Our day at Noah’s Ark was highly enjoyable despite a bit of a mishap that we really should have been able to avoid. Here’s the story:
The day got off to a pretty good start, although it was a bit less hot and sunny than I might have preferred (but not, by any means, cold or unpleasant). We started off on the classic speed slides (Jungle Rapids) that have always been among our favorites. We then checked out, but postponed decisions about actually braving, this year’s new slide (Scorpion’s Tail—an enclosed body slide that starts out with a huge super-steep drop, then goes into a “near-vertical” loop). We spent some time standing in lines for some of the more popular attractions that we judged fun enough to warrant doing at least once despite the waits.
About an hour in, as we were proceeding from one slide to another, we were suddenly accosted by a duo of waterpark patrons who looked exactly like us, except slightly wetter and a bit shaken. “Beware of Black Thunder!” they warned us, chillingly. “Black Thunder?” we thought, scratching our heads. “But that’s one of our favorite slides!” It’s located at the far end of the park, so we hadn’t gotten to it yet—but we certainly intended to, and this “beware” business struck us as a bit melodramatic and buzz-kill-ish. Naturally, therefore, we blew off the mysterious, gloomy doppelgangers.
In due course, we made our way across the park to Black Thunder, which is a two-person inner-tube slide (actually, several of them) that’s enclosed and completely dark inside, so that you go twisting around sharp curves that you can’t see coming as you go down. There was no line at all, so we headed straight to the top, got onto our tube, and plunged down. Naturally, nothing bad happened, and it was lots of fun—so upon emerging at the bottom, we headed right back up for a second run, feeling pretty smug; clearly, those doom-predicting look-alikes of ours had not known what they were talking about. When our second trip down the slide also produced no mishap, we completely forgot about the strange warning—and headed back up once again for a fateful third trip down the slide.
This, of course, proved our undoing. Perhaps halfway down or so, one of the sudden jags around an unseen curve capsized us! This had never happened before, in all the times that we’d gone down this slide in the past. Why it happened this time, I still really don’t know. You always tilt up the side of the slide when you go around a sudden curve (which is a big part of what makes it so much fun)—but this time, we tilted up and then flipped completely over. It caught me very much by surprise, but I wouldn’t have been overly distressed if not for the fact that Jen immediately began crying out in pain. She also let go of the tube completely and slid the rest of the way down on her own; I followed, holding on to one of the handles on the tube and pulling it behind me. At the bottom, I learned that Jen had hit her head and perhaps pulled a neck muscle when we capsized. We got the employee at the bottom of the slide to radio for a manager, who brought Jen some ice for her neck, and, still surprised and unsure what to make of the incident, we headed over to some chairs by the Adventure River to take it easy and recuperate a bit. (Later, Jen mentioned that she had also “stubbed her toe” when we capsized—which proved actually to be the most serious of her injuries; we still don’t know for sure if it’s broken or merely bruised, but it’s in bad shape.)
A bit later, after some down time (part of which was spent in the Adventure River), Jen was feeling ready to try some more water slides. And then it occurred to us: This accident needn’t have happened—and we could still prevent it from having happened! After all, smack in the middle of the park, there’s a slide called the Time Warp—complete with a crazy backward-running clock. It’s a group raft slide where you go down a big chute (in the dark), then around the perimeter of a bowl at the bottom a time or two (depending on your weight and momentum), before eventually being swept into the exit chute. The more times you go around, the further you travel back in time, we reasoned. And so, determined to undo our little mishap, we headed for the Time Warp. After waiting in line for a while, we climbed aboard a raft with two other people and headed down the chute, around the bowl, and back in time!
Upon emerging, we checked a clock, thought back through our morning, and quickly headed off to intercept ourselves as they made their way between slides. A few minutes later, we spotted them—looking blissfully uninjured and worry-free (so naive!). There was quite a crowd between us and them, but we got as close as we could and cried out: “Beware of Black Thunder!” They headed off away from us without responding, but we figured they’d gotten the message, so we confidently waited for the time continuum to alter and Jen’s injuries to vanish. This failed to happen, however, and it was at this point that we suddenly remembered the incident with the look-alikes from earlier that morning. Clearly, our moronic past selves had failed to heed our warning! What complete boneheads!
Deeply unimpressed with the intelligence of our past selves, we resigned ourselves to the fact that the mishap had, indeed, happened, and decided to make the best of the rest of our day at the park. Jen took things a bit easier than she otherwise might have, but we did still have plenty more fun. I contemplated further tempting fate by trying out that new slide (Scorpion’s Tail), but the extremely long line saved me from having to make up my mind either to do it or to completely chicken out (“perhaps some other year, when it’s not as new and the line is shorter”). I did, however, work up the nerve to take The Plunge for the first time ever. Once upon a time, The Plunge was the park’s big, scary, extreme, near-vertical thrill slide—though in recent times it’s been overshadowed by the even more extreme Point of No Return that was built right next to it in 2001. I’d never been bold enough to try either of them in past years, but for some reason—even though the much tamer Black Thunder had already gone awry for us mere hours ago—I felt up to The Plunge this time. It was a bit terrifying, but also fun—and horrible death didn’t even result!
Eventually, after several more times down Jungle Rapids and a few runs down this or that other slide (not to mention some time in a wave pool and various other things), we decided to call it a day. We still couldn’t believe that Black Thunder—long one of our favorite slides in the park, alongside Jungle Rapids—had turned on us! (And we were also still a bit miffed at our past selves for blowing us off.) But even though all did not exactly go well, fun was had, and I, for one, hope that we have not seen the last of our favorite water park (even if, next time, we do Black Thunder individually, on separate tubes, rather than together on one, to minimize the risk of another accident!).