I spent the majority of last week planning a road trip to the Blowing Rock area. The plan was to go to Grandfather Mountain one day and Linville Caverns the next. Thursday morning I checked the weather forecast and decided that 42 degrees was a little too cold for traipsing through the mountains so I decided that south we would go. I had been promising my kids that we would go to Carowinds and was excited to see on the website that Friday was opening day. Not only that, if I bought the tickets that day they were only $29.99, saving me $68 just for admission alone. I bought and printed the tickets and we were up bright and early Friday morning on our way to warmer fun.
We pulled into the parking lot and saw a massive line . With pre printed tickets in hand I walked to the admission gate only to realize that the massive line was for those holding pre printed tickets. About 20 minutes into waiting we came to a Carowinds employee whose sole job was to check your tickets to make sure you were in the correct line. He looked and verified that we were. 20 more minutes and we come to a table where again someone checks our tickets and waves us on . 20 more minutes ( an hour into the line) and we finally come to a scanning station or what appears to be our way in, and the lady looks at our tickets and announces to me that we are in the wrong line. We were in the season pass registration line and we needed to be in the general admission line which by the way was almost empty when we had arrived. So basically what she was saying was this : we could have been inside the park an hour earlier and my screaming bladder could have been emptied 60 minutes before it was. It was all I could do to hold it together and just say thank you and move on.
The first priority was to go to the top of the needle and look around to see what we all wanted to do. Cara saw a roller coaster that interested her but the only things Ben and Eric saw was a go cart track. We rode the Hurler and then straight lined to the go cart track which isn't included in park admission. Cara and I rode one more roller coaster which wasn't what I would call exciting. I could only drag Eric and Ben away from the go cart track long enough to watch a 3D dinosaur movie and lunch. We ended the day by riding the scrambler which you can find at any local carnival or fair. We go to Carowinds, spend $125 to get in and nobody in my family will even ride Thunder Road with me. I have made the executive decision that we will not be going back to Carowinds any time soon.
We rested our weary bones at a local Sleep Inn and was back at it Saturday morning. Since go carting was the most loved activity the day before, we spent our day at Adventure Landing. The spring break special was 3 hours of unlimited go carting, mini golf, and bumper boats for a single price. For the next 3 hours we drove , putted, and floated. Knowing what I know now, it would have been way more cost effective to spend both days there .We finished the day grazing the buffet at Golden Corral and came back home to sleep in our own beds.
Things may not always go as planned, my family may not always agree on how to spend our time together , but the time spent together is priceless.
