The Ghostly Gangplank

The Ghostly Gangplank

In Minnesota at the Mall of America, there is a ropes/obstacle course called The Ghostly Gangplank. It goes all the way up to the top of the mall, which is so big it can fit loop-the-loop roller coasters in it! When you are on the floor looking up at it, the people on the top level look like figurines.

Each level has some kind of obstacle you can walk across, like two skinny balance beams parallel to each other. Those are hard to cross because when you're thirty or forty feet in the air, you're probably thinking something like, ''Oh my gosh, if I put my foot in the wrong place I'm going to fall to my doom!'' At least that's what I was thinking. There is a bridge that looks like it's falling apart, and you have to walk on the slats. That was easy to cross because the gaps between the slats weren't very big. There is a really hard one on the sixth level--two black ropes that cross in the middle, making a narrow X. Those are hard to walk on--they are very wobbly! I couldn't even cross those.

Luckily you're strapped in so you won't fall off.

About to go up the Ghostly Gangplank!

There are six levels of obstacles that get harder as you get higher, and you can actually walk ''the plank," a small platform that gives you a view of all the rides in the Mall. At the end of the plank, you can pull on two ropes to make a clanging sound. Mommy tried that. She said it kind of scared her. "Walking on the plank, there is nothing below you until the ground," she said.

You transfer levels by walking on staircases. You could walk right up to the sixth level if you wanted to, but what fun is that? It's a lot more fun to do the obstacles. Each time you go up a level, you climb another eight feet. You're so high up on the sixth floor that when the roller coasters pass you, you can feel the breeze they make!

When you reach the top, you can go down a slide. It's a curvy tunnel slide that goes all the way to the bottom floor. You sit on a sack to go down, and when you reach the bottom, you're probably going to feel like, "Wow! I'm back on solid ground!" It's really fun.