#138 In which our hero gets free tickets to purgatory.

The Scientist scored free tickets to Geauga Lake as part of an employee appreciation thing.

We went on Sunday, and it was hell.

Well, not really hell… I mean, hell is a horrible place that is so bad that, given the choice, you’d not even enter, let alone stay for several hours. No, Geauga Lake was just bad enough to be extremely taxing and uncomfortable for The Scientist and I, but not bad enough that we said, “Fuck this, we’re going.”

We knew we were rolling the dice even planning this thing. Macey is only a year old, so she wasn’t going to really get anything out of it. But Lily is almost three, so we thought that she would enjoy the spectacle and the kiddie rides and fair food. I guess just Lily and I could have gone, but we wanted a nice family outing. As did 10,000 other families.

Going to an amusement park on the weekend you know it’s going to be packed. We had hoped that more people would plan a Saturday trip, and not Sunday. And who knows, maybe it was 10x worse on Saturday. But it was still crowded when we went. And when you’re wheeling a double stroller down narrow walkways jam-packed with humanity, it sucks.

Things went down hill almost instantly. We got to the park, got everyone into the stroller, entered the park and were immediately assaulted with more flesh than we ever wanted to see. We made the mistake of entering on the water park side, so just about everyone was in a swimsuit. Which could be a good thing (even a great thing) if it’s all beautiful, toned swimsuit models. However, if you cross-reference the demographics of your typical amusement park visitor with the demographics of your average swim suit model, you get NO MATCH. What you do get is a ton of people exposing copious amounts of flesh in swimsuits that they should legally be barred from wearing.

We made our way to the kids section, because I had promised Lily rides. Not spinny-pukey rides, because neither The Scientist nor I can deal with them, but we figured there would be plenty of slow-moving stuff that Lily would enjoy.

The first one we saw was a little kids train ride. Perfect.

Well, perfect except for the line. It took about 15 minutes for our turn, and that was about 14 minutes too long for Lily. We’ve worked on the “wait for your turn” concept before, and Lily was probably as good about it as we could expect… but it was still taxing. Maybe more so for me than her. All the while in line Lily said she wanted to be in the front so, naturally, when it was our turn we got stuck in a middle car. Immediate melt-down. But, the gods of parenting were looking out for my little girl, and the woman in the front car was too fat to get her seatbelt fastened, so Lily and I to sit up front afterall. Lily got to “drive” the train, and she enjoyed it. It only lasted about four minutes, but she had fun while it lasted.

There was another ride she was interested in, but I persuaded her to skip it to play on the jungle gym stuff instead. I just couldn’t deal with another 15 minutes of whining while we waited.

To their credit, Geauga Lake had a really cool climbing/sliding thing. Lily and I climbed all through it, then down the slides, then back up, then down the slides, over and over. I wasn’t really clear if parents were supposed to be on this thing or not… but fuck it, I wanted to chase my little girl around. We had fun.

Next was dinner. There was a “family style” restaurant that was air conditioned, so we went there. It was pretty much a shithole. I wasn’t expecting much, but they managed to fall short of my already low expectations. But we got to sit and relax for a bit, and the girls ate some of their over-priced meals, so it wasn’t a complete loss. And since we got into the park for free, I guess the park management is entitled to get their investment back in somehow.

All in all, the park itself wasn’t horrible… just the people. I’m not crazy about crowds to start with, and when 80% of them aren’t wearing shirts but are wearing a sheen of sweat … let’s say it doesn’t add to my enjoyment. I could go into the white-trashiness of the people there, but do I need to? You’ve been to amusement parks, right? You know.

But I will say this: both The Scientist and I went into separate bathrooms to change the girls, only to find the baby changing stations covered in shit. Literally. In what world is it okay to have your kid crap on the table, then walk away saying, “Not my problem!” ?

We all brought our swimsuits (yes, I was planning on adding my own flabby gut to the pale exposed flesh problem) but ended up not putting them on. However, that didn’t stop both Lily and Macey from getting soaked to the bone in the kiddie fountain. It was actually really cute to watch. And since we didn’t have dry clothes for them, we ended up wheeling our kids out in -- yes, you guessed it -- just their diapers, aka, white trash baby style.

Anyway, I think Lily and Macey had fun, which was the whole point. Next time I’ll have a better mind-set, and I’ll go in knowing that it’s going to be a giant clusterfuck and that nothing I’m going to encounter during my entire stay is designed to amuse me in any fashion whatsoever.

My family went to plenty of amusement parks when I was a kid. Now it’s time for me to pay my dues.