Well, summertime is here at last and it's time for that wonderful summer ritual: simulating (and occasionally achieving) the mortal jeopardy of uncontrolled flight. Yes, every summer millions of Americans strap themselves into ostensibly secure harnesses and allow themselves to be helplessly dragged to the top of metal mountains and then dropped to the ground from heights God never intended man to drop from and survive. I refer of course to the thrill of roller coaster riding. It takes a good deal of bravery and a modest helping of insanity to board these scream-machines. The modest lift and dip coasters of the past are dinosaurs. Today you get dropped, twisted, looped, corkscrewed and just generally all shook up. King's Dominion in Virginia has 14 roller coasters. When it first opened up some 35 years ago it had one - the Rebel Yell. It boasted a 90 foot drop. HA! 90 feet is like a short stumble compared to the 200 foot plus demons they have today.
And I love 'em all, brother. I could ride all day long. My favorite theme park is Busch Gardens Europe (which, contrary to its name, is located in Virginia nowhere near Europe). It lags behind King's Dominion in coaster volume, boasting only five. But it more than makes up for that by having a park voted world's most beautiful for eighteen straight years. It really is beautiful - a great place to bring the family. And the coasters are pretty cool. They range from the relatively tame "Big, Bad Wolf" to the 205 foot 90 degree (yep, STRAIGHT down) "Griffon." My favorite is the "Alpengeist" which is filled with corkscrews, loops and incredible G forces. And rounding it out are the "Loch Ness Monster" with double interlocking loops and a good dark tunnel, and the "Apollo's Chariot," with 9 drops starting off at 210 feet. Am I afraid? Heck, no. I can handle them all. No fear here, baby.
Except for one ride.
Wait a minute, you must be saying to yourself (because I know I would be). Here you tell me you take 200 plus feet vertical drops in stride, deal with corkscrews and loops with hardly ruffled composure, dangle your feet from precipitous heights on floorless coasters with no concern, yet you have one ride which scares even you? (Yes, you thought that, you know you did.) What, you ask, could be so terrible? What gut-wrenching, mind-boggling, twisting, turning, G-force pushing monstrosity from hell causes the Pooch to break out in a cold sweat, fake a headache or change the subject nervously? What can be so horrifying?
The sky ride.
Yeah. You heard me. The freakin' SKY RIDE. The silly little Gondola ambling slowly through the air over the park. It's mass transit - not a thrill ride. No dips, no twists, no loops, not even a big dark tunnel. No need for a restraint. Loose articles welcome. No minimum height. No long list of disclaimers saying "Patrons who have stubbed toes or slight head colds should avoid this ride so we don't get sued." No nothing. Just a slow-moving, cable-suspended, long, excruciating torture session! I hate it. I would rather be launched from a catapult into a net made of spaghetti than be enclosed in that little box, hung from an impossibly thin cable (and nothing else, dammit!) and dragged into the air to be dangled over the heads of park patrons like some overweight Sword of Damacles. Whoever dreamed up this mode of transportation must have been a bigger sadist than the demons who create the metal monsters. Nobody has any business feeling comfortable in this thing.
Well by now you're thinking (I'm psychic like that) "What? Are you serious? What in the WORLD is scary about a sky ride?" Yeah, sure, YOU aren't afraid. That just shows what YOU know. Have you ever thought this thing through? On a roller coaster you are strapped in safety harnesses, riding on a big, honking metal track that ain't going nowhere. There are fail-safe, redundant, interlocking safety systems all through the ride. Yeah, sometimes the rides break down and people get left dangling, but that just proves the safety systems work. You are very unlikely to get hurt on a roller coaster - unless you happen to be male supermodel Fabio, who got struck by a bird in the face on Apollo's Chariot (and God obviously had it in for him for being so damned pretty. It just ain't natural for a man!). Yep, unless you're on the almighty hit list, you aren't going to lose anything but ego points (and maybe your lunch) on a coaster.
