Cedar Point.

I would consider myself an expert on theme parks. 

Growing up, most of my family vacations included visits to family members because we got several things out of it: visiting family, free place to stay, and proximity to roller coasters. Coincidentally, most of my out-of-town family members happened to live a short drive away from some sort of theme park: Disney World, Sea World, Busch Gardens in Florida and Virginia, Six Flags over Georgia... so maybe that's why we saw our family so often.

The point is that I grew up going to places like that, smelling $14 funnel cakes that we couldn't have because they were too expensive, waiting in line for an hour to go on a two minute ride, walking around hiding from people dressed up as characters from Disney movies and cartoons, screaming on roller coasters... 

Well, the other day, Carson informed me that he had never ridden a roller coaster. I laughed, of course, thinking it was a joke, but then he followed up with some silly question that only a roller coaster novice would ask. After further clarification, it came out that he had been on a roller coaster, but it was more of the state fair type and less of the I-think-my-stomach-might-come-out-of-my-mouth type. 

From what I can tell, the good theme parks are somewhere down in California, not in Washington, Idaho or Oregon, which are nearby. So it makes sense that his family didn't make the 30-hour (or however long) drive down just to pay a million dollars to get into Disney Land. Obviously they didn't - their family was nearby - no excuse to visit ;)

We've heard about the wonders of Cedar Point since before we moved. When people found out that we'd be in the Cleveland area, they looked wistful and said "You MUST go to Cedar Point. It is amazing!" So we moved here, looked at ticket prices (and the $25 parking fee - WHAT???) and said, "That's nice, but that is a very expensive date". 

And then Carson met someone at a conference a few weeks ago whose brother or sister or someone was in charge of getting volunteers for their Halloween parade. The volunteers only had to be there for one hour, and they got free parking and free admission out of it. So we volunteered, and it happened to be the last weekend that they needed volunteers. 

Sunday after church, we drove over to Sandusky, Ohio and entered Cedar Point. 

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that just about every time our family went to a theme park, it rained. Guess the Bay family is continuing that tradition. 

We got there about 25 minutes before we had to meet to volunteer, so we found what Carson thought was a kiddie wooden roller coaster to ride. Afterward, he admitted that he'd never been on something that fast and scary. Note his windblown look.

Then we went through a little gate marked "Employees Only", which was kind of fun, and entered a back room filled with costumes for different characters and decorations. We were given two bright yellow jackets that were ugly but surprisingly warm and windproof, and told to stand in a certain place and wait for the parade.
Carson squints in the sunshine, I squint when it's raining...

We took pictures while we waited.

And then someone found us and told us that it was too windy, so the parade was cancelled. They took our warm jackets away and told us to go have fun in the park.

We rode Carson's first big-boy roller coaster. They told us that our legs would break if we didn't have them stick-straight on this coaster. He seemed to believe them.
He loved it but looked TERRIFIED on this and every other coaster. I think it was the wind that made him look that way. I couldn't take any more pictures-of-pictures because I got yelled at on the other rides but take my word for it - I wanted to buy them because he looked so freaked out.

This was on our way to the car to get a bigger jacket. It wasn't that cold, but it was windy (it's right on Lake Erie). 

 They had an exhibit called "Dinosaurs Alive!" but we didn't go through it for whatever reason. Here's Carson with his buddy.

This is the fifth-largest  and longest wooden roller coaster in the world. This thing was SCARY and surprisingly long for a roller coaster. Carson's face on this was the best, and my scarf flew up over my mouth so the picture of us was my favorite.

Dad found a webcam and we spent most of the day trying to find this fishing skeleton so that he could see us online. He took a picture, but I don't have it.

I don't think we'd be smiling if this were for real. But can you imagine if we still punished people like this?

We stopped to watch this acrobatic show, which was really amazing.

We stayed till after the sun set but you can only take so many pictures of yourselves smiling in line for roller coasters. After the sun had set, the park turned creepy (it's Halloweekend there)... there was dry ice pumped to look like mist and creepy zombies and things that popped out and harassed you every single second. They were only on one half of the park, so we took the longer way back after our last roller coaster (which ended up being shut down due to wind). Those things were creepy. I don't like creepy things.

So our first theme park adventure together was just that - an adventure. We'd love to go back on a day where rides aren't shut down because of wind and rain, and probably on a day when there aren't zombies roaming the park. But all in all it was great. We laughed a lot, enjoyed the rides (and the shorter lines that are probably a result of the wind and rain), and discussed why we weren't purchasing $14 funnel cake. 

Two enthusiastic thumbs up.