And now we return with Part Two of chronicling Canada’s Wonderland! As you’ll all recall from last time, we had just made a lunch stop at a restaurant with a conflict of interest for a name. Let’s read on, shall we?

Freshly full of food and fun-lust, we finally make our way to the classic Top Gun! Except that our precious Top Gun is nowhere to be found: once again our favourite bureaucrats had relabeled our childhood friend as Flight Deck and expected us to just let it slide. Well, we showed them who was boss, I can tell you: we let it slide so hard it’ll make their heads spin!

Remember when I said that this day was extraordinarily fantastic? It was! It was brilliant sunshine for the entire duration; perfect for keeping spirits high! However, being the reclusive nerd that I am, I’m not accustomed to that much brilliant sunshine. Ever. So I spent a large part of my time on the lookout for a nice pair of sunglasses. Nowhere was this more pronounced than when we wandered over to the water park, with large reflective bodies of water abound. The dip was definitely refreshing, but I spent a long time having excellent conversations in excellent view of our friend Sol, and my face had started to hurt from squinting. I began to get desperate. So much so that I almost bought a pair of checker-print sunglasses which were clearly way too awesome for a mere mortal like me.

Luckily I conquered temptation, and found a nice merch stand which had a delightfully less-awesome pair of sunglasses to bring and end to my sufferance. Unluckily, the lady from whom I bought the glasses was not particularly well-endowed with paper money, and needed to give me $17+ in change. If you ever have a need for toonies, let me know, I’m pretty sure I won’t run out until the robots take over and demand the coins for parts.

Curse these blasted flesh-sacks we roll in, we already needed food again! I’ll have to look into why we’re still working with this dated hunger thing, it’s got to be at least a hundred years old now. It’s older than Canadian military equipment — oh snap! So we head over to a restaurant named, uh… Well, let’s call in Steve’s. So we go to this Steve’s buffet, which was in possession of delicious corn on the cob. I decided to exchange currency for some of this corn, and was contented. Right up until the then-setting Sol decided to chill with my previously stated nemesis: a giant pendulum! The strobing bastard almost ruined the joy of corn! I could tell that the staff were upset at this, as well, since no fewer than 3 trays of food were thrown to the floor in frustration while we were there. It’s alright, guys; I feel for you.

Remember how they always say TV is educational? Well I think blogging should get the same rep, so here’s the lesson for today: if your hands aren’t out, you’re a pussy! Got that? Try yelling it out a couple times, it’ll help memory retention. I picked up this lovely tidbit from some sweet little tween-age girl gently comforting her nervous younger brother — it made me long for my own loving sister’s words of wisdom. I tried to take her wisdom to heart when it was my time to ride the Orbitter, and was sure to pass it along to Carl in turn.

Now as I’m sure most of you are aware, having wicked fun all day has its costs; tends to make you mighty sleepy, so around this time we had to stop for a little mini-motivational to keep everyone in on the party. Based on, I would assume, proximity, since I certainly wasn’t paying attention to geographic location, we decided to hit up the Bat. The Bat started off well: nearly empty beginning section to the line, which I decide to skip by vaulting over each of fences. Well, that turned out to be a silly idea, since they’d closed all those sections off and I had to vault into the end of the line anyway, but it highlighted the ways in which I am graceful like a butterfly: all of them. This was further emphasized by the desire I failed to contain to show off, which landed my head precisely way-too-damn-close to a gigantic spider. Ugh, not my finest moment.

I learned some interesting things, and I think I made my own contribution to the pool of human knowledge while in the line to the Bat. I think the only way to to adequately relate this is with this clearly undoctored photo:

Stopped, the show has been.

Stopped, the show has been.

That was all just before the Bat. The actual Bat itself was surprisingly metal — far less mammalian than encyclopedias would have you believe. Having said that, I rather enjoyed the slightly modified version of The Cat Came Back as performed by My Favourite Roller Coaster Operator Evar; followed by a very ominous, “goodbye.” Had I heard it in the voice of GLaDOS, I think I would have died happily during the ride. Seriously, that girl will cut you.

Now what’s a good day without some exercise, right? The dark of night has thoroughly fallen, and we have a hurried huddle to determine whether we’ve got time for one last ride — and one of my favourites — the Vortex. While I put my fiddle with my lens-popped glasses, we apparently decided to make a run for it, just in case. Well, I wasn’t going to miss out on this; I start chasing those before me, while putting my multitasking handicap to good use putting away my glasses. Determined to get there before the ride closes, and blind as the last ride, I start to chase in earnest, and ended up following Ryan closely in order to avoid getting lost and trampling children — deserving though they may be, society frowns upon such things. Gladly the ride was still running when we got there, which was a blessing; it would have been worth the run anyway, though: it was like being back in kindergarten playing tag again!

So This is where the wondrous day in the more Wondrous Land ends; but that’s not the end of the tale! The ride home was an adventure in and unto itself! However, having written you two complete pictures, at the current exchange rate — three if you include the actual picture! — I’m going to leave that for another day. I’ll leave you with this teaser, though: it involves singing, sacking, and I almost get lucky with Jellyfish Bob! Stay tuned; same BatChannel!