A Musing

 It was a ritual of sorts, between my brothers and I, to talk about all the ways that things could go wrong on a particular amusement park ride. We would have this conversation in line for the attraction. And not in our "indoor voices." The chats varied a bit depending on the visit and the time of day, but the gist of the discussion tended to center on the percentages at play. The number of times a certain car on a certain track had made its rapid trip from point A to point B without incident just raised the potential for carnage. Each time all passengers had returned safely from their ride automatically increased the chances for the next car to be the last. 

This is the kind of thing in which my brothers and I take amusement. I suppose we figure that the majority of time we spend in amusement parks is waiting in lines, so why not generate some entertainment while languishing in the queue? 

These memories came flooding back as I read the account of a fourteen year old kid who fell off a ride in Orlando. And died. The most crass response to this news would be to suggest that the odds caught up to young Tyre Sampson. He paid for his ticket and took a ride on an instrument of gravity enhancement called "Freefall." An artsy enough appellation for a machine that could just as easily be called "Plummet to your death," but the lines might not be as long. Investigations into accidents like this are always a bit of a mixed bag, since part of the interaction is putting your mortal existence on the line with the hope that all those bars and harnesses will keep something truly awful from happening. The most dire consequence witnessed by those on and around the contraption is one of regurgitation of churros. A hose can generally take care of those messes. No need for paramedics. 

Zooming out just a little from this tragedy, it might be important to mention that this accident occurred at ICON Park, eight miles away from one of the Happiest Places On Earth, Disneyworld. My son likes to repeat an urban legend about the Disney lands, insisting that no one has ever been pronounced dead within the gates of the Magic Kingdom(s). This makes a great story, since the spin is that Disney folks take great pains to move the corpses to a location just beyond park property to certify the demise of their visitors. While this may be the case in some situations, there are still plenty of stories about how all those hydraulics and large chunks of metal can go astray. Considering the time, money and care invested in guest safety, it is in their best interest to keep the body count low. 

Of course, once you slide down the scale a little to the second or third tier venues like ICON, my guess is that some of those precautions might get a little more lax, and the time between trainings and inspections stretched to something a little more on par with their bottom line. Which brings me to the scariest bit of banter my brothers and I used to exchange: waiting for our turn for a ride at one of those parking lot carnivals that used to pop up just ahead of the state inspectors in K-Mart parking lots. Some of the operators of these external stimulators had a few more teeth than they had fingers, but always seemed to be missing a few, instilling patrons with nothing more than terror. Because any ride you can walk away from is a fun one, right?