Playing at the Amusement Park

It's hard to believe, but Marina and I didn't make it to the amusement park until this weekend. She's been wanting to go, but we've had such a busy summer that we couldn't fit it in. Today was such a beautiful day that if felt like the beginning of summer.

When we arrived at the park, I could see this trip would be different from last year. Our first stop was the observation tower. Marina had never expressed any interest in that before. We got a great view of the entire park and pointed out the rides we wanted to go on before going back down and getting on them.

We started off in the Kid's section.  Two rides had been added since last year, so Marina tried those first. She really liked them. She spent time on her old favorites too - bumper cars, airplanes and, of course, the roller coaster. I noticed that Marina is only two inches shorter than the maximum height for the kid's rides. There's a good chance she will be too tall to ride them next year!

On our way to the ball play area, we saw the face painting station. As usual, Marina wanted that. She asked for a rainbow butterfly. The young woman who designed it was an art student. She was quite detailed and added a ton of glitter. Marina loved that!

We get a turkey leg to split for lunch. Then we headed into the rest of the park. We went on some of Marina's favorites as well as some new one. I told Marina that I can't do a lot of spinning anyone, so she was quite concerned that I didn't get sick. Still, she convinced me to get on the Spider - one that made me sick as a kid! I did all right, Marina loved it!

We went on the river raft ride that we loved last year. We got completely drenched. Apparently some additional water spouts had been added. Marina was not happy. Then it was my turn to challenge Marina. We had never tried Ghost Blasters, a sort of haunted house with guns to shoot at the ghosts. She was a bit nervous, but agreed to try it. Once it was over, she had more point than I did and she said, "Let's do it again!" We ended up riding it five times today!

We headed back to the kids section. The lines were very short so Marina got the chance to ride everything she wanted many times. She often found a new friend to ride each one with. By this time, it was getting dark. So we made our way to the exit. Before we left we took a ride on the carousel. We were both pretty tired after all that fun.