As I mentioned earlier, Charlotte absolutely adores amusement parks and fairs, and, now that she is tall enough to ride anything she wants, she can’t get enough of them. Ergo, it stood to reason that her requested birthday trip would include the best amusement park within easy driving distance—Six Flags St. Louis.
We had never visited St. Louis before last weekend, although it is a popular destination for people who live where we do. It’s a bit farther away than Chicago, but it’s still not much over three hours. Our hotel was on the southwest side of the city, so we drove a bit farther, but, all in all, St. Louis was a good place to go on our first real trip with Jeremy.
We left on Friday afternoon when Jeff got home from work and arrived at Homewood Suites around 9:00, after stopping at Steak ‘n’ Shake (Charlotte’s choice) for supper. We picked this place on a friend’s recommendation because it has two separate sleeping areas; as Jeremy wasn’t yet sleeping through the night when I booked it, we thought this might be a good idea.
While Homewood Suites is a nice place, we had a less-than-nice experience there. We had neighbors whose children screamed out in the hall late into the night. Trying to get breakfast on Saturday morning was a nightmare; the hotel was fully booked, and the breakfast area was in no way big enough to accommodate everyone, even in shifts. A lady got nasty with Jeff after he told her that he was saving a table for the rest of his family, and our kids were behind people in the waffle line who made waffle after waffle after waffle in spite of the crowd.
After we left our room on Saturday, someone thought it would be a funny joke to put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on our door. So, when we arrived back from Six Flags, we found a bag hanging on the door containing towels and replacements for anything else we might have used, but the room had not been made up. While this wasn’t really the hotel’s fault, it certainly colored our view of the place and the level of clientele it attracted.
I honestly try not to let these things bother me, but come on!
Anyway…on to the good part of the trip!
We arrived at Six Flags around 10:00 a.m., thirty minutes before the park opened. This gave us plenty of time to park, go through security (metal detectors and bag check), and get over to the line into the water park. Six Flags St. Louis has the traditional amusement park, in addition to a large water park, which ended up being a very nice place to be since the heat index was a humid 103 degrees on Saturday! Here is the family, waiting for the park to open!
Because we wanted a place that we could settle with the baby, I had reserved a cabana in the water park. I think was the best decision that we made for this entire trip. The cabana offered shade, a table and four chairs, two loungers, a bench locker, four inner tubes, and four beverages. I checked in to our cabana at 10:30, and someone was there with Jeremy until the water park closed at 8:00 p.m. We had a relatively cool place to feed Jeremy and ourselves, a place for him to nap, and a place to relax out of the sun. Fabulous!
I don’t have a whole lot of pictures of Six Flags, but we ended up having a really fun day, much better than my pessimistic self expected. After all, how much fun can an amusement park be with an eleven-week-old baby?!
But Jeff and I tag-teamed riding rides in the park with the older two kids and watching Jeremy. I got to read a book and enjoy the sun while Jeremy napped during my shift, and then I got to ride some roller coasters and other rides and float on the Lazy River while Jeff sat with Jeremy. We had a shady, private table on which to eat our ridiculously expensive lunch from Papa John’s (upside—it was enough food for lunch and supper!), and we never had to wait for tubes.
Because it was so hot, the water park stayed packed, but lines in the amusement park were very short. The longest wait that anyone ever had was about 30 minutes, and we literally walked right on most of the rides. When the water park closed, we spent another 90 minutes in the park, and the kids ended up riding everything they wanted to ride, including lots of scary roller coasters and one of those dreadful rides that takes you up 26 stories and drops you. Elijah rode that one twice!
Here is one happy birthday girl near the end of our time in the park. She is soaked from a ride on Thunder River!
I guess my lesson learned from our day at Six Flags is to not necessarily listen to what everyone says. I had just about been convinced that going on a Saturday in the middle of summer on a hot day with a baby was a recipe for disaster. Instead, it was a great time.
On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at Dairy Queen for a cool treat. Day One of our weekend in St. Louis was in the books.
Next time…Sunday on the farm and desperately seeking the Hard Rock Cafe. Stay tuned!
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