Coasters Cannot Be Trusted

Last weekend we took the boys down to Six Flags along with a few other couples and their kids. It's been quite awhile since Jill and I have been there, and most of the time we focused on the coasters. I didn't recall what there was for younger kids, but as it turned out - quite a bit.

Part of Six Flags St. Louis is a water park, so we started there. They had an enormous wave pool, a kiddie area, a sort of slow-moving river you can float around on inner tubes, and a couple of water slides that were open. Logan had fun in the wave pool, and Liam sort of enjoyed the inch or so of water that he allowed himself to be coaxed into. It's kind of comical to see a kid who's around 3 feet tall and suited up in full lifejacket regalia being freaked out by water higher than his ankles. Oh well, we're working on it.

We did get Liam over into the tube river, where he sat on my lap as we floated around. I think this is probably what he had the most fun with in the water park, since he was doing something, and yet no portion of his body was actually in contact with water.

At some point, something occurred in the water park, and most of the kiddie area was shut down. So, we ditched the water park, changed everyone back into street clothes, and hit the park proper. We took the boys up to the Looney Tunes area, where there were lots of playgrounds and tame rides for them to enjoy.

Logan managed to get in not one but two roller coasters, and we're talking full-size coasters here, not the Zambezi Zingers. First up was the new Tony Hawk Big Spin, which consists of a fairly mild coaster ride, but the cars are free to rotate around as you go through the track. At first glance, I was dead-set against riding this one - my abhorrence for any sort of ride where you spin very fast in tight circles is well-documented. I was told the spinning was pretty light, and I really wanted to go with Logan on his first coaster ride, so I went. And it wasn't too bad. Logan was pretty excited until the first drop, and then his face went from "this is pretty neat being on this ride" to "OH DEAR LORD WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO". Any time we hit a curve or dropped or did anything that upped the G-forces, his eyes would get really big and sort of dart around in half-panic. I think there was only one instance where he actually got a little freaked out, but like any coaster it only lasted .8 seconds, so he made it through just fine. Afterwards we asked if he liked it:

"Yeah, it was pretty fun."

"Do you want to go ag-"

"NO."

At the end of the day, he and I rode the Screaming Eagle, which is an awesome all-wood coaster way in the back of the park. He only went on it because his friend Savannah was a big fan, although after the Tony Hawk ride I don't think he was quite so keen on coasters. I sat next to him and told him to hold my hand and just scream as loud as he wanted. The coaster goes up the first hill, then down a gentle little slope to get a rolling start before the first big drop. Logan started screaming at the gentle slope and didn't stop until the very end of the ride. He thought it was fun, but has no interest in ever riding that one again either. EVER.

The log flume, though, was a big hit. He rode that probably 4-5 times. It seems to have just the right combo of relatively low speed and a decently steep but very brief drop at the end. That was the highlight of the park for Logan. Liam's favorite was the carousel, or as he called it, the horse ride.

All in all a fun day, helped enormously by the perfect 83-degree weather and astonishingly light crowds. Jill and I managed to both ride the new wooden Evel Knieval coaster (Verdict: Awesome), and even that was only about a 15-minute wait. Maybe someday we'll get Logan on that one (probably not before 2035).