13.08.2012 – 13.08.2012  33 °C

Yep I’m a sucker for punishment as I spent the whole day back at the theme park, Busch Gardens. Every time I saw that big blue coaster I would just shake my head and think/ say “how insane was I to get on that enormous ride?”

Actually we had a great day at the theme park today because we stuck to all of the tame rides and watched some shows. Even M had a great day at Busch Gardens. We started our day off by riding the Flume ride. I’m always a sucker for log rides and today was no exception. I’d brought myself a plastic bag today to hold my stuff so it wouldn’t get soaked on all of the water rides and gosh I was glad for it.. First ride and we were all soaked!! (I don’t think M was dry at all today—I had worn quick dry clothes so I was ok!!). M and I rode at the front with D at the back… I had said that we should all ride the last drop with our hands up in the air for the photo and M actually rode it with her hands in the air!! I never thought I’d see the day!

From the flume ride we headed over to the Bavarian part of the park to go thru the haunted castle, have some lunch and ride the dodgem’s. The Haunted Castle was a bit of a fizzer for me. It is one of those 4D rides, where you hop in a carriage, don your 3D glasses and get driven thru a set that is mainly made up of video screens. Lots of baddies flying at you etc… Works well if you can cope with 3D watching… As I can’t (it makes me feel very unwell), riding it in 2D was appallingly bad… Nothing is really scary when you can see two versions of everything—(As a side line, I sincerely hope that 3D tv doesn’t take off in a big way because I’m in big trouble if it does.. I don’t relish feeling sick every evening to sit down and watch the 7pm news—might reduce my tv watching though!)

Right next door to the haunted castle was a lunchtime show about Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood. It was a nice cool place to rest for a while in between rides. D and I had planned to have lunch here but the menu was pretty average so we decided to just have a snack, enjoy the show and head out somewhere else for lunch.

Dodgem’s came up next. We actually had to line up for quite a while to get a ride and then of course two minutes later it was all over.. We all smashed into each other and had a good time.. Can you beat the dodgem’s for great fun? It’s up there on my list of fun things to do.

By now we had worked up an appetite so we headed over to the Canadian section (don’t ask me how Canada fits in with Europe) to have ourselves some bbq-ed chicken with fries and coleslaw.. Food can be a little predictable here sometimes! A funny thing happened when I ordered my chicken, I was asked by the serving lady what coloured chicken I would like… Huh? The first thing that popped into my mind is she was asking me whether I wanted a white feathered chicken or a black feathered chicken!! What she meant was what coloured flesh would I like my chicken.. would I like the breast or the thighs? I had to ask her twice to work out what she meant.

The last part of our day was taken up watching a 4D pirate movie, complete with water and wind (again it wasn’t fantastic in 2D but not as bad as the haunted house thingy) and the River Rapid ride. We lined up in the heat for almost an hour to go on the rapid ride. We were warned that we were going to get wet and what an understatement. The ride itself doesn’t get you super wet until right at the end where the whole raft passes under this large waterfall that just douses everyone on the boat with water. I thought I was wet when I got off the flume ride, it was nothing compared to the drenching we got after the rapid ride.

We ended our day in Busch Gardens and our visit to Williamsburg, tomorrow we are heading up towards the Shenandoah Valley.

Song of the Day– Van Halen, Sucker in a 3 piece (one for Bennie 🙂 )