Rising Star Adventure

JAN 20--Amusement Parks

Written for "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  with prompt: On this day in 1885, the roller coaster was patented by L.A. Thompson. Tell us about a time you visited an amusement park.

I don't visit amusement parks much these days, but when I did got to go as a child, I always preferred the roller coasters that just went up and down like the Scream Machine at Six Flags, if any of you are familiar with it. I hated ones that went in circles and upside down like the Mind Bender. **shutters**

I went on the Mind Bender only once at the urging of my dad and brother, who loved it. I screamed it terror so loudly, I couldn't talk for a while afterward. I was never on that torture device again.

Fast forward 3 decades and I'm visiting my brother who was living in Florida at the time. We were going to have a day alone, so we decided to go to Busch Gardens since neither of us had ever been and we were both military, so we got in free once a year.

My brother had always been a roller coaster lover. We went on a few rides, but there was one where we were sort of suspended, with our feet dangling. He begged and begged me to go on it. Finally, knowing rides aren't nearly as fun alone, and wanting my brother to have a good time, I acquiesced. I screamed bloody murder, and not in a haunted house kind of way... More in a bloody murderer chasing me around my house kind of way. I did NOT enjoy that ride. When we got off, my brother was kind enough to thank me and not laugh at me. He said he could tell I did not enjoy myself, so he wouldn't ask me to go again. He rode several more times alone.

There was one other roller coaster he wanted to ride at Busch Gardens. I held his stuff while he did. (Now I know what we did to mom all those years ago when we'd go to the amusement parks.) I waited for him at the exit and when I saw him, he was pale and appeared visibly shaken. He said he wouldn't be going on that ride again. Like a good sister, I laughed at him.

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