I was in agony, absolute, total, agony. Around me were hundreds, if not thousands
of people, all of us intent on being some of the first people to take a ride on Hagrid’s
Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure at Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park. I’d seen the sneak preview video and it
looked amazing, like no other ride I’d ever seen. There was no way I was going to drop out of
that queue, but the pain…. oh my God, the pain. I felt as if I was holding on to a rising
balloon, and if I just held on a little longer, I could make it, but if my grip failed me,
I would fall and die. That’s just a metaphor, but in reality I
really was on the verge of death. Let me explain. First of all, you should know that I’m a
huge Harry Potter fan, not just a fan of the movies, but the books and everything else
related to the magical teen and his band of extraordinary buddies. You’re probably thinking that I’m just
a kid, but you’d be wrong. I was a kid when the first movies came out,
but as some guys on the mean streets sometimes say, “Once an addict, always an addict.” When I heard about the new ride in Orlando
I got in touch with another guy I knew from the Harry Potter Fan Club Facebook page and
we both agreed we’d try and get on the inaugural ride. The reason I picked him is because we both
live in Florida, I’m in Tampa and he’s in Jacksonville. We wouldn’t have too far to travel, so the
deal was made. The plan was to get a hotel close to the theme
park and the next day wake up well before dawn and start queuing before the crowds came. As you guys all know, you can have the best
intentions in the evening and when you get up in the morning you don’t have the same
amount of enthusiasm. We were sharing a room and when that alarm
clock went off at 3 a.m. we weren’t in the best of moods. Maybe those few beers the evening before had
been a bad idea. Fortunately, the hotel had a 24-hour café
and I sank two double espressos, followed by a bottle of water, followed by a mocha
Frappuccino to go. My friend wasn’t into coffee, he said it
gave him anxiety, but I can tell you this, soon after I’d downed those espressos I
was good to go. Since we knew we’d be standing in a queue
for maybe a couple of hours we bought some stuff from the convenience store and put the
food, water and soft drinks in our backpacks. What was surprising was the fact when we got
to the park around 5 a.m. there was already a stream of people lining up at the entrance
to the park, all of them there for Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure. No kidding, we even met a guy who’d come
all the way from England. The dude was dressed in a wizard's cape and
written on it were the words, “Potty for Potter.” He had to explain to me that “potty” can
mean crazy in the UK. The guy was kinda condescending about having
to explain that to me, but I paid it no mind. This guy was potty, there was no doubt about
that, flying over the Atlantic for a theme park ride. He told me he’d read in the media that the
experience was one of a kind, and the park had spent $300 million on it. He said some of his countrymen travelled the
world to watch their stupid football teams lose, so what he was doing wasn’t all that
crazy. “You mean soccer?”, I asked, genuinely. What did I know? “NO!”, he said, shaking his head in disdain,
I mean football!. Jeez, I thought, I’m gonna have to spend
the next few hours next to this guy and I’ve already upset him. After about an hour we saw more and more people
join the queue. It was hard to say how many because it wrapped
around the corner. In front of us I would guess there were about
300 to 400 people. The time was now about 7 am so there were
only a couple of hours to wait before the park opened, but the thing was, I needed a
pee. I’d only had those small espressos and had
barely touched my mocha Frappuccino, but I still felt those first pangs of pee pain. You know, the part where you’re not quite
sure that if you just hit the release button for a second if something will come out. At nine am we were allowed inside the park
and to my surprise no one tried to jump the queue. Every single person was directed towards the
ride, with some of us now inside the theme park and from what I could see, a lot of others
still queueing on the outside. That made me feel quite proud that we’d
made the decision to wake up so early. The sun was now out and I was in a bit of
a predicament. I still needed that pee, well, I needed it
more, but I was also thirsty. Those beers the night before really had been
a bad idea. I decided I would just take a sip of some
Coca-Cola rather than glug down water. I’d later find out that this decision was
a bad one, because sweet, soft drinks, like the coffees I’d drunk, are what you call
diuretics. What are they, you might wonder. Well, the answer is they promote something
called diuresis. Ok, so you’re still in the dark about this. The simple answer is they make you pee....
