We got in last night at 1:50am, completing our whirlwind 36 1/2 hour Texan adventure. We were at Six Flags for 11 hours, so in duration it was a little shy of our Disney effort of a few weeks ago. It was also less costly and tactically a little smoother. Since the girls had free tickets and I had a discount ticket ($26.00 vs $41.99), just getting in was dirt cheap compared to Disney (even with the $9 parking fee). I'll take $35 over $148 any day. Not that I have any regrets about taking the kids to Disneyland. We were in line for parking right at 10am, which was park opening time, and were in the park by 10:24.
The girls' mother and stepfather drove down to Arlington, Texas to meet up with us at the park in the morning (instead of spending the night in town like we did), which helped with the fast-ride situation. Since Shelby prefers the slower rides, which limited our selection somewhat at Disney, we alternated Shelby duty while others rode the coasters. In my estimation, of the 9 roller-coaster-type (by my count) rides at Six Flags, we got to ride five. We were shooting for seven, but we were interrupted (literally).
Mother nature came along for the ride so to speak, causing park staff to close the rides on two occasions due to lightning. The first closure was only 20 minutes, and no precipitation followed. The second was quite a bit longer, was followed by rain, and forced many to leave the park or take cover in the theater buildings. That second closure also came as Darby and I were close to getting onto the "Titan", claimed to be the biggest and faster coaster in Texas. We were pretty annoyed because the same thing happened to us earlier trying to get on Batman.
The line situation was no better than at Disney in most cases, though I was quite surprised by the one exception, which was the Shockwave. We practically got right on to that one. The worst for us was a split between Batman (which Darby and I did finally get to ride... and I do mean FINALLY) and Spongbob (which Shelby rode with her mother and step-father). We were in line for Batman for at least an hour, though maybe a little more. Plus we were just in front of some very rowdy kids, which only made the whole thing watched-pot slower. As much as I wanted to ride Batman, if you told me we could have conquered the other four coasters we otherwise missed in the same period of time it took us to get through the Batman line, I probably would have opted for the coaster quantity over the Batman quality.
When it was finally time to go home, the girls fell asleep before we got to I-35 and they slept the whole nearly-four-hour drive home. Darby woke up as we turned onto our street and said, "Are we almost home already?" I was pretty cranky at that point, so I rolled my eyes and said, "yes, Darby, we're about to be home, and yes you got to sleep the entire time."
Of course, on the plus side, that was the lowest-maintenance long-drive I've ever had with the kids, though with my rampant tiredness I'm not sure I fully appreciated it at the time.
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