our Adventure into the Valley of the Unknown

Yesterday when we were at COSI, Connor asked to see the Dinosaurs again. I didn't want to. So, I came up with a brilliant idea to take him somewhere else instead. A place that he had never been before. Adventure. Into the Valley of the Unknown.

So, we went and bought our tickets, and then wandered around the gift shop for a few minutes before our assigned departure time into Adventure. Into the Valley of the Unknown.

Now, it has been quite a number of years since my last foray into Adventure. Before it was a separate ticket Adventure. But...I didn't remember anything about it that would make it unsuitable for our little party of explorers, consisting of myself, Connor and Lex.

Well, we waited in line, were given a little map with a worksheet to use in figuring out little clues that required a writing utensil to complete, and no sort of writing utensil. You think they could have factored in the cost of a small golf pencil into the ticket price. When I inquired after a writing utensil, I was informed that there were none, and that I could simply remember the pictograms that formed the puzzle. Umm, really? How is that instructional to a child? How I am supposed to remember foreign pictograms while wrangling two small boys in a dark cave?

Anyways.

We did the maze, and that was all fine. We remembered the three animal symbols that we found in the maze successfully, punched them into the statue in the maze, and it did a song and dance and presented us with another pictogram that we had to commit to memory for use in unlocking the observatory in the middle of the Valley of the Unknown.

In the next area, we found a slide. But it was spooky. Both Connor and Lex kind of freaked out when we climbed up and they realized that they were supposed to slide down into the black unknown. But I convinced them to do it. Then, we went into a room with Gates of Doom. Or something like that. Connor was fairly freaked out about the Doom thing, but I explained that everything was just a special effect, like the Rainforest Cafe or the T-Rex Cafe. But then there were skulls with red eyes and the doors were opening and closing and opening and closing and he was sure he was going to get left behind. Or trapped. Alone.

Anyways, we escaped the Gates of Doom and the kids were freaked out. Nevermind the animal symbols we were supposed to be searching for at this point. That was totally forgotten. They were in survival mode. And the next thing we encountered was another Room of Doom. And this one had smoke and all sorts of red laser beams that we were supposed to crawl over, under and through to get to the other side. Connor thought he was going to be killed. By a laser beam. He had a total panic attack, and that caused Lex to have a total panic attack.

So, I stuck my hand in the beam to trip them off. Connor nearly fainted. I'm sure he thought my hand was going to be lasered off. But, then the scary music stopped, the smoke stopped and the lasers turned off. And I took them out of the room and right out the nearest emergency exit into the bright white hallway of COSI.

Connor looked stunned. He had totally forgotten we were at COSI. He had totally bought into the Valley of the Unknown. He thought we were there. He thought we were in danger.

And it was too much for him.

He broke down into tears and hugged me and fell over and sobbed, "You saved me, Mommy!"

He still thinks he was going to die. He told Kevin all about how I had saved him in the Scary Place of Doom. I'm his hero. And I feel like a heel for putting him through that.

We should have just gone to see the stupid dinosaurs.