Hometown Tourists: Atlantis Park

Subtitle: "A Comedy of Errors"

It's me, Ben, again. I woke up at 4:15 this morning, so I have some time. I wanted to tell you about a recent Adventure we had at Atlantis Park in Garden Grove. It was one of my favorite's so far. But it was also a challenge. But hey, let's be honest here--I'm two, so everything's kind of a challenge.

We drove all the way to Garden Grove on a crisp August morning. I say "all the way" because I don't like being in the car for more than 10 seconds, so for me it was kind of far. The directions were kind of strange, asking us to turn left onto a street when there was a concrete divider in the middle of the road. Since it apparently breaks some kind of law to drive across those things, we had to make a few turns and find our way back to the street we were supposed to turn left on. We were obviously at some kind of park, but we couldn't see the Atlantis Play Center anywhere. While we'd never been there, the park we were looking at didn't look anything like what we were expecting based on descriptions. So we drove around for a while and never actually found what we thought we were looking for. But again, since we'd never been there (or even seen pictures), we thought maybe we were misled. This looked like just a regular park. After a solid 15 minutes, we gave up and parked next to a little playground. There was an enclosure off to the side that was under construction, so we suspected that maybe that was the cool part and that it was off-limits for the time being. My mom was getting kinda frustrated and annoyed that we drove all this way for what was pretty much the same park as we have across the street, but I didn't really care. I just like parks. So we got out, grabbed the camera, and walked over to the playground. After a minute the battery died on the camera, so we walked back to the car to change the battery. I was perfectly content with playing in this little playground, but my mom was positive there had to be more to this lame park than just this little playground. So she decided to walk a little bit to find it. I didn't want to walk, so I made her carry me.

 

Well, we found the cool part! It was all the way at the end of the road on the backside of the park. After walking about a half mile to it, in my mommy's arms of course, we saw that it cost $1 to get in. Well, we didn't have our money because it was in the car, which was of course on the other side of the park. So mommy said we had to walk all the way back to the car and drive back here. I thought that was ridiculous. I wanted to stay and go in because I'm two and I have no concept of money. I also didn't want to walk back to the car. So I made my mommy carry me. She wasn't too happy about that, especially since she had the big camera in her pocket and it was making her pants fall down because she's lost some weight and the camera is heavy (and so am I).

Well, eventually we made it back to the car. My mom strapped me in and we drive down to the park. So did a big yellow bus full of day-campers. Turns out there were a lot of day-campers there that day. Oh well. I love watching big kids play and trying to be like them. So we paid our $1 and went in.

It was heaven. There were several play areas with fun sea creatures to climb on, slides, grass to run and play in, a boat, a giant sea-serpent slide, and an awesome bridge with a tunnel underneath. I love tunnels. I just ran and ran and played and played. Coolest. Park. Ever.

The Journey: Not too bad. It probably would have only taken us 15 minutes from door to door if we hadn't explored the entire city of Garden Grove first. Just make sure you drive all the way to the end of the street that you can't turn left on.

The Price: $1. I think it's kind of silly to have to pay to go to a public park, but whatever. It's only $1.

The Highlights: To whole dang thing. But my favorite part was the wild bunny that I got to chase around for a while. I love bunnies. Also the Neptune statue. I wouldn't sit on his lap, but I liked to sit at his feet.

The Downsides: All of the walking. But that's not really Atlantis's fault--that's all my mom.