There is one sound in this world that immediately causes my stomach to drop to the floor, my mouth to go dry and my heart to start pounding. It is distinct and terrifying, a sound that both draws me in and makes me want to run away screaming. It is the snap snap popping sound of a roller coaster car crawling up the lift hill towards its first inevitable and dizzying drop.
Roller coasters petrify me. I have a recurring dream of falling from the sky in an endless sickening descent that feels exactly like that first weightless plunge on a roller coaster. I hate the inability to catch my breath during a roller coaster's fall and the way my body lifts slightly out of the seat no matter how tightly I strap myself in (roller coaster enthusiasts call this "air time" and seek it out avidly. I personally call it "vomitrocious" and will go very far out of my way to avoid it.) Every time I ride a roller coaster I'm paralyzed by the irrational fear that whatever is holding me in will suddenly pop open just as the car drops from that first dreadful height and for just a second I'll float miraculously in mid-air, Wiley Coyote-like, knowing all the while that I will momentarily drop to a bone crushing death. It's good melodrama and as a phobia it's kept me off of any number of thrill rides in my years.
It wasn't always this way, though. The first real roller coaster I can remember going on, at about age nine, was called Willard's Whizzer. I don't understand how that name got approved for a family theme park either, kids, so let's keep moving. I guess it was tame as far as coasters go, full of sharp turns and lots of speed, but no serious drops of the gut wrenching kind that came in later years. I loved it. I gave myself over fully to the unpredictable twists and mounting pace of the thing, feeling as close to flying as I ever expected to come. Handing over control in exchange for this sense of tumbling excitement was a good trade. If grown-up roller coasters were this much fun, I couldn't wait to go on the next big one that they were installing at our local amusement park, Marriott's Great America (now Paramount's Great America).
That next coaster in my repertoire was called The Demon and it aged me. The Demon was a serious revamp of an older coaster called Turn of the Century, which I hadn't been tall enough to ride in its heyday. With its multiple loops, black and red steel construction and tunnel filled with steam, The Demon was a siren's song to a kid newly enamored of speed and thrills. I begged to ride it, anticipating the wild reckless fun of the Whizzer. What I got instead was my stomach in my throat and my head swimming with panic. I'd never experienced a drop like The Demon's before (90 feet at 54 degrees) and, choking back tears upon my exit from the ride, I never wanted to experience it again. Like an idiot, over the years I have chanced the Demon a few more times, each time with no more success than the first.
The Demon ruined me for steel coasters and while I understand that today there are coasters far more evil in their premiere drops than The Demon, the sure knowledge that I can't hack a now out-of-date coaster prevents me from trying many others. But of course there are wooden roller coasters right? Perhaps a wooden coaster, which given it's construction has no loops, could be up my alley. Or perhaps not. It was in Florida, on my first wooden coaster, that I came to understand that what I loathe about roller coasters is not the loops but the air time I mentioned before - that part of the ride when you're not really on the ride, but sort of floating around in your seat. Accompaniments to air time include that horrible floating stomach sensation behind your navel and the inability to catch your breath.
I didn't know any of this when I boarded The Roaring Tiger at the now-vanished Circus World in Florida. This white wooden monstrosity had a drop of 92 feet, which was comparable to The Demon's 90-foot fall, but the terror of the Tiger was only just beginning with the drop. What I didn't know then but know all too well now is that at least a steel coaster stays still. A wooden coaster shakes and shimmies as though it may well fall apart at any moment under the tremendous force of your trip. I had never been so frightened in all my life and I exited the ride shaking and horror-struck. It took years after the Tiger for me to even approach another roller coaster.
Although Circus World closed its doors in the mid-eighties, The Roaring Tiger lives on to this day. The coaster was moved to Magic Springs Park in Arkansas. Did you know they could do that? Just pick up an entire roller coaster and move it to another state? I didn't know that. I'm not actually sure I want to know that. I can't say I'd feel particularly comfortable riding a creaky wooden roller coaster that I knew had been moved from central Florida to Arkansas. If anyone reading this has ridden what they're now calling the "Arkansas Twister" please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of it, because I'll never ride it. For one, I know it's sordid past as the most traumatic roller coaster I've ever ridden and two... well, I'm not planning any trips to Arkansas in the foreseeable future.
My renaissance of coaster riding occurred during my first summer of college. Eggman and her boyfriend and I got cheap season passes to Great America, for some reason I'll never fully understand. I hated roller coasters and Great America is full to bursting with them so why I thought a season pass to the park was a good deal is beyond me. I think maybe Eggman's boyfriend worked there or something, but I honestly can't remember. In any case, we hung out down there a lot, and proximity led me to tentatively begin riding the coasters again. Although never The Demon. I learned to trust wooden coasters a little bit by riding The Grizzly. This is a relatively tame ride by anyone's standards, but since I'm not looking to get sick it worked out well for me. I once rode The Grizzly six times in a row on a slow summer evening. It got boring after a while.
It wasn't until I was in another country that I found a roller coaster I could love. Predictably, it was a Disney ride.
Now before you raise your voice in a collective howl of disgust, let me just say that I understand your trepidation. The classic heavily themed Disney coasters are not for thrill seekers. In fact, I would argue that the Disney mountain range - Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain and The Matterhorn - aren't really even roller coasters at all. Disney itself admits this. They're "roller coaster type rides". This is like comparing Cheeze Whiz to unpasturized Roquefort. Cheeze Whiz is a processed cheese food and Big Thunder Mountain is a roller coaster type ride. Both are good for the purposes for which they were conceived. But you wouldn't put Roquefort on Chicken-in-a-Biscuit crackers - though college students thrive on crackers and Cheeze Whiz. Likewise anyone from a 7 year old to a 70 year old can get with the Big Thunder Mountain program. Each is made for the masses and they work out quite well that way.
But the French have mastered cheese and likewise have a marvel of a roller coaster on their hands at Disneyland Paris. Their version of Space Mountain is called De La Terre à la Lune and it is, in my opinion, the best attraction I've ever ridden anywhere, bar none. And I'm not just saying that because it's Disney, because I frankly think that the entire Disney's California Adventure park sucks wazoo and I'll tell anybody that. Anyway, as far as De La Terre goes, it brings the heavy theming for which Disney is so well known into play extraordinarily well with a Jules Verne focus that fits well with the look and feel of Disneyland Paris' "the future that never was" Tomorrowland. But it's the ride itself that is a perfect standout from the entire Disney attraction canon with which you're familiar. De La Terre was a pioneer in the use of the catapult launch system, which obviates the need for that first horrendous drop. All your speed is gained through a single tremendous upward rush, like the takeoff of a rocket, and then you're flying through the darkness, twirling, falling in the most marvelous uncontrolled way through space. This is Disney's fastest ride and also its only attraction with inversions. I lost count of how many times I rode it.
The pure speed and raucous joy of De La Terre à la Lune was Willard's Whizzer redux and brought me full circle, back to an understanding of why I keep trying coasters even against my better judgment. True, I hate the sick feeling in my gut and the outright terror that the sound of the chain beneath my car provokes in me. But every time I get in line I consider that the payoff may just be one of those rides that are worth the sweaty fear, that let me fly and laugh and let go, bringing me back to the eager trust of eight years old. I would ride a hundred Demons for that feeling just one more time.
- KNP July 13, 2003
