BOMB-BAY!

I just finished reading Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in the last few weeks. One of the themes that seemed to occur throughout the book was the imagination of children and how they blow rumors out of proportion. This brought me back to a situation in my childhood that was very similar.

For either three or four years during my youth, I went to Wet N' Wild quite often. I went often enough to buy a season pass and get full value out of it. They were great times. I would often go with my friend, Greg, and we would explore the park on our own. We knew the park inside and out. We knew when and where there would be longer or shorter lines. For instance, in August there was an event called Hot August Nights (not to be confused with the car show in Reno). There would be a live band out by the wave pool along with fun and games beginning at around sundown. From that point forward all of the rides at the park were basically vacant. Greg and I would take advantage of this and ride the rides over and over again.

We rode every ride. Well, every ride except for one. As many times as we went to the park we never rode the Bomb-Bay. Bomb-Bay was a ride in which one had to climb a circular set of stairs about 75 ft high. At the top the rider was placed in a capsule, or known as the "Bomb-Bay." From there the capsule would open underneath your feet and you would drop into a slide that slid straight down the whole 75 ft. Sounds fun right???

Well, there was a bit of an urban legend about this "Bomb-Bay." It seems that everybody had a brothers, girlfriends, second cousin that either got stuck in the Bomb-Bay for hours on end or had lost a limb or digit when it got caught when the capsule opened.

Greg and I thought that most of these stories were jibberish, but then again what if they weren't? It seemed like every time we went to Wet 'N Wild that it would be the day that we finally conquered the colossal Bomb-Bay. And every night when we would leave we would pass the ride and it would laugh at us because it still haunted us.

Unfortunately, Wet N' Wild didn't stay open long enough for Greg and I to finally conquer the Bomb-Bay. It was closed down to make room for high rise condos on the strip. In fact, the stalled construction project, Fontainebleau, sits where the majestic Bomb-Bay used to rise over the entire park. And even though the park has been gone for years, I can still imagine the Bomb-Bay laughing at me every time I drive by its location on the strip.