The WAL

Okay, not exactly a vacation post, but I did this for the first time during my vacation, so there’s the tie in.

We initially crossed the border to go to the aquarium in Niagara Falls, New York but my better half heard about an outlet mall there, so we got directions and made the ten minute drive mentally converting kilometres per hour to miles per hour every couple of minutes to make sure I wasn’t speeding too badly.

Long story short, I got 3 suits, cuffs on the pants included, and a pair of shoes for $372 US and then paid tax crossing back into Canada (GST and PST to my surprise and dismay).  We also bought some kids’ clothing and my wife contributed a bit to her wardrobe as well, but I think I had the best deal.  I can easily spend $300 on one suit on this side of the border before alterations, even during so-called sales.  Low end suits are usually around the $150-$170 range and are 100% polyester rather than wool.  The tax coming back into the country irritated me, but it was absolutely worth the trip.

One of the named by the CBC 7 Wonders of Canada (some of which are decidedly odd choices), the Falls are certainly worth seeing at some point in your life just for the feeling of standing next to something so large.  I believe the quote was summer flow over the falls is on the order of 154 million litres per minute.  That’s the Horseshoe falls on the Canadian side.  The American falls, while still impressive, only hold about 10% of the overall flow from the river.

Between the upper deck, the Maid of the Mist boat tour, and the tunnel behind the falls, you’ve got three different ways to get close to the falls and two of them will get you wet enough that raincoats are provided.  Throw in the White Water Walk (a boardwalk next to one of the nastiest stretches of rapids below the falls), the Butterfly Conservatory and the biggest Budhist temple (The Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple) I’ve ever seen, and you’ve got an entire day of tourist stuff.  Yes, we bought a package of tickets that included all of this plus a full day of transportation on the shuttle that runs the length and much more of all of these.  It didn’t include the Buddhist temple which happens to be across the street from the White Water Walk; that was a happy bonus.

A fun, if tiring, day.

Yes, I suppose the title was a bit on the predictable side, but it fits.

There isn’t one recycling bin anywhere on the grounds of Marineland so far as I can tell.  I carried plastic bottles for hours looking for one.  An employee of the park, when questioned on the matter, said, “Agh.  Don’t get me started.”  The amount of waste generated by a theme park in one day is staggering.  How much of it could be recycled?  And none of it is, unless you carry it back out yourself, which we did every time we went into the park.

If you go to feed the deer in the deer park, think twice.  I don’t know if it’s inbreeding or something in the water or the rest of the environment, but shivers ran up my spine regularlyl while we were in the enclosure.  The deer were friendly enough, and took food from your hand very gently, but a few of them looked like they had some kind of wasting disease or massive intestinal parasites depriving them of all nutrition.  There were only a few of those, but there were a large number with huge cysts growing on various parts of their body.  Face, neck, sides, legs.  The cysts ranged in size from smaller than my pinkie fingernail to nearly the size of my fist.  Most animals that had one had more than one, sometimes a lot more than one, and most of them had at least one.  I felt like I wanted to disinfect my children from head to toe when we left the deer park.  Very scary, boys and girls.  Avoid the franken-deer.

Which is worse, the lack of recycling or the deer mutating before your eyes?  I’m having a hard time deciding.

So much for daily posts, hmm?  I’ll try again.

After my glowing review of Marineland, I couldn’t have anything bad to say, could I?  Well, some and mostly financial.  An extra $5 above the day pass for a season pass is a good deal if you’re going to be in town for a couple of days, but once you’re inside, it’s a different matter.

Bring your own food.  Price tags for edibles at Marineland are as bad or worse than Wonderland.  Two burgers and one order of chicken strips, all with fries, and two slices of pizza, plus three drinks came within spitting distance of $40.  A mere $2.60 for a bottle of water, the same bottle you can buy 24 of for $2.99 in the grocery store.  A regular sized soft icecream cone for almost $3 tax included.  Bring your own food.  Seriously.  We mostly did, but ate lunch there the first day because we didn’t want to go back to the van.  We went back to the van for dinner.

$8 to pet the Beluga.  Yes, in my last post, I said it was worth it for the experience.  But $8 still seems a bit steep when it’s an experience that lasts less than two minutes.  The optional professional photographs of the experience carry pretty hefty price tags, too.  Our digital camera did okay.

There is a part three to this sequence, but I’ll leave it for tomorrow.

Oh and dude, put your shirt back on.  I don’t care if it’s hot.  No one wants to see that.  Really.  You’re setting a bad example and it hurts my eyes.

