Vater go, Kings Dominion (Haunt, Saturday 10/26)

See what I did there?

The wife and I were invited to Kings Dominion on Saturday by her friend from high school and her husband; they sort of started a tradition a couple years ago of doing KD's Haunt the last weekend of operation due to its proximity to her birthday. There were supposed to be several more friends of ours there, but they all canceled for various reasons.

First off, I bought our twilight admission online to save some cash, and really dig the fact I don't have to print them out anymore, and instead sent them to Passbook and scanned my iPhone at the front gate.. I use Passbook for my United flight tickets all the time, and just found out Cedar Fair uses it last week when I went to Knott's. Good stuff.

We met up with our friends around 5pm at the pizza joint to the left of the Eiffel Tower and intended on first getting beer, but that particular pizza joint had run out. Lame. We headed for Victoria Pizza near the Drop Tower and made sure they had beer before getting in line. 10 bucks a beer was kind of a shock at first, but really wasn't too bad considering they were giant 22oz. cans. And they had Yuengling, which is a huge win for me.

Rides:

1. Our first ride this particular evening was Boo Blasters on Boo Hill, only because it was close by when we started discussing what to ride. And it ended up being our only ride of the night, thought not intentionally. While in line, my wife and her friend were hit on by a nine year old boy who thought he was being so cute and adorable, but in reality appeared the entitled, obnoxious punk kid to everyone else in the immmediate vicinity...including his mom (who at the same time took responsibility for his overconfidence, apologizing to us for his behavior). It was sort of funny at first, but then it just became weird and creepy. The ride itself was shorter and less fun than I remember, but that could have been because I scored like 150 points, either because my gun wasn't setting off the targets like it should have been or because I suck.

The Haunts:

After another round of beers (this time in the beer garden next to Victoria Pizza, which had zero line), we headed to Cornstalkers. This was a pretty cool corn maze-themed attraction with creepy actors hiding in various places and jumping out at people.

Next up was No Vacancy, which was a pretty elaborate hotel theme set up inside the Action Theater. Pretty great aesthetics, but very similar to Cornstalkers with the actors jumping out making scary noises and stuff.

Then we hit Zombie High, which was very similar to the previous two haunts but with a high school prom gone awry setting. Creepy people jumped out at us.

The last one we did was Club Blood, and it was incredible. And by incredible, I mean pretty much the same as all the others. Actors. Creepy. Lots of jumping out. Stuff.

Overall, we did have a fun time. I was actually really surprised at the level of effort put into all the haunts, at least compared to the Halloween event KD had during the Paramount era. The atmosphere througout the park was really well done, too. Cedar Fair really stepped it up. And as mobbed as the park was (last Saturday of the season), waits for all the haunts didn't exceed 15 minutes.

I wanted to be sure to get a ride on Intimidator 305 before we left, since I'd never ridden it in the dark, so around 11pm Liz and I said our goodbyes to our friends, headed to the back of the park, took one look at Intimidator's packed queue and promptly turned around and headed for the park exit.

The end.

Vater said:

See what I did there?

No.

Nice tr though.

I believe it was a play on the fact that "Vater" sounds sort of like "way to."

I had really hoped to hit up KD for their Haunt this year, but my schedule didn't really allow for it. I'm glad that you didn't have to wait too terribly long for the Haunts, though, despite the crowds.

sirloindude said:

I believe it was a play on the fact that "Vater" sounds sort of like "way to."

I sure hope not. That's a terrible line. I thought it was something too smart for me to get....

I like to change it up. The occasional stupidity keeps people guessing, while simultaneously dashing bjames hopes.

Didn't realize CF started using Passbook, awesome! Now if they'd let me keep a copy of my season pass on Passbook.

It's funny, I remember thinking when iOS6 was released that I would never have any use for this silly new app called Passbook. Now I freaking love it.

It's kind of how I've felt about a lot of Apple products. When they're first announced, they don't seem like things I would ever get much use out of...until I and everyone else has them and can't remember life without them. And I'm a very non-Apple fanboy.

I'm with ya. If I didn't have my Candy Crush app I'd die.

Passbook is cool. I wish it was an open standard Android could implement as well.

I felt the same way about passbook. Now I wish more places would implement it. Heck, I wish I could link my debit card to it.