This year my birthday, a two-week extravaganza I call Maggie Gras, will be spent at Kings Island.

Not Paramount's Kings Island, mind you. Just Kings Island.

That's what it was called when I was a little girl. That's what it was called when the Bradys went there. That's what I call it today.

I haven't been to Kings Island since high school Grad Night, when I was a sulky teenager. I stressed through gritted teeth how I was too cool for roller coasters, riding only Whitewater Canyon with all the boys. Inside, however, that was killing me. Inside, I longed for some Beast action.

(Full disclosure: I did visit Kings Island last summer. But my friend and I arrived at 8 p.m., then spent an hour eating takeout pad Thai in the parking lot. We made it inside with barely enough time for one ride before the park closed. So that doesn't count. I didn't get a keychain photo or anything.)

Growing up, my family visited the amusement park every year. We did abscond to a different park once - but my memory from that trip is based solely on a photograph of me, looking adorable in a stroller and a rainbow Cedar Point visor.

Our annual trip to Kings Island was more than just a vacation. It was my chance to test the waters of adulthood. Every year I evolved somehow - I was taller, able to venture slightly farther on my own, and finally capable of figuring out how many funnel cakes one can consume without vomiting.

A million years ago, I was only old enough to sit among my parents and a bunch of drunks in a biergarten and watch faux Bavarian dancers in lederhosen and swirly dirndls. There were no rides in store for me that year. I was too young, too small and therefore sentenced to have my photo taken a trillion times in front of carefully landscaped flowerbeds. Meanwhile, my sister and brother were getting free french fries, meeting the president and riding the Bat. Or that's how I imagined it, anyway.

The next few years, I had aged enough to ride all sorts of transportation-themed things by myself - contraptions that looked like helicopters, trains or horses in mid-stride - and later some smallish baby roller coasters.

By the time I had matured and stretched tall enough to ride real coasters - the Racer, the Beast and the King Cobra - my siblings had graduated, moved away and found spouses.

My dad couldn't ride roller coasters anymore. By then he had too many heart problems. And my mom didn't want to mess up her hair.

Still, we made the annual pilgrimage. And year after year, there were a few things that always remained true at Kings Island.

First, the scientific fact that I was tall enough to ride any roller coaster of my choosing didn't mean squat in my family. I was still young enough to have my mother's hand welded to my own. You never knew when a kidnapper would stick a hypodermic needle in my arm, drug me and carry me off, far away from the log rides, cotton candy and frighteningly large cartoon characters forever. Second, here was a place I could always find blue (I'm guessing Smurf) ice cream.

Third, amusement parks really do make people happy. No matter how much we fought or yelled or annoyed each other in the wood-paneled station wagon, once we parked in Huckleberry Hound and emerged through the Kings Island turnstiles, everything was all sunshine, sno-cones and yabba-dabba-doo.

My sister brings her own family to Kings Island now. My brother lives too far away to make the trip. And my father spends his days taking care of my mom, who is ill. Me, I have a full-time job and a sport that consumes most of my time. But for just one day, I'll give some of the new-to-me rides a try, like Delirium, Face/Off and Drop Zone.

I'll ride the old favorites, too, making sure to get the very last seat of the Viking Fury ship and the very first one on the Racer. And I'll realize how much growing up only makes you want to grow young again.

E-mail mdowns@enquirer.com