For those of you who are wondering why we were celebrating a 1/2 birthday, here's the deal. J's birthday is Jan 31, mine is Jan 21 and S is Jan 25! 3 birthdays within 10 days of each other in our family usually means dinner or whatever I want to do. (Thanks S for being such a good sport too!) Anyways, J never complains and always just goes with the flow (granted he doesn't plan anything so he should just go with it, but that's another story). This year I decided to do something completed geared for him. So I made a reservation for 10 of us go try the ropes and climbing course at Adrenaline which included zip lining. I ordered a special Kokanee cake, and had our friends and family keep it a secret for months. :)
Now what's the deal with Adrenaline you ask? Well for starters I think it's opened a little premature. It needs work, help with customer service and management. But having worked with a few start ups (opening some BPs and Lilac when it was still growing) I know this takes a ton of work, a lot of hours, and usually they don't quite have the funds to pay a person properly to get a really good dedicated manager. It's not quite set up for groups yet and the course is well......
The course itself is not for the weak. It's actually not for a lot of people. It is designed with a few flaws in my opinion and it was tough. Not just physically tough, but emotionally disappointing. As I read on their website that a 4 year old could complete the course, I thought, 'oh it's just a fun course that is built up high.' Not really the case. Now, do not get me wrong..... it was TONS of fun. And I would go back. I would try my best again. BUT it was frustrating. It was hard to try climbing to wall over and over again while being physically exhausted and knowing you are so close, yet so far away. I will tell you this.... I never made it to the course. But 3 men in our group did and J said it was a lot of fun.
I did have a few complaints, among them were when I called to confirm our reservation at about 11:30am and see how the weather was there, they never mentioned there was no power. We had a reservation to eat in their restaurant, but with no power that meant no restaurant. Had they told me, I could have made other arrangements at that point. It was fine, we went to BP Kenaston who accommodated our group and we had an amazing server, but it was more the point of it. This also meant you had to pay cash as their debit and credit machines were down. Again, had I known, when I confirmed with our friends & family, I could have made sure they had cash on hand to pay for their drinks (warm) from the bar. (As a side note, I'm pretty sure you aren't allowed to serve if you have no power, and with no emergency lights on in the bathroom, I'm also pretty sure you have to close for safety reasons)
Having no easy way up the course made it so 70% of our group could not participate although they tried. Ziplining was only accessible if you could make it up, so our group was stuck watching. Because of the weather, we were also not able to go xorbing, which was disappointing as it would have provided at least something for the observers to participate in. The wake boarding was also closed due to no power.
But even with all of this, I'm happy with the day, I'm glad we did it, and it was tons of fun! Here's a few pictures
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| J, C, and K (who is scared of heights) on the first level of the course |
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| Me climbing the wall, never made it much further |
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| Birthday Cake courtesy of Sunrise Mosaics - check them out on Facebook |
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