All we wanted to do yesterday was take a nice little trip to Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom. We had a couple free tickets and were planning the day for a couple weeks. Yeah, we slept in a little later than we planned so we didn’t get to the park until about noon, but that’s not important.
What is important is total power trip that some cops like to go off on.
As we were driving through the parking lot, I was following the line of traffic until we got to the back where there were some open spots. Once we got back there most of the cars kept going, but a couple had started to pull into the next row back as the one in front of it was just about full. To get to where the last couple spots were in previous row, I would have had to mow down a crapton of pedestrians since there was a long line of people walking to the park entrance. So I decided to just grab one of the spots in the empty row.
Apparently, this was just absolutely absurd of me. A cop–an actual cop, not just a parking attendant–came marching up to my car and started screaming into my window. I totally needed to be put in my place so it’s a good thing that yelling was involved. I had seen him about fifty feet up where the other cars were going, but he wasn’t really directing the traffic. He was just standing there with his back to the cars that were coming down the row so until Screamy McKensy started treating me like the stupid civilian that I am, I had paid no attention to him.
As he gets up to my window, he screams at me “Do you not see the flow of traffic?!? Move your car over there now!” I mean, come on, it was totally necessary for him to be a complete douche about it. I needed to be told! A simple “Excuse me, would you mind moving your car to the end of that other row there? We are trying to fill each row completely before moving onto the next” definitely would not have sufficed in this situation. This is important when you are clearly a rookie cop who has been assigned to working a parking lot at the local amusement park. You really have to turn up the power trip when your wanger is that little and you are trying to prove that you are more than just Tiny Tim and that the guys down at the station are really just kidding with you and ragging on you because you’re the new guy, but they do in fact like you. Really, they do. Don’t worry, dude.
At this point, I’ve got two choices. I can either just go ahead and move my car or I can go all Larry David on his ass and raise a stink. Since we were really just trying to have a nice day out, I decided to go with the former rather than ruin the whole day. But don’t worry, I can ruin a day with the best of them! So I start backing my car out of the spot slowly as there were other cars coming and some people walking.
Again, being a terrible person, my horrible actions just weren’t going to fly. Mr. IEatPiecesOfShitLikeYouForBreakfast wasn’t going to have this. Oh no. He started yelling at me again telling me to just cut through all of the parking spots to get to where he wanted my car. Mind you, cutting across parking spots like that is illegal–at least in the state that issued my driver’s license–which is the reason why I didn’t do it in the first place.
At this point, I’m pretty much fuming. Not at all because I was asked to move my car, but because of the unnecessary douchocity being slung my way. As I’m driving down the row following the other cars, another cop comes up to my window and screams at me “excuse me sir, are you handicapped?!?” Keep in mind, I’m already not too thrilled about the events of the last minute of my life so it took every ounce of self control to handle this maturely while my girlfriend is bursting with laughter from the passenger seat.
Now, let’s rewind for a moment here… “Excuse me sir, are you handicapped?!?” Classic. I mean this is just great. Who says that? While there has been some debate over whether this was a serious, legitimate question or if she was the reinforcements sent in to further aggravate me, I’d like to think that it’s the latter and that for a few minutes yesterday, Jesus hated me. Honestly, I can’t think of any other reason besides Jesus hating me that such an amazingly comical line as “excuse me sir, are you handicapped?” would go wasted on me like that. Only Jesus himself could set me up for a line like that and make me not able to enjoy it because I was too pissed off to get down with the humor of the situation.
And about three minutes later? The entire row that I originally parked in was filled with SUVs. I guess I didn’t meet the height requirement to hang with the overcompensation crew.
What really irks me though is that I’m usually the guy who defends cops when people say “I hate cops” or “all cops are assholes.” I always throw in the “sure, there are plenty of douchey cops out there, but that’s a complete generalization, there are tons of really nice and awesome cops.” In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’ve have more positive interactions with the police-cops than I have had negative ones. So of course it makes perfect sense that my ass needed a good power-trippin’. Homeboy needed to be taught a lesson that you must always fear the wrath of authority! And a lesson I was taught.
All that aside, Dorney Park was fun as hell. The water rides were awesome even though it could have been a few degrees warmer and we only got to go on a few because the lines were a little slow. And the coasters helped make the trip all worth it.
Voodoo, pictured to the left, was really great. It reminded me a lot of Two-Face at Six Flags America. The ride starts off with a linear induction shot that shoots the train forward up a 90° track with a bit of a twist. Then the train rolls back down and through the starting point and then up another 90° track backwards. From here, the train goes back and forth between these two a couple times. On the last backwards trip up the back track, the train gets held for about a full second with the riders facing straight down before making a terrifyingly weird screamy noise and letting them go. It’s pretty intense. The initial shot doesn’t match Kinda Ka’s at Six Flags Great Adventure, but the overall ride is pretty intense.
Talon and Hydra were both really good in that typical roller coaster that doesn’t introduce anything new kind of way. Talon had a nice drop and some good twisties, but it was awesome because it videos you during the entire ride. The DVD of the like minute long ride was $15 so it’s not really worth it, but it was fun to watch the preview after the ride!
