Darien Lake & Outlet Mall

USA 2014 Blog Day 2

Thursday, 5 June 2014 Ian

Wakey wakey rise and shine ... another early 5am rise today to ensure we were on the road at 6am for our 4 hour drive North to Darien Lake in New York State. Today was cold compared to yesterday (around mid-late 50’s) much like home ! We arrived in time for park opening along with the dozens of yellow school buses ... the park was rammed with school kids. After processing our park season passes (which also gives us 50% discount for park entry at both Silver Dollar City and Dollywood later in the trip) we immediately headed over to Ride of Steel – their signature steel hyper coaster (200+ feet) only to find that the ride was closed (apparently having a wheel replaced) and no ETA of when it was due to open. Déjà-Vu ... we’ve been to this park before only to find that the same ride was down all day and never got to ride it !

We took an hour out during the day to photograph and video the park, and to have a bite to eat. The coupon book that we were given with our season passes had an offer of ‘Buy any drink and get a free doughnut’ at one of their food outlets, however when trying to redeem the token was told ‘Sorry you can’t actually use that token in the park – you’ll have to use it outside the park at another outlet’. How ridiculous when you’ve just spent $130 purchasing their season passes. Oh how we laughed – NOT !!! What is funny on this trip is that wherever we go, people keeping shouting at Adrian ‘Nice Mohawk’ (referring to his hair cut) although not sure how amusing it will be after 3 weeks !

Having left the park at 5pm it was time for some retail therapy so stopped off at an Outlet Mall on the way to Toronto Canada. Adrian managed to find some goodies in the Adidas store. I however eventually managed to find some shorts in Walmart only to be told at the counter that the shorts were actually being recalled and she was therefore unable to sell them to me – AARRGGHH ! Painless border crossing into Canada, but now stuck in a traffic jam in Toronto at 11:20pm so still haven’t checked into hotel. Goodnight and more updates tomorrow...