Would YOU Pay $47.99 To Get Rained On?

I suppose if you happen to live in Florida or Texas or one of the other drought-stricken states, you'd be willing to pay much more than that.

Here in Ohio, however, where we've had more than 28" of rain so far this year (about 6.5" more than normal), people are much more likely to be willing to pay for some good, old-fashioned sunshine. Paying to be rained on here constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in my book. Or maybe masochism.

My opinions aside, it seems an inescapable fact that a good number of Ohioans paid $47.99 to get rained on today.

That's how much the typical, undiscounted ticket costs to get into Ohio's Cedar Point amusement park these days.

Here's what the skies above Cedar Point look like on a good day (in this case, Wednesday):




And here's what the midway looks like on a good day (in this case, yesterday):




Now here's what the skies looked like this afternoon just after 2:




Do you think the people down below had any idea what was coming?




And make no mistake, it WAS coming:




Certainly it was becoming somewhat obvious to everyone by this point:




Perhaps it was most obvious of all to those who were waiting in line to ride The Windseeker:



I'm not sure at what point they shut down The Windseeker because of wind but I bet it was no later than 5 minutes after this shot.


Which was taken about 5 minutes before this shot:




Soon the skies had opened up and people went scurrying as people are wont to do at such times....





I've always wondered why more people don't just lie down and enjoy it.


Of course things were worse 300 feet up in the air:



I can certainly understand why the camera didn't catch anybody just lying down and enjoying it up there.


Fifteen minutes later it was clear that the worst had passed:




And just 5 minutes after that, it was even clearer:




Soon people were going about the hard work of finding themselves some fatty foods and over-priced soft drinks once again:






An hour later things were pretty much back to normal:






By 5 pm the only thing left to do was to track down and arrest the evil young boy who had brought the wrath of God down upon everyone by jumping a turnstile:




I'm telling ya, if they had had webcams in 1492 Columbus never would have had to leave Spain to explore America and I'd now be living in a city with a *very* different name.