Bigger than a carnival but smaller than a theme park, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk nestles itself right on the beach, just a stone’s throw away from the Municipal Wharf. After the adventure of finding parking, we made our way down to the Boardwalk for an evening of rides, games, food, and music.

The highlight ride of the park is the Giant Dipper roller coaster. As we waited in line for the ride, we watched the informational movie about the roller coaster’s history. Much to my surprise, the Giant Dipper is one of the most famous wooden roller coasters in the world, and I can’t lie, I became significantly more excited about the prospect of riding it upon discovering this.

When it was finally our turn, we got to enjoy all the usual parts of a roller coaster experience: the suspenseful ascent, the stomach-lurching fall, the unnecessarily loud screams, the I-feel-like-I’m-gonna-hit-my-hands-on-a-rafter hands above the head routine, and the embarrassing mid-ride photo op. No, it wasn’t the tallest, fastest, or loopiest roller coaster in the world, but it was much more fun than I had imagined.

How could this get any better, you ask? After filling the rest of the evening with more rides and food, the night was topped off with an Eddie Money concert right there on the beach. That night it was almost as if I had “Two Tickets to Paradise”**

** That’s one of Eddie Money’s best-known songs, and I’m quite aware that was a really cheesy joke.