So yesterday Eric and I went on a mini-trip, so here is my trip report for it. Sorry, no pics.
It all started a couple days ago. I saw an ad on TV for a carload sale at Darien Lake over the weekend (for those of you reading this and don't know, it's the largest amusement park in NY). It was $24.99 for your car. That's cheap! So I asked Eric if he wanted to go with me. Actually he's the only person I know who would go with me, since my sister had to work. The only day I could go was Sunday since I worked Saturday. At first Eric didn't want to go. He had too much to do over the weekend and he wanted it to be a "quiet" weekend.
So here's what Eric had to do over the weekend:
Change my oil
Check my breaks (they were squealing and I was having a hard time breaking)
Check my tire pressure
Check my left rear wheel bearing
Change a friend's exhaust system
Fix his filler neck
Change his oil
He called me up at told me to come over after work on Friday so he could get all my shinanigans done. But I didn't get there until 7, so all he did was tear my breaks apart. He wasn't very happy with me for it. Saturday we went up there (to his parents' house where he was working on the cars) early. He got my car done in no time. He said my breaks were fine. He changed my oil, put ZMAX in my fuel and forgot to check the wheel bearing. I checked the tire pressure and Eric filled them up. One tire was FLAT!
He then moved on and fixed his friend's exhaust and didn't get to his truck. I talked to him when I got out of work and told him that since I wasn't gonna get to go to Darien Lake, I wanted to go for a walk with him to burn off some steam. Eric says to me "I would like to go, I've been thinking about getting outta town and doing something different..." So he went and asked his friends if they wanted to go also, and he'd pay for them. They said no. He said he would think about it. I told him I'd call him in the morning.
So I did, after falling asleep at midnight and walking up at 7 (my mom's alarm clock woke me up). I sat around until 9 am and then called Eric. He said he wasn't sure if he wanted to go cuz he was so tired and had to fix his truck. Then he said he could do his truck during the week. I was like "let's just go while it's cheap!" So he got up and took a shower. I called him around 10:15 and he still wasn't ready. He said it would only take him a few minutes. So I said I was just about to leave.
My dad and I went outside to take some stuff outta my trunk and add stuff for the trip (which my dad told me "You are not going to Disney World, you don't need so much stuff!"). It was really nice out. I didn't even need my sweater or jacket that my dad forced me to take.
I got to his place around 10:30 or so. He still wasn't ready. But we left about 10 minutes later. I had a 1/2 a tank of gas and didn't know how much I would use driving to Darien Lake. Just to elaborate... Darien Lake is roughly 2 hours away from where I live. Eric semi-argued with me to take his truck instead of my car since he has EZPass, but I said, my car gets better gas milage. I pulled up to the gas station (which was full service) and hopped outta my car to start filling up. Eric's like "why not let the guy do it, and I'm like he's standing around like an idiot, I'll be faster." Then Eric asked me if I wanted anything to drink. I said a Coke Zero and he asked if I wanted an energy drink... then I was like screw it I'm going in because it's full service. I picked up a Code Red Mountain Dew. Eric got some Red Bull. After my car was done filling (which was about 10 gal and Eric yelled at me for over-filling my tank) I washed my windows and headlights. We were on our way.
OMG! What a long drive! It took us forever to get there. Once we hit the freeway section of I90, it started to mist. We called one of Eric's friends to ask them to check the weather for us. He said it was gonna rain until 2 and then clear up. Well after the freeway, it pretty much stopped misting.
We got to Darien Lake, paid the $7 for parking and parked... RIGHT NEXT TO THE FRONT GATE! Wow! I said "I have no problem walking back to the car for anything I guess!" We went and got in line to purchase our tickets. $25.49 with tax I think. Not a bad deal!