But on the sky ride, not only are there no restraints, but they wouldn't matter anyway. The only thing holding you up there is a cable. A freakin' CABLE. No good firm track under you (or thick metal supports over your head like on suspended coasters). No good, strong engine like on an airplane. No parachutes. No means of backup, no fail-safe way of holding you up should the front half of the cable decide that it doesn't love its back half any more and the counseling has failed. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE FINALITY OF THIS SITUATION? The good folks at the park have informed me that, should the cable decide to part, all of those little tower thingies would lock up, keeping the OTHER segments from dropping. HOW VERY COMFORTING! It is SOOO nice to be able to think, as I plummet to my certain death, that the people on the OTHER segments are gonna be OK, darn it. If I happen to be on the segment with the cable halves that have irreconcilable differences, the only good a restraint would be is to keep the smashed-beyond-recognition body parts in a tight little package for ease of disposal. How convenient for the morgue. And then again, even if I happen to be lucky enough to be on one of the OTHER segments, I now get to wait for rescue for what might be hours while contemplating the likelihood that the failure mode which affected the poor folks whose bodily fluids are currently seeping into the local water table might also be imminent in my own cozy little cell. Joy.
And it doesn't help that the safety signs in the gondolas point out that rocking back and forth is prohibited and is cause for dismissal from the park. This is, of course, almost an invitation for any number of teenagers or drunk adults to do just that. Since the manufacturers of this ride seemed to think it important enough to prohibit the action, it MUST be of SOME importance. So now I am convinced (without rational cause, but that is what irrational fear is ABOUT, people) that should a good strong breeze decide to come along and rock this cradle, it might come crashing down like the one in that sadistic lullaby. Not only that, but did you know that each gondola actually has a weight limit of 608 pounds? 608 POUNDS??? That means if you put four average adults in that baby (easily accomodated, space-wise) you could be overloaded by 100-200 pounds. And it's just my luck the McFatterson family is (over)loading the gondola right in front of mine with Mom and Dad and two childhood obesity poster children who are currently each holding a hot dog in one hand and an extra-large Coke in the other. Yep, my fat on one side and the Goodyear blimp brigade on the other. No reason to be concerned about that extra cable strain, right? Oy vey.
To add one more exquisite layer of horror to all of this, the ride is S-L-O-O-O-W. The Griffon, with it's two 90 degree death-drops, runs at 73 miles an hour. Except for a sadistic 6-second dangle over the first drop, this thing is VERY fast. It's over before your lunch has time to catch up with you. It's fast and intense, but it's over before you know it. But the sky ride, oh this little horror is slow torture. It ambles on at a pace which a turtle on caffeine could best without breaking a sweat (assuming, of course, that turtles sweat, which is an entirely unrelated - yet fascinating to consider - topic in which I will avoid indulging here). You feel each long, drawn out bump, wiggle, rock, vibration and rattle along the way. You hear each pop, snap, moan and groan. It is sensory devilry without the attendant adrenaline rush. No thrills here. The only thing your brain will overload on is frantic messages from your bladder. This is no fun, it is hell. The worst part is that I hold on to the center pole, indulging my irrational fear of parting cables with the equally irrational thought that, should the gondola plummet earthward, the center pole would somehow remain happily floating in mid-air with me attached. It's comforting. More comforting, at least, than contemplating the safety of those "other segment" people. I hate those people.
So should you ever find yourself in Busch Gardens Europe, Stone Mountain Georgia, at a ski resort, or in any other place where one of these insane cable death-traps is used think, man, THINK! Find an excuse to stay on good old mother earth. Try "What? The sky ride? That thing's for wimps! I'm going to go ride the Tower of Terror." Or how about, "Sky ride? Why would we want to do that when we could walk along this lovely path, surrounded by the trees and flowers and mouldering remains of the last victims of snapped cable syndrome?" No wait, leave that last part out. Just tell them its more healthy to walk. But if dread circumstance leaves you no choice but to board the sky ride, at least take this advice. Hold on to the center pole. It is extremely unlikely that the cable will snap. It is even more unlikely that, should this tragedy occur, holding on to the center pole will have any good effect at all, but you never know.
