You must be this tall to ride this blog

Former and current movie-theater-employees will agree that "upsizing,"has never gotten them anywhere. "Upsizing" is the constant repetition of the words: "Well Sir, if you buy a large drink instead of a medium, you can add a large popcorn for only $4.75, blah blah blah candy blah blah nachos, etc etc," until the customer either gets annoyed and snaps at you or buys enough junkfood to stock a bunker. I always thought that mystery shoppers, those mythical people who patronize businesses in the guise of normal customers, but who are really monitoring your every move as an employee, where a fiction made up by bosses (ie: adults) to scare their adolescent employees into giving correct change.

As it turns out, unlike other fictitious beings such as King Arthur and Elvis, Mystery Shoppers do exist. I know because while working at Colorado Cinemas Arapahoe Village 4 (Feb 2002-Aug 2002) I upsized two shady characters and won two free passes to Six Flags Elitch Gardens as a reward for my excellent salesmanship (read: fear of being fired).

I used them to take my friend Mike to the amusement park for his 20th birthday; that was the last time I went to Six Flags.

Since then both Six Flags and I have grown a little older, a little wiser. For instance, I now know that the "six flags" are the six flags that have flown over Texas (where the franchise originated) they are: Texas, The U.S, Mexico, France, Spain, and the Confederacy. Though of course, in Denver, the confederate flag has been replaced by the Colorado flag. I'm not sure why we have to have a Six Flags Over Texas in Colorado, since, by nature, Colorado is not Texas. I prefered the days when it was just Elitch Gardens, and the park was, honestly, mosly just gardens with a few stomach-turning, rickety old rides like the octopus and the tilt-o-whirl. (Oh yeah, and the trees by the Wild Cat that were covered with 100 years worth of chewing gum.)

Anyway, those days are gone but that doesn't mean the rides aren't just as likely to make you lose your funnel cakes on the log ride. I love a place where people pay to endanger their lives, get drenched with filth-infested pond water and vomit every ounce of their overly-priced, deep fried lunch. And parking only costs $9 (US) these days.

Yesterday was a day of discoveries:
Alsn especially likes to watch the ugly people.
Tim gets motion sickness, but wants to go on every ride, hands-up, anyway. (This is remedied by going, "ughhhhhh, ughhhhhh" over every bump instead of screaming your head off, like me)
"My Sharona" is not a song about a car.
You're just as likely to scrape your face on the bottom of a wavepool as you are in the ocean (sand not included).
Tim's cell phone falls out of his pocket no matter how tame the ride is.
People will pay any amount of money to play any unwinable game if the stuffed monkey is big enough.
Alsn is still the uncontested winner of any and all Diet Coke-drinking constests.

And most importantly: I'm still 12 years old and not above running from one ride to the next. The rides only get better when the sun goes down.