Water Park

Head-first and fast. Words to thrill by in the water-park world, where the top kick today is called the Waimea Wave. Check it out: At the top of the 60-foot tower, you stand in the starting pool. Take your mount: Belly to the foam mat. Hands in handles. Head up. Deep breath. The gentle curve at the gate gives way to a steep drop, and you plunge fast enough to free-fall into a big bottom curve that pulls you out of the dive and shoots you skyward. You fly up and over an arch and then down a second slope before finally leveling off to skim 65 feet across the surface of the splash pool.

ATLANTIS PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas - A 13-year-old boy can wait only so long. By the time we check into our room at Atlantis Paradise Island, the water slides we see from our window aren't merely calling him. They're screaming at him. So only five minutes after our bags hit the hotel room, my son and I ditch his mom, grandparents, and sister to get to his raison d'etre : the water park. We walk to the top of a water slide, wiggle our fannies into an inner tube built for two, and let it rip. This trip, we're going to play every day in the water and head back to the hotel with shriveled fingers and toes.

The same ticket will get visitors access to roller coasters and rhinos - and a closer look at exotic wildlife - in a 2013 revamping of Six Flags Great Adventure that its owners claim will create the world's largest theme park. By combining the park's 350-acre Wild Safari and 160-acre traditional amusement area, Great Adventure will be about 10 acres larger than Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando, officials said Thursday at the Jackson Township, N.J., destination. In the new Safari Off Road Adventure section, guests will interact with some of the 1,200 animals that had been seen in Wild Safari.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. - The Twin Cities boast a major attraction that is not even inside their borders: a mall. A big mall. Last year, about 42 million people visited the Mall of America, officially in the suburbs, at the end of Minneapolis' Hiawatha high-speed trolley line, about 25 minutes from downtown. The light-rails, as they're called, leave you off inside one of the parking garages, only feet from a mall entrance where the newly renovated Sea Life aquarium, wholly different from the old aquarium, greets you. About 18 million of those visitors were out-of-towners.

Q: I've been married for five years to a guy with a drinking problem. He is finally in rehab. My parents and the rehab counselors tell me I have to stay and be supportive. But you know what? I've had enough. Perhaps there's just too much water under the bridge. We have a 2 1/2-year-old daughter. I just want to get a clean start in my life and move upstate. My parents tell me I'm wrong, but I feel I have a right to my own life. What do you think? A: There are some paths which, when first taken, obligate you. This is one of those paths.

With winter on the way, ski resorts across the region are preparing for their busy season. But at Sno Mountain, the electricity has been turned off for weeks. The resort's online ski-pass-ordering feature worked Tuesday, but repeated calls to Sno Mountain's toll-free ordering number and administrative office rang over and over with no answer, no voice mail and no answering machine. An iron gate blocked vehicles from entering the resort's sprawling parking lot. No staff vehicles were visible.

THE PHILLIES dropped the ball on their annual Phillies ALS Festival. My daughter and I have been going to it ever since the first one at the Vet. If the Phils were winning or losing, we were there. Breezy 80-degree day, or cold, rainy night, we stood in the lines and had a ball. Now that the Phillies are world champs, I guess now only the privileged few can go. I attended the last Phillies home game before the so-called sale of the tickets on May 3 versus the Mets, and asked employees in the ticket windows and information booths about the sale of festival tickets.

I grew up in Logan, in a semidetached house with a side yard where my mother would set up a plastic "swimming" pool on hot summer days. The water was barely deep enough to cover my knees when I sat down, but the pool provided a good excuse to play with the garden hose. Occasionally, on exceptionally steamy days, she'd take us into town, where we'd "swim" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in those old cascading fountains that flank the "Rocky steps. " This was in the pre-Rocky years, when the fountains were still working.

Taxpayers here can expect to know in about two weeks how a sizable payment of back taxes, owed by the borough's largest tax delinquent, will affect their tax rate this year, Mayor Curt Noe said last week. Solicitor John Marrocia deposited a $200,000 check in the township bank account on Jan. 30. The money is the first installment in the payment of taxes owed by the former Action Mountain amusement park off Branch Avenue. Action Mountain still owes the borough $384,000 in back taxes, plus $300,000 in interest, Marrocia said.