Wonder la

Wonder la, India's largest amusement park, is about an hour from our house here in Bangalore, so we decided to make the trip this weekend since Erin and Matt only have a couple of days left in India. I feel like India must not have any actual amusement parks if this is the largest - although it was clean and had some fun things to do, it was much closer to Sesame Place than Six Flags in size and ride options. Although, I am totally afraid of heights, so I'm kind of just complaining for the sake of the thrill-ride seeking reader, I guess.

We went on a couple of nauseating spinning rides, one of which turned us upside down over and over for three minutes straight, while the other lifted us up quickly and dropped us over and over again. I liked that many of the rides featured copyright-violation rip-offs of famous cartoon characters, like Scooby Doo, Lion King, Woody Woodpecker, etc., but with different colors so they weren't exact copies. There was also a ridiculous "Cinema Magic" virtual reality experience, called "Mazy Mine," which was a somewhat dated simulator ride featuring a white hillbilly who makes the audience take a ride through his dangerous mine shaft. My favorite, however, was the Dungeon Ride, Wonder la's version of a haunted house. It had scary Indian music and skeleton's in sarees! I thought it would have been scarier and more realistic if they had a room full of beggars, eunuch's trying to castrate you, and rabid stray dogs, but it was still pretty good.

Wonder la also features a bunch of fun water slides, wave pools, a lazy river, and a Rain Disco. It was quite like an American water park, though we did notice a couple of stark differences. For one, everyone wears full clothes at the water attractions - I'm talking jeans, button-down shirts, salwar suits, formal sarees..... we stuck out quite a bit already, so Erin and I modestly covered our bathing suits. Like the buses here, there is also a segregated area of the wave pool for ladies and children, so they can frolic without fear of groping pervs. Oh, and no alcohol at all in the park, which I am not complaining about, since I had a beer poured on my head at Geauga Lake when I was 8. Also, a lot of the babies were wearing eyeliner, even in the pool, which shows how much more glamorous they are than American babies.

Pics below. You can see the full album here.