Essential coasters for the newbies, part 2

Sir Gonchness, that is a great resource. You've made planning next year's (and all subsequent seasons') trips a fifteen minute proposition instead of the hour plus using rcdb. :)

Anyone who thinks that their coaster count makes them a better person needs to grow up, learn to do their own laundry, and move out of their parents' basement.

When you have a chance, seek out some of the smaller parks and their coasters.

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Aren't we grumpy, hoffman?

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Yeah it happens.

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Ensign Smith said:
Heck, my daughter's six and she has 65 credits (and that's nothing compared to some Buzzers' kids, I know.)

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I've heard stories of kids who have hundreds of credits before they've entered middle school. Frankly I'm very grateful my parents indulged my coaster riding habit to a degree but much of my leisure time was not taken up by going out to ride coasters and if I'm ever to have kids I'd be the same way. To me there's too much wonderful stuff out there in the world to spend that much of your kid's early years in parks, but if that's what people want to do and your kid digs it there's certainly worse things out there you could be doing. But me, if my kids were into it we'd go to a handful of parks a year and that's it.

I know a 12-yr-old who has well over 500 credits. He and his mom travel all over the world.

We've visited an amusement park on 17 different days this year. We might have one or two more left in us. That's average for our family.

My kids are 6 and 10 and their counts are 82 and 253 respectively.

I guess it depends on if you feel that spending some time of your day (anywhere from 4 to 14 hours in our case) on 17 different days each year at amusement parks is unbalanced. I figure that's about 150 hours or less than 2% of their year.

I'd also argue that the travel (we have a 'not just parks' rule for trips) lets them see, do and experience places and things that some people go their whole lives without.

Beats the scheduled playtime and activites that all of their friends seem to be trapped into. :)

These "kids we know" who travel ALOT miss classes more than their classmates...and typically get better grades. It's an education you simply can't get in a classroom.

Besides, NCLB means kids don't need to learn diversity or differing viewpoints/lifestyles. ;)

What Gonch said. By traveling to parks all over the place, you get the chance to see things and experience cultures and diversities that many other humans never get to. I know some of these "Credit Kids" myself and they are some of the nicest kids I've ever met. The world needs more of them to offset all of the bigoted, racist dumb ass adults in the world. And talk about quality family time. Most kids don't spend that much time with their parents/families.

Good thing Gonch isn't an enthusiast, or else he'd have to build coasters for his family to ride on. :)

I admit it, I'm totally jealous of all the coaster credits you all have. In the meantime, I take my paltry sum of credits, and am stuck riding Phoenix 30 or 40 laps so far this year. After a while it gets so boring... Phoenix, Twister, I need to ride the Flyers a few times to break up the monotony. Then as a change-up it's Lightning Racer, Storm Runner... yawn.

My daughter and I have been riding coasters together since 1999. She decided she liked coasters and at the time I had not ridden one in over 20 years. It has been a joy to travel with her and enjoy parks together. I travel for work and I do not go to the local parks if she isn't with me. As she gets older (now 15) coasters are being challenged by concerts and trips to the mall. We will hit 300 coasters together in the next couple weeks. It has been special and most importantly something we could do together. When we go we try to ride everything and then decide what was good and what was not so good. Little coasters in out of the way parks that we might have skipped if we weren't doing them all are sometimes very surprising. I would suggest you pick what what you want to do and not base all your decisions on the opinion of others.

Cool guys. I had the pleasure of doing something like that, but in reverse.

In 2005, I was working at CP and got a pack of comp tix. The family (mom, dad & sis) came out for a visit. Well, I have never seen my mom so scared (by Magnum), my dad so fascinated (by the way TTD works, as he works with hydraulics for a living), and my sister so thrilled (by MF).

Prior to Maggie, the tallest thing my mom had ridden was the YC @ CL.

My dad, sis & I got a great phot from MS, and they all had a blast.