mini vs MEGA: Kings Dominion’s Eiffel Tower

Kings Dominion’s Eiffel Tower: Our Mini vs. Mega Stop in Virginia

I’ve been going to Kings Dominion with my family since I was a kid. We’re talking the early ’80s.

So when my brother heard we were coming up to Virginia, he suggested a day at Kings Dominion. He lives close enough to make it a day trip, and he and his wife have season passes. So do my parents.

My brother and his wife came with three of their four kids, my parents came, and then there was our crew: me, Zach, Care, and Mason. We had quite a group.

I already knew the Eiffel Tower was standing right there in the middle of the park, and I knew that if we went to Kings Dominion, that tower was instantly becoming part of our mini vs MEGA series.

There was no question about that.

First, though, we had an entire amusement park to survive.

And this was how it started!

I’ve Been Coming to Kings Dominion Since the Early ’80s

Somewhere along the way that day, I found a timeline of Kings Dominion history. Naturally, I took pictures of the whole thing.

Apparently, I have officially reached the age where things I remember perfectly well from my childhood are now displayed on historical timelines.

Excellent. 😂

Kings Dominion broke ground in 1972, with Lion Country Safari opening in 1974 before the rest of the park officially opened to the public on May 3, 1975. And the Eiffel Tower was there from day one.

As I moved farther along the timeline, I started finding pieces of the Kings Dominion I actually remember.

I remember the Land of Dooz. I remember Smurfland. I remember the Haunted River. Planet Snoopy? That was Hanna-Barbera Land when I was a kid.

Then there was The Grizzly, which opened in 1982, right around the time I started coming to Kings Dominion with my family. More than forty years later, I came back with my own kids and rode it again.

The rest of the timeline moves through decades of rides and attractions that came and went, the first water park opening in 1992, and increasingly ridiculous roller coasters.

A LOT has changed since I started coming here.

But that Eiffel Tower has been standing over the park the entire time.

There was one problem with my little trip down Kings Dominion memory lane, though.

The timeline I photographed ends in 2013.

And I know Kings Dominion did not just throw up its hands in 2013 and decide nothing else worth mentioning was ever going to happen. 😂

There are two matching gift shops across from each other near the entrance, and I have a sneaking suspicion the rest of the timeline may be hiding in the other one.

So when we go back, I’m checking.

If I’m right, I’ll grab the rest of the timeline while we’re there and finish what I accidentally started.

We Picked a GREAT Day for an Amusement Park

It was roughly 102°F outside.

Now, I know amusement parks take planning. I lived in Florida for a long time, and one thing living there taught me was that you do NOT plan an amusement park day in the middle of summer. Disney and Universal were fall-through-spring activities for us. Summer was not when I willingly wandered around an amusement park baking in the sun all day.

Yet there we were, in Virginia, in the middle of summer, at an amusement park.

We started the day with the Log Flume because getting soaked before doing anything else sounded like an excellent idea.

It was.

Then we rode White Water Canyon, so at that point we were sufficiently soaked and ready to hit some thrill rides. From our group, me, Care, and Zach rode The Grizzly, followed by Twisted Timbers with just me and Zach.

So far, so good.

And then we got sucked into the water park.

Where We Learned What NOT to Forget… or Wear

Here’s the stupid part: I knew better.

After living in Florida for years, I knew exactly what a summer day at a water park required. We hadn’t wandered into Kings Dominion completely unprepared for getting wet.

But somehow, I had forgotten water shoes.

For everybody.

That little oversight became painfully obvious about three seconds after we took off our regular shoes and stepped onto the pavement.

HOLY HOT, BATMAN!

Getting from one patch of shade to another was bad enough, but then we got to the stairs for one of the water rides. The steps had been baking in the sun all day, and halfway up, my feet were literally sticking to them.

And then my body just quit.

I froze on one of the steps. My feet were burning, I knew standing still was making it worse, and yet I could not make myself move.

I was standing there yelling, “I’m freaking out!” while Mason and Zach came running back to help me.

At that point, there were fewer stairs between me and the top than there were between me and the bottom.

So I ran for the top.

Which is how, with the bottoms of my feet already feeling like I’d left a layer of skin somewhere on those stairs, I finally got to find out what kind of water ride we’d just climbed all that way to ride.

Oh Good, a Dark Enclosed Water Tube

It was a two-person tube ride, so we split up boys and girls. Care and I got into ours with me sitting in front.

I was still upset from my epic moment on the stairs when suddenly…

TOTAL DARKNESS.

I hate water. I hate the dark. And I HATE closed-in spaces.

And there I was, in a tiny tube in complete darkness, with water spraying us from every direction.

Care knew immediately that I was not enjoying the situation in any way.

We rode down the entire thing in utter silence. 😂😂😂

When we got out and flipped the tube over, all I could think was, what was I thinking not equipping my family with water shoes?

We did two more water park rides before deciding we’d had enough. It was getting crowded anyway, and we were ready to get back into the rest of the park.

Then Care showed me her shoes.

My Water-Shoe Mistake Was About to Cost Me $50

Her Converse had gotten soaked earlier in the day, and they were DONE. There was maybe half an inch still connected in the front.

She tossed them.

Now she had no shoes, which also meant no more rides.

So into a gift shop we went, where she found a pair of flip-flops for around $20. Mason’s shoes were soaking wet too, so we bought him slides. He at least kept his regular shoes.

By the time we walked back out, my failure to think about water shoes had turned into roughly a $50 gift-shop trip.

Fantastic. 😂

But we had smiles from the teen, and shoes! 

We Had One More Thing to Do

My brother wanted to grab food at one of the park restaurants, but none of my people were hungry enough to throw another $100 at amusement-park food, so we split up.

Honestly, we were all pretty much done with water and thrill rides, so we did what we came to do.

Or at least what Mason and I came to do.

Get to the top of that tower!

Care had absolutely no interest in this part of the adventure. She stayed on a bench on the ground while the rest of us headed for the Eiffel Tower.

Kings Dominion’s Eiffel Tower Has Been Here Since Opening Day

Kings Dominion’s Eiffel Tower is a one-third scale replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It stands 331 feet tall and has been part of Kings Dominion since the park opened in 1975.

And unlike a miniature landmark where you stand on the ground, take your pictures, and move along, you can actually go up this one.

Mason didn’t know anything about my mini vs MEGA angle. He probably still doesn’t. He just thought it was awesome that Kings Dominion had a miniature Eiffel Tower and wanted to go to the top and look out so he could say he did it.

Honestly, that’s a perfectly good reason.

There’s an elevator, so we hopped on the next available one. About a minute and a half later, the doors opened onto the observation deck.

Welcome to the Steel Cage in the Sky

The observation deck is reportedly around 275 feet in the air.

Allegedly.

I can find the official height of the Eiffel Tower. I can find the scale. But an official Kings Dominion source giving the exact height of that observation deck?

Nope.

Apparently that’s a secret. 😂

Whatever the exact number is, I can personally confirm that it is plenty high.

The entire observation deck is fully caged in with welded steel. Nobody is popping through that thing.

I knew this.

My knees did not care.

None of us particularly likes heights, so we cautiously walked around and looked out over the park. Eventually we got a little closer to the edge and, because apparently standing 275-ish feet in the air wasn’t enough, we even more cautiously stuck our phones outside the cage to take pictures and video without the steel in the way.

My knees were chatting shit the entire time about giving out due to weakness. 😂

Zach, meanwhile, was being a ham, because that’s what he does in pictures.

His photo basically says, “Look at me. I’m not scared.”

Except when you actually look at him, he’s relatively far from the edge compared with the other side. He’s kinda right in the middle.

Sure, babe.

Totally fearless. 😂

Then a gust of wind caught my hat and almost took it right off my head. The observation deck is completely caged, so it probably wouldn’t have gone far unless it managed to make it through one of the openings, but I wasn’t interested in testing that theory.

Hat recovered. Phone not dropped. Knees still functioning.

We were doing GREAT.

Once I stopped thinking quite so much about how far above the ground we were, the view really was incredible. On a clear day, you can reportedly see for about 18 miles.

We took our pictures, took some video, and looked out over Kings Dominion.

We did exactly what Mason and I had wanted to do.

And then Mason was officially done.

Okay. I’m Done. Let’s Go.

This is a picture of Mason standing by the elevator with his eyes closed.

This wasn’t staged…That was the actual moment.

He had gone to the top, looked out, taken in the view, and done exactly what he wanted to do.

Now he was standing there with his eyes closed waiting for the elevator because he was completely finished with being that high in the air. 😂

We rode the elevator back down and reunited with Care, who had made the entirely reasonable decision to experience the Eiffel Tower from a bench at approximately zero feet in the air.

Eventually, we made our way back to the truck.

When we first started it, the temperature display said 114°F. 🥵

Yeah.

That tracked.

Would I Go Up the Kings Dominion Eiffel Tower Again?

Absolutely.

I’ve been going to Kings Dominion since I was a kid, and a lot has changed since those early trips. Some of the things I remember are now literally hanging on a historical timeline inside the park.

This time, I got to walk through those memories with my parents, my brother and his family, and my own kids. I rode The Grizzly again, learned a rather expensive lesson about water shoes, and discovered there is apparently a temperature at which my feet simply stop accepting instructions from my brain.

And after all the water rides, roller coasters, cooked feet, destroyed Converse, emergency gift-shop shoes, and 102-degree heat, Mason and I finally made it to the thing we had both been waiting for.

We got to the top of that tower.

He got to say he’d done it.

And I got another one for the mini vs MEGA collection.

mini: complete. 🗼