To Paris and Beyond: 06-12 Flamingo Land - Funny Name for an Amusement Park

Flamingo Land Amusement Park was an exhausting 5 minute drive from our hotel today. When we arrived at opening time the parking lot was almost empty. Maybe a dozen cars were there. Great news.

We picked up a park brouchure last night and it had a $4 off coupon (regular price $29) that we used for our admission.

Holy Line Jumping Batman, where is everyone?

Our first sign of life were the rides running with no one on them, meaning that the ride operators were at least getting the rides ready to be ridden.

We walked around taking pictures and headed for a ride that had people riding it - Mumbo Jumbo.

This coaster sat 4 people per car. The first drop was 110 degrees. One turn was an outside banked turn of 30 degrees. From there the coaster car turned upside down and stayed that way until it dived down live a jet fighter (I believe this type of turn is called an Immelmenn). You can see the coaster car upside down getting ready to dive.

We rode this a few more times and then moved on to the next ride that was open - Kumali. This was a standard ski lift chair coaster (it's really called a suspended coaster because the train is suspended from the track rather than sitting on it). We rode this once because the seat harness system used on these usually bangs your ears.

We did not ride, but noticed and photographed, this great themed water battle ride.

Hey, what's better than a Wild Mouse coaster WITH a Wild Mouse Coaster Car?

Me, riding alone on this spinning ride.

Velocity is an unusual coaster because there aren't many of them around. Instead of a chain lift it is launched by pushing on the back end of the train til it reaches about 50MPH.

The cars are like motorcycles and you straddle the seat, lean forward and grab the handle bars, and a harness presses against your back to keep you locked in.

That's all the taller the first hill is. This allows the ride to keep a pretty fast speed throughout the whole ride.

Equally as fast (if you COULD pedal that fast) was this little baby. Yep, we rode this one too.

Here we are coming back into the station and you can see how high off the ground we were.

Monorail that we did not get to ride because our time and the time it was in the station never matched.

Cute coaster called Swoosh Air. Airplanes that are hanging coasters.

They just had so many rides that were well themed.

We took the train around and it mostly went through their zoo area. There were no lions or tigers or bears, __ __ (fill in the blank).

For a late lunch at the 50's-themed OK Diner (is there food just "OK"?) we split a cheeseburger.

After walking around and taking some more pictures and shopping a little bit we decided that because of the light crowds we were able to get everything done that we wanted to, so we headed for our next home.

We passed many small villages that looked like these.

This road had a 25% grade and RVs were not supposed to go on it. The top of the hill was at an elevation of only about 2,000'.

We arrived in North Stainley at our B&B for the night, The Old Coach House, and found a note and a key from the proprietors saying where our room was.