Left in the dark

Over memorial day, Marathon Man and I headed back over to the Six Flags theme park in New Jersey. Yes I willingly went to Jersey. I rarely make the trip across the Hudson for such pleasures as roller coasters and Swedish meatballs. Yeah, the Ikea there rocks. Frankly, Ikea rocks in general. M-Man and I toured it a few weekends ago and I could not believe fun and cheap the furniture was. Plus the food there is beyond cheap. My meatball plate with potatoes set me back $1.99! It was like walking through a magical frugal paradise, or otherwise known as my heaven.

Back to roller coasters….The park was busier than last time, so we took to squeezing in some “alternative” rides between awesome roller coasters. Yeah, we rode the teacup ride. Don’t laugh, it was a lot of fun. We got ours spinning soooo fast that I almost threw up. Once we exited, the next batch of riders (little children) scrambled to our teacup because it looked the most fun. We also hit the raft ride (?) where you transverse rapids in a giant inner tube made for 8 people. I swear that son of a bitch always turned just in time to soak me. Seriously, I would be on the opposite side of the rapid, then 5 feet from the drop (and subsequent flood of water and spray), the tube would suddenly turn and stick it to me. I spent almost the entire day with soaking wet jean shorts and sneakers that expelled water every step I took.

One ride we were really looking forward to was the new “Dark Knight” Batman roller coaster. Its name is a play on the new movie (added publicity) and the fact the ride is inside a giant building. It opened that day and the line was estimated to be 3-hours! Thank Goodness that we had chipped in the extra $20 for the speed pas which cut out the majority of the wait. The ride basically takes you into a room where you watch a sad 10 minute movie (filled with a lot of plugging for the movie) before you load into “subway cars”. You are plunged into the darkness where the track is nothing more than a couple of jarring turns (no big drops or loops or anything remotely resembling a trick) and a few flashes of posed mannequins (which you saw coming since it flashed for the car in front of you only 10seconds prior). Essentially, the other “dark” coaster, Skull Mountain, which is also a children’s coaster beat the pants off this new ride. As we left, I was tempted to run over and tell the hordes of people in the 3 hour long line that it was sooooo not worth it.