Dutch Wonderland

Paul's parents had taken their two sons to Dutch Wonderland decades ago (the parked opened in the 60's). The kids and I had our first visit there yesterday. It's an amusement park located in Lancaster, which is two hours from our home. It's geared for young children. If you are 42 inches tall, you can ride every ride in the park, although kids that height have to ride with an adult for a few rides such as the bumper cars. If you are under 36 inches you are more limited in what you can ride. Since Oliver is 36 inches tall, he was able to ride almost everything; the five he couldn't were the Kingdom Coaster, bumper cars, swings, pirate ship, and twister rides. The park has 37 attractions, and the kids did 33 of those. They opted to skip the carousel, sand area, and the wiggle racers (which was just a bunch of plasma cars, and we own a plasma car). The tugboat was closed. We had no wait for most of the rides, and the kids were sometimes able to stay on a ride more than once because there wasn't a line. They rode the flume five times, for example.

The first ride they rode was the "kite flight," which was different than any other ride I've seen before. The kids were lying on their bellies and were flying around at various heights in a circle in a sort of superman position. That was also the last ride we rode last night on our way out of the park. We arrived at 10:00 and left at 7:30. The park was open until 8:30, but considering we had a two hour drive, we opted to leave at 7:30. They also have seven shows, and we saw four of the shows, which included two high dive shows.

The weather was perfect, which was an answer to prayer because the forecast included thunderstorms. The park was not crowded at all, and parking was free. The kids wore their bathing suits because they had an area with a large splash pad and several water slides that all three kids could do (quite the contrast to Six Flags). Unfortunately for two of the slides they needed to ride with an adult, and none of the adults had  brought a bathing suit. OOPS! I went down with Nadia twice in my shorts and shirt. My hair stayed dry, my shirt was partially wet, and my shorts were soaked, but it was warm enough that I dried off fairly quickly.

We are glad we went while the kids are young. I was afraid Nadia wouldn't enjoy it because they didn't have any big roller coasters. Oliver was still free, which was a perk to going this year. I think Sesame Place is a little nicer, but it's also farther away. Sesame Place doesn't have free parking, but the tickets (if you get a group together) are cheaper than the coupon we used yesterday. I've been keeping a list of all the amusement parks the kids have gone to (sort of a "life list"), and it was nice to try a new one. The seven of us had a great day!