Sunday, September 30, 2012

Cotton candy costs HOW MUCH?!

Man, I really need to stop posting so frequently.  People are going to start thinking this is a twitter feed, me just prolifically spewing stuff every 8 months or so, rat tat tat like a machine gun ... and quality will suffer.
 
Quality was already suffering?  All the more reason for a break.  After this post, I may need a sabbatical, to recharge my creative juices.  

Anyway, we took the kids to Hershey Park this Saturday, which was the last weekend of 2012 that the park would be open.  Daddy's infallible thought process was that by end of September, with a nip in the air, the boys and girls of summer back at school and busy with weekend algebra homework and science fair volcanos to construct, the water park area closed down, the place would be relatively free of the teeming masses, no long waits, just our family skipping gaily from one empty ride line to another (Your Non-Existent Wait from this Point: A Mere 23 seconds!), with us eventually growing jaded from being able to sit in the front coaster car over and over.

Well, it turned out that the park was not exactly a chocolatey Wally World ghost town.  No, it was a bit more crowded.  How crowded?  Like sharing an elevator -- or maybe a linen closet -- with every person in Calcutta.  I think that in addition to the several million guests who arrived the normal way, the mendacious park overlords actually teleported in gleaming rows of tour buses from the future, just to break last year's attendance record.

It was absurdly, hatefully, maddeningly crowded.  I fumed: Why are all these people going to Hershey Park at the end of September?!  Obviously, our family is here because of careful, strategic planning.  But the rest of these lemmings seem to think that this is, like, a totally sensible day to go to the park. Was the herd augmented because of the evening Kelly Pickle concert? (Isn't she an American Idol cast off?  She's now a country music star?  That gives me a migraine.)

Now, fortunately, our kids are still too young -- ages 7, 5 and 3 1/2 -- to ride the big roller coasters.  Because the lines for those rides stretched to the Tappan Zee bridge.  I think it's entirely possible that, immediately upon arrival, hundreds of people ran and got in line for "The Great Bear" -- one of those suspended coasters that provide the thrill of brain-sloshing G-forces and a the very real risk of a bloody pigeon strike to the face -- and when the park closed, those same people, now dehydrated, and weeping bitter tears of impotent rage, had nearly reached the spot in line where they could -- if they stood on their tippy toes -- see the loading platform in the distance.  So close, and yet so far.  

Did I say that our children are not big enough to go on the wickedly fast, stomach churning "Jolly Rancher" rides?  Hershey has a handy ride height system, where types of Hershey candy correspond to how tall one must be to partake of the thrill of standing in line until one's bladder gives way.  Jolly Rancher rides are the apex -- the double black diamond rides -- and only for people over 7 feet tall who have also flown a space shuttle mission; Reese's Pieces attractions are for slightly shorter people who have a 70 percent greater propensity for vomiting when upside down, and so on; Hershey's Kisses designated rides are for little tykes like our daughter Anna. 

But Anna does not want to be, does not for a moment accept the reality that she is a vertically challenged, albeit adorable and quite tall for her age, second class Hershey Kiss.  No, no -- Anna's attitude upon learning that God had not seen fit to make her grow fast enough to ride any of the Coasters of Death or other "Big Kids" rides, was not one of wistful equanimity.  No, it was Cruella Devil being told the Dalmations were not for sale.  Her ride sign should have been a Hershey's Bitter Lemon Crab Apple Tart Dipped in Unsweetened Chocolate.

The idea that she was humiliatingly relegated to the "Lady Bugs" and the 2 mph Horsey Ride, while her brothers were allowed on much better, faster and trendier rides, was too much for Anna to bear.  Not even cotton candy would pacify her.

(Oh, did I mention that the cotton candy cost ... wait for it ... Four Dollars.  I ordered two -- what are they? sticks? -- thinking it'd be around three bucks.  I was even prepared for five, max.  Eight dollars?!  That's a mark up percentage that cannot be expressed in rational numbers.  It's like Pi to the Infinity power.  I'm pretty sure that it costs the Hershey robber barons one half of one peso to have an Equadorian child laborer press the button on the Wonka machine that whirls a spool of bubble gum pink, or electric blue or cancerous black spun sugar, and yet they want four bills. Gordon Gekko would be mortified at the profiteering.)

Anyway, I'm going to start having Anna hang from the backyard swing set, to stretch her torso, because if we go to Disney World as planned in another year, and she can't go on Space Mountain or the Pirates of the Caribbean, she might burst into flames and start flinging Snow White, Goofy, and innocent patrons thru the air with her telekinetic powers, like that girl in the Stephen King novel.  Not the pig blood girl, Carrie, the other one.

Ultimately, despite Daddy's grousing about the lines, and Riley's penchant for rubbing his hands over every garbage can, urinal and germ-encrusted surface in the park (I'm surprised he doesn't have Ebola), we had a fun day.  No one fell off the Sky Ride, we saw Zoo animals (although Anna was sorely vexed that the elk would not move and that there were no giraffes), and my 37 dollar pit beef sandwich was delicious.

                             

 

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