Dollar Days at the Dallas Zoo

My older girls had not been to the Dallas Zoo, so I thought it would be fun to take them this summer.  I found out that the zoo has "Dollar Day" once a year... which happened to be on August 19th... so we went.  The zoo opened at 9:00 that day, so we left Wylie at 8:30, thinking we would get there a little after 9:00, spend the day walking around, get their dollar lunch items (hotdogs, chips, sodas, waters were all a dollar!), then head home around 2:00.  Boy, was I wrong!!  We got off the freeway at about 9:20, then spent until 10:00 trying to get to the zoo (which is RIGHT OFF THE FREEWAY!) and into the parking lot (which we didn't get into at all... we parked in a grass area past the "parking lot overflow")!  By the time we got into the zoo it was 10:15.  My girls (and I) were already frustrated from it taking so long to park.  But we were going to enjoy ourselves if it killed me!
We had friends meeting us there, so we started walking around and fighting the crowds, looking at the animals.  Our friends arrived at about 11:15, at which point my girls were already complaining about the heat, the amount of people, and their "feet and legs hurting".  We walked around for another hour looking at the animals (depleting our water supply) and then decided to go get some lunch.  The lines for the dollar food was SO LONG, so we decided to forego lunch, hit the reptile house (which is air conditioned), then go home.  Well, we were not the only ones with that idea.  The line for the reptile house came down the sidewalk and around the corner and just kept going...
By this time, my girls had had enough.  I had had enough.  Our friends had had enough.  So we all walked a mile to our cars and left.  Never again will we go to the Dallas Zoo on Dollar Day...  Not for a million dollars.