Day 59: Tropical Islands (Xander)

When we drove up to the Dome, I thought, "This is really, really big." When we got inside, I noticed that they hadn't made a lot of tall buildings. It smelled a lot like chlorine.

Everyone got a wristband, even kids. You could buy things with your wristband and you got assigned a locker that you could open with your wristband. The locker room was also very big. It had over 9,000 lockers! Mine was 8550! It was close to the back.

Photos by Mom on Xander's iPod

The first slide we went down, everybody almost came to a stop. I came to a full stop and I had to push myself. That made me very scared because I thought somebody would come down behind me and hit me.

The slides were not operated at the top by any lifeguard. Instead, there was a light that would be red when somebody else was sliding and green when you could slide.

The Green Slide (Photo by Chris)

Then we headed to slide tower. They had four slides on it. The smallest one was green and there was no light on it because it was very wide. So you would just go when there was nobody else currently sliding. At the next height, there was a red slide that you went down on an inner tube. That was the only place that you could sit on an inner tube. The inner tubes were very heavy, made of thick rubber. It was hard, but I could carry it up by myself. At the next height, there was a yellow slide that we had to wait almost half an hour to slide down. And we decided not to do it anymore because it was a long wait and the slide was very slow and not as fun as the other ones, in our opinion. At the next height, there was one that none of us really wanted to go on. Venice and I weren't even allowed because you had to be 15. It was very tall and it made you go up to 70 km/hour. Scary.

My favourite slide was the green slide because there was almost no wait and you could do many things and not get told not to. A lifeguard wouldn't say, "no." For example, I saw a few kids, including me, go on their knees (not sitting, but standing on their knees). It had a small pool at the bottom and that pool had a lot of sand in it.

(Video by Chris)