The Average American Family Vacation Day Two

AAFV Day 2 started with a quick trip to Dorney Park. Deciding to focus solely on the water park this trip, we drove in our swimsuits, with a dry change of clothes in a backpack for our day's later adventures. We got there about 9:30, 30 minutes before opening, found ourselves a locker, and waited by the Wild Water Kingdom gates until 10AM.

Our first stop was going to be the Patriot Plunge, so Kairi and I could go down one of the tubeslides. Alas, it was not yet open. I guess lifeguards don't like waking up early. Our second stop was at Riptide Run, a lazy river with a twist (a few slides thrown in). This is a family favorite, although it took the kids two or three trips to be brave enough to go on this without a parent holding onto their tube. After our first trip down, we were able to carry our tubes right back up to the top for a second time around. It's nice going to the water park so early; everyone else is on the dry rides this time of day. (Jenn - Well, not EVERYONE else. There was a pretty big crowd waiting to go in, and some slightly obnoxious teens were riding multiple tubes down the one river. But all in all, it was less crowded than usual, and a very good time was had by all.)


After Riptide Run, we got into another lazy river in the park, Runaway River. Runaway River is a lazy river (tube ride around a basic track of water), with a few waterfalls that come down over your head, just for the added wetness. This is one of everybody's favorite rides in the water park, as evidenced by the smiling faces of the kids in the picture above and the rare photo of Jenn below. It's unfortunate that I am so bad with a camera, which is why Jenn is not in more family pictures (she does the photography in the family). (Jenn - Actually, that's not a bad picture, except that it has me in it....)


We ended up going around a second time, but only after having to actually get off and ride this time and get back in line (despite the fact that there wasn't a line). After floaty relaxing trip number two, we headed to the newer of the park's two wave pools.




First it was just me and the kids in the water, but soon Jenn also came in. (Jenn - That's cause I gave up on finding a place to put our towels and dumped them on the ground. Turns out that giant crowd at the gates had run over and staked out all the lounge chairs...) We got to swim around in some calm water, and then the waves started. The wavepool actually made us wish we had left already for the Outer Banks (that's not until Day 5), because then we wouldn't be counting on a machine for our waves. This water, however, isn't nearly as salty. Kai and Nick swam and jumped, and I got into the action with some underwater shenanigans. The underwater picture I think came out well, considering Jenn took the waterproof camera and shoved it under the water and clicked. (Jenn - I'm always afraid of losing my contacts if I open my eyes to take pictures underwater.)


After the wave pool, Kairi and I finally got a chance to go on Patriot Plunge (and Jenn and Nick went on Riptide Run again). This is a tube slide with three chutes to chose from (red, white, and blue, hence the name). Both Kairi and I picked the blue chute, which is fully closed the entire way down. It was my first time on any kind of water slide (outside a small neighborhood pool type slide), and I definitely had fun on the way down. The way up wasn't such fun, since I'm afraid of heights. I think the fact that I couldn't see a blasted thing helped make me like the ride. That way I couldn't tell how far up I was. :) (Jenn - Suuuure, he'll go on this when his daughter says it's not that bad. I've been trying to get him on waterslides for years. I would have joined them, but there's no way Nicky would attempt the slide. *shrug*)

After Patriot Plunge, we got back to our locker, which we gave to another family for the price of our deposit + $1 (that way they get their deposit back at the end of the day and basically spend $1 on the locker, and we get $1 more than our deposit plus we didn't have to stand in line to return our locker key!). We dried off, changed, and headed for Part 2: Musikfest. (Jenn - Blah, blah.... Mr. Attention to Detail here.... *wink*)

Musikfest is music festival in our area that started in 1984 after the collapse of the local steel industry. While I liked it as a younger kid, I started to get sick of it when it got to be more in my way than fun. As an adult, I've basically gone twice every year to grab lunch during my working hours, but besides that, the family has tried to avoid the festival at all costs. This year, we decided to brave the festival, since we thought the kids might enjoy the music.

So we parked in a parking lot about 5 miles out, and for $6, took a bus into the heart of Musikfest. This was better than paying $10 - $20 in parking close to the festival (assuming we could find parking).

