Return of Nemo!...vacation report

Back from vacation, and OMG, WHAT A TRIP! For anyone who has not been to Cedar Point, you are missing heaven on Earth.

My husband was the biggest skeptic before we ventured on our first road trip to CP six weeks ago. Got him on the Blue Streak, a very mild coaster, and it all started. Next thing we knew, we were taking the 300+ foot drop on Millennium Force and then working our way up to the fastest and tallest coaster on the planet...Top Thrill Dragster. At 120 mph in 3 seconds and 420 feet at a 90 degree angle both ways, this is the ultimate sensation.

We took in all 16 coasters on this trip, taking intermittent breaks to walk the beach and relax our muscles in the hot tub at our hotel. (Needless to say, we were battered with harness hickies all over our arms by the end of the trip, but it was great!) Oh yeah, and I saw someone throw up on a coaster for the first time in my life. We had been waiting in line about 20 minutes when the red train came back in to the station at Millennium Force and wow...took 'em another 45 minutes just to clean up the mess and disinfect.

On our second day, I gave Steve an ultimatum--he had to either ride MaxAir or the RipCord with me. Now, MaxAir is like the Scrambler compared to the RipCord, which hoists you up 15 stories by a harness and allows you to freefall drop. For some crazy reason, he chose the latter, and I thought for sure he was going to kill me as we were slowly being pulled to the top by nothing more than a couple of cords.

Quite the contrary, his reaction was unlike anything I've ever seen in my life. The constant screaming was to be expected, but he latched on to my arm and would NOT let go. When we finally came back to Earth, he grabbed me and told me he loved me at least a dozen times. The lady who unstrapped our harnesses was laughing so hard...she said that he got the award for the longest and strangest scream she'd ever heard. He was jumping up and down like a kid, yelling how "$&#*%@ awesome" it was, and shaking random people's hands. Of course we bought the video...and have already watched it at least thirty times since.

So we did it again on Saturday before we came home.

Another highlight was this game...and we don't typically play games at amusement parks. But we were strolling along Wicked Twister Midway and we spotted this five foot stuffed fish that resembled Nemo. I was reluctant when Steve asked if we should try it, but I was like, "Aw, why not." (If you happened to read my post about Nemo dying, you'd see that the 2 live fish we won at a local fair didn't last long.) So I thought we might try to win our little boy one that wouldn't die...and has tags. My gosh, that boy loves tags. He rubs them with his fingers and sticks his other fingers in his mouth. It's an odd fetish, but one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

Anyway, it was this game where you roll a whiffle ball off of a board and into a box. We bought 3 tries for $5--Steve threw two and then I tried it. Well, mine did this strange thing where it went off the backboard, hit the box, bounced back up on the board, and back in the box. I screamed--and then the guy says, "Ma'am, I've never seen that done before!" as he's cracking up. Then he proceeds to say..."I don't think I can give you a prize." I was like, "What the hell?" He had to be joking...No. He told me to lean around the corner and tell the lady at the game adjacent to his to call his supervisor. I thought for sure he was kidding...told him that he needed to call his own boss. But no, he wouldn't leave his game.

So I leaned around the corner and told this chick what had happened, and damn if she didn't understand English. I glanced at her name tag and saw that she was from Poland. I was pretty miffed at this point, especially after having a fiasco at the fry stand with some lady from Kyrgstan who said, "Ees theese a test?" when I asked if I could get garlic fries with my corn dogs.

But she did manage to get, "Supervisor?" out of what I said, and I held my fingers up to the side of my head and told her that yes, she needed to CALL the supervisor. Well, he came 5 minutes later and after telling him the situation, he said it wasn't a winner. Like hell it wasn't. So I requested--politely-- that he call his supervisor to watch the surveillance tape, and after another 5 minutes, they determined it was a winner, fair and square.

What a freakin' ordeal for a fish! I absolutely hated having to challenge these people, and I hated it even more that it had to go that far over a silly game, though I knew I was right. But it proves that A. They aren't used to having winners, so it must be rigged, and B. The employees don't even have the authority to make judgment on their own games.

But it was great...Steve was a celebrity carrying that thing around the park, and my son was absolutely delighted to have "Nemo."