Star City First Timer

Last Friday my family was invited by Lilia's nephew, Dictus, to join them for a trip to the Star City.  Tha plan was for us (me, Lilia, Kenneth, and Darwi) to go to Novaliches first and we'd all go to Star City in the afternoon.  I think there was some miscommunication there as what they meant was late afternoon.  We left Nova around 5:30pm and got there after 7:00pm.  This was the first time I ever got into an amusement park.  No kidding.  Of course, I've gone to the perya before and rode the Ferris Wheel and caterpillar, but I've never had the chance to go to Enchanted Kingdom or Star City or any of the other all-year amusement parks.  It was great.  And crowded. 

Considering that most of the rides are in an enclosed space (a pre-existing building), it's the first weekend of the New Year (or the last few days before the start of classes), and it's in the metropolis, I was expecting it to be crowded.  I wasn't surprised at the crowds, but there's the illusion that there's less people than there really were.  This impression was dispelled by the queues for the rides -- the  popular rides had at least a hundred people waiting in line.  Roughly equivalent to an hour's wait at the least. 

Only five of us were riding, that's me, Kenneth, Darwi, Peaen and Dictus (he financed the trip).  Lilia and her brothers, Peping and Paquito weren't riding.  She's scared, Paquito is in no condition to ride, and Peping doesn't like to. 

The Zyklon Loop rollercoaster was out of commission.  But the "Star-Flyer" was the real center of attraction -- and at least 200 people queueing.  We never did get to ride that.  Besides the long queue, Lilia didn't want us to ride.  I think that if any of the kids pushed for it, we would have ridden, but the ambivalence did show. hehehe  Nope, we didn't ride. 

The bumper cars looked like it had less people waiting in line.  After a bite to eat, we waited our turn at the Wild River.  We even donned our jackets so we won't get wet.  And most did get wet, though some were a lot more wet than others.  Next up was The Flying Carpet had two queues, the one on the first floor was longer, but the other starting from the second floor was shorter.  We took the shorter line and waited only about half an hour to get a ride.  Kenneth didn't ride, though.  We weren't able to get any more rides as it was almost closing.  We barely had time in the Snow park.  Funny that, there was a no picture-taking policy but lots of cameras.  The pictures we took were mostly blurred as the hands were shaking from the cold.  We left at closing time, 2:00am and got to Novaliches around 3:30am.

The following day, Peaen's birthday, I had a BP of 160/90 (rounded off).  Oh well.

--andoy
10 January 2008