She's a Demon

We took a trip Saturday to Great America (courtesy of some free passes from work) and had a little "mini vacation" with the girls in Gurnee, IL.
I didn't know until we looked it up online Friday that they had a Wiggles World there, which entertained Clare and Addie for a while, but they're on the fringes with the multi-colored boys from down under. Clare is kinda beyond them, and Addie has never really been exposed thanks to the invasion of High School Musical in our house. If you know the answer to "What time is it?" Then you feel my pain.
But they both enjoyed a show and some rides with the Wiggles theme... we also rode the carousel and some other "kiddie" rides, and also spent a few minutes in what I can only described as a big room of chaos with flying foam balls. It was a 2-story circular room with about 5 million little foam balls about the size of baseballs whizzing around. Every 20 feet on both floors there were little pressurized canons that you could load up with balls and take aim at your fellow revelers. It was loud, crazy and borderline obnoxious, not to mention a virtual guarantee of catching whatever all the other little kids left all over the balls.
Anyway, I digress from the real storyline of the day. Clare kept asking throughout the day when we were going to ride the real rollercoasters. "When daddy? When?"
Keep in mind that daddy has recently decided that the bigger roller coasters are not a good idea (just ask Sara and Braxton about the mission to Mars at Epcot)
Wanna see what it was like? Try here...
So we decided that Clare and I could handle The Demon, which supposedly had 2 "loops" that took us upside down, some high speeds and a tunnel. Cool, we can handle that.
As we climbed up the initial hill and took a look over the park from several hundred feet up, I started to wonder if this was such a good idea... Clare looked like she was thinking the same thing, but she kept saying "here we go, dad!"
Then the bottom drops out from below us and we're screaming towards the loops. First 1, then another, both of us jammed down into our seats from the g-force. I had a vicious grip on the safety bar with one hand and another on Clare's knee (as if that's going to hold her in)
We started to fly around the curves after the 2 loops and Clare looked concentrated but not scared. Yet. Then we got to the tunnel... dark and lots of screaming, "demon-like" noises. She wasn't a big fan of that, but it only lasted a few seconds. As we came flying out of the tunnel, I looked ahead and saw 2 corkscrews waiting for us. "Oh crap" I said outloud as a tightened my grip on Clare and the car. We sailed around upside down, twice, screaming the whole way. I kept thinking "this is not what we bargained for, this is going to ruin it for Clare" but she came through like a champ!
As soon as we came to a screeching halt back at the platform, she immediately wanted to ride again, but with Ann and Addie waiting patiently below, he had to head over to the Whizzer for our last ride of the day.
The Whizzer was built by Noah just after he finished the Ark, so it rattles a bit more and appears to have fewer security rails at the top which made me really nervous, but the cars you ride in are huge so I could take Addie with me and put her between my legs, with Clare doing the same with Ann right behind me. The ride was pretty crazy and fast even though it never went upside down. At some point I held the side of Addie's head so she wouldn't get whiplash, but they both seemed to enjoy that one too. Clare begged for another ride on The Demon and we were going to ablige but the line had gotten a bit too long so we headed for the car.
It was a great day, and we made it home after only spending money on parking, some cotton candy, dippin' dots and some sodas at McD's for the hour ride back home.
Pictures to come in the next post, I hope!