June 2nd: Senior Grad Nite 2025

Today was pretty sweet!

In the morning, I woke up a little bit earlier than days prior to get to school on time to get on the busses for our senior year grad nite. Unfortunately, the bus broke down while it was getting onto our campus, so the bus company had to send us another bus, which delayed our departure by around an hour. We were supposed to departure around 9:30 but we left school around 11AM. For some reason, the bus company ripped our school off and we got a yellow school bus even though the school ordered 2 fancy tour busses. The yellow school bus arrived first and a bunch of people went on, but I was fortunate to board the tour bus along with my friends, which arrived later. Even with the nicer seats, the environment was still rather chaotic. It was a good gamble!

We arrived to Santa Cruz even later than we wanted because of the horrible traffic. An entire lane was closed because they were doing road work. I found some solace listening to music.

At last, we arrived to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk at around 2PM. After gathering our wristbands to get unlimited attractions. We first hopped on the Pirate Ship to get started with the attractions. Our seats were closer to the middle so the thrill was a bit subdued, but we still had a good time. After, we all headed towards the Double Shot Drop Tower. The shooting up was fine and exciting, but falling was really thrilling! I experienced a lot of pressure on my head while falling and the feeling was a mix of excitement and clinging-on-for-dear-life. Anyways, I still had a fun time and I would ride them again, even though I was screaming for the entire time on the Double Shot.

After that, a bunch of us went to The Undertow. We re-arranged ourselves with other people in our school to ride it with people we were more comfortable with. Thankfully, we rode the biggest dip facing the front, but the dips while we were facing the back were really thrilling and scary! It was a quick ride but it was fun. Then, we rode Shockwave, which went super high as we twisted and turned! I think the twisting and turning made it more survivable. At times, while facing the outside, it felt like I was about to fall off!

After riding all of those rides, we split off and got some lunch. I got an over-expensive burger from the Boardwalk Grille (Thanks Mariana) and the extra pickles from my friends who don't like pickles. The pickles were actually pretty crappy pickles in terms of pickles but I think I was the few in our group that liked pickles to begin with. The burger itself was very filling and pretty good.

After lunch, we headed down to the beach. Although I didn't bring beach attire, Austin and I rolled up our pants as high as they went. Even so, a big wave caught us off guard and we still got a bit went, but thankfully not too wet. We also buried Austin in the sand, which was fun. It was unfortunate that Emily's bag got bird poo on it.

After getting out of the sand, we rode the pirate ship one more time. This time, we got seats that had a bit higher of an incline, and if it wasn't for the lap bar, I felt like I wouldn't flown off! It was very fun again. Then, after not being able to decide to ride the Typhoon or go with the other group to the Gondola Lifts (Sky Gliders), I decided to go the Gondola Lifts. Unfortunately, right when we got there, the Lifts had stopped for a while for some reason. Thankfully, they started again soon after. Once we got off after seeing the views of the beach and boardwalk, we had to rush back to the other side of the boardwalk since we had a "curfew" for our private all you can eat dinner and to get ready for our private arcade time. We saw another side of the boardwalk that we didn't see before nor were we able to experience, so we want to come back during the summer.

After checking in, we were served a dinner of: baked beans, Caesar salad, macaroni salad, bread sticks, hot dogs, and burgers. It didn't appear to be of the highest quality, sitting in steamers, nor was I very hungry, so I only had some macaroni salad, a hot dog, and a bread stick. There was also a soda bar. The food was fine, it wasn't the worst, it did its job, but some more varied options, some more exciting food would've been nicer. I thought of it as comparable to upscale private food, school lunches before Michelle Obama.

While we were waiting for the arcade to be ready, we had some games and other fun things inside our private room while waiting. There was a photo booth, tattoo station, spike ball, other indoor sports balls, and connect four. I ended up getting a white smiley face tattoo on my left arm and taking some pictures in the photo booth. The view from the private room was really nice!

When the arcade finally open, we originally planned to rack up tickets and buy things from the prize room, but they had close it down for our private grad nite. Either way, we had unlimited arcade usage! We tried out a bunch of games and had a pretty good time. We really got the enjoy all the games since it was private and we had unlimited usage. We also tried laser tag. Even though I was try-harding and running around like crazy, I still didn't get a good score. Maybe I should listen to the instructions better.

Finally, after the arcade shut down, and after getting a caricature done of us, we boarded the busses. Unfortunately, to make it fair, the staff chaperones ordered a switch of bus boarding. Since we were on the fancy bus on the way here, we were getting on the cramped school bus on our way back. It was really chaotic on the bus! We finally arrived back onto campus around 11PM.

Today was really a blast. I had a really good time spending time, getting on rides, seeing the views, and enjoying the boardwalk with people I've spent high school with, and some since even middle school. I really wish we arrived to the boardwalk earlier so that we could spend more time and see the entire other half of the boardwalk we didn't get to. I'm going to miss these awesome people. I wish we had more fun times together before high school ended, but I'm still going to cherish the moments we did share.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to those who spent time with me on the boardwalk,

Issac