King's Dominion/Funnel Cake Contest Trip Report

4:45 am came very early Saturday morning, but it was easy to wake up knowing the fun day that was to come. Jamie and I left Mooresville, N.C. around 5:15 and set out to our destination of the day: Kings Dominion in Doswell, VA. Our drive through the great states of North Carolina and Virginia was very pleasant—no traffic problems at all.

Our first stop on the trip was at Biscuitville . Biscuitville is a chain of 52 restaurants, located in North Carolina and Virginia that serves (obviously) breakfast biscuits. Although it is a North Carolina chain, this was our first time visiting a Biscuitville since there isn’t one in our hometown. We’ve always wanted to go to one, though, and decided to seize this opportunity and stop for a quick bite to eat. I ordered a sausage biscuit and Jamie got the bacon, egg, & cheese along with a side of grits. Biscuitville’s claim to fame is that they make fresh biscuits from scratch every 20 minutes. Where we ate (in Burlington, NC), there was a window at the front of the restaurant where you could see the biscuit lady actually rolling out the dough…nice touch! Our breakfast was delightful and we would definitely stop at a Biscuitville in the future, however, if I had to choose between here and Bojangles, I would pick BoJ’s.

Back on the road, we stopped two more times, once at the I-85 Virginia State Line Welcome Center, which was a very nice rest stop, and again in South Hill, V.A. to get gas and use the facilities. The South Hill gas station was a peculiar little place…the only thing around the exit was this one gas station and a Mexican restaurant. Luckily, we were here to not only take a bathroom break but to make a purchase as well because there were signs all over the doors that said “It costs to flush the toilet, you must make a purchase to use the bathroom, etc.” Out of all of the convenience store bathrooms I’ve visited, I have never seen anything like that in my life. Very interesting. This was our last stop until we arrived in Doswell.

We got to Kings Dominion around 10:45 a.m. and went to guest services to pick up our tickets. Many thanks to John at Kings Dominion who hooked us up with some complimentary “press” tickets to cover the events of the day. Once in the park, Jamie and I decided to squeeze in a few rides before the Funnel Cake Eating Contest at 1:00. We planned on riding Dominator but the line looked too long and we didn’t want to risk anything. We moved on to Anaconda and only waited for about 10 minutes before we were able to ride. This is an older coaster so it definitely threw riders around a little. The first drop was awesome, though, and the ride itself was worth the short wait in line.

By this time it was getting close to 12:30 so we made our way to the Eiffel Tower, where the Funnel Cake Eating Contest was to be held. A crowd had already started to gather and many of the eaters were already there mingling. Ryan Nerz was announcing and was looking pretty fly in his gray suit and orange tie…yeah I bet ya’ll didn’t know we did fashion commentary as well. This was the first time we’d seen him be the M.C. so that was cool since we’ve both read Eat This Book. Badlands Booker busted out some flows before the contest began and got the audience pumped up by rapping about the Sweet Science of Competitive Eating.


By around 12:45 all of the eaters had arrived except Sonya Thomas so Ryan had to stall a little to see if she would show up in time. After 1:00, the Black Widow still hadn’t shown, so he decided start without her. After all of the eaters were introduced on stage and began filling up their cups with their respective beverages, Ryan began announcing the rules of the game. Each plate of funnel cake had been weighed in at 2 pounds. The funnel cake was baked, not fried, and contained no powdered sugar on top. The contest would be 10 minutes long and no dunking would be allowed. Wait, WHAT? No dunking? The look on a few eaters’ faces was pretty priceless. I’m not sure if Ryan accidentally said that, if he was just joking, or if that was the original plan, but he quickly retracted the statement and said “dunking is okay”. Just as the contest was about to begin, Sonya Thomas arrived. Looking very cute but a little disoriented, Sonya was running late because of traffic, but she did make it on time to compete!

A few minutes later, the countdown began and the eaters were off. Strings of funnel cake drenched in water/kool-aid/Gatorade/whatever were shoved into the mouths of the eaters. Pat and Joey seemed to be pretty neck and neck the entire contest. About two minutes before the contest was to be over Joey broke the record for funnel cake consumption. As the last minute approached, the eaters looked pretty relieved it was almost over. The contest ended, all of the funnel cake debris was picked up off the ground and wringed out of the cups, placed on the plates to be weighed with the remaining cakes. The King’s Dominion officials took a while to tabulate up the weight of the consumption and finally came to the conclusion that the totals for Joey Chestnut and Pat Bertoletti were too close to call. There would have to be an eat-off.



The rules of the eat off: The first to eat either two pounds of funnel cake or whoever ate the most funnel cake in two minutes would win. Both competitors looked a little worried about having to stuff even more funnel cake in their bodies, but they accepted the challenge and the eat-off began. In the end, Joey Chestnut ended up winning with 7.3 total pounds of funnel cake. It was a good contest. We’d never gotten to see an eat-off in person, so that was pretty exciting! In the end, Hall Hunt came in 4th place eating 3.8 pounds, Humble Bob in 3rd with 4.8 pounds, and Pat Bertoletti ended up eating 7 pounds. Dora the Explorer awarded the top four winners were awarded a big blue check, signed by Sponge Bob.

After the contest was over, Jamie and I left the park and set up our tent at the King’s Dominion Campground. The campground itself was pretty cool, they had a pool and a little ice cream booth, and it was the perfect little place to camp while visiting King’s Dominion. Once we set up or campsite, we went back over to the park and rode Dominator (a floorless roller coaster), which was awesome and then decided to head over to Volcano: The Blast Coaster—the #1 thing we were hoping to ride. The line was pretty long, around an hour wait, but we decided to stick it out because we really wanted to ride. We saw Pat B. and Nasty Nate waiting in the line, so I guess eating the funnel cake didn’t stop them from taking advantage of their day at the park. The ride itself was definitely worth the wait and was our favorite ride of the day. We tried to go hit up the water park but it was pretty crowded, so we just went back to the campground and enjoyed the pool there for a while.

By this point, it was getting late and we were getting really hungry. After checkin out the Doswell scene, we quickly found out that if we wanted something to eat, our few options would be Burger King, Denny’s, or the restaurant at the truck stop. Doswell isn’t the most happening place in the world, that’s for sure. Craving pizza, we decided to go down the road a few miles to Ashland and ended up eating at Tony’s Grill and Pizza Restaurant, ordered a mushroom pizza, and devoured it in like 5 minutes. Ashland was a fun little town; if we ever go back to King’s Dominion I think we’ll stay at either one of the hotels there or maybe even Richmond. Lots more to choose from in regards to food and entertainment. It was starting to get dark and we were pretty tired so we called it an early night and slept to the sounds of crickets chirping in our secluded little campsite. It was nice to finally get a little rest.

Wow… I didn’t mean for this to get this long…! Anyway, to sum it all up, our trip was really fun, the roller coasters did not disappoint, and the contest was quite entertaining. We drove about 630 miles round trip and made it back home around 1:30 Sunday afternoon. It was a Memorial Day weekend well spent.

Upcoming Plans for the Summer:
-Nathan’s Qualifier in Charlotte, NC—June 13th (the only person we know of in the contest is Super Paul Barlow, anyone else going?)

-Las Vegas, June 14th—Honeymoon/anniversary/gambling/eating/drinking/fun

-July 4th—Big road trip planned that involves Philadelphia, Jamie’s first trip to the Big Apple, and of course Coney Island. Stay tuned!

We'll try to upload some more pics to our blog, but if you wanna see more, check out Sadie's facebook.

See ya next time!

--Sadie and Jamie