First Time Fridays: Frontierland Shooting Exposition

See the hole right in the bullseye?  Yeah, we did that...

One of the lessons we've been learning as of late here at Days In The Park is that the more we do, the less there is to do. Let us explain. As we go along and continue to do more and more things inside The Park, the less things there are to do that we haven't done yet. Makes sense, right? It stands to reason that even at a place as big as The Resort that there aren't a limitless list of activities to do. One of the things we've always prided ourselves on, though, is our ability to continue to put things off (anything) so that there is always something to do that we haven't yet. Which leads to a new segment we'd like to do every so often as the opportunity arises: First-Time Fridays!

This week's First-Time event comes to us courtesy of one of our new favorite places to hang out, Frontierland. When we first started going to The Parks, it was definitely an area that we underutilized. But, as time has gone on, we find ourselves spending more and more time in this area, if to do nothing else other than sit around and people watch. And that's exactly what we were doing a few weeks ago on a rainy Sunday evening when Amy walked out of Westward Ho with some shiny new quarters in her pocket from a lanyard/Vinylmation purchase. As we sat on the bench, we could hear the "Pow! Pow!" of the guns going off behind us at the Shooting Exposition, and with the change burning a whole in her pocket, we decided it would be best to free her of her burden and give the shooting gallery a try.

We had, of course, seen the Shooting Exposition any number of times before, and had stood around watching other people try their luck at their marksman skills (mostly while looking for Hidden Mickeys in the attraction or something), but had never really given it a chance ourselves. We don't know, maybe 50 cents seemed too steep at the time or something. But with the rain coming down (in rushing, rising rivulets) and nothing else to do, we slipped our quarters into the slots, grabbed our guns (just like Davey Crockett) and took aim at the various targets which presented themselves to us. Boom! We woke the owl up and he started hooting at us. Pow! We shot the gravestone (terrible, ain't it?) and watched the ghostly footprints appear and begin walking away from it. Bang! Well, okay, we missed the train (darn thing wouldn't stop moving) but otherwise we think we did a pretty bang-up (pun completely intended) job of hitting our targets, even with guns which had sights on them that seemed slightly amiss. Mark did our website proud, though, by nailing one of the hardest targets to get on the back wall. We won't give away exactly what happens when you do (you need to find that out for yourselves) but we'll just say it involves a ghostly figure swooping all around on the wall, flying here and there and all over the place. Creepy, huh?

We thought that the Shooting Exposition was actually a lot of fun. It's pretty cheap entertainment at only 50 cents a pop, and for your money you get roughly 10 shots that you can use to take aim at any number of dozens of targets set up around the shooting gallery. It's just like any number of other "laser sited" shooting galleries all around the country in any number of amusement parks, but since this one is at The Park, it automatically becomes better than any other one in existence, whether you can hit your targets or not. And truth be told, it can be a lot of fun just standing around and watching other people play as well (which we've done from time to time).

We'd like to give it two thumbs up, but we can't. We're too busy cocking the hammers on our rifles and blowing apart innocent cacti, gravestones, planes, trains and automobiles. Give it a try next time you're in The Park. It's the wildest game in the wilderness!

Several of the targets that litter the shooting gallery, including what MIGHT be a Hidden Mickey!

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