The Musikfest organization had a treasure hunt going on for the kids this year. If they went to certain information booths, they could color in places on their maps. Each station had a different wonder of the world (Great Wall of China, Statue of Liberty, etc.) If they found every place, they got a prize. This started out fun, but as the heat started to bake our brains, and the sheer number of tourists got in our way, the treasure hunt turned us all into crabs instead of pirates. of course, it didn't help that the map was wrong and two treasure hunt stations were at the same information booth...


With one place on the map left to go, we decided to walk up from where we were (the historic part of town, with some colonial-era buildings) up to Main Street where a trombone quartet was playing. After a bit of a hike up the hill, I ran into a friend from work. We chatted for a few minutes, but then I caught up to Jenn and the kids, who were already sitting and listening to the trombones. After the second song, Jenn thought we should check out the comedy stunt artist, Jonathan Burns. (To be honest, this left me slightly annoyed. We came to listen to music, didn't we?) (Jenn - Actually, this was the KIDS. Where they were sitting, they could see him juggling fire, and for some reason, found that more intriguing than listening to trombones. Hmmm... Can't imagine why...)


Jon Burns was pretty funny. He was a contortionist, juggler, and all around geek. There wasn't anything spectacular about his show, (Jenn - Yeah, because Scott juggles with a barbecue fork, a knife (which you can see getting ready to fly under his leg here), and a flaming torch ALL the time...) but it was cute. After the stunt show was done, we headed back down to the historic area to listen to a Celtic/Blue Grass band from California called Sligo Rags.


The drummer and fiddler weren't bad, but the accents were fake, and it's wasn't really easy to hear the vocals half the time. (Jenn - Maybe because the volume on the instruments was eardrum shattering. Which I wouldn't have a problem with. At a rock concert. But when you're listening to Celtic Bluegrass, it hardly seems apropos. As Scott said, they were okay, but not very exciting.) They did cover Dirty Old Town, which was nice. But, by this time, everybody but me was sunburned, and the insects were bothering Nicky. It was sometime mid-afternoon (4PM, I think, but I couldn't say for sure, since the cellphone got left in the car), and we decided to have dinner. I was hoping for a rendition of Wild Rover, but if they did play it I don't know. They probably would have mangled it anyway.


The kids and I each got an ear of roasted corn from Aw, Shucks. I get this corn every year when I come down for lunch. The corn is roasted in its outer leaves, then shuckec and covered in butter, seasoning, and paraseam cheese. Jenn, Kairi, and I also each got a shish-kebab from Hogar Crea (which is also part of my normal Musikfest lunch), who have been making shish-kebabs and curry chicken at Musikfest as far back as I could remember. While the meat was a little tough, it wasn't too bad. (Jenn - Aw, Scott. Don't you think you should mention, for the sake of the unintiated, just what our three ears of corn, three shish-kebabs, and two diet cokes cost us? Try $29. Urgh.)

After dinner, it was time to finish up the treasure hunt and to catch Keith Leaf, firejuggler, who was performing down by the kid's area (Banana Island). He dropped a few balls during a early part of the show, but by the time he got to the fire juggling, he was doing pretty well. Nicky liked the fire juggling best. (Jenn - So did I.)


After the fire juggler, we finally were able to finish the treasure hunt, only to be told we had to wait for someone from Musikfest to get back with more prizes. We sat for about 20 minutes while Kairi and Nicky colored in some huge puzzle pieces of the world. Once or twice I snuck over to one of the radio station tents, where they had a misting fan set up. At last, the volunteer arrived with the prizes, which was a small goody bag filled with markers and activity books and other cool crayola stuff. (Jenn - It was a pretty decent goody bag, considering it was free, and the kids didn't feel cheated after all their hard work finding the stations. I was worried while we waited all that time that it would be some little dollar store type item and they'd be disappointed.)


All in all, it wasn't the best day of our vacation, but they that tends to happen at least once per trip. The weather isn't going to always cooperate, and crowds can make anyone testy. We had a great time at Wild Water Kingdom, and we did learn one thing: Yes, Virginia, we do indeed hate Musikfest (although I'll probably keep coming during lunch breaks next year...). (Jenn - Well, you're welcome to it during any lunch break you like, dear. Scott was very diplomatic - I was probably the least happy, but mainly because I could see that the kids weren't very happy, and I wasn't thrilled with the fact that you had to walk past 50 concession booths for every one act (musical or otherwise) that you saw. At any rate, I'm glad this particular vacation afternoon is history.)