Excited, Nervous, and a little bit anxious here I stand, wearing my favorite blue jeans and a Hollister shirt, my DC shoes and a baseball cap. My name is Riley, Riley Dude. I don’t know why, but I’m pretty sure my middle name is dude because I’m one cool dude! Well, its 6:00 in the morning. 24 hours ago I was laying my head on a soft squishy pillow with my eyes closed. I don’t have to go to school because I am on vacation in Ohio. Yeah, I know, vacation is supposed to be somewhere like Florida, Hawaii, but no, we had to go to Ohio. The only reason we’re going is a roller coaster called Millennium Force, one of the steepest in the world! No, I’m not going on, are you CRAZY? Unfortunately, I made a deal, we go here, skip school, have fun but I have to ride this rollercoaster.

I’m only 11 years old. My birthday was yesterday, April 16th. I guess you could say I’m tall for my age, or at least tall enough to ride the coaster. The line for that thing is probably going to be huge. People said they had to wait 3 hours to ride it, it only takes 2 minutes. To me that’s ridicules. I’d rather be at school! I pleaded, got down on my knees on this dirty concrete, and begged. But no, they wouldn’t budge at all.
After a while of standing waiting for the park to open, I took it into consideration. I was pretty sure I would be going on, so I started to boost my confidence. I figured, if I’m going on this thing I better have a good time. Within a couple of hours the place was flooded with people. With only 5 minutes left, I started to get….excited. When the park opened, our plan was to rush to the coaster, getting ahead of the traffic. A lot noise came from the speakers above, “Cedar-Point is now open, no pushing or shoving, that will lead to consequences.”

Our plan was in action. The plan get to the coaster went down the drain. It turns out other families were planning the same thing. Mostly everybody rushed over there, so while running we all got split up. The coaster was on the other side of the park. When I finally got there, I found my mom frantically looking for me and my dad. After a while, a long while, we all found each other. By the time we got in line we were kind of in the middle. Our wait was only 1 and a half hours, which is pretty good considering some people have to wait 3 hours. We get closer and closer. Every step we took I get more and more nervous.
I tell myself “NO, don’t be a wimp, ride the stupid closer and you’ll have an awesome story to tell everybody when you return home.” Well an hour and 25 minutes pass by. We are just rides away from going on the steepest roller coaster in the WORLD. Oh boy, I’m I scared, but I can’t wimp out now. That would be a total waste of time. Our coaster comes and I hesitate but walk to the seat I would be sitting on.

I take my shoes off so I can feel the breeze when the coaster drops the steep, steep drop and sit down. The seat belt was a little loose but the guy said that it would be fine. The ladies give thumbs up and the guy presses the button. At this time I didn’t know what to think. Should I be excited or nervous, should I close my eyes, or keep them open? At this point, I was just going to go with the flow. Well here we are. Going up the HUGEMONGUs hill hmmm….it feels like we have been going up for a while. My mom is pleading me to keep my eyes open. I guess the flow just wanted them…..OH MY Goodness!!!!! As we are going down my stomach feels like it’s not even there. I don’t even know what do think. My head is forced to the headrest; I can’t lift my feet up. I look at my mom’s hair; it’s all over the place….WHAT!?!?!? The coaster starts slowing down, right in the middle of the drop. So here we are, high up in the air and its starts SLOWING DOWN. What the heck. IT JUST STOPPED! Okay it turns out it wasn’t supposed to stop. I look at my mom while I am screaming with everybody else, “We are going to die” some people are saying “I’m going to SUE you”.


Workers below are shouting to us, but we can’t hear what they are saying because of all the commotion. After about 15 minutes, people stop being mad and start being scared, for their lives. So they took this into consideration and started to listen. Wow. What a good idea! The people told us that they don’t know why it stopped, and we may be like this for a while. But they promised us that they would get us out of here. Our heads were tilted down to the ground so it was hard to hold them up after a while. I wasn’t as scared as I was at the beginning of this all. They made it clear that this coaster is very safe and it won’t fall off the tracks. I thought about that and after a while it became clear. If this thing was so safe, why are we like this?
The blood was rushing to my head fast. I was starving, thirsty and burning hot, the sun was shining right smack dab on my face. I’m glad my seatbelt was kind of loose because I could hear other people complaining they were getting choked. I try to talk to my mom but she said that she didn’t want to talk right now because she felt light=headed, whatever that means. So I just let her alone. Dad was 2 rows ahead of me because he was too slow taking his shoes off and this guy just came sitting down. So the guy next to me was…..a little weird. He enjoyed being held against his will while being hanged horizontally. So here I am. Still stuck, it has been 3 hours! My neck hurts really badly, it keeps tilting forward. I turn to my mom but she looks like she is enjoying this too, her eyes were closed and her head was just hanging there. Jeez, she must have good neck muscles if it doesn’t hurt for her neck to just to hang, my head hurts just to hang it there.

After 5 whole hours, they find of what’s wrong. I wake my mom up to tell her the news but she just keeps sleeping. I push her again but still, no movement. This is when I start getting worried. A chilling fear came down my spine. Is she dead? At this point I don’t know what is more important. Listen to what is wrong to see if we are getting out of here so I can get mom help, or to see if mom is still breathing. I decide to listen. The guy says that somehow the coaster got jammed, they don’t know why but they couldn’t get it running for a while so we had the choice to get plied out of there with a jaws and then some how climb onto the ladder, (dangerous) or keep on waiting. The guy next to me was the only one that wanted to get out that way. They decided maybe it wasn’t such a good idea (smart). So here we go again. Stuck, in the same place we were 5 and a half hours ago. They couldn’t even promise a time that we would be unstuck. I would rather be at school!

“Yay!” We all cheer. In just a couple of minutes we would be leaving this mess. My mom is still sleeping (weird) and I’m still trying to keep my head up with all my might. They found a way to start it so it would go super fast. Then hopefully it will get unstuck. Although this is good news, there is also bad news; there is of course, a caution to this. This thing wasn’t designed to go that fast but they figured this was the only way. I decided to just close my eyes when they do it. Hopefully the big jolt will wake mom up. Dad yells to me that he’s sorry he made me go on. I yell to him back that mom isn’t waking up. He said just to leave her alone. Well here we go in just 3, 2, 1…….

“Ahhhhhhhh”……….we all scream at the top of our lungs. We thrash down the steep hill and into the spot we started. Everybody has huge smiles but man, o, man was mine enormous. The only thing to bring me down was mom; she was still sleeping, her head dangling down. The paramedics were already there so they took her. My dad and I just stood there hoping everything was all right. The guy in charge of this park said that he would give us free season passes for our life if we didn’t press charges. Everybody took the passes. How couldn’t this day get any better, or worse? I don’t know what to think, should I be happy for our complimentary season passes or nervous about mom, or thrilled about telling my friends?

Happy was the right answer, turns out my mom just passed out because she couldn’t keep her head up. Everything was great at this moment. I had an awesome story to tell, free season passes, and the rest of the day to ride super safe kid rides! Wow. What a story to tell.