David’s sister, Julie works for Carlson Companies as an event planner (seriously, I think that everyone who works for Carlson has a job relating to planning company events or HR. It’s really weird). Every year they rent out Valley Fair, a mini-wiener version of a 6 flags style amusement park. There are rides and long lines and cheap cotton candy and little piles of puke and a little marching band that plays all kinds of weird instrumental pop music songs.
One of the free attractions of the park is that it backs up to a landfill and is next to a waste water treatment facility. The term “Minnesota Pride” means Different things to different people.
The nice thing about having the park bought out by the company was that lines were virtually non-existent and since it was a company event, the threat of having your boss near by seemed to make the parents less likely to scream at their children.
Here’s the deal, I’m not much of a ride person. I adore places like EPCOT with their slow moving, educational rides. I like the spinning swings, the ferris wheel and the carousel. I despise the sensation of falling, I hate rollercoasters. David really likes rollercoasters a lot.
David likes rollercoasters. I like David. David knows me really well. David bribed me with ice cream, cotton candy and kisses to go on the Wild Thing. The Wild Thing has a 4,926,781,438 foot drop. It literally has to take you into space before dropping you back to earth at speeds that will force your skin to peel off your body and find a safer way home. In fact, I went on the Wild Thing, the rickety wooden coaster with the peeling lead paint and the Excaliber which is also a rickety wooden coaster but with a big drop and one of those sections where anyone taller that 62 inches will have their skulls sheered off.
I didn’t just get an ice cream, I got a hot fudge sundae! I’m no fool. I know what I deserve.
We did the log ride (david got some of that foul water in his mouth), the corkscrew, a water raft ride in a pitch black tube where we got totally drenched and the Enterprise (twice) but I could not convince either of them to go on the tilt-a-whirl or the scrambler.
The strange thing about Valley Fair is that there really aren’t that many rides but it’s set up in such a convoluted manner it takes forever to get from one ride to the next. I guess that’s intentional, the longer you are in the park the more likely you are to buy food, novelty hats or monkey shaped backpacks.
All in all, a lovely day. Way more fun that I could have expected and at the end of the day I declared myself the champion of the rides and danced through the park.