Frogley Summer Tour - Day 4

Day 4: AdventureLand

Today started at 7:30. We got up and dressed, then went to the hotel breakfast about 8:30. Breakfast was a bit of a disappointment compared to what we were served in North Platte (from the same hotel chain), but we managed to get enough to eat. We then packed our day bag, made sure we had everything we needed, and left the hotel around 9:45 to drive across the street to AdventureLand. The gates opened at 10am and we made it through them by 10:15. :)

Thanks to a tip I read online, we headed straight to Adventure Bay, the water park at the back. We found a perfect set of two chairs in the shade, right in the middle of the splash pad/kid water slides, larger tube slides, and the lazy river. We spent a couple hours splashing, sliding, lazing, and having some great fun. Matthew fell asleep in the lazy river and ended up napping on one of our chairs in the shade for 40 minutes or so.

Around noon we were ready to move on. We found some unhealthy park food just outside the water park for lunch, then started on rides. Dave took the older five on The Outlaw (a roller coaster) while I took the little ones on some kiddie rides. That ended up being the only roller coaster that Danielle, Christine, Jacob, and Joseph went on. They apparently decided that they didn’t like roller coasters and they will never again go on one. Marie and Ben kept begging to be allowed to go on one, but were never tall enough, and Kathryn LOVED the roller coaster and ended up going on all of the big ones with Dave.

There was a lot of whining as we moved from place to place. Kids were upset that they had to wait for things, they were upset we weren’t doing the ride they wanted right then. They were upset that someone stepped on their shoe, or squeezed their hand too much, or looked at them wrong. It was obvious by around 1pm that most of the kids needed naps. But we knew if we left the park we wouldn’t come back, and we wanted to do as much as possible.

We did our best to remind the kids why we were there, and started splitting up more to allow them to do appropriate rides at the same time. At one time Dave took Kathryn to ride more roller coasters, Danielle, Christine, Jacob, and Joseph rode the bumper cars, and I took Marie, Ben, and Matthew on a little truck convoy ride.

Another fun note for the day: before we left on our trip I had some matching shirts made for us. They each have our frog logo on them with “Frogley Family” on the front. On the back, like a sports jersey, we put “Frogley” and the number of their birth order. People noticed us in the park all day long, and commented frequently about our shirts. At one point someone pointed us out to a friend of theirs and said, “That’s the group I was telling you about.” At another point, Ben wandered off from our group shortly after Dave and Kathryn got in line for one of their roller coasters. I totally didn’t even notice he wasn’t with us until a guy came up to our group and explained that his girlfriend had found a small boy wearing the same shirt as our kids. He said he thought he was number 7. When I went with him to get Ben back his girlfriend said, “I knew he was supposed to be with the Frogleys.” Awesome. Another mom told us later, as we were all waiting in line together, that her kids wanted shirts like ours that showed they were a family. :)

Around 4pm we decided it was time to go on the last few must rides and wrap it up. We made our way to the SkyWheel, the Carousel, and the Train. All great family rides.

Then we stopped at the Main Street Creamery for ice cream cones.

While eating our treat the kids started lamenting that we didn’t get to go on the Raging River. We had considered going on the rafting ride earlier in the day, but someone mentioned that the line was well over an hour long, and we decided that was too much. But now as we were contemplating leaving the park, we realized how sad it would be to miss that ride. I was super sad about missing that particular ride, partly because rafting rides are my favorite, and partly because I hadn’t been allowed to go on many rides at all thanks to my current pregnancy status.

So, we turned around and headed back to Raging River. We waited in line for not quite one hour, then Dave went with the four girls, and we did a baby swap when he got back so I could go with the other three boys. I am SO glad we did that. It was seriously the most fun ride I got to go on today, and the kids all loved it. Ben got soaked in our boat, and still begged to go again. Unfortunately, by the time we finished our ride, Raging River was closed for the night and it was time to head back to the car.

We left the park at 7:45pm, made it back to the car, back to our hotel room, and got ready for bed. Then Dave decided he was hungry so we let the kids watch some shows on the hotel TV, and ordered pizza from a local restaurant. Now it’s just after 11pm and it’s time to sleep so we can get up and move on again tomorrow. :)