We'd been promising the kids that we'd do a theme park at some stage of our travels. I know a lot of parents would probably take their kids to Disneyland when they come to North America, but frankly, Disneyland is a long way from Toronto, it's way to expensive to get down to either LA or Florida, and at the end of the day, even though it's a good theme park it's still just a theme park. Canada also has a world class theme park called Canada's Wonderland just north of Toronto on the 400 but we'd heard some real horror stories about crowds and waiting times during the summer months. We told the kids that if we didn't find another theme park somewhere along the way we'd try to fit a visit to Canada's Wonderland in.

Kate's teacher back in Australia, Mr Hidson, had told her about the Six Flags theme park and highly recommended it, and while we staying with Wendy and Willy we happened to see a brochure for Six Flags... as it turns out, Six Flags is not a single theme park, but a whole chain of theme parks. Since we were travelling through New York state, we decided to drop in to visit the one located at Lake George, NY, aptly called the Great Escape.

We left Wendy's and headed north into the beautiful Adirondack Mountains - stunning scenery. Lake George took us about an hour or so north of Albany, the capital of New York state, and is a lovely little village on a beautiful lake. It's pretty touristy of course, but still a nice place. After checking into a hotel, we walked around the town and the lake, had some dinner and did some shopping before heading back to our room.

Next day was perfect theme park weather - not too hot, not too humid, a little cloudy, but still patches of sun. The park was very affordable, had tons of great rides and the crowds were nearly non-existant! Apart from one ride that had a queue of about 20 minutes, the longest we waited for anything else was about 2 minutes, and mostly we just walked right on to the ride. It makes for such a more enjoyable day when you aren't fighting crowds and pushing and shoving in queues all day!

There was some amazing rides - the Boomerang, the Steamin' Demon, the Comet, as well a a full blown waterpark with water slides, wave pools, etc, etc... there was lots to do and we spent the whole day going from ride to ride to ride.

I think the kids would agree that it was one of the best theme park experiences we've had.