Terrifying thrill craze

Press, 13 June 1979, Page 11

Terrifying thrill craze

By RONALD CLARKE. NZPA-Reuter Correspondent Los Angeles

Americans are terrifying themselves ridmg rollercoasters in the latest craze to hit the United States.

Amusement parks are competing with one another to build bigger, faster, and more terrifying roller-coasters, knowing the bigger the thrill the bigger the queus of riders. The Beast, Colossus. Tidal Wave, Montezuma’s Revenge, Loch Ness Monster, and the Barnstormer — these are some of the giant rides pulling in the crowds.

Tidal Wave, at the great amusement park at Santa Clara, California, turns customers upside down in a loop and, just as they are about to recover their breath, carries them backwards over the same course at up to 88 km/h. The Beast, at King’s Island amusement park outside Cincinnati, Ohio, sends its passengers zooming down from a height of 43m at 112 km/h. Eleven of the multi-mil-lion dollar roller-coasters opened in the United States last year, and at least four more will be working this year.

There have been accidents on the rides, but Americans are not swayed from their determination to buy between three and four minutes of fear on the rails.

Carol Flores, aged 20, was killed when .she fell from the Colossus rollercoaster, at the Magic Mountain amusement park on the outskirts of Los Angeles, last December. Ten persons were hurt when a train of passenger cars on Revolution, another roller-coaster ride at Magic Mountain, hurtled backwards before a backup braking system took hold last July. Seven persons were scratched and bruised when the rear car in which they were travelling. became detached from the rest of the train on the Space Mountain roller-coastei; at Disneyland, Anaheim, California, last August.

But people still queue for up to four hours for a roller-coaster ride. Gary Kyriazi, who styles himself America’s leading authority on roller-coast-ers, says riding the rails is a sport everyone can afford.

“It’s like being a skydiver, a trapeze artist, and a pilot all rolled into one when you are up there,” he said.

Mr Kyriazi, aged 29, who claims to have ridden every roller-coaster in the United States, said: “1 like very fast, smooth, mellow rides. I like the sensation of flying.”

A psychiatrist at California State University said many people rode on the roller-coasters because

they felt there were few real challenges left. “A hundred years ago, Americans could cross a wilderness. Now they have to look for contrived challenges to their nerve,” she said. The cost of a nervetingling ride is often included in the price of admission to an amusement park. At Disneyland, an admission price of 5U57.75 includes a ride on Space Mountain and other attractions. A separate ride on the roller-coaster costs 95c. Magic Mountain produces the “Roller-Coaster Almanac,” decribed as “a comprehensive compendium of fascinating facts, figures, fancies, and photographs concerning that transcendant Titan of thundering thrillers.” According to the book, the first commercial roller-coaster in the United States was opened on Coney Island, New York, by a Sunday-school teacher named Lamarcus Adna Thompson, who felt

young people visiting amusement parks were spending too much time in beer gardens. At the bottom of the first slope of his ride, called “Thompson’s Switchback Gravity Pleasure Railway,” passengers had to leave the cars while attendants pushed the vehicles to the top of the next slope. The Coney Island rollercoaster reached a speed of 9 km/h. Today’s Loch Ness Monster, in the Busch Gardens at Williamsburg, Virginia, reaches speeds up to 112 km/h. Greezed Lightin’, at Astroworld, Houston, Texas, plunges its riders from standstill to 96 km/h in four seconds. Passengers go through what is claimed to be the world’s fastest double-loop ride on the Shock Wave, at the Six Flags over Texas amusement park in Dallas. Charles Dinn, an engineer who designs amusement park rides said

people like to be scared. He quoted a little girl who had told him: “It (the roller coaster) frightened me to death — three times.”