Thursday, August 30, 2007

San Antonio II

Day 2: We went to Six Flags Fiesta Texas - lots o' roller coasters and no one tagging along who is too short to ride them! Fanta-bulous!!!
But I have two tips for y'all:

Tip #1: Don't assume that a massive 200 acre amusement park with roller coasters 16 stories (168 ft) tall will be easy to find. You may know which exit you're supposed to get off the freeway, like we did, but if you expect signage to take over from there, think again. No sign from the freeway, no sign from the freeway exit, just one little tiny almost invisible sign about 5 ft from the intersection telling you where to turn. If you're coming from the other side of the freeway (like we were at first), good luck! We had the pleasure of missing the turn because we were in total disbelief that it wasn't more obvious and therefore felt insecure making the turn. We kept going hoping to see a sign and when it never presented itself, we stopped in for beverages at a grocery store where I casually asked for directions as though I was merely curious about how close Six Flags was (you'd think I was a man or something I was so embarrassed to ask directions, but it was pretty humiliating to not be able to find something that big). My in-laws would be proud, they always say no date is complete without a trip to the grocery store and we managed TWO over the course of our trip!!! But anyway, the delay was okay because it was pouring rain until we got out of the grocery store.

Tip #2: Apparently when you go to at least this Six Flags on a Thursday in late August, NO ONE is there. Maybe it was the Thursday part, or maybe the fact that school had almost started up again, or maybe it was the fact that it rained that morning at their opening time, but it was GREAT! We got there an hour after they opened and the weather had changed to sunny but not quite the usual "surface of the sun" hot I expect from Texas in August. We went on all the roller coasters, the bumper cars, and the log and white water raft rides and ate a leisurely lunch in 4 hours!!! We even neglected to "game plan" properly at the beginning, so we back tracked several times, and still only 4 hours! I think the only times we had to wait were when we wanted to wait an extra round or two to get on the front seats, and then maybe 20 minutes for their newest coaster that just opened this year. Actually, we may have waited something like 10 minutes to get on the white water raft ride because we decided to go on it at the hottest part of the day. So, we played free Wii inside for a little while (we were Wii virgins) then went on our 2 favorite roller coasters a 2nd time and rounded out the day to 5 1/2 hours total.

Now before I praise these two coasters we deemed worthy of a repeat, remember that I am only comparing them to other rides at this particular park. I must begin any discussion of thrill rides with the statement that for me will probably always (or at least until there is a significant advancement in roller coaster technology) precede any discussion of this type. These 2 coasters can really only be honorable mentions at best because the greatest roller coaster EVER is X at Six Flags Magic Mountain in southern California. Nothing will ever compare to that. M and I waited in line 4.5 hours to ride it the first season it opened back when we were dating and it was worth every second!!! I wish I had DVR for my brain on that one :) And after that, there are a myriad of awesomer (that's a word, right?) rides also at that and other theme parks. But for the purposes of this discussion on M & G's Fiesta Texas experience, Superman Krypton Coaster and Tony Hawk's Big Spin win the prize. I don't know what the prize is, but they win it.

Superman for sheer can't-keep-my-eyes-open-because-the-wind-
blows-my-eyelashes-shut speed and sweeping expanses of track. Big Spin for laugh-out-loud fun. Somehow this one actually did capture the sensation of boarding (at least based on my snowboarding days -- I never was much of a skater back in high school because my dad didn't approve *cough*HYPOCRITE* cough*cough* and I was way too obsessed with school work to ever make any real progress breaking my bones and getting asphalt face). After extensive examination of other riders, we determined that the little 4 person cars spun around a whole lot more if they were unbalanced (with say three people or say a fat lady and three small kids) but both times we ended up riding with 2 teenage boys to round out our party of four. Oh well, even if our relatively comparable weights reduced our spinning, we still had lots of fun.

So anyway, that was our day. But sorry, no pics for you...


To be continued...


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