The trip to Kings Island was a blast. We left in the early morning, which was not so bad for The Partner and I, but for the highschoolers who had stayed up through the night (prom was the night before) it was tough.

The faces look a little funny because I distorted them to “protect everybody concerned”. (Their release forms did not include my right to photograph them and put them on the Internets.) During the three-and-a-half hour ride each way, the students mostly slept or talked quietly amongst themselves. The Partner and I brought along a few movies (The Matrix, Pirates of Silicon Valley, and The Shawshank Redemption), so while movies that I’ve seen a dozen times before played in the background, I read Tom Robbins‘ Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (an author I highly recommend).

Once at the park and left to our own devices, The Partner and I wandered around and spent quite a while waiting in lines for rides (more than an hour for The Beast). Every rollercoaster we went on hurt us. No matter how hard we tried to brace ourselves or situate our bodies within the restraints, we still were jostled about. We left each ride aching, me with my neck and The Partner with his chest.

For lunch we walked around the entire park comparing food prices. Subway wanted $6.99 for a 6″ sub and another $1.99 for a small bag of chips. Two slices of nasty pizza were $5.99, but luckily small cups of water were free of charge.

We met up with the four other chaperones but no students stopped by, so after sitting around for half an hour The Partner and I went on their mock Eiffel Tower, one of the highest points in the park. It offered a great view.

I seem to have developed a fear of heights and as we rode the elevator up the tower my heart raced. When we stepped out onto the caged observation deck, I could feel the steel structure swaying in the wind.

Images of the tower collapsing ran through my mind and we spent maybe 15 minutes up there.

The second time we went on the tower was slightly better, but we both were still frightened.

We had fun, felt the excitement and terror of zipping along wooden tracks at high speeds, hearing the clank clank clank of the slow ascent to each peak of the coaster, and screamed obscenities on the way down. We rode bumper cars twice, aiming for small children stuck going in reverse. We steered clear of the (http://www.coastermania.net/parks/pki/dropzone01.asp) Drop Zone, which had scared us absolutely shitless the year before, but before leaving the park we had a caricature drawn of us by a young artist named Matt, who got my arched eyebrow of doom and The Partner’s current hairiness perfectly:

EDITED 07-24-08: Drop Zone link expired.