We walked in and right up to the Predator. It's the wooden coaster there. We decided to get the herky-jerky outta the way first. We waited roughly 20 minutes, and that's only because they were loading the trains so slowly! It was actually not has wicked as I had remembered it (FYI it has been 7 years since I had been to Darien Lake). It was quite fun. After that we headed towards the back of the park to ride the new roller coaster they opened. It's like motorcycles or something. We walked passed Boomerang (it's a roller coaster where it lifts you up the lift backwards, drops you forwards through the station up into a cobra roll, then a vertical loop and up another incline, where it then lifts you up, holds you a few seconds, and drops you back down, but backwards. I had never been on this before. I said I wanted to ride the new coaster before lines go too long on it. So we walk up to it and it was closed. I figured because it had been raining. So we headed back towards to the park and stopped at Boomerang and contimplated if we should ride it or now. We agreed to ride it later when we headed back that way for Motocoaster.
We saw they were starting to operate a lot of the rides, one of which was the pirate ship. So we both wanted to ride it. The bumper cars were right there next to it so we waited for them while they were test running Pirate. It took a wee bit of time to get on bumper cars. But they were fun. I haven't rode those since I was very, very, very little. Then we were on to Pirate. We pretty much walked on it, sat second to last row. It ended up making Eric a wee bit nausious. So we sat down for a few minutes. We decided we were fairly hungry (it was like 1:30), so we got funnel cake cuz Eric loves it. They had a couple of options: cinnomon sugar, apples, or strawberries. We went with apples and cinnomon sugar. It was really good. HOT!
After that we felt pretty good and headed over to Viper. This is the first roller coaster I ever road that went upside down. One year, I road it 9 times in a row (without getting off). I would have rode it more, except I was started to get sick. Eric was still feeling a lil oozy, so we stopped at Subway, got a soda and Eric wanted a cookie. We sat there for a while... I pointed out to Eric that the soda tasted different. He goes "it's the end of the thing." I said, "nope, find a drinking fountain and taste the water... it's the same flavor."
Here I'm gonna take a lil aside, everyone talks about the water in WDW and the way it tastes... this is how the water tasted at Darien Lake.
Ok, so after the soda we went on Viper. Eric was conserned about it but we agreed it was a pretty smooth ride. Again, barely any wait. We waited and ended up in the red car again (we got the red car on Predator also). You start off going down a lil drop outside of the station, you turn then head up the lift hill. OMG! The chain was SO LOUD! It was louder than on the wooden coaster. Then you crest the hill, go down another lil hill, turn and down the big drop into a vertical loop. Somewhere after that into a cobra roll, then somewhere towards the end there's a double corkscrew. WOW! You really didn't feel any jerky-ness at all! Going upside felt natural. It was an amazing feeling!
The only other roller coaster I have been on that goes upside is Rock'n'Roller Coaster and you just don't get the same feeling being in the dark. I pointed it out to Eric and his response was "I don't even remember going upside down in RNR (my mom had the same comment when I was telling her about the day later).
When we first arrived at Darien Lake, I asked Eric (joking too) if he was gonna win me a stuffed animal. To my surprise he said yes. This was a surprise to me, because he has never done anything like that before... Anyways, after Viper we played a midway game. It's one where you throw the rings onto the bottles. I couldn't believe how cheap it seemed. We didn't win. Oh well. So we walked around some more and I showed my discontent to Grizzly Run being closed. It was one of my favorite rides as a child and I hadn't ridden since (it's always closed).
I have no idea what we did for a while... we played some more midway games (one where you throw the bag to knock down the milk bottles, another where you throw balls into a giant tub, and another ring game that was even more cheaper). We came across a girl working while we were on the midway and she said that the games were $6 a game when Six Flags owned Darien Lake (now they were $2). So she tried to give us some tips on how to actually score, but we still lost. Oh well. It was fun anyways.
We walked around and looked at the rides, but nothing appealed to us. I kept asking where the dark rides were. I don't believe Darien Lake has any. Eric decided he wanted a pretzel. So he went and grabbed one while I watch a guessing game. The guy guessed both the age and weight wrong. The crowd began to build up... he continued to guess age and weight wrong. He got a few people, but I'm not sure what for.
