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Sunday, January 7, 2007

A Wonderful Day at WonderLA

06 January 2007
Team Orange - Back again... the way they are best - in a team!!


But this time, not to prepare for an office extra curricular event, but to let our hair down and celebrate the third place we secured in Utsav, our annual cultural fest at office

It wasn't the entire team - (by that, i mean, the active particpants!!) - that went..Just a fraction of it... pity the people who missed out!!The place we went, was WonderLa, the amusement park on the outskirts of Banglaore. We were 11 of us - 9 'Orange's and two friends from outside -
  • Arif bhai and Niharika - on a Hero Honda Passion
  • Amit and Rashi - on a Bajaj Pulsar
  • Khusroo and Abhi - on a Hero Honda Splendor
  • Bhavin and Rachana - on a Suzuki Max 100
  • Surag - on his Yamaha Libero
  • Me and my sweetheart - My Bajaj Discover
Arif bhai said 9 am. I know him very well - and yet i made the mistake of getting ready to meet up at that time. Ri was lucky, abhi was lazy - both of them overslept, and slowly joined at 9 30 am. But the unluckiest were Bhavin and Rachana, who (i guess, not knowing, or ignoring the fact about what is bhai is like... :-)) were left waiting for an hour for us on the dusty highway, a few km down the road. As expected bhai entered the scene at 10 am, with his (and now, the entire team's) two new friends - Pinki (ufff.. i mean Niharika) and Rashi.

Pleasantries exchanged, bikes revved up, and a couple of snaps later, we hit the road to the amusement park. Caught up with Bhavin and Rachana on the way. From the look of their face, i felt they had half a mind to beat us all - the latecomers!! :-)



1145 hours - We reach WonderLa. I was the only (??) person in the team, who'd been there once before, and became the self-appointed guide! Pinki and Rashi got the first proper glimpse of "what" i am!!. Abhi became the "lucky" guy to swipe his credit card for all the tickets - 540 per head...

(Mmmmm... now... Abhi who??? he he!!)


Once inside, we parked our bags in lockers in a jiffy and ran to the rides... It started with the Techno jump (my favorite ride at the park) and the adrenaline started gushing... Half of us went first and the rest half - including Rachana - went next. This was whe
n Rachana opened her mouth (to scream)... only to close it by late afternoon, when we were done with all the rides!! :-D


Click..click...click went the cameras... Once everyone got the taste of how the next few hours would go by, we went on with the rest of the rides with a tad bit more confidence.. The "Drop zone" (free fall) was followed by the Mixer ride ...One look at that, and 3/4 girls wanted to give up. This was when the team noticed the spunk of Rashi - trust me, i've seen few girls with kind of guts that she has - atleast when it comes to such risky things...



Maverick - the next ride - has been named so, for a very good reason. All the guys, excluding Arif bhai, and the girls - Ri, Pinki and Rachana opted out. The rest of us decided to give it a shot. Arif was content licking his chocobar, after having confessed "spins waale ride mein, meri toh bohoth buri tarah ph****i hai yaar" (ha ha ha!!). This was the first ride (and luckily the last one too), when the fluids in my brain threatened to come out of my mouth in another form!! Luckily, nothing like that happened... About this ride?? - The 4.5 spins in mid air, and the 5 second upside down hang at the topmost point were the most mmmm.. shall i say... "testing" moments, for me, during the entire day!!

Y Scream, and Insanity no longer seemed as intimidating, after the Maverick experience. Hurricane was down for maintenence, after it got stuck mid way, holding around 30 hapless people at a crooked angle, in mid air for 10 minutes.

...Phew... lucky it was not us!! :-)


That was the end of the land rides. We took a break to grab a bite and to regain our composure. I felt as if i had travelled for 100 miles...Fried rice and noodles later, we ran to the "dashing cars" section. Luckily for us, we were the only people there and got a chance to go for it several times.
I kept wondering why the operator had to stop it every 2 mins and make us go through the queue section once and come back, despite the fact that we were (almost) the only people there!! Grrr... some day, i will have the controls in my hand, and you will be in this car, then i will have my revenge, i told myself, staring at the operator...



Done. Next? Water rides.... yippeee!! Changed to other costumes soon, and started off with the "Wonder splash" - the signature ride of the park (that's the one in the photo)... We enjoyed it so much, that we went on it twice - and both times, in the photo that's been taken, you won't know, if Rachana (i'm sure u won't have any trouble spotting her!!) is crying or laughing!!


The ones after that were also awesome fun - the various slides - through tunnels, on floats, and mats etc. But the one worthy mention was the slide with a 70 deg slope - the only ride in the entire park on which Amit commented - WOW!! (for the rest, he just kept saying "...kya hai isme? kuch bhi to nahi... pata nahi kyon chillate hain!!" - tell you what - for a moment, i felt he was brain dead during the Maverick ride to comment like that!!)

The Ocean wave pool gave a virtual experience of surfing. Pinki made several jumps in the water, assisted by me and Arif bhai.. Bhavin and Abhi loved it so much, that they came back for the next time, an hour later... Rashi seemed to have lost most of her mana in the morning rides and appeared exhausted. Rachana as usual was with her mouth open!!


The icing on the cake was the Rain Disco (this wasn't there when i went there the last time) - 20 mins on the dance floor in the 'rain water' gave an ex
perience like the one i had only watched on the idiot box, in the bollywood movies until then!

Thoroughly tired, but having enjoyed it to the core, we changed into dry clothes, munched on some snacks went to the Sky wheel - the 30 m diameter wheel on a 50 m, 15 storey building.


This wheel actually gives a bird's eye view of the surroundings - But sin
ce it was already dark by then, we could just see lights below. But for a person like me, who loves heights, even this was a thrill i cherished - but i did miss watching the sunset from up there, like i had done the previous time.

Rachana kept her mouth busy, to avoid looking around and finding herself 250 feet above ground level! She was infinitely relieved when the wheel stopped after just two rotations.


We came down, had a few last group snaps, and then left from there saying goodbye to an AWESOME 9 hours we spent there!

Reached Banglaore at 9 30, found an empty restaurant, after the first two we planned to go were already overflowing with the weekend Bangalore eat-out crowd. Wangs - in Jayanagar 5th block was the place. Bhai seemded to know the people there. He had been there with his friends many times... And backed by this "expereience", he ordered for us all - half of which got left out at the end - which bhai - quite rightfully - packed up as a parcel and took home.

We bid adios to each other at 11 pm and dispersed. I home and crashed at 12 30 am, with the memories of the wonderful day i had floating in front of my eyes, as slumber taxied me into my world of dreams

My special memories from the trip:


  • Being Christened "Dracula" by two pretty damsels!! (refer photo above!!)
  • The 2000 km milestone achieved by my Discover
  • Meeting the girl with the iron guts
  • Getting two "Wonder Splash" photos for a deal of 130 bucks, rather than 200
  • Flying on Mysore Road with my sweetheart after the span of an year
  • The complimentary calendar given at the park, which i will customize with Ri's help
The ticket - Rs 540
The snacks - Rs 100
The gasoline - Rs 100
The red letter day - Priceless!!

There are several things that money can buy... For the rest, there are friends like mine, who turn a normal day, into a memory to be cherished forever!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There aint no pics here!!!

Unknown said...

yup... wonderlaa is fun..
but going on the water rides makes one stink of chlorine !!