Since everyone else was off this week, I took Wednesday and Thursday off as well. Partly because I frankly just needed a break from the work grind, and the rest because I just needed the rest. And what the hell, I deserve a couple of days off now and then.

Y’see, since Thursday or Friday of last week, I’ve been plagued by some killer, more-than-just-allergies sinus headaches that just wouldn’t go away, to the point where anyone who talked to me was accused of shouting, and a simple end table lamp appeared to be more the size of a klieg light. Not a good time for me.

So, Tuesday afternoon, I visited my friendly neighborhood family doctor, who confirmed my sinus infection suspicions, and sent me home with a scrip for big pink antibiotic pills. Hopefully they’ll clear me out for at least a while.

I’m tempted to blame the whole thing on the office in DC, where they’ve had meetings about all the people who work in the basement getting sick. I don’t work in the basement, but there’s something not entirely right about the air there.

As I was feeling a little better on Wednesday, I caved to the pressure of the family, and we headed up the road to King’s Dominion the other amusement park in the area. We’ve been here ten years, and I’ve never bothered going. I don’t necessarily think I was missing much.

KD is your reasonably typical amusement park; lots of roller coasters, and no particular thought to layout, traffic patterns, or any particular theme. From the piped-in generic pop music, to the actual presence of mall franchises like Chik-Fil-A and Cinnabon selling refreshments, the park seems kind of thrown together, and what little thought went into the place was pointed toward marketing the experience toward the “average” consumer of chain stores and American Idol.

And apparently, people eat it up. The folks wandering about (most of them emblazoned with corporate logos of one flavor or another) seemed to enjoy it immensely, without having any of their particular tastes challenged in any way whatsoever. Personally, I was kinda bored by it.

Busch Gardens (which also gets foot traffic planning much better) offers a theme (little areas based on various European Countries) and sticks to it; they don’t get everything perfect, certainly, but they make the experience work. King’s Dominion, on the other hand, doesn’t have any particular theme in mind; a random mish-mash that doesn’t try to be anything much beyond the local mall on a slightly larger scale. Even Hershey Park manages to pull off the “consistency” thing a little better.

Maybe the various changes of corporate ownwership over the years have something to do with the lack of identity- Cedar Fair (of Cedar Point and Knotts Berry Farm) owns it now; it used to be in the hands of Paramount, who bought it from somebody else. This mixed heritage does create some interesting juxtapositions of licensed content scattered about: aging kiddie rides based on old Hanna Barberra Cartoons, a couple of Scooby Doo rides, the Nickelodeon iconography, a few randomly placed Wayne’s World logos, and an incongruous African-themed area (that apparently used to be a Safari attraction) that doesn’t really have anything “African” in it.

Oh well; I guess I’m going to have to hope that I get used to it (or hope that my “meh” ness had something to do with the medication in my system); we bought season passes this year (they were only four bucks more than general admission), figuring we’d try something new this year after a couple of years of Busch Gardens.