Grand Junction – Jim, whose name has been changed to protect the innocent – even though the innocent in this case happens to be in his 40s – threw a bit of a temper tantrum when he was told it was time to leave the go-carts behind and head back to the campground to get some sleep.
And when Jim found out that he could come back anytime until midnight to keep racing around the track, he began pleading with the rest of the group, some of whom were under the age of 10 and could barely keep their eyes open, in a way that made us wonder if we needed to stage an intervention.
When the adults are being dragged out of a place by the exhausted kids, an amusement park is onto something.
It turns out that Bananas Fun Park in Grand Junction is onto a whole bunch of things, from making sure everyone has a good time regardless of age to pricing things right for families.
Since it opened in May 2004, Bananas Fun Park slowly has added attractions to its base of miniature golf, go-carts, bumper boats and an indoor arcade, most recently putting in outdoor inflatable jumping castles and jungle gyms and adding a batting cage to the 6-acre park.
Owners Chris and Heather Burns say they aren’t surprised we had so much trouble getting one of our adults to behave and leave, although Heather said she sometimes has trouble on the front end convincing the big kids they should buy themselves a ticket too.
“They come in and look around and think it’s just one of those places for little ones,” she said. “I have to tell them, no, it’s for you too.”
The main attraction for the grownups is undeniably the Go-Karts, the real deal on a concrete track with a tire-and-steel bumper rail system that kept us from sailing off the course when we, um, wrecked, even though you aren’t supposed to do that.
Around and around we went, passing and blocking and swerving and skidding. It was a great way to vent some I-70 spleen. Let’s just say Jim wasn’t the only one who kept getting back in line the second the seatbelts came off.
Once we’d worked up a good exhaust-scented sweat, it was time for some bumper-boat action in a 3,000-square-foot swimming pool, in oversized round rafts with comfy seats that had been fitted with giant water squirters. The guys who ran the bumper boats were oversized kids themselves, and they delighted in filling buckets with water and drenching anyone who happened by.
It was perfect to cool off while playing 18 holes of miniature golf, and when that was over, to duck into the arcade for the usual token-spewing, hand-eye coordination challenges. One thing we did notice is that you need an unusually high number of tokens here to get prizes in exchange, but it seemed a fair tradeoff for the reasonable entrance fees.
The food at the Congo Café, which has a patio in addition to inside seating, was inexpensive – $2.75 kids menu and $5 subs and $13 pizzas – but also the only thing that was truly medium-quality. You can’t bring your own food in here, so we made do with a picnic out in the parking lot.
But it was a short break, because then it was time to go back out to the track to play Mario Andretti again.
And if anyone sees Jim, would you tell him his wife and kids are looking for him?
Travel editor Kyle Wagner can be reached at 303-820-1599 or kwagner@denverpost.com.
