Sunday, July 20 — Keith had enjoyed the FFX murder mystery show so much that he asked if we could go back again this week (the murder mystery show was every Sunday at 1400 and it was a different mystery every week). In the morning, Eric and Keith went over to Miss Roxy’s to play D & D, while Christi went over to Karen’s. When we planned this, Eric and Keith had figured that there would be lots of time between D & D ending and the show starting. We’d planned that Christi would pick them up after D & D and we’d have a leisurely lunch before the show. The D & D session was intense that the session ran long. Miss Roxy ordered lunch in so they could eat while they played, and we were ten minutes late to the FFX show. But fortunately, they didn’t start without us.

Last time, the show’s theme was Wild West. This time, it was Superheroes. Like last time, they passed out character sheets and clues about what we should ask the other characters about. There were more people in attendance this week than last week, and they ran out of characters. Karen and Mark didn’t get characters, which was disappointing for them. They were invited to partake in solving the mystery, but without clues, they had no idea what kinds of questions to ask the other participants, so they gave up on participating early on.

continued… It was now noon. Keith was getting hungry and Eric was eager to eat again. We went to the nearest restaurant, which served barbecue. Up until now, the longest line we’d been in was 15-minutes for the water ride. However, the line to order at the restaurant took about 40-minutes. Eric proudly reported that his meal would have cost more than $30 had he paid a la carte, though Keith’s didn’t make it to $30, so the average between the two was $60.

We went to a nearby ice cream shop in France. We each got a milkshake, which was not included in the meal plans.

The next big ride that we wanted to go on was in Scotland. We decided to take the sky tram over to Germany to make the walk shorter. This was leaving France.

Thursday, July 17 — We decided to celebrate Keith finishing 7th grade with a trip to a nearby amusement park called Busch Gardens. We’d booked the tickets online a day before. Apparently, ticket prices were variable based on day of the week/season. Ours were $55 each for one-day general admission. Busch Gardens offered a food package, where for $30 you can get a meal every 90-minutes. We knew from Sea World, which was owned by Busch Gardens, that this was a smoking deal as one meal generally costs $30 by itself. Eric and Keith both got the food package, but Christi had a food allergy that Sea World couldn’t accommodate and we figured that Busch Gardens wouldn’t be able to accommodate it, either. Eric was horrified to find that there was a $21 service fee for booking tickets online.

Busch Gardens opened at 1000, and we pulled into the line to enter the parking lot right at 1000. We knew parking would be expensive, but $34 was even more than we’d anticipated. We found parking close to the entrance and there wasn’t much of a line to get in. It was another hot day, but it was quite windy, and the cool wind kept us from getting too overheated (for the most part).

The sign at the entrance said that this park was voted The World’s Most Beautiful Theme Park. The map of the park indicated that the theme for each of the different areas of the park were European countries. The entrance was in England, and it was adorable.