Thrill Rides

A few years ago I went to California for a friend's wedding. After the wedding, a group of us found ourselves with some time on our hands, so we went to some theme parks over the course of a couple of days.

The first park we went to was Disneyland. Disneyland does a fantastic job of creating an atmosphere around each ride. Each ride has a theme and they do a lot of work to tie everything back to that theme. While you're waiting in line for the jungle tour there's a soundtrack that plays animal noises, talking animatronic characters that increase the anticipation and even the mundane things like the handrails look like vines to fit into the ethos of the ride. Every ride has an atmoshpere and a feeling around it.

The next day we went to Six Flags: Magic Mountain. Six Flags is not great at pulling off themes. Sure, they have a couple of statues here and there and cool signs for their rides, but no soundtracks, no vine-like handrails and no talking parrots. Mostly they just have bare bones roller coasters. Steel support structures sticking out of the ground with chain link fences to keep you out of the dangerous places and metal tubing handrails to keep people in line.

But I've got to tell you, I like Six Flags better. Sure, Disney is great at creating atmosphere, sticking to a theme down to the tiniest details, but the rides themselves aren't all that great. Mostly they're just some kind of theme-related car that goes through a series of theme-related scenes. Six Flags on the other hand stinks at outward appearance, but the rides themselves are awesome. Gut-wrenching, breath-catching, stomach-dropping rollercoasters that drop, flip, spin you in multiple directions at once. Bare bones coasters that while you're heading up that first hill make you look up and wonder, "What have I gotten myself into?"

We spend a lot of time trying to make our lives look good. Trying to tie everything neatly back to the theme that we've chosen to define ourselves: soccer mom, power executive, family man, church goer. Maybe we need to strip all that back to the bare bones of steel and chain link fence. To live a life that's not simply a movement from one theme-related scene to another. To live a thrill ride life. The kind of gut-wrenching, breath-catching, stomach-dropping life that makes us look up and wonder, "What have I gotten myself into?"