Danielle Blog

Summer – update #4 – Narragansett Pier and Six Flags New England

I’m continuing my story about my vacation out east to Rhode Island and New England to see SeaQueen and go to a scientific conference. There are additional posts about our trip on Memorial Day to the azalea garden and to the Gilbert Stuart birthplace.

Upon leaving the Gilbert Stuart birthplace, we headed back to SeaQueen’s place via a scenic route. We were just going to drive past Narragansett Pier and beach, but it looked so neat, that I convinced SeaQueen that we should park and walk around. We ended up checking out the surfing, paddleboarding, and the two towers.

It was really fun to be at the ocean and hear the waves crashing.

There was also a certain energy at the beach that I can’t quite put my finger on; it was an air of excitement, but also something else. Maybe exhilaration? It was that feeling of people desperate to squeeze every last drop of fun out of a weekend that was rapidly drawing to a close. There were definitely a lot of people who were checking out other people, so maybe it was sexual tension too. Whatever it was, it made for an interesting energy.

I don’t have any photos of our evening spent with SeaQueen’s friends and newborn baby girl. We had a fun time visiting with each other; we ate good food and played Apples to Apples, which was rather funny.

I don’t have any photos of our Tuesday trip to Six Flags New England. But it was AMAZING!
We were convinced that since school was still in session (recall that this was the Tuesday after Memorial Day), all of the kids would still be in school and the lines would be miniscule. Well, imagine our surprise/disappointment, when we got to our first ride of the day – a coaster, of course – Bizarro – and the line was over 30 minutes long! Bizarro is the ride that replaced Superman. It was our absolute favorite ride at the park. We ended up starting our day with Bizarro, and ending it with two back-to-back rides on Bizarro. By the end of the day, the lines WERE miniscule, because the kids had all boarded their buses and gone home.

What did I love about Bizarro, as opposed to Batman or others? Well, it was FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST and it went HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH!

I just looked up some stats and it goes up 20 stories and the first drop is 221 ft.

It goes up to 77 mph!

Boy did it get my adrenaline flowing! So much so that I felt a little ill when we road it back-to-back at the end of the day. But it is just an incredible, incredible coaster.
Also, the restraints on it are MUCH better than any other coaster I’ve ridden.

Screen capture of Bizarro from the Six Flags New England website

The restraint is this huge padded yellow thing that covers your midsection (you can see it on the screen capture above). I don’t like the ones that come down over my shoulders, like on Batman (see below), because I end up banging my head against them too much. The designers of Bizarro really solved that problem well.

We rode coaster after coaster that day.

We also went on some water rides, because it did start getting pretty hot about halfway through the day. We really got soaked on the river rapids ride. We rode the swings, which was quite breezy and relaxing.

It was the first that I’d been to an amusement park and rode coaster after coaster in a really long time. It was a blast!