Almost ten years ago, my family and I ventured to see the Backstreet Boys at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta during their "Black & Blue" tour. My sister was a big fan...no, "big" does not even come close to describing it. She loved them, had her bedroom walls practically wallpapered with their posters, and stalked MTV in hopes of catching her fifty-thousandth viewing of the "Backstreet's Back" music video. So, when I learned that the Backstreet Boys would be bringing their "This Is Us" tour to the Wild Adventures Theme Park in Valdosta, Georgia (the weekend before her twenty-sixth birthday, no less!), I wanted to take her, if for nothing else, the nostalgia factor. I mean, how could they possibly be as good as they were back at the height of their career, especially since they had gone from selling out the 75,000-seating Georgia Dome to...playing at an amusement park? It would be fun to have a blast from the past. All tickets were only $10, not including the $50 park admission, a far cry from the $180 it cost for me to see "The Circus Starring Britney Spears" from the second row just last year. The downside: we waited until the day before to order tickets and, therefore, got stuck with row Z (the rows do go back to GG so, at least, we weren't all the way in the back).
We decided to make a day of it and, since park admission was required for access to the concert anyway, we got to the park at opening with hopeful plans of spending the day riding roller coasters, swimming at the water park, and eating cotton candy. We should have known that it would be a problematic day when, after taking one picture of my sister with a llama named Jellybean, our camera died because, get this, my mom didn't realize she had to charge it. Alas, we were determined to make the best of it. We rode three rides, including my very first roller coaster (yay!)...and then the rain started...then the thunder and the lightning. So, we returned to the car for shelter and watched as the rides were hastily shut down and as people scurried into stores to avoid the torrential downpour that lasted about three hours. We waited...and we waited...and we waited. Finally, out of the cloud-coated sky, peaked a tiny ray of sunlight that grew slowly, but steadily until the roar of the roller coasters began again and Wild Adventures Theme Park kicked back into life. Before we knew it, we were back in line at "The Hangman," my sister's favorite roller coaster and the one she had desperately wanted me to ride all day. The line was long with people who, like us, were sick to death of waiting for the rain to stop and just wanted to ride something...anything. We were all antsy, agitated, but, mostly, excited.
Howie Dorough: My New Hero
We were almost to the ride when, suddenly, the ride attendant came over the intercom: "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but there will be a slight delay. We have some VIP guests arriving shortly to ride." An excitement permeated the hot, sweaty, and beyond-ready-to-ride crowd. Could it be...the Backstreet Boys were about to be there? Yes...well, not quite...only one actually came to ride: Howie Dorough, accompanied by a host of family members (including his lovely wife and adorable young son) and friends. They were escorted by park security to the front of the line and rode the ride ahead of us. Some people were angry, but I didn't mind. Hey, I figure that, if someone should get to cut in line, it should be a Backstreet Boy...and not the two sweaty hillbillies who nudged in front of me a few minutes prior. As soon as Howie and company got off the ride, the group of people right in front of us were allowed in. The ride was back in commission! A minute and a half and we would be coasting around "The Hangman"...or we would have been, had the ride not broken just as the car was coming back into station, leaving about twenty people sitting helplessly just shy of the boarding platform. I thought about it: had Howie not interrupted so that he and his family could ride, that would have been me stuck on the coaster. So, thank you, Mr. Dorough, for cutting in line and for saving me from deep psychological scars. You're my new hero!
As soon as we were all dismissed from the ride, I wasted little time in stalking...ahem, tracking Howie down. Fortunately, he hadn't gone far, just up to a neighboring ride. There he was, ten feet away and walking towards us...and we didn't have a camera because, you know, my mother didn't know she had to charge it (this is something I won't get over anytime soon, I assure you). He looked at my sister and politely said, "Hey," as she snapped a quick photo with my dad's camera phone. You know, I now know an unexpected truth about life that I had never expected to learn: not getting to take a picture of a Backstreet Boy when he is only two feet away from you is really, really disappointing. My advice to you all: keep a camera in your pocket, purse, or around your neck at all times because you never know when one might pop up! After that, we didn't get to see Howie again until eight o'clock that night when the actual concert started. Admittedly, I didn't expect much from the concert. The Backstreet Boys have not been "big" for years and the bar was set high by their monumental "Black & Blue" tour way back in 2001. Love them or hate them, no one can deny that, back in the day, those boys put on a spectacular concert. Everything was pointing towards a disappointment for this new concert, lacking the budget or the big arenas that made the Backstreet Boys so big back in the height of the boy band craze. In the end, how did it fare? We'll see...my full review is coming soon!
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