Marineland was fun.  We did the season pass thing so we could go back whenever we wanted throughout our vacation and probably spent something close to thirty hours in the park.  Rides, rides, and more rides.  Paleoboy and I did Dragon Mountain and the Sky Screamer on our second visit.  Dragon Mountain, the only roller coaster at Marineland quickly became his favourite, joined by Nature Girl on our third visit.  At not much past seven, she squeaked by the height restriction with about a millimetre to spare.  The Pink Princess scared her mother repeatedly by going on rides that frighten my wife.  And this little girl gets carsick if she’s sitting next to a window.  Strange.  If you’re a kid, Marineland is more or less about the rides.

But not completely.  We did all the shows, too, and took literally hundreds of pictures.  (I love my digital camera)  We touched and fed Beluga whales (a little expensive, but worth it for the experience once), got splashed by Orca, and laughed at by a very large seal in between bouts of dolphin acrobatics.

And we rode the rides, over and over again.  We didn’t miss one, although a few of them we hit only once and others many, many times.  On a weekday, you more or less walk up to a ride and get on it or have to wait one round and then get on it.  Saturday was a bit worse and Canada Day (our first day there) the busiest of all.  But even on Canada Day, the wait to fun ratio was rarely more than 10 to 1.

Much fun, much excitement and probably most of what the kids remember of the vacation.

We spent the first day of our vacation in Toronto at the Metro Zoo.  We’ve been out of Toronto for about five and a half years now.  My oldest has some vague recollections of the zoo while his younger sister doesn’t recall it at all and the youngest was born just after we moved here, so it was an adventure for everyone.

With the exception of the Meercats (which seemed to be off display for reasons unknown), we hit all of the animals on everyone’s Top 3 list and an awful lot more besides, probably something more than 2/3 of the zoo total and that’s a lot of walking in one day for kids, especially since it was the first day of what turned out to be a six-day vacation.

But the highlight of the day, as I mentioned in my last post, was Stingray Bay, a travelling exhibit that’s at the Zoo until October.  Picture a large kidney-shaped (sort of) swimming pool that’s only a couple of feet deep and is home to thirty or so stingrays of various sizes from dinner plate to hula hoop.  The rays swim around and around and when they get close to you, you stick your hand in the water, after divesting it of any jewelry or watches you might be wearing, and stroke them as they go by.  Sometimes you get splashed a little, but mostly these strange puppy-dog fish come and rub up against your hand.  They sort of feel like soft dolphins, spongier and a little less rubbery.  If that doesn’t help, think of something the consistency of well-chewed taffy but wet and smooth.  Okay, that sounds kind of gross but it isn’t, really.  Maybe play dough under plastic wrap with water poured over the top.

It’s difficult to ascribe motivations to a fish, but some of them seemed to actively seek out people to stroke them.

Highly recommended.

After extending the vacation for a day and completely blowing the budget, we’re back.  Six days and five nights in beautiful Niagara Falls, Ontario.  Well, five days, really, and six nights in a way.  The first day we spent at the Toronto Zoo and let me just say that Stingray Bay was worth the trip all by itself.  More vacation content later today, and certainly for the net few days.  We crammed a lot of stuff into the past week and I’ve got lots rolling around in my brain to get out and possibly even some pictures to share (between my camera and Paleoboy’s, we’ve got nearly five gigs of images and video, so there’s lots to choose from even if half of the shots didn’t work out).

But right now, my front hall is full of luggage, souvenirs, and dirty laundry.

As of eight pm tonight, I’m on vacation, not returning to work until July 8th.  If the Toronto Zoo had a theme song, I’d be humming it now, but I’m humming the Marineland theme song instead.  It’s our second destination, after the Zoo.  From there some other touristy stuff in Niagara Falls and perhaps across the border and home late Friday night or maybe even Saturday if we decide we can squeeze an extra day out of the budget.

I know it’s been several days since I posted, but my spare time has been sucked dry tidying things up for holidays and even my writing is hitting bare minimum word counts.  I will also not be doing any significant writing for the five days I’ll for sure be away but hitting things fairly heavy after I’m back so the overall word count on “Skip to my Luu” won’t be much different than it would have been.  I am taking a pair of 25k word novellas to possibly read if I have time.  No real intentions of editing, but we’ll see how things go.  Maybe in the van when it’s not my turn to drive.

Long post the day after we get back.  Promise.