Our Trip to Six Flags Kings Dominion& Carowinds|The Adventuring Abbeys

The Adventuring Abbeys at Kings Dominion Roller Coaster Family Vlog

Carowinds has been at the tippy top of Derrick’s amusement park bucket list for a long LONG time.
The park is about 8 hours away from us, so it’s just outside of the “weekend trip” range – and that makes getting there a bit more tricky.

We had originally planned to visit Carowinds in 2020 – but after the pandemic rode in & ruined everyone’s plans, Carowinds actually did not open for the regular amusement park season of 2020 at all.
This pushed our visit to Carowinds to the front of our 2021 “must visit” list & a few weeks ago, we finally made it happen.

We tend to head out on roller coaster riding adventures fairly spontaneously, usually booking hotels & making plans just a few days before we leave. However, after getting caught in a sticky situation (and almost not being able to find a hotel) in Hershey a few weeks before, we went ahead and planned our trip to Carowinds about 2 weeks ahead of time (which is unheard of for us).

Sadly, Derrick’s Grandfather passed away a week before our trip, which sent all of our “pre-made plans” spiraling. We quickly re-grouped & re-planned, and with the help of Priceline, we were able to cancel & re-book (or re-schedule) all of our hotels (we always book our hotels thru Priceline, but after our amazing experience with their customer service team during this particular scenario, we are Priceline customers for life.)

Our change of plans took us to Six Flags Great Adventure first – to check out the brand new Jersey Devil Coaster! We only spent a few hours there before heading south to visit Kings Dominion the next day. After a short day at Kings Dominion, we headed south yet again to reach our final destination of Carowinds.

Unfortunately, our 2 days at Carowinds did not exactly go as planned. The heat was insane & even though we did everything we could to stay cool (drinking gallons of water & cooling off in the water park), the heat overtook Braelynn & she ended up not feeling well. This sent the kids & I back to our hotel, while Derrick stayed at Carowinds in order to pick up coaster credits.

Day 1 cut short, we hoped that Day 2 would be better.
Day 2 arrived and was hotter than the day before. In an attempt to keep the kids out of the heat, we went to the park for a little bit in the morning & then the kids & I retreated back to the hotel during the hottest part of the day, only to return later in the afternoon to finish out the day at the park.
On top of it all: a storm rolled through, closing down all of the rides in the park for several hours that afternoon, severely setting Derrick behind in his quest to get good video footage of the park.

We enjoyed our visit, but it just seemed to be littered with unfortunate (and out-of-our-control) circumstances. As much as we had been looking forward to Carowinds, I think we enjoyed our time at Kings Dominion more. I’m sure we’ll go back for a re-do soon & hopefully we have a better experience next time!

And because, what’s a blog post without photos? Here are a few of the images I took on our visit to Six Flags Great Adventure, Kings Dominion, & Carowinds!