Thrill-Ride Terror, Not All of It Imaginary
six-minute video clip, taken with a hand-held digital camera, features exploding fireballs and a prosthetic great white shark that meets an untimely end, electrocuted by “high-voltage” cables. In the past seven years, it has been viewed more than 160 million times.
The video is of “Jaws: The Ride,” at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, which was based on the 1975 film. The ride closed in 2012.
“This was better than the actual movie,” one commenter wrote.
Thrills and fantastical immersions lure adventure seekers to theme parks. But there is a different explanation for why some attractions have people riding over and over, even if only by watching a video: nostalgia.
“People have positive associations of when they first went to a park as a kid,” Jason Sheridan, a host of “Podcast: The Ride,” which chronicles amusement park attractions, told The Times. “They think, ‘Oh, this stuff will be there forever.’ So when Disney re-themes a ride, they feel a little melancholy.”
That nostalgia has driven the popularity of the unusual genre of “last ride” videos, like the “Jaws” clip, which allow viewers to virtually ride through attractions that shuttered their doors long ago.
But some rides resist retirement. At California’s Disneyland, the Haunted Mansion has endured for five decades, its slow-moving “doom-buggies” moving visitors past ghostly illusions and into an upbeat graveyard party.
One Haunted Mansion superfan, R.J. Crowther Jr., a bookseller in San Diego, has ridden the attraction more than 200 times, earning a certificate that declares him an honorary citizen of the park.
“When you’re younger, it’s just all real and magical,” Mr. Crowther told The Times. “There’s just something wonderfully otherworldly about it that just captures people’s imaginations.”
The combination of fun and fright has resonated deeply with park guests.
“I think the Mansion taps into our wanting to be scared and realizing that we made it through safely, that we were able to overcome our fears and deal with them and come out O.K.,” said Alan Coats, the son one of the ride’s original designers, Claude Coats.
At Action Park in Vernon, New
Jersey, visitors also once lined up to overcome their fears. But there, coming out O.K. was not guaranteed. Broken bones, concussions and chipped teeth were just a few of the souvenirs visitors regularly took home.
“People were bleeding all over the place,” Susie McKeown, who remembers going to Action Park more than 30 years ago, told The Times.
At least 14 broken bones and 26 head injuries were reported in 1984 and 1985, and six deaths — including a drowning and an electrocution — occurred between 1978 and 1996. Action Park once bought the town new ambulances to handle trips to hospitals.
“America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park,” as it was sometimes called, has long been closed, but nostalgia for it still runs deep. An upcoming documentary will look at the park’s legacy.
“A lot of people look back fondly on it as a coming-of-age experience,” said Seth Porges, one of the documentary’s creators. “How do you reconcile the fun of it with the human toll?”
Some still romanticize the park as “the most fun place in the world,” Mr. Porges said. But perhaps some attractions are best left in our memories, or on our screens.
“They say there are too many rules now, too much regulation, stuff used to be fun,” Mr. Porges said. “Yeah, stuff used to be fun — if you survived.”
Nostalgia for some defunct attractions plays out in videos.