To prepare, we spent the last night moving furniture and cleaning things. It was fun.
Nathaniel's been having an interesting time getting used to the time difference; he went from EST here to Pacific Time in Oregon for two weeks, then came back here but after only four days went on another vacation (and schedules are always weird on vacation). But last night he went down at like 6:50 pm and he's still sleeping now at 7:30 am. Winning!
I wish I had pictures from Busch Gardens to show you all, but I don't. My camera's batteries died. Actually, here are two pictures from before it died:
Those were obviously taken in Dragon Land. Sadly, that slide was the one thing Nathaniel enjoyed most about Busch Gardens, I'm pretty sure. That, and a crazy rainstorm we weathered, during which he continually tried to throw himself out from under our umbrella and into the rain. I'll post a picture of that later. It was cute.
He was a very good boy--the first thing we did when we got there was we took him on the Battering Ram. We sat in the very middle, across from my dad and Sam. Baby sat between me and Isabel, and we each held onto his legs and I had my arm around him.
He was terrified.
He shook like a little baby leaf. He was so scared. But he didn't cry. He is super brave!
Except for that what did make him cry was a baby Ferris wheel that went like 6 feet off the ground and I was sitting next to him the whole time, and it went super slowly. He was traumatized.
He did also semi-enjoy this little weird dragon ride where the dragons go in a circle up and down, and I think he semi-enjoyed riding in the teacups with us. He almost enjoyed the merry-go-round, but the whole time he just wanted to touch all the horses, and we had to keep him seated in our little bench.
For lunch we had funnel cake and this awesome potato chip like thing. My mom said that she really wanted to buy the machine that made them--"even if it was $600 it would be worth it!" she said. Only they're actually $800. So, maybe not so worth it. Who knows.
Other than that--reviews of the new rides: Verbolten, I thought, was a sad replacement of the Big Bad Wolf. I didn't realize that the ride was now basically indoors--you do the roller coaster through a weird haunted forest thing in a building... it's like Space Mountain or something. The ride DOES have a very surprising moment, but I thought the Big Bad Wolf was better. When you have such a beautiful area, why have an indoor coaster? Riding the Big Bad Wolf wasn't just super fun, it was a beautiful experience, because you got to be surrounded by the forest and ride over the lake and everything. Oh well.
Mach Tower--eh. Okay, I hate those rides anyway, where you go up super high and then drop. I always ride them anyway, but I secretly hate them. Mach Tower was better than normal rides like that, because you spin around as you go up, so you get to see the whole park. However, for me personally, the harness was so weird-fitting that my left arm got totally smushed and it hurt the entire time. I would not ride that ride again. ...until next time I go. And only because of peer pressure.
Alpengeist isn't new, but what was new was its joltiness. I think they need to tighten the screws on that thing because it threw my head around like crazy and all of us had headaches afterwards. It used to be our hands-down favorite ride because it was so smooth.
Best coasters: Apollo's Chariot, followed by the Gryphon (Gryffon? Griffon? whatever).
Best other rides: Wurbelwind, DaVinci's Flying Machines.
I was surprised at how many rides Nathaniel could actually go on, at only 30 inches tall. It wasn't a lot of rides, but considering his size, I was impressed.
Anyway. Vacation was super fun. And now, glad to be back and getting back into routines. And excited to see the Marshalls today! <3
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