I Am Not Amused

There is a special kind of place where people of all ages can go to forget about their troubles and frolic the day away amidst a cavalcade of whimsy and delight. But you can’t go to Denny’s every day, so some jerk went and invented amusement parks. 

Amusement parks, in case you’re a recently unfrozen caveman or a Fifteenth Century stable boy who’s been throttled forward in time on a wacky fish-out-of-water adventure, are lawless districts created by the American government where citizens gather in their leisure time to see if they can’t kill themselves. Best described in run-on sentences, amusement parks are hotbeds of peril where science and suicide meet. 

The word “amusement” is employed here rather deviously. I submit to you that true amusement is achieved through a tickling of the wit or a flexing of the intellect and not through the scrambling of one’s internal organs in a brightly colored twenty-foot centrifuge. A more appropriate moniker might be “horror camp” or “mutilation farm” or “death depot.”

There are more ways to die at an amusement park than there are reasons to dislike Andy Rooney. Well, almost. And we’re not just talking rides here. If the roller coaster doesn’t decapitate you (and that’s a big “if”), there’s always sun stroke, chlorine poisoning, Tetanus infection, or a chunk of fried dough lodged in your pulmonary artery.

Rides, however, remain the chief threat to your well-being. They range in unpleasantness from the Log Flume, which recreates the sensation of drowning violently in a canoe accident, to giant rollercoasters with names like “Nitro” and “Viper” which recreate the experience of dying on a giant rollercoaster.

The suffering seems to be in direct proportion to the size of the corporation funding the park. There may be more physical dangers at Six Flags, but the Disney parks are unmatched in the arena of psychological injury. Children, the primary marketing target of these attractions, enter the so-called “Magic Kingdom” to find themselves assaulted by a legion of garishly disfigured demons guaranteed to fuel nightmares from here to grad school.

When it reaches this kind of magnitude, an “amusement” park is upgraded to “theme” park status. The theme of the Disney parks is apparently “cha-ching.” According to the most recent figures, it now costs $7.85 per square inch to cast a shadow at Disneyland. It may be harder to die on the rides at Disney, but the financial ruin that awaits you upon your return home will motivate you to try harder.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Disney is the traveling carnival, which avoids the commercialