Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Partner in Crime


I've had this odd fascination for amusement parks and thrills since I rode the Raptor at Cedar Point in 6th grade.  Then in 8th grade I met who would turn out to be my best friend, Stacey Doornbos.  The reason we actually became such good friends was because one year she invited me and some other friends to go down to Cedar Point with her and her family.  2 years later and we are STILL going to amusement parks every chance that we get.  We have SO many funny stories from going on our adventures together but here is one of my favorites:

So Stacey and I tend to do things FULL OUT.  One spring we decided to go to Cedar Point for opening day.  We also decided to get season passes, which meant we had to be there at like 8am to avoid long lines (we didn't want to have to waste one second getting into the park of course)  Cedar Point is a 5 hour drive from Holland Michigan, so we got up at 3am wearing t-shirts we had decorated showing our excitement/love for the park.  We wanted to get there as quickly as possible so I was speeding a BIT (ok I was going 95 in a 75)... I was young and reckless ;)  The only thing that makes my heart drop more than the first drop on a good ride is seeing red and blue flashing lights in my rear view mirror.  The cop asked us where we were going and we just pointed to our decorated t-shirts.  I think he saw that we were SO excited and didn't want to ruin our day because he let us off the hook!

When we got to the park, we were first in line for season passes.  That's when we saw a news crew coming up to talk to us. Apparently they saw our t-shirts and wanted to know why we loved amusement parks so much.  We of COURSE did an amazing job showing our enthusiasm.  So amazing in fact that the public relations manager of Cedar Point came up to us, let us in the park for FREE before it opened and had us ride the brand new roller coaster front row for the film crew.  It was pretty amazing.  We met the CEO (I of course already knew his name and what he looked like b/c I'm dorky that way) and we developed a bit of a relationship with the public relations manager.  The next year they were opening Top Thrill Dragster, the tallest fastest roller coaster in the world and Stacey and I were invited to come back for Media Day to ride the ride and talk to all kinds of news sources before the park was even OPEN!

Just goes to show you what a little enthusiasm (and some spiffy hand decorated t-shirts) can do!

3 comments:

  1. next time, i would like an invite.
    that's all.

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  2. So i do miss you and was thinking about you today because I just bought tickets to Cedar Point and will be going. I got then at 1am so I could purchase the mid week saver for 30 dollars and today they expire so I have to use them LOL... anywho - you ROCK

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  3. Don't forget the amazing times you had at Michigan's Adventure, too. Shivering Timbers is topnotch.

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