So, it’s spring break, my kids are off from school, I work for myself as you know, so I’ve been trying to block off half days during this spring break so I can spend time with them which has been going well.

Yesterday, blocked off the back half of my day and we went to Six Flags.

That was a mistake.

So Six Flags, if you don’t know, is an amusement park, it’s like Disney World but less good.

Actually they had some recent issues where a new CEO was like, we’re going to make this more Disney-ified, we’re going to make Six Flags more upscale, which meant we’re going to charge more for everything, not change anything else, and make the meal plans worse if you do those, make the season passes worse.

And so we used to be pretty heavy season pass members, we would do the meal plans where you get a couple meals a day and you could buy the fancy cup where you get unlimited refills all summer long and he made all of that ridiculously costly and shock of all shocks season pass usage has plummeted.

We’re still in that world now, it sucks, but we were season pass members and we still have season passes for a bit and I could take off a half day yesterday so we did and we went to Six Flags.

Liam loves Six Flags.

The other two kids, not as big a fan, but he loves it.

He especially loves roller coasters.

And Lauren wasn’t feeling well so the decision was that we were going to split up.

It was going to be Liam and me doing our thing.

If you’re screaming, Liam and I doing our thing at your podcast listening device right now, you’re welcome.

I wanted to give you that joy of feeling superior.

But anyway, so Liam and I went and did our thing and Lauren, Ani, and Sierra did their thing and we’re looking at the app, Liam and I, and Liam is my navigator at Six Flags because I don’t go to Six Flags nearly as often as he does and he knows how to get around.

We’re looking at the app and it tells you the relative line weights and I’m like, look, here’s a bunch of coasters that are five minute weights and here’s the 45 minute weights and here’s the hour weights.

And he’s like, the five minute weight ones suck.

Those are the indoor roller coasters.

They’re not as fun.

They don’t even go upside down.

Let’s get in line for a 45 minute line.

Let’s get in line for a Green Lantern.

Okay, we get there.

It’s a long line.

It’s a long line in the sun.

And we’re like, we’re just going to do it.

And I’m like, Liam, we should know we’re going to do one, maybe two rides today because we’re not going to be here a super long time.

And if we’re going to spend all this time in this line, it’s going to be a while.

And so we’re in that line and occasionally you’re getting abandoners, right?

You’re seeing the ride go and you’re seeing abandoners, people just getting out of the line and walking through sometimes from surprisingly far up.

And we’re like, geez, the biggest issue was they were only running one car.

The ride supports three cars, but they were only running one car.

And I puzzled out that this was because they’re understaffed right now.

It’s not summer, so they don’t have their full staff there.

And like, I guess if there were multiple cars to manage, they would need two or three more staffers on the ride and they just didn’t have them.

And the kids who work at Six Flags have absolutely no urgency with regard to anything that’s going on, right?

They don’t care.

They don’t care how many people go.

They don’t care how long the line is.

So they are in no rush at any point.

It’s not because they’re being extra safe and secure with the harnesses or anything, by the way, they just don’t care.

And Liam and I are looking like, we see what we’re going to run the curve.

We’re having a good time.

We’re chatting.

Uh, occasional line abandoners, still a very long line.

And as we get closer to this corner where you kind of get behind the ride, but still in the queue, he’s like, oh my gosh, it’s zigzags there.

Because it was one of those things where like it takes the line and makes it get more twisty for a bit.

It’s like, it felt like we were going to be getting far, but there’s still all that.

Yeah, there is that twisty part there, but it’s not crazy.

Like we’re trying to estimate how many people can go on the ride.

We were timing how long between when they would send the ride.

So, okay, there’s still probably about 45 minutes left.

And then like half an hour goes by and we calculate again, like, there’s still probably 45 minutes left, which may meant maybe that our first calculation wasn’t ideal, but that’s fine.

We’re not scientists.

Um, uh, so we’re that in the back, we’re in the twisty part.

Now we’re going back and forth, uh, except then we’re not going back and forth.

And there is trivia, there’s TV showing trivia and we got through all the trivia questions.

Um, and it’s not interesting.

It’s six flags trivia, which nobody knows any of the answers to.

So it’s stupid.

Um, but so we’re just going through this line, uh, and then we’re eventually not going through the line, right?

It’s just going incredibly slowly.

There was a 10 minute gap between rides at one point for no reason that we ever learned.

Um, there’s a woman who’s on the ground level cause you eventually go upstairs again to the right, but the one on the ground level, who’s yelling at people like truly yelling.

Like if a manager had been there, this woman would be fired.

She’s screaming at people not to sit on the hand railings.

I’m not entirely clear on why they care.

We weren’t sitting on the hand railings, but she’s like, how many times do I have to tell you?

And we’re thinking, you know, there’s new people coming into the section each time and we don’t work here.

So we’re not telling them that’s on the railing.

That’s your job.

And you have to tell every new batch of people that comes in.

But this lady was very grumpy and not audible, right?

She had no way to amplify her voice other than screaming and she was full on screaming.

Uh, and at some point I say to Lee, I’m like, Hey, do you want to give up?

Um, and this, I said it once early, he’s like, no, no, no, we’ll do away.

And I said again, later, Hey, if you want to give up, you gotta let me know.

He’s like, I think I do want to give up.

He’s like, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I do.

And I’m like, well, tell me why.

And he’s like, because I think it’s still going to be an hour from where we are now.

We’ve been in this line now, one hour and 28 minutes.

It’s like, I think it’s still going to be an hour and we’re doing some more math and we’re seeing just how long it’s taking in between rides.

And it’s gotten a little bit worse.

Like now they were having about five minutes between runs, five and a half.

And that was getting around seven minutes between runs.

And then I’m like, let’s observe a person.

Let’s keep tabs on how long it takes this person.

And we gave up when after 30, no, it wasn’t that long after maybe three more runs of the ride.

So I guess that’s probably around 20 minutes, 21 minutes.

That person still hadn’t even gotten up the stairs, the stairs, part of the line.

And we saw that this was going to be incredibly slow.

So we abandoned the line.

We were the furthest ahead in line people we saw all day, abandon that line.

And we were just going to go home.

The other should done one ride also.

And then as we’re going by, I’m like, look, there’s a really short line on this ride.

I know you don’t like this ride as much as the twister, but why don’t we just do it?

He’s like, well, look, we’re going to get on right now.

And I convinced him we want to twist.

There was a good time.

Wasn’t worth the first gigantic abandoned line.

Wait, but it was still a good time.

Anyway, a six flag sucks.

Happy Thursday.

Spex.