Mother's Day blessings from the ironic wish genie

Last weekend, we figured we'd pop over to Canobie Lake Park, but Jorie got some sort of short-lived but vicious stomach ailment and threw up all over the place, so we opted out. This weekend, for some reason we thought we were being clever going there for Mother's Day: surely people on Mother's Day did characteristically Mother's Dayish stuff like brunch in packed restaurants? Besides, the weather was cool and overcast with a few sprinkles of rain.

Little did we know that on Mother's Day, MOTHERS GET IN FREE. The place was mobbed. On the bright side, it was really cheap.

Jorie, of course, wanted to ride the Canobie 500 cars with Mommy. Sam and Jorie stood in line for those little cars for an hour (I'd offered to be the one to stand in the line but Sam for some reason did not take me up on this). While they were waiting in line, I visited the restroom, came back and chatted with them, walked over to the Canobie Corkscrew and took a ride on it (unlike the Yankee Cannonball, the Corkscrew often has almost no wait), came back again, went to the arcade and played several rounds of pinball (relishing the soul-deep horror J. R. R. Tolkien would doubtless have at the concept of a Lord of the Rings pinball machine with BASH BALROG mode), then came back again by which time they still had to wait for several minutes more to get on the stupid little car.

By then, everyone was hungry. Jorie wanted chicken fingers. We went over to the (as derspatchel will attest) obligatory Frontier Land section to a stand that sold nothing but chicken fingers, which had three or four people working back there to serve a hellacious line of visitors and had a half-hour wait. Jorie was adamant about the chicken fingers but getting increasingly restless. I took her to play a few rounds of Skee-Ball while Sam held the place in line.

It wasn't the greatest afternoon for Sam. She finally put her foot down and refused to get roped into any more demands of Jorie's involving a long wait, so when Jorie insisted on threat of tantrum that she wanted to ride the Antique Cars, we split up again and Sam went and rode the Ferris wheel (which Jorie for some reason will not go on, though she loves the sky ride).

But the Ferris wheel turned out to have yet another long line, whereas the line for the Antique Cars wasn't that bad after all, so while Sam was off waiting to get on the Ferris wheel, we rode the Antiques and had enough time for Jorie to take two rides on the Junior Sports Cars (the electric ones that little kids go on without adults) afterward. This time she seemed to particularly love the Junior Sports Cars; maybe we should have just hit those to begin with.

While waiting for the Antique Cars, I did get a really good look at the new roller coaster, which seems to be about half-built at this point (it's a bit further along than seen here; the first loop is almost complete). It looks pretty impressive for Canobie Lake.

One reason I went out of my way to ride the Corkscrew today is that I get the definite impression they won't be keeping it around for very long after Untamed comes up. Since by modern standards there's not a lot to it, it's not that big a draw, and it seems little-known that it's mildly historic, being one of the first batch of modern roller coasters to have any sort of inversion, and apparently only the second one in operation. People complain that it's become a slightly rough ride with some head-banging on the corkscrew element, but I didn't experience that at all; I suspect a shorter person might have a rougher time of it. Anyway, while it's no Yankee Cannonball, I found the drop and the double corkscrew thrilling enough, especially compared to standing in line.