Delia's Birthday Outing

As I've discussed before, we are big fans of the birthday outing because it gives our whole family the gift of exciting new experiences and memories to share together.  We gave Delia several choices for her birthday and, as we kinda figured she would, she quickly chose a day of rides and animals at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.  Like most other Six Flags parks, Discovery Kingdom has your big thrill rides, but it's unique in that it seems more geared at families with far more kid and mild rides and half the park dedicated to animal shows and experiences. We stayed the entire time it was open, walked onto every single ride without waiting, and only repeated favorites 3 times.  That shows what a huge variety of things there were to explore!  This was the perfect park for us and we had a phenomenal day.

   

 We watched a funny sea lion show, got up close to some penguins and a walrus, walked through a shark tunnel and petted sting rays in the Ocean Discovery section.

 In the Jungle Land section, we saw lions and tigers and elephants swimming.

We also fed giraffes!  For a couple bucks, the girls each got a whole load of leafy veggies, apples, yams and carrots to feed to friendly giraffes their looong tongues.

We made it to 3 shows and this one, Cirque Splashtastic, was our favorite.  It combined awe-inspiring circus acts with dolphin tricks.  Definitely one of the most unique dolphin shows we've ever seen!

One of the park's hidden gems was a glass butterfly house.  This place was crazy-packed with butterflies!  They were fluttering ALL around us and the girls were just desperate to get one to land on them.

And then there were the rides.  Though the animal stuff was super cool, we spent the most time running from one fun ride to the next.  The girls always love the 2-3 rides I buy them at the Boardwalk, so to have a whole day and 30 ride options and no restrictions was a great treat!

One of my favorite stories of the day was the swings.  This park had 4 sets of swings.  We labeled them S, M, L and XL.  The girls started small and worked their way up all day.

By afternoon they agreed to go on the Sky Screamer.  This is one the park's iconic rides-- swings that ascend 15 stories and fling you around at about 45 miles/hour.  I love roller coasters and don't shy away from a thrill, but one ride on this freaky thing was enough for me; I was shaking when I got off.  But, these fearless girls hopped on for a second ride with Dave!
 

 (Delia had to pick the #6 seats!)

I convinced Ella to ride one big roller coaster with me too because she loved the Sky Screamer so much, but Roar the wooden roller coaster was just a little too scary for her.  This was the one not-bright spot on an otherwise perfect day. I'm proud of her for trying, though.

 I keep thinking I'll have to be planning a birthday party one of these years.  But, if the kids continue to indulge us in outings then instead of stressful party planning we get to keep doing fun stuff like going on roller coasters and watching dolphin shows! :)