We sat down and ate the pretzel. It was good size. VERY, VERY salty. We ended up whiping all the salt off. Eric also got cheese, but it was very mild in flavor. The pretzel though was really good, lots better than Auntie Anne's.
Eric wanted to get going... we had only been there a couple of hours. I wasn't ready to leave yet (I mean I drove there!). And there were still a few things I wanted to do. We tried to find Mind Eraser. This is when I realized Darien Lake has a bad layout.
Eventually we found it. It was our longest wait. They were running only one train. But the line moved pretty fast since ppl would leave since they were sick of waiting. In actuality, the line would have gone faster if people understood it. After the queue there are three entrances that you can choose for front, middle, or back of the train. People were just gathering at the rear of the train and not letting people pass who wanted to ride in the front. Anyways, they came online and said they were gonna load the second train. Lines went by much faster after that. Eric and I always ride middle (well I do, the front is too slow and jerky, back just whips you around, I feel). So we got into a line in the middle of the train. It turns out that line had only 1 working train (like in one train the harnesses were broken) so we actually ended up waiting forever since our line had to board every other train. We didn't get the red train because of it.
Mind Eraser is an inverted coaster which I love! You start up the lift right out of the station, and turn as you go down the first hill. The first inversion is a cobra roll, but there's a vertical loop and barrel roll in there somewhere. This ride was bad. It was really wicked. Our heads were going all over the place. My hair was a complete mess after it! Of course Eric wanted to leave right away, but I had to let my head settle before I could drive, plus I wanted to see if I could do Ride of Steel, MotoCoaster, and Boomerang.
Sometime I saw this lil shop called Five Little Monkeys. It looked like they sold stuffed animals, so I wanted to stop. I was so excited when we walked in there to see they were the same company that sold the animals that I buy in Animal Kingdom! I had to buy one! So I walked around trying to decide what to get. I already have a Flamingo, Elephant, and Hippo. Here they had some weird big nosed animal, a rhino, some others. I picked up the rhino at first, but then saw a meerkat. That's what I go. It was bigger and cheaper than the rhino anyways. But I was still super excited.
We headed over to the back of the park to check out MotoCoaster which still wasn't running. Then I asked Eric if we should do Boomerang. We both felt neither of our stomachs could handle it. But somewhere Eric said he felt like he wanted speghetti and garlic bread. I said there used to be a restaurant here that served that so lets find it. So we did and he says "I want to eat it at home!" And I was like "I'm not cooking" and he goes "all you have to do is cook the pasta" and I'm like "you cook the pasta." Then I was like, what if we go to the Olive Garden. Well we didn't decide then, but pretty much decided we were going to leave. And I had to buy cotton candy before we left. So we had to find the cotton candy vendor. We were walking past the walkway to Ride of Steel and decided to walk over there and see how long the line was.
Ride of Steel is like 210 feet tall. That may not seem like a lot in today's roller coaster world, but I still haven't rode it or anything remotely close or taller. I have panic attack just thinking about it. I told Eric that if the line was like it was at Mind Eraser, I couldn't ride Ride of Steel because I'd have a panic attack before the ride started.
Well there was barely any line at all, we watched a train take off and do the first bit of track. I decided I couldn't handle the climb. I just want to clarify that I'm not scared of heights, I'm scared of stairs... my fear is that the ride stops and I have to walk down them stairs.
I'm gonna finish this later, I have to get ready for work.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing! $165 round trip with direct flights and GREAT TIMES!
So I ran like the wind (so fast I upset the dog) to get my credit card. I booked those bad boys before they had the chance to change the price. My mom says "maybe they will get cheaper!" My response, "from what I've seen with JetBlue, I doubt it, and I can't risk losing this great deal!"
