GLENDALE - I have a confession: I'm an amusement park wimp.
Just ask my 8-year-old daughter, Bella. Once, on a carnival ride that took us swirling six stories in the air, I grabbed onto her leg and cried: "Don't worry. This will be over soon." She turned to me and screamed into the wind: "Let go of my leg!"
So when we went to Wet 'n' Wild water park in early May, she fully expected me to beg out of the challenging slides. "It's OK if you don't want to go on that one or that one," she said, pointing to the Tornado and Mammoth Falls.
Nope. This was work. Suck it up and climb those stairs. Wait in that impossibly long line and try not to imagine the worst-case scenarios as you see riders slammed against the side of a slide or slung to the lip ofthe ramp inches from being hurled into the parking lot and certain, gulp, death.
We started at the Toilet Bowl because it looked harmless. You climb in an inner tube for two and it shoots you out of the pipe into this bowl that circles around a couple times before you're sucked down the "toilet" - a dark, short tunnel - that shoots you into a pool of water.
On my fright scale: a few butterflies, but a piece of cake.
Time to be braver. Next door was Maximum Velocity, another two-person ride. Two long tubes that likely stretch two football fields in length snake side-by-side, slithering around a curve and over a hump that gives you enough velocity to jump out of the end and plop into a couple of inches of water. You race the pair in the next tube. The ride's operator determines the winner by letting one rider go first. As we zipped along, slamming softly against the walls as we rounded the curve, I turned to glimpse our competition behind us. Guess we got the early-go.
On my fright scale: a little more challenging.
Now I felt empowered enough for the Tornado. The line seemed more imposing than the ride. Every couple minutes we took a few steps forward; after 10 minutes, we could see the riders on a four-person inner tube shoot out the slide and slam up one side of the cone-shaped tube, then sling against the other side. Back and forth, up one side and then the other until you flow down the exit into the wading pool.
By our turn, all inhibitions I had were gone. Not that I wasn't just a wee bit nervous. I had convinced myself there was a slight chance I'd fall out of the tube. So I gripped on for dear life and closed my eyes for an instant.
On my fright scale: definitely not for the faint of heart, but it pays off with an incredible adrenaline rush.
Our last challenge: The mighty Mammoth Falls. The ride is rated "extreme" on the park's Thrill Meter.
On this Saturday afternoon, with a light breeze keeping the 95-degree day at bay, the line started at the bottom of the stairs that climbed 57 feet.
We crawled along, taking a few steps up, then waiting a few minutes. All around us, people anxiously rattled off Mammoth Falls war stories. A lanky kid with gauges in his ear big enough to droop his lobes halfway to his shoulders spouted out to his friend, "Dude, I almost fell out! It was sick!" A young mother consoled her daughter's friend: "Oh, it will be fine. We'll all go together and hold hands."
Bella, can we hold hands? Nope, better not let on that I am once again petrified.
Finally on the platform, I looked down at the ride as a raft of people zipped out of the tube and shot up the ramp. Just beyond was the back parking lot, empty given that the summer season hadn't begun and the park was about to close.
Yep, one good push and you are so shooting into the the asphalt.
I climbed into the raft with my daughter and a young couple and off we went. The raft twisted and turned then dropped down a wall of water onto another slide that ramrodded us up the ramp. In all the twisting and turning I ended up with my back to the ramp. Great! Now I won't even see it coming!
But just when I thought the momentum would carry us into the parking lot, we swung back down and shot out the other end.
On my fright scale: Sick, dude!
Unfortunately - or fortunately? I haven't quite decided - Wet 'n' Wild's much-ballyhooed new attraction, the Constrictor, wasn't open to the public when we visited. It opened Memorial Day weekend, boasting "the tightest turns of any other water slide giving riders an experience unlike any other in the world."
From the description - "Riders speed down the enclosed flume slide into a series of corkscrew turns, snaking back and forth in the series of spirals, slithering down its insides on multiperson rafts" - I think I would have been in over my head.
Let's go surfin' now - here's how
For the first time in at least 10 years, you can surf at Big Surf in Tempe.
No one is quite sure why or even when exactly surfing stopped at Arizona's first water park, which dates to 1969 and claims the historical distinction of being the nation's first wave pool. The park's previous operators, who ran it for 18 years, did away with the surfing. That's rather ironic, since Big Surf's reputation has long hung on the novelty of surfing in the desert.
The current management, which has owned the park since 1971 and reclaimed daily operations in 2009, reinstated surfing two weeks ago, said Mike Jensen, a park manager.
Jensen said ocean-worthy waves are generated by cranking up the wave machines.
