single with vodkagood girl gone bad

so i took the rugrats to hershey park 2 weekends ago (yeah yeah, i’m a little behind in my blogging) with my pal, her lovely daughter & my mom. i had never been there and really had no idea what to expect. my girls had been there last summer, so they were totally jacked. i could only imagine how the concept of a park called “hershey,” that is not only dedicated to the very life-giving substance, chocolate, but to all candy in general, must be nirvana to a kid. that is like taking me to a vodka museum where you get to do free shots at each exhibit.

we decided that the best kickoff for the weekend was to leave during friday rush hour and sit in traffic for a few hours in the monsoon that hit nj. but we got there eventually, had a late dinner served by a very strange waiter & rested up for the next day’s fun filled extravaganza, that only a day at an amusement park can provide.

doesn’t every morning at a huge amusement park start the same way? everyone is so full of excitement and bursting with energy. every group member must have a personal park map which no one can actually fully figure out anyway. you all point out every ride you’re gonna go on, which is all of them, and set a course of action. immediately after getting past the throngs in the entrance area & are birthed into the vastness of the park, you are already confused & holding the map upside down while contorting your head to figure out where you actually are in real life. so, you just say fuck it, let’s go with the flow and get on the first ride the group wants to do, but as the day wears on, you eliminate a bunch of the rides on your list if the kids don’t remember ‘em. however, this only occurs after wrestling them past the endless sea of “gift shops” by the “village”( i.e merchandising area) at the entrance by making all sorts of promises to buy useless crap at the end of the day so you don’t have to carry it around for 16 hours. and really, you just hope they forget about it so you can try to save a few bucks. they never do. to a kid, you are an endless supply of stuff & cash. to some extent you want to do that for them, but you get pissed off at the $7 you were forced to spend on gatorade & a soft pretzel because your little angel is hungry 5 minutes after you got there. the outrageous, unapologetic gouging at “family venues” is so obnoxious. like paying for parking. i would prefer for them just say, hey, “welcome to our park. we will be ripping you off at every opportunity we have today & there is not a damn thing you can do about it.”

while my pal has 1 daughter who is 8 in tow, i have mom, my 2 girls, 5 & 8, and a stroller to wrangle. which means not only a lot of coordination, but also pushing the 36 pounds of 5 yr old AND all the crap hanging off the back of the stroller uphill. apparently, mr. hershey thought it would be a great idea to build a park in the mountains. and it’s a full day of rides, plus a water park, which means extra provisions (read: weight) are necessary: changes of clothes, bathing suits, giant beach towels, snacks (free ones that are totally distasteful to my kids), waters, lotions, goggles, & flood gear. it was quite heavy. that is why i felt bad about nothing highly caloric that i ate that day because i was working it off during my duty as a pack mule. this is one of the few areas in which the ETB was handy – as the family schlepper (yiddishdictionaryonline.com) but i would rather carry my shit to hades and back than ever be forced to vacation with that looney-toons again. but, i do digress.

what is the one thing that always tries to ruin your fun at the amusement park though? the lines. the lines are the suck but you have no choice if you’re a regular schlub (yiddish.com) that has to go on a weekend with the rest of the vacationing populace. waiting endlessly in 95 degree heat and 127% humidity to move 2 millimeters an hour is just not fun for anyone. i people watch to pass the time. it can provide hours of entertainment at any place where the public converges, especially an area set in the middle of the appalachians, america’s third world country. now, it does grant endless material, but be warned that you will see may things you may wish could be unseen and they never can. especially in the water park section where people are barely dressed. many of whom you wish would put on more clothes or larger swimwear. multiple piercings in places in which you can’t begin to imagine the mechanics involved to even get pierced. stab and bullet wounds. scars of all shapes & sizes. endless tattoos. mounds of blubber. progeny of only what could be first cousins. all colors of hair. crazy ass outfits and the biggest, deepest camel toe i ever saw. shiver.

another thing i did on line, which i am not necessarily proud of, but will blog about anyway, was to totally let not 1 but FOUR sbd’s (silent but deadlies) out on an indoor ride line & it was so repulsive in this hot confined area even i couldn’t stand it. peeps were close to fainting around me. seriously though, i knew i got stone cold busted when i heard the chick next to me in the parallel line say to her friend, “i smelled it too, & i know who did it.” and she pointed at me. i tried to look innocent but i was identified. so, people behind me on the great american chocolate tour ride, let me take this opportunity to officially apologize, but all that free chocolate they were handing out, did a number on my colon.

tmi, you cry? NEVER.

technically i wasn’t really tall enough to ride some of the rides unattended by a responsible adult so i stuck to the kiddie rides. leave it to a park in pennsylvania to have a ride called “the convoy” in which tots ride in a “tractor” against a mural of cows and pretend they are corralling the cattle. one cool thing that happened was while i was waiting on line with my 5 yr old to go on the ladybug ride, i felt something tickley on my hand. i looked down & immediately regretted brushing it off because it saw that it was firefly. a single firefly out in the middle of the day in the midst of zillions of people landed on my hand. and if you read my firefly post, you will know why this struck me as happy & sad at the same time (http://singlewithvodka.blogspot.com/2009/06/firefly-firefly-fly-away-home.html).

a cool thing about modern day amusement park visits, is that we all have cell phones now. so we could easily be in contact if we split up. this was the best thing ever. remember how much it sucked to have to guesstimate when you would be done with something & pick a meet-up place? i cant imagine how we ever went to these enormous sites without cell phones & texting ability. this came in handy when we were starving and met up for lunch. lunch is always an expensive ordeal where you also have to wait on a line. except on this line you get to spend $57 on cold chicken nuggets & greasy pizza while the rest of your posse fights for the next empty table. but you are always refreshed after lunch & ready to take on the rest of the park which we did until darkness began to fall. then when you are most exhausted and your feet are screaming in pain, you must try to escape…

to make a break for it you have to navigate the “twilight” crowds that have now descended, walk 12 miles back to the entrance if you can find it, which means you have to venture through the merchandising pit of despair once again, & then miss the parking lot tram so you can walk another 6 miles to your car if you are lucky enough to remember where you parked. its not until you sit down in the car & the kids pass out immediately that you realize how tired you are and that there is no way you can do this again tomorrow.

all is all we had a great time: all of the girls enjoyed it, my mom had fun, and i spent a ridiculous amount of money even though i refused to buy the candy they were claiming was “on sale.” ya, right – 3 bags for 19 bucks. come on, people, i know you are aware you can go buy this in your local supermarket for much less, but the hordes were buying the chocolate like they would never see it again anyway. just plain silly to me. needless to say, it will be awhile before i indulge in the land of chocolate again, so this past weekend i decided to hit AC without the kids which was exponentially more fun, but that is my next post…