This article first appeared on the original TannerFamilyOnline site in the summer of 2005. This is the first of five day trips we took during a one week period during our first summer there together. This article is originally dated June 22, 2005 and was written by Heather after being in country for only 3 months.

Well it’s already the middle of the week. It’s all going by so fast! This is one of the “kids” days today. We’re off to Holiday Park. It’s only about a half hour away.

This amusement park is smaller than most in the States. And being the middle of the week-it’s not too crowded which is nice. I was worried there wouldn’t be much for JJ to ride on, but they have a whole Kinderland area for the small kids. A large playground area, several smaller rides and an inside room with all sorts of play stuff. We took JJ with us on a few of the more gentle rides and he did really well and seemed to have a lot of fun.

At Holiday Park there’s a roller coaster there called the Expedition GE Force-crazy scary! I got sick just watching it!! An American set a record on this coaster riding it day and night for 49 days. No way was I riding it even once! There’s also a ride called Free Fall. It takes you up this needle about 70 meters-150 feet or so and at the very top it slows way down and there’s cameras that take your picture right before the free fall kicks in and drops you to the bottom-no thanks. My heart can’t take that kind of stress.

Instead we went on the DonnerFluss which was a white water rafting ride. That was a lot of fun. I think the kids went on it 3 or 4 times.

 
We also went on a water log ride called the devil’s barrels. It helped that Dwayne told us all the drops that it took. There’s one part that you go into a tunnel and it goes up, then all the lights shut off and it swings you around and takes you down backwards. Towards the end you’re up so high you can see all around the entire park and you’re up as high as most of the roller coasters there–that’s kinda scary because you’re going really slow and it gives you time to see the crazy big drop you’re about to take. You go down two drops-better than going straight down! You can actually feel yourself lift out of your seat a little bit and of course you get all nice and wet at the end! That was a pretty fun ride-we went on that one twice.

Towards the end of the day we went to a water show they have. It’s a ski and jet boat show. They did a really good job. We weren’t sure if any of them we German though-they all had really American names like Amy, Sam, Brian. We didn’t make it to the crocodile show they have so I guess we’ll just have to go back another time:).