My Disney water park story is more lighthearted but still puzzling. I decided to go to Blizzard Beach in early March, correctly guessing that it would be almost empty and thus I could indulge in any ride I wanted. So when I walked in the entrance in my swimming trunks and technical long shirt, I was stopped for a poll and for whatever weird reason I decided to indulge the pollster. He didn’t believe me when I said I was from Central Florida and kept trying to get me to admit that I was Canadian due to being there so off season, which hasn’t happened in decades (I moved to FL from Western NY decades ago and used “eh” as a tag question rather than “right” until I got tired of people making Canadian jokes, which I didn’t get at first because didn’t everyone say “eh”?)
I’ve never been there, but when I took my kids to parks/playgrounds I saw single males get stared at/talked about by parents.
When the three oldest grandkids were younger, my wife and I would pick a weekend in the fall to take them to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City. One year I was trying to get my two grandsons to go on the big wooden roller coaster (The Prowler) with me. They had gone on a number of other, smaller coasters but were afraid of the big one. I begged and pleaded and they finally decided to go, but I could tell that they were still kind of uneasy about the idea.
As soon as we stepped off the ride, they both yelled “That was AWESOME! Let’s do it again!” 
My story isn’t particularly exciting or funny, but I’ll share anyway. I was at Great Adventure in New Jersey and about to get on one of the smaller roller coasters when the attendants closed off the line. Two large men in suits with radios entered through the exit and surveyed the place, and soon a group of children and adults entered, also through the exit. They boarded the coaster and rode it, then left, and the regular line resumed. It was only later that I realized that one of the group had been Whitney Houston.
I was in Tulsa last year on a road trip. Somewhere in my walkabout in the downtown area I came across a strip of 35mm negatives on the ground and picked it up.
When I got home I scanned the strip–the images were from an amusement park of some sort:
After a little online sleuthing I figured out the pics had been taken at Bells Amusement Park, which was closed down in 2006. How the film strip from a park that shut down 15 years before ended up where I found it is quite a mystery. My theory is it fell out of a box or got tossed when someone was moving.
I was in a band at my university situated in Cheshire in the north west of England. We weren’t that great but recorded a few songs and had some fun live performances and we broke up when we all graduated. Nobody outside of my uni will have heard of us.
Cut to four or five years later and I’ve gone with a friend to an amusement park outside of London called Chessington World of Adventures. We went on the ghost train. As the ride went through suddenly lyrics from my band were read out and wafting down to us on the train. One of my old band mates had a summer job on the ride and spotted me on the cameras. That was an interesting ride.
While we’re on the subject, here’s a plug for my favorite documentary of 2020
Ah. I never pay attention to that. Security is never an issue for single people at a DIsney park.
Hah - one of the very few times I’ve sprung for such a photo wasn’t on a ride - but when we took the kids to Navy Pier (Chicago) and there was a funhouse sort of place - with a Van de Graf generator at the end. You could put your hand on it, and of course your hair would all stand on end.
Moon Unit was about 6 at the time. We’d visited the nearby Children’s Museum before the pier, and they had face paints… and she had covered her face with red, yellow and orange markings.
That one, I had to pay for. I still have it as her profile pic on my phone. For a long time, I had it on the family web page labelled “An early hair and makeup disaster”.
She hates it. Teehee.
Forgot this one - and it’s not JUST about the rides, but the whole weekend experience.
I was with a group of Girl Scouts at Wildwood, NJ: they have a “Beach Jam” every year, the weekend before Memorial Day, and the weekend after Labor Day, where you can camp on the beach, and you get tickets for most of your meals, and unlimited rides.
The first year we did this, it was a huge hassle to get our tents hauled out to the sand, and get our tents set up. And of course the next morning, we had to take them down; naturally it started raining right then.
The troop leaders decided that this was too much hassle for a single night. Yes, one night was bad, two nights would somehow be better. I said I’d be happy to drive and help chaperone, but I was not interested in camping - so I booked a hotel room for me and my daughter.
It had evidently monsooned just before that weekend - so we had a hell of a time finding a place to set up all the tents that was not an inch deep in water. Finally found some spots, I helped with setup, and everyone went for dinner / rides etc.
At 2 in the morning, my cell phone rang. One of the tents had COLLAPSED due to the weather - so I wound up with 6 people sharing the room with me. They booked more rooms for the second night - I think everyone had learned their lesson. The next time we did it, we just got hotel rooms from the outset.
