Roller coasters: not so much

[prog]

Wednesday classicaljunkie and I went to Six Flags. It was weird and nobody had any fun. Basically, her approach to amusement parks is to ride the 500-foot coasters over and over until she can't walk anymore. Mine is to go on the baby rides with my eyes squeezed shut while I go FUCKFUCKSHITCOCKNONOAAAAAAAAAAA, and then sit for a while to recover. A basic incompatibility was thus discovered.

But then we went shopping and had coffee and felt better.

Comments

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

My roommate had planned a "coasters till you puke" event at Six Flags (Great America -- Gurnee IL) with the intention of trying to ride all the largest coasters in a single day. Knowing that you probably wouldn't have wanted to go to that event.

Unfortunately one of the attendees didn't expect a 'coasters till you puke' event to actually involve riding any roller coasters so he got to be all mopey and sit out on all of them.

Another guy there would ride coasters but he didn't want to go on any that actually went upside down. After waiting in line for a Batman coaster for nearly an hour, watching the coaster go upside down he got all upset that it actually WENT upside down.

Then we had that one girl with severe emotional instability -- she broke down crying for a half an hour because she saw someone who reminded her of an ex boyfriend she knew online two years prior. She was okay on the coasters though.

[jazzfish]

Jeez. The two worst social experiences of my life both involved amusement parks, but I thought that was just my bad luck. Good to know it happens to other people too, I guess.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

It happens to absolutely everyone, all the time. I swear that no one has ever had any fun at an "amusement" park. Everyone is under so much pressure to have a good time--particularly given the outrageous cost of admission--and there are so few venues to actually enjoy, and tastes differ so vastly, that the experience is massively unpleasant for everyone, always. Add to that the feeling that being at an amusement park frees the emotionally unstable and morally stunted from the usual restrictions of basic politeness and decency, and you have a nightmarishly toxic koolaid that park operators can only get their victims to down by expending endless advertising dollars.

Every summer I think about taking my kids to Canada's Wonderland, which is our version a Six Flags type thing, and then I recover my senses and think about jabbing myself in the eye with a fork instead. It would be far cheaper and quite a bit less painful than repeatedly waiting in a hot, sweaty line for untold hours to take a brief excursion on a ride that at least one member of any party is guaranteed to hate.