SFMM - How to “plus” a trip with my 16 year old?
I’m taking my 16-year-old son to Magic Mountain this week for 3 days (flying in from Utah). This is our third trip and we’ve always gone this time of year. Great weather, reasonable crowds, etc., but there’s a small problem I’m trying to figure out how to navigate.
This is something my wife and I do for our 2 kids every year. They get to pick their own “kids trip” every year. We have a small regional airport near us with cheap flights to California (we do SNA for Disneyland and BUR for Magic Mountain) so these trips are actually pretty cheap.
The problem this year is we told both kids they could bring a friend. My daughter’s trip to Disneyland is the first week in November and her best friend is coming with us. My son’s friend had been saying for the last few months that he could go and…long story short…turns out his parents had no intention of letting him go. They just kept finding new, lame, excuses even when we offered to fully cover the cost of airfare, tickets, food, etc. I just really wanted my teenage son to have someone to hang with other than Dad (me). I’m not the worst person to be around but I’m not his peer either. Plus I can’t handle some of the more extreme coasters due to migraine issues so I just keep him company in a lot of lines (last time I rode Tatsu in my 20s I almost barfed from the migraine it triggered).
What I’m looking for are any ideas on how to kind of plus up the trip to make up for his friend not coming. Budget is about $400 since that’s what I was willing to spend on having his friend come. Been considering fast lane passes but wondering if there are other good options I’m not aware of. We have season passes for this trip (the cheapest one - gold I think?). We did the Halloween stuff last year but he’s not really interested in doing those again. This is purely an adrenaline junkie trip.
TIA for any help/suggestions!