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Kings Island theme park is located in Mason, Ohio near Cincinnati. It is a 2 hr drive from where we live, Bloomington IN. We visited there in last July. General admission is normally $35 if you buy online. Otherwise it would be around $50. Kings Island is a great place to have fun. There are many thrilling rides and small rides as well. The rides I liked the most were WindSeeker and Backlot Stunt.

It was too hot since it was summer. Good thing we brought sunscreen. If you are visiting in summer I think the best option is to go for the rides in the morning and go to water park when it gets too hot. 

Water park of Kings Island (Boomrang bay) is a great place to enjoy too. You can spend hours of fun there. I really liked Tazmanian typhoon and Pipeline paradise from the water rides.

However there were certain facts I should mention about Kings Island. It is good if you can bring your own food and drinks because the price of food items and everything inside Kings Island is too much. Even the lockers cost too much. If you are planning to go for both roller coaster rides and water park then you will have to buy two lockers as the water park is located far away. Also a locker costs $15.

However we spent a great day at Kings Island and it was about 8.00 p.m when we leave the place.
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Space needle, which is considered as a major landmark, is located near Seattle Center House. The height of the needle is 184 m.

You can see a really nice view of the Seattle city and surrounding mountains from the observation deck. It was bit rainy and gloomy when we go there, but still it was a nice experience. The hardest thing was finding parking. Finally we managed to park on a roadside. Anyway it seems the needle has valet parking facility at a cost. General admission for space needle is $18.

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Dungeness Spit is a long sand spit, which is the longest natural sand spit in US. It is located in Olympic Peninsula, Washington.

There were really nice hiking trails around the spit. We followed a trail for about 30 minutes and came back as we were running out of time. It was a nice evening and was really cold there (in March). So we didn't hike the spit but spent some time in the shore seeing the sunset. However it was bit difficult to bare the fishy odor around the bay. 

It was late when we come back and we were hoping to visit Space Needle next morning.
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Our aim was to visit Dungeness spit. So we had to take a ferry as the route has to cross the sea at some point. So we chose the route via Bainbridge Island.


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So we took a ferry to Bainbridge island from Seattle, and then headed to Dungeness spit. The ferry ride was amazing. We got into the top passenger deck and took pictures of the surrounding. It was bit cold that day and was bit rainy too. So I guess we couldn't experience the real beauty but the ride was really worthy.

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We planned a 3 day visit to Seattle, WA (to brother-in-law's place) in March 2011. I had to travel alone because my husband went there day before for a conference. I could reserve a ticket for me for $520 from Priceline.com. Yes it was a relatively high price because the dates were too close when I reserve the ticket and it was a Friday evening I planned to leave on. 

So I arrived at Indianapolis airport from a Star of America shuttle ($15 one way from Bloominton, IN). Normally Star of America provides low prices than Bloomington Shuttle Service. I was hoping to arrive in Seattle by 11.00 p.m in Pacific time but I couldn't reach there till next morning because of American Airlines.

My route was Indianapolis airport to Chicago (O'Hare)
Chicago airport to Seattle


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Due to my delay we lost half of the day. So we decided to go for a Ferry ride and visit Dungeness spit after lunch.
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For the return trip we took the same route we took the other day (Trip to Florida - Day One). So no wonder it was bit boring. Of course again, it was a 17 hr drive. Nothing special happened on our way. We were able to reach our home sweet home at about 11 p.m.

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Today our target was to visit Sea World. It was really cold in the morning but it became bit warm during the day. It was about 10 a.m when we arrive there. Roller coaster and stuff were not open yet. We watched  an amazing killer whale show and a dolphin show.

Apart from the shows, there were many interesting rides including two roller coasters named Karken and Manta. We didn't dare to take those two rides though. Anyway this Journey to Atlantis thing was nice too. There was another train simulator named Wild Arctic ride. Another nice experience was the Sky Tower. It slowly lifts up the passengers deck up so that they can experience a breath taking view of the surroundings.
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