What kind of (fast) roller coaster rider are you?
I visited Thorpe Park in the UK on Saturday (my first time, although I’ve had 3 previous Alton Towers visits), and I’ll be honest… I ride each one fully expecting to meet a grisly demise. Is this normal?
I’m sure some people love the thrill - literally enjoy every second of it.
Not me… I constantly worry I’ll fall out of my harness, fly out into a wall, or the car will derail… that’s all I think about mid ride.
What about you?
I can be sitting in my living room, and things go through my mind on a fast roller coaster.
Why did I do this and when will it end? I stopped riding roller coasters a long time ago.
An unsettling feeling - part terror, part dread - set in during that first slow ascent up the big hill.
Once over the top, every second is a thrill.
mmm
Woooooooooohoooooooooooooo!!!
The last time I was on a rollercoaster, I couldn’t help but thinking about all of the outright criminal negligence I’ve seen on job sites.
Inspection/maintenance not done, but forms were filled out and signed.
Jerry rigged equipment etc.
I like the rides but the older I get the less I trust.
<barrel roll> This is the sort of stuff I’d love to do in my plane if I knew how… except it’s much safer this way.
<steep dive into a loop> What interesting forces for my body to experience.
<backwards down a steep hill into a sideways curve> You don’t feel something like that every day, that’s for sure.
I have never felt a “thrill” while riding a coaster.
More like:
“Oh dear, this is going to feel bad in a few seconds.”
“I hope those support beams rushing at me don’t knock out my legs at the knees.”
“Head doesn’t feel good…”
Nothing really went through my mind, but it was the butthole of the bug that hit me in the forehead. Nothing like wiping squished bug off your face after a roller coaster ride.
Well, we know that the last thing that went through the bug’s mind.
The air.
Ifthisissofuckingfastwhyisn’titoverwithalready
Hell Yeah!!! My youngest daughter and I are both thrill seekers. We went to Silver Dollar City in Missouri on a beautiful April day when hardly anyone was there and just rode all their (very good) roller coasters over and over with no wait. I love Six Flags New England too.I always like to tell people that someone really did get thrown out killed on the Superman roller coaster but only after we are strapped in and committed. Gruesome death is a small price to pay for fun.
That said, we went to one of those pop-up carnivals in a K-Mart amusement park where the carnies are all felons or actively high. They had one of those swinging pirate ships so we got in the far back to make it more fun but I didn’t know what we were getting into. The operator never secured the restraining bar which I quickly realized during one of the first big swings. I had to figure out a way to keep both me and my daughter from being thrown out and probably killed. I used my legs to brace against the seat in front of me and my arm to keep her in place. I tried to tell the operator to stop the ride but he never heard me or didn’t care. It was one of the scariest few minutes of my life.
Forget roller coasters! This is it!
Save up some dollars and go out for an aerobatic airplane ride in an old biplane. There are places around where you can do that. (No, I haven’t done it yet.)
I’m a student glider pilot. One of my fantasies is to try my hand at glider aerobatics one of days. Yes, there are places you can go for an aerobatic glider ride too.
Spectacular videos of glider aerobatics:
Johan Gustafsson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQxNWp5w91Q
Luca Bertossio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImW8Kydqtc4
There’s always skydiving as well, if you’re going for the adrenalin. (No, I haven’t tried that yet either. One of these days…)
ETA: Sign on the wall at a local skydiving place, which I recently visited:
If at first you don’t succeed . . .
maybe skydiving isn’t for you.
Again! Again! Faster!
OMG OMG OMG WHEEEEE!!! AAAAAHHH I’M GONNA DIE WHEEEEE!!!
I love rough wooden roller coasters, especially. There’s a sound some of them make as they’re going around a corner that sounds exactly like the shriek of a nail being pulled out of wood. It’s terrifying. I first experienced it on the Psyclone, which was Six Flags Magic Mountain’s reproduction of the Cyclone on Coney Island. (I went on the original, twice, when I was in New York.) Most recently at Knotts Berry Farm’s Ghost Rider.
Did you go on “Stealth”?
I bloody love Stealth. It is a one-trick-pony but what a horse!
The only thing that goes through my mind immediately before launch is “I wonder if this is as fast and as vicious as I remem…FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTT!!!”
I love rollercoasters, but admit that the older I get the more I think about safety implications.
Statistically I’m probably more likely to get injured on the road going to and from any amusement park, but safety does enter my mind.
And then “weeeeeeeeeee!”
Not gonna happen.
I knew I had for certain grown old when the thoughts on my last coaster ride where along the lines of “Oh dear god, I hope I don’t break anything.”