Family Land

On Monday, Emily & I went to Family Land, an outdoor amusement park that's about 10 minutes from our home. They have a few rides, tobogganing (of sorts), skating, swimming, tennis and even a drive-in movie theatre. The drive-in was actually a pleasant surprise. Methinks we will "drive-in" a couple of lawn chairs and enjoy a movie one of these summer evenings.

Back to the story. We had a day free and decided to enjoy it riding some rides. It was cool out, and there was a chance of rain which did materialize later on in the day, but otherwise a good day for riding. The nice thing about family land is that you share it with about 500 elementary school students, so all the "big people" rides have no lineup. Literally. Emily and I were the only riders for most of the rides we went on. We had to wake up the workers or pull them away from their internet surfing in order to help us. Some of the rides was fine like that. Bumper cars gets a little tedious with just two people.

The advantages to this may seem obvious - no lineup, no obnoxious people, you get to ride as many times as you want. Hey, if the employees are really nice, you might not even have to get off! That'd be great!

Or so you would think.

The warning sign was when we went on the Viking, a boat ride that just goes back and forth. Typical, common ride that is generally held on the more relaxing side of things. However, when you're put through three rounds without stopping, even the tamest rides gets nauseous.

The nice lady that worked on the Viking took a shining to us foreigners and walked us over to the roller coaster - the Dragon Chase (which is also a euphemism for getting high on opium, as a side note). We should have seen it coming.

A relatively tame roller coaster, it goes upside down once, a couple of corkscrews, tight turns and a drop or two and you're finished. It's over pretty quickly, and as everyone else on the ride is a young adult couple, they send us through again without stopping.

And again. And again. And again. And again.

After 4 times, you think it's fun, but you'd be great to get off for a bit. After 7, you start to wonder how to say "Please let me off the ride as I'm not sure another round would be as enjoyable as the first half dozen" in Korean.

Nine times around without a break, they give you the option of getting off. Everyone took it.

Apparently they don't normally open up the roller coaster during the winter, so they either wanted to give us our money's worth, or check to see if it was still working after all that time in storage.

Blech.