pee more than say, water. Caffeine is like the king of diuretics, and
I’d just had it in coffee and Coke. I was really holding that pee in around the
10 am mark, about 5 hours into our queuing. There were some helpful distractions, such
as videos playing with some amusing words from Hagrid, or pictures of the ride itself
and the pretty amazing Forbidden Forest that had been created. Still, I was now in pretty serious pain. At around the six-hour point I was standing
cross-legged and slightly bent over. This seemed to ease the pain, as if I was
squeezing the tubes where the urine traveled to meet its final destination. What I would later find out after a bit of
research was that at this point I was in danger of weakening my bladder muscles, something
which could harm my bladder for the rest of my life. In hindsight, this was the least of my worries. Surely, we were close to getting on the ride,
I hoped, and I just stood there looking like a man who was slightly demented or had recently
been in an accident. My buddy had done the right thing and had
just been taking small sips of that water, but to be honest, in his excitement I don’t
really think he was that concerned about my predicament. I’d also later find out that the parts of
my body that were helping me keep in this pee, now probably a tsunami waiting to happen,
are called urethral cylindrical sphincters. These are great when you tighten them for
a short while, such as when you don’t want a puddle of pee beneath you on a busy bus,
but they are brakes, not doors, so they can be worn out. At the seven hour mark I couldn’t overstate
how much agony I was in. I knew we were close to getting on the ride,
so I held on for dear life. That British guy heard me telling my buddy
that I thought I was about to pee myself. My friend laughed, but I can tell you, it
wasn’t funny to me. My buddy said that if it was that bad just
go find a bathroom and he’d hold my spot in the queue. You won’t believe what happened next. That British guy overheard this and said in
no uncertain terms that if I left the queue I’d have to start from the back. He said he also needed a pee, but in Britain,
he said, there’s a thing called queuing etiquette. I think this guy thought he was special just
because Harry Potter is British. That, or he was just a xenophobic snob. I can recall his exact words. He said, “The reason we have queuing etiquette
is because if we didn’t there would be chaos.” “Queuing chaos doesn’t work,” he said,
and then went on about a time in the past he’d had difficulty buying a train ticket
in India and how he’d almost gotten into a fight at a buffet where hordes of hungry
Chinese people fought over shrimp. He said he wasn’t picking on me, only that
if order broke down then order would cease to exist. “Formal and orderly queuing,” he said
in a patronizing way, “is the mark of a civilised man.” What a total jerk. He told me that if I left the line he would
make a complaint and say I had jumped the queue. What I really couldn’t believe is that other
people in the queue didn’t get my back. I guess one less man in the queue was good
for them, and so they just kept quiet. The words that went through my head were,
“The milk of human kindness”, and then I wished I hadn’t thought about milk. Gallons of it, pouring over pristine porcelain
mountains. At that moment my urethral sphincters almost
called it quits. I’ll fill you in later, but I will tell
you that I had already caused myself some damage. It was at about the nine-hour point that we
were very close to the ride entrance. I’d almost made it, but the problem now
was the excitement I felt almost made me lose concentration and loosen those muscles, and
let all the urine flood out. I had to concentrate. Keep the door locked, I kept saying to myself. Everyone was laughing and joking, taking selfies
and looking in awe at the ride we were about to go on. I was undoubtedly the only man in that queue
who did not have a smile on his face. If anything, I grimaced, a kind of agonized
grimace, like someone who’s just won the lottery and then been told they only have
a week to live. We finally got in the castle, but to be honest,
I was in no mood for taking photos. I was hardly even aware at this point if I
was actually holding a pee in, it was like I’d gone into survival mode. It felt like my urine had become a hardened
prisoner and my entire body now was some kind of detainment unit. The ride itself consisted of Hagrid’s motorcycle
with a side cart next to it. I told my buddy that in the interest of me
holding in this pee it might be best I take the bike and he the side cart. It was all about control, you see, I needed
to feel in control. That British guy was right behind me on the
other bike, something he’ll regret to this day. At something like 50 mph we drove past Fluffy
the three-headed dog, and other such things as Cornish pixies and a Centaur. I didn’t really care, I just wanted the
experience to be over as quickly as possible. This was turning out to be one of the most
painful and pointless days of my life…and there would be consequences to come. I thought I had it under control, even on
the biggest descents and through the sharp bends, but then there was a surprise drop
and the heavens burst, the tsunami came, my bladder roared as its doors were kicked down
by a violent torrent of urine. My pecker must have been flailing around like
an out of control fire hose, hours of back-up urine gushing from its spout like a great
yellow geyser. The pee was everywhere and it stunk. It was old pee, neglected pee, and when it
ejected from me it spread far and wide. I looked behind me and saw that British guy
wincing, looking utterly disgusted, his eyes glaring into mine. Was I embarrassed, you might ask. No, is the answer, I was relieved, incredibly
relieved, and almost ecstatic that my British foe had tasted the vapors of an agony he had
been an accomplice in creating. I know guys, maybe I shouldn’t have felt
so overjoyed that someone had to experience great wafts of urine vapor in their face. But you know what, I paid for it. I soon got my karma. When I finally got back to Tampa after a pretty
awkward farewell with my Harry Potter fanboy buddy, I felt a stinging pain every time I
went to the bathroom to pee. After seeing a doctor I was told I had a urinary
tract infection. That could be cured he said, and told me he
couldn’t believe I’d done a 10 hour urine hold. If there are records, he said, I might have
broken some. The bad news, though, was that he said the
damage done could be irreversible. He told me that long-term bladder stretching
could make it hard for me to pee in the future and one day if I kept doing this kind of thing
I might have to put a catheter into my member and draw the urine out. On the other hand, all that stress on my bladder
could lead to incontinence, so holding in even normal pees would be impossible. I had some blood checks and my kidneys were
functioning normally, but he said when you do something as crazy as I did, kidney damage
can occur as can the appearance of kidney stones. “Just don’t make a habit of enduring those
marathons,” he said. “A few minutes is fine, but holding on for
hours isn’t good for you at all.” The one thing that really scared me is when
he told me that the bladder can actually burst when you hold in a pee as long as I did. He said it was very rare, but it had happened. When it does happen you can actually die. He told me not to worry, though, because the
cases he’d heard about all happened to people who already had compromised bladders. He said, like what happened to me, before
the bladder bursts people will just pee themselves. He said cases of healthy bladders just bursting
are so rare that he doubted that could have happened to me, but in the few cases it has
happened, urine leaked into the abdomen and when people didn’t get straight to the emergency
room they died. The punchline to this story is that I could
have actually told one of the attendants at the park that I needed the bathroom and gotten
the green light to go. He would have made sure I got right back into
the queue, despite what that British guy might have had to say about that. We can think of one really suitable match
for this story, a video that might put you off going to an amusement park ever again. You’ll know what we mean after you’ve
seen, “The Worst Amusement Park Ride Disasters.”
