Mobile) held Jet's attention fast, and by the end of it we were all just damp, not wringing wet anymore. Good, old Colorado dryness.

Jet then went on another three or four rides and ended up in the Acme Warehouse, which was filled with vacuum powered machinery that sucked up soft foam balls and spit them EVERYWHERE. There was one small machine Jet found that he could feed balls in at one end and they'd be spit out, bouncing, at the other with some velocity. He could have been there all day, I think, but I pointed out that there was a HUGE equivalent machine taking the balls up three stories and spouting them out the top. He got big-eyed at that, and climbed up to see.

He spent a good hour in there, and by then it was nearly 9, so we headed back to get Jet his smashed penny, and then we headed home, where he finally ate a whole plate of food and went to sleep upsidedown on his bed (feet on his pillow) while John was reading books to him. Happy boy.

I'm still not entirely certain I enjoyed going to the amusement park with him. It was nice to get in the two rides we could do, but I can see that we're probably not going to be doing a lot of the really fun or crazy rides until he's 42 inches tall, and that's going to be a while. Still, it was fun to watch him have a great time, and he got in a good dozen rides and they all made him grin pretty big, so that was a good thing.

Another part of it was that none of the rides he could go on where rides we could go on. There's supposed to be an old amusement park around here called Lakeside that the library gives free tickets to if Jet reads a certain number of days worth of books, and they have older rides that both big and little kids can go on at the same time. So that would be worth doing for all of us. They even have a steam engine drawn train that would really fascinate all of us to ride behind. One of the last coal-burning steam engines used in a park in the U.S.. That would be worth seeing and doing.

Comments

[anitar.livejournal.com]

pewing?

[liralen.livejournal.com]

What Jet calls everything that shoots something, "A pew-er." *grin*

Wow! You got an account?! Very keen.