Vacation Fun!

Vacation Fun!

Quentin Smeltzer, SmeltzerNation, 8/21/2010

It’s been a while since my last post because we’ve been on vacation.  You know what a vacation is: that’s when you go someplace you chose not to live, to get by without the creature comforts you most enjoy, to eat food you wouldn’t normally eat, and to pay boatloads of money for the privilege. 

A recent New York Times article says buying “things” doesn’t make us happy.  This is particularly good news for those of us with no discernible source of income.  Unfortunately, the article goes on to say that paying for experiences like sushi rolling lessons or vacations does make us happy.  So my wife decided we should take the money I'd been saving for a new motorcycle and spend it on a vacation.

And it is true that vacations always make me happy… when they end.  Nothing brightens my day like the news that I can stop paying hundreds of dollars a day to use stuff I can use at home for free.

But is it all about money?  If you looked at my bank balance you might conclude that it is.  But what about family bonding time, adventure and new experiences?  And it was a new experience to be yelled at by the attendant for daring to bring a small cooler poolside.  It was fun finding no parking place in the motel lot at night.  It was a delight to watch my wife and son shop for useless crap in the interminable string of gift and novelty stores that lined the main drag of our vacation village. 

And then there was the day we spent at the Six Flags Great Adventure amusement and water park.  My wife bought our “all-inclusive” tickets online, so we only paid about $120 to enter!  Our fun-filled day started with a mile-long walk from where we were allowed to park, for only an additional $10.  Then we got to stand in a swelling, impatient crowd waiting for the park to open.

When it did, we raced for the gondola ride, which I thought might give us a good overview of the park.  It turns out the gondola ride moves at roughly the same speed as the old woman in the commercial who has fallen and can’t get up.  This made for one LONG ride, inching along with our feet dangling thirty feet above the hot pavement.  Instead of traversing the park, giving us the reconnaissance I had hoped for, it made a small loop in the one corner of the park we had already seen.  Scratch off the first 45 minutes of our thrilling day!

Next, we got on one of those spinning, swing rides; the kind you can catch at the local fair that sets up in a field in your town every summer.  Hardly amusement park quality, but still enough to induce a mild case of vertigo coupled with nausea.  My son wasn't interested in the big roller coasters after that, so instead we decided to head into the water park to enjoy some splash-tastic fun!

Speaking of fun, the first choice we faced in the water park was how much we wanted to pay for a locker for our street clothes!  I think we opted for the $17 “medium.”  Standing in front of a wall of lockers my wife swiped her receipt in front of an electronic reader, and--voila!--a floor-level door popped open.  After changing into our bathing suits and jamming our street clothes into this rat hole we were ready to get wet 'n wild!

To get our wacky, watery adventure started, we stood in a line with inner tubes and climbed a four-story tower to go down a water slide.  The ride lasted twenty seconds.  The line lasted twenty minutes.

Quickly tiring of that, I spotted the line for the Black Cobra water tube ride.  This queue appeared to be short so I corralled my family in.  After we were in this line for twenty minutes we made a turn around a bend and saw there was a hidden part of the line, meaning it was three times longer than it first appeared.  After an hour in the broiling sun we got to the top to see a single attendant operating only one of the two Cobra tubes available.  I thought about asking this high school student making minimum wage why the other tube wasn't being used while people suffered sunstroke in the brutal heat, but really, I was just so happy to get the hell out of there I jumped in the raft with my son and we pushed off.  The sweltering, claustrophobic, neck-snapping ride lasted all of thirteen seconds. 

It was already lunch time and I was eager to see what delights might be available.  The answer was a marvel I had never seen before and frankly never hoped to see in my lifetime: the $10 slice of cheese pizza!

After this yummy lunch of white dough, tomato sauce and "real" cheese came the interesting challenge of finding a place to sit by the giant wave pool.  With arms loaded with bag and towels I walked past maybe 500 chaise lounges, each with a towel or a pair of sunglasses on it to “hold” it.  Finally, incredibly, I found the one open lounge in the entire park!  I put our stuff there, rechecked to make sure I still had my sunglasses, and started off to find wife and child.

Just steps away I was accosted by an angry New Yorker who accused me of stealing his chair and rifling through his property.  “The chair was empty,” I assured him.  “No it wasn't,” he said.   I used to argue with this kind of goon, sometimes receiving a fat lip for my trouble, always receiving a dose of adrenaline sufficient to make my eyeballs vibrate out of my head.  Now I take a cue from the pastor of my church:  I make my voice very small and say:  "Okay."

This doesn't do much for my action hero self image but it does help ensure that my feet reach the ground the rest of the day.  It also scores points with the wife who really doesn't need me to provide drama.

I gathered our things and we sat on our towels on the concrete.  At least the giant, wave pool will be fun, I thought.  But just as we got in they ordered the hundreds of people in it to get out.  There was no explanation.  Half an hour later when we were allowed back in there were no waves.  It was just a vast, crowded swimming pool, only deep enough to cover the tops of our knees. We left the pool and returned to our pile of towels on the ground.

It was around this time that my son, wife and I all noticed that our bare feet were beginning to blister from hours of standing and walking on hot concrete with no place to sit.  I cautiously asked if anyone was ready to go and tried to conceal my joy when it was unanimous:  oh yes.

Understandably exhausted from the three or four rides we had managed to cram into the course of our fun-filled, sun-baked, over-priced, five hours in the park, we made the long, painful hike back to our Lilliputian locker.  I crouched on the floor like a homeless person foraging a tipped over garbage can and clawed our belongings out.  We changed into street clothes and began the long death march back to our car. 

What a day!  Like the vacation itself, our Six Flags experience had indeed made me happy.  To leave.  As they say in their television commercials:  More flags, more fun!  I'm thinking they're still a couple of flags short...