Worlds of Fun
Kansas City, Missouri
Coasting For Kids
June 9, 2013
Page Three






At lunch everyone was given a Coasting For Kids shirt and the big fundraisers were given prizes like a cabana in Oceans of Fun for a day along with a bunch of tickets and goodies from Worlds of Fun and Give Kids The World Village.



Here's another Bond snapped photo.

Give Kids The World Village started with one little girl with Leukemia.  After all of the treatments, doctors visits, hospital stays that she had to endure all she wanted was to go to Orlando and take a brake from fighting her illness and just be a kid at a place like Walt Disney World, Universal Studios or Sea World.  A request was put in for a complimentary hotel for her but it took so long for everything to be set up for her that she passed before she could get her dream. 

Henri Landworth, a hotel owner in Orlando decided that kids like this one little girl needed a place where there would be no red tape slowing down or keeping them from their dream of just being a kid and visiting some of the worlds best amusement parks for a few days.  He set in motion what was to become Give Kids The World Village a few miles outside of Disney World.  Give Kids The World Village opened in 1989 and since then they have fulfilled the dreams of over 122,000 kids with life threatening illnesses and their families.

Cedar Fair has been raising money for Give Kids The World Village for five years now and while I had heard of it the importance of it hadn't dawned on myself until recently.  My nephew Louie was born with a rare genetic disorder that keeps his muscles from ever developing.  Louie needs a respirator to breathe.  He will never crawl.  He will never walk.  Needless to say he will never be able to ride a coaster with me his uncle or Bond his cousin.

The thing is while he can't experience the thrill of a coaster he can experience the joy and magic that brings Bond and myself back to amusement parks over and over.  When visiting The Magic Kingdom in January Bond and I were in line for The Jungle Cruise and we were asked to wait while the loaded a special boat.  It was for a lady in a wheelchair.  A platform in the center of the Jungle Cruise boat rose up and rotated so that the wheelchair could board and then get lowered back into the boat so that despite being in a chair that person could enjoy The Jungle Cruise just like we did.  Bond and I looked at each other with the revelation in our eyes that said "Louie can ride this" and then we started looking for other things that he could ride and we were astounded at how much he could do there and we wanted to get him there to do it, to share in what we love.

As a result when I heard about Coasting For Kids this year both Bond and I had to do it.  So this spring we started asking family, putting a link up here at Negative-G and asking people on Facebook and Twitter to help out.



When we signed up my pie in the sky expectation at never fundraised before was that Bond and I would each raise maybe $250 but in the end my friends, families, and visitors to Negative-G's generocity and I raised $640 and Bond raised $529. 

Here's all of the Coasting For Kids people at Worlds of Fun.  In total all of us in this picture raised $10,410 and chain wide all of the Cedar Fair parks raised over $150,000 this year for Give Kids The World Village.



Once our group photo was done with it was back to riding.  Our next two hour block of riding was at Prowler.




Next


Copyright 1999 - 2025

Paul B. Drabek