As you may recall, we knew another trip to Pittsburgh was on our summer agenda because of the screw-up with Jacob's new Pirates jersey not getting its front numbers. We hadn't quite determined when that would be happening, but we had discussed a couple options including the Sauerkraut Saul plush giveaway on July 20 or possibly making it part of a larger road trip that could include Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and any number of other places in between. Our summer schedule has been taking shape, and it isn't looking promising for any lengthy vacations. We have a reunion this weekend, a reunion and an anniversary party the following weekend, a birthday party the weekend after that, and Craig's out of town for work for a few days at that time. Add in a few appointments and a couple other other single-day activities to be scheduled, plus Carter's orientation and our Cedar Point trip (hopefully) around the end of August, and everything's spaced out just right to sort of jam up our weeks. Now, I know we don't have to go to the parties (well, except the first reunion, which I'm involved with) and we could reschedule at least one of the appointments, so I'm sure we could fit something in, but it's going to get complicated. I also have someone to train at work so vacation days will be a bit challenging to cram in--though I will do it if needed. We don't really have any firm plans and no one will latch on to anything we've discussed, so we're just sort of in a holding pattern. We've talked about Philadelphia or Maine, other things in Florida, and of course Atlanta is always on the docket, and I'm still holding out hope to get out west to see my brother's family at some point. But nothing has really stuck.
So, in the midst of all that, somehow the July 20 Pirates game became our target--well, the boys' target. Then Craig mentioned stopping in Erie for Waldameer en route, which was intriguing. I thought maybe we could find time to do the Museum of Illusions we didn't get to last time, but that was a long shot. Even with those possibilities, I was still sort of angling to do something better and make the most of another five-hour drive in that direction. I also kept thinking about my messy house and all the busy weekends coming up. So we didn't book anything. Hotel options and tickets started dwindling. We were still undecided (and unpacked) on Friday night when we got home, tired, from Jacob's last baseball game. It wasn't looking good...but in the back of my mind I knew I would be blamed for squashing this and I knew it was important to the boys, so when I woke up on Saturday I started scanning hotel sites and apps again. I found one hotel that was both reasonable and had decent user reviews, and thankfully it had free breakfast, too. It was about a half hour outside the city (in the wrong direction), but it could work. It was really the only option, actually. So I booked it, got out of bed, and started packing up Carter's and my stuff.
We'd hoped to get on the road a bit sooner than we did since Waldameer opened at noon, but we had a couple stops to make (Wegmans for prescriptions, then gas, and then a bathroom stop that turned into an Aldi stop en route about halfway), and then we decided to grab food before we got to the park, which was around 1:45 or so. I should add that Craig and Jacob had opted to go explore Mercyhurst and try to find a place to shoot basketballs and/or hit baseballs, even though I think they would have liked the water park a lot. Their day didn't go quite as well as ours since Jacob got hit in the head with a baseball and all of their Mercyhurst attempts fell short--everything was locked up. But Jacob did get lobster at Outback, so there's that. Carter and I ate our lunch in the car, and then the guys dropped us off at the Waldameer entrance.
Waldameer is a charming little park--pretty compact, a little old fashioned, not as structured as most, and not exactly a big thrills kind of park, but it's fun and had been on our list. We went there in 2015 when Carter was only two! Obviously he had to stick with the kiddie rides back then. Jacob was just exploring bigger rides at that point and I think the Comet at Waldameer soured him on coasters for years to come. Oops. But we had put it back on our list as of last year when they added a water coaster to their water park. Carter and I really wanted to check that out, and this trip seemed like a great opportunity.
We walked into the park and looked around a bit. We figured a good starting point was Pirate's Cove, which is an old school, walk-through fun house. There was no line so it was an easy one to start with!
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| This picture was from later in the day when I had a better angle |
It's cheesy but fun--shaky floors, mirrors, optical illusions, glowing items, blowing air, silly displays full of skeletons and pirates. It actually reminds me a lot of Kennywood's Noah's Ark, but obviously with a different theme. It's from the same era of those cheesy, low-tech features. The main difference is that Noah's Ark moves back and forth the whole time, making it a bit harder to navigate. It's just good, silly fun.
Another entry in the same realm is the Whacky Shack. I remember really liking this one when Jacob and I rode it. Same concept as Pirate's Cove, but you're in a little car that takes you through all the silly displays and sometimes whips you around corners and gives you some little jump scares. As you can see in the picture below, the cars make one outside appearance down a little dip, before re-entering the building for more fun.
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| The eyeballs near the peak spin, too! |
It's really a fun throwback and made for a good way to start the day, even if it was a longer wait than would have been ideal--probably about a half hour. But for me, it's a must-do!
By this point our lunch felt pretty digested so we hopped in line for the Steel Dragon, a spinning wild mouse. It reminds me a lot of the one at Seabreeze.
From the line, which was elevated, there was this lovely view of a line of Rose of Sharon bushes with the log flume in the distance. The flowers looked so pretty. I'm not sure this really captured it, but I tried.
The coaster itself was fun--it had some good swoops and hills. You can sort of see in the background the nearly sideways curve that the coaster car is on. It was nothing crazy compared to a lot of what we ride, but it was really fun!
At that point we walked over to the big one, Ravine Flyer II. I have such mixed feelings about this coaster. It's a wooden coaster, with similar trains to Predator at Darien Lake. Like a lot of woodies, it is rather rough. But it's super exciting and feels like a runaway coaster even though it only goes about 60mph max. One of the only other coasters that feels that way to me is Phantom's Revenge at Kennywood, but this one is wood so it has the rickety feeling to go with it. The first hill is 118 feet, which isn't that high, but it feels steeper than it is. It flies over the nearby road twice, which is different, but that part of track has ridiculous airtime so you're more preoccupied with that than realizing where you are. It's way rougher than I'd like but I can't deny it's exciting!
Carter liked it, but also felt its pain. I ended up taking two Tylenol right away because I could feel it in my head. I think with a re-track it would be outstanding.
After that we worked our way over to the Comet, the last "big" coaster. That's the one whose airtime (and probably lack of seatbelts) ruined Jacob's desire to ride anything for a while. On the way we stopped for a bathroom break and of course I had to get the park sign photo op because I have lots of these with Carter in them!
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| It was easier to see in person |
The Comet feels a little like the Bobsleds at Seabreeze but is a little more of a traditional out-and-back compared to Bobsled's setup feeling a bit more "wild mouse". It's another woodie, so probably rougher than I would prefer, but not nearly as bad as Ravine Flyer II. As I mentioned, there are no seatbelts, just a bar, so that airtime is pretty noticeable on this one. Definitely a fun ride.
We decided at this point--around 4:30--to go to the water park. Lines looked massive when we came in so we figured by that point hopefully people would start to leave. Either they'd be tired or hungry or the heat of the day was less intense so we figured that would work to our advantage. It was still plenty warm, though. We stopped to get a picture of the frog lifeguard, then headed in to change.
I don't have pictures from inside but I have a couple later on from the Sky Ride and when we were walking out. We walked around a little to get the lay of the land and just quickly popped into the wave pool up to our knees or so to cool our burning feet. Carter did run into the big pirate ship play area for a few minutes to shoot water at people and go on one of the little slides, but quickly came back because we had bigger fish to fry!
We only had a couple hours to do the water park so we opted to get in the endlessly long line for the water coaster. If you haven't seen one, it's like a water slide that can go uphill thanks to water jets. We were a little disappointed to discover that our combined weight was too light to go ourselves. You may remember a number of years ago that a kid on an underweight raft on a ride like this down south flew up and off the slide and got decapitated by the tunnel. Horrible. So obviously we knew why it was a big deal, but the girl at the bottom of the stairs said they'd pair us up if we couldn't find another pair while we waited. So up we went. It was a 45 minute wait, but not terrible. When we got to the top and mentioned to the girl that we were underweight, she looked mildly panicked and said that normally they're not supposed to let anyone up without a set group that hit the minimum weight. Well...shoot. She asked the groups on the first flight of stairs if there was a duo that was willing to ride with someone else, and initially it wasn't looking good. Fortunately, an older couple (probably in their 60s) raised their hands. Whew. We weighed in and all was good...thank goodness. We all laughed through the entire ride because the as the jets shoot you uphill, all that water comes up and over your back, so you get quite the shower! There were probably three or four of those. It was chilly but a really fun ride!
We were heading toward the racing slides after that and got sidetracked by the lazy river, whose line had shortened significantly. As predicted, by the time we got through that 45 minute wait, lines were starting to dwindle. The lazy river was fine--not a lot of obstacles but not bad. That exit was right near a set of slides we didn't realize existed--a pair of simple twisty body slides that ultimately reminded me of riding the slides at Disney. These were longer but felt very similar with their spirals and seated position. I think maybe we did the double tube slide next? It was a big slide that we could see rode really high on the walls when you went through a curve. It was fast and fun to do together. And the pool was SO warm!
After that we did a couple rounds on the racing slides. I'm not a huge fan of face-first racing slides (on a toboggan-style mat) because of the water in the face issue, but Carter really wanted to do these because they were much more elaborate than Darien Lake's. They were longer, had one open stretch not in the middle, and even had timers to give you your time and finishing order! They actually weren't too bad, hence why we rode them twice. By that point there was no line, but it was a long walk to go from the exit to the entrance again. Carter had a hard time getting started because he was smaller and they started the timer so fast once you were up at the tube, so I definitely beat him both times!
We were almost done and only had maybe a half hour left by this point so we headed to the last bank of tube slides--one toilet bowl, one twisty double tube slide, and one that ended up being dark most of the way and having a nice hill at the end. We figured we'd do the toilet bowl together and then see if we had the time or desire to do the other two, and thankfully we were able to do all three. The toilet bowl left us laughing because we got inundated with water multiple times (we got a bonus swirl because we missed the exit the first time around). We did the twisty tunnel slide together and then split up to do the dark one separate. We didn't realize it would be that dark, so it was a surprise. But the end drop (with bonus waterfall at the exit) was cool. The last thing we hadn't done were the extreme body slides. They're the kind where you need to cross your arms over your chest and cross your ankles, much like Brain Drain at Darien, but minus the floor dropping out. One was a straight down tunnel, and the other two were mirror image ones that did one big curve and then dropped to shoot you out into a pool. When we were in the water coaster line, we watched people rocket out of all of them. They would just fly into the pool with a giant splash. We saw a couple littler kids have to get assisted once they hit the pool as I think it was pretty disorienting. It was not my thing, but Carter really wanted to do it, so we did the mirror image ones at the same time. I did question audibly why I was doing it as I went down, but in the end it wasn't terrible!
With that we headed back to change and go back into the park, although Carter opted to stay in his stuff for the log flume, which was our next stop. I don't think he needed to, but I don't blame him--he's used to Shipwreck Falls/Pittsburg Plunge giant ones, not smaller splashy ones like this one or Seabreeze's.
The big hill on this one was a pretty good one.
I didn't go on this one last time--I stayed with tiny Carter while Jacob and Craig rode it--and I recalled them just being pleasantly splashed, so I was hoping that's all we got on this one. It was a pleasant ride--through a misty tunnel, up and down a small hill with barely a splash, and then the big hill which seemed like a good one (and probably could get you if it splashed just right), but it really gave us enough of a splash to keep me damp for maybe 20 minutes, if that. Carter changed out of his swim stuff and we started working toward wrapping up. We rode the Ali Baba since that was a type of ride Carter hasn't done much.
I shared in my last Waldameer post that I spent my childhood wanting to ride the Rainbow at Maple Leaf Village in Niagara Falls, and this was the ride that fulfilled that dream. It's not super exciting, but it's still fun (and taller than a similar one at Seabreeze).
We considered a couple other rides but eventually decided we'd just do the Sky Ride. I knew it wasn't the most exciting, but I had really wanted to ride it last time and didn't get to. It was also shaping up to be a lovely evening sunset so I figured I could probably get a couple good pictures up there, and I wasn't wrong!
This is one of the shots I got of the water park. If you zoom in, the blue slope is the belt that sends the water coaster boats back up. The tubes in the background were partly the water coaster, partly the body slides, and partly the last tube slides we rode.
It was such a pretty evening and the view was pretty outstanding.
And as usual, the company was good!
We sent Craig and Jacob our Popeyes dinner order from the Sky Ride. We wanted Raising Cane's since it was close to our hotel, but that was still a couple hours away so we had to settle for Popeye's.
This view was overlooking the two sit-down slides that reminded me of Disney, and the tops of the double tube slide and its single tube sibling.
When we got back off the ride, the lights were starting to come on and everything was looking so pretty.
On our way out we stopped at these funny mirrors. Carter's face in this one just cracked me up!
We wrapped things up and headed out of the park. From the walkway there was a better view of the water coaster. To the left you can see the multicolored twists and turns of the racing slides.
The guys picked us up, and off we went toward Pittsburgh. The sky turned all sorts of pretty colors as we drove.
The hotel was about two hours away so it was a bit of a hike in the dark. But eventually we got to our hotel past Pittsburgh, down near a casino southwest of the city. The hotel wasn't great but it wasn't terrible. It looked like parts of it were just recently redone, but other stuff still needed attention. But it was the only decent one available and in the end it was fine...enough. We settled in for the night and got ready for a long but fun day on Sunday.
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