So on one of these trips, I was the last parent to leave, and I had 3 girls with me. My own (Moon Unit), S (who was intrepid), and L (who was less so). There was this ride that was coaster-ish: you got into the line of cars, got dragged backward up one steep slope, then let go, and you would then go through a few loops and go up another steep slope which parallelled the first one. THEN you’d be let go again, BACKWARDS, go through those same loops, and wind up back up the first slope - at which point you would be slowly returned to the starting position.
Moon Unit had zero interest in this. I had almost zero interest. S was eager to ride. L was interested but nervous. I offered to go. She wanted to see S (and me) ride first.
So I rode with S. We got off, and L saw we’d survived, and NOW she was willing to ride it - she just needed to see me do it.
We got on - and she panicked and got right back off. I was already seated, so I just went with it.
Times I wanted to ride: zero. Times I got to ride: 2.
A few months later I took my kids and my niece to Hershey Park. The niece is utterly intrepid too - and they had that same *%&^ coaster there. I could not let myself be outdone by an 8 year old… so I rode it again. Sigh.
Wife, kid and I took a trip in the camper to Dizzyland when he was maybe 7ish (just tall enough to do all the fun stuff). Had a spot with a shuttle to camp (on pavement, but it was cool). The kid ran out of gas about sundown, so we retreated to the camper, ate a quick meal and I set off to conqueor the kingdom with a bottle of Tequilla. Place takes on a whole different vibe.
It truly was the Happiest Place on Earth.
Those are boomerang coasters.
Wow - there’s a Wikipedia entry for everything! The Sea Serpent (Wildwood) and Sidewinder (Hersheypark) are indeed the ones I reluctantly rode.
I actually prefer coasters to “hurl-a-whirl”-type rides nowadays, when I visit parks at all, as my stomach can’t deal with the latter anymore while a coaster will usually SETTLE things.
There are also shuttle loop coasters but they go in a straight line rather than being U-shaped, and you get launched from the station instead of being dragged up a lift hill.
As an example, google “Laser Loop at Kennywood Park” for videos - I couldn’t copy the link for some reason.
Our tiny daughter asked (and asked and asked) to go to DizzyWorld, and we’d always say “Okay, when you’re five…”
Years later, got a call from my sister, who’d booked a huge multi-room unit and could we join them in Orlando? We said okay, when are you going? Yeah, that’ll work…
That daughter I mentioned? She walked through the gates of the Magic Kingdom on her fifth birthday.
That’s been showing on TNT (I think). I TIVO’ed it but haven’t watched it yet.
A couple of Disney World Stories
First:
I went there the year Space Mountain opened. I don’t usually ride them, but I decided to try. I actually liked the ride.
For those who don’t know, Space Mountain is a roller coaster with one twist: it’s completely in the dark. You can’t see what’s coming up (they even have you go through a brightly lit tunnel at the start, so your eyes aren’t adjusted to darkness.
I decided to try it again. We had just started when the car stopped and the lights went up. There was evidently some problem that they had to fix before continuing. So I could see everything.
I realized it wasn’t a particularly difficult coaster. The thrill was not knowing; once you knew, there wasn’t much there.
Second
We went again when my daughter was about five. There was a new ride, Body Wars (closed now), that she had heard about. The entire trip down, she was talking about “the ride through the body.” It was one of the first things we tried.
It was a motion simulator. Your car didn’t go anywhere, but seemed to be moving as it tilted and the visuals simulated you traveling through the body a la Fantastic Voyage.
But we hadn’t realized that some of the motion was a bit violent – just a shaking, but we were expecting a leisurely tour. Our daughter hated it. Afterwards, she kept saying, “I don’t want to go on the ride through the body.”
As Dave Barry said in one of his columns, “Don’t go on Body Wars after eating bratwurst.”
My wife and daughter and I did end up going on Body Wars, and pretty much liked it. What we weren’t prepared for was, after we took our circa 7 year old daughter on the “Making of Me” attraction, where Martin short essentially gives you a primer on sex education.
Precipitate questions it did. We spent a year after that explaining things and purchasing various books on sex for her.
I had to put my glasses in my sock, so I saw nothing.
Was that the intention? Wow, I’d never considered that. SM may not be the most exciting coaster on it’s own, but the setting and visuals make it one of my all time favorites. Notice the chocolate chip cookie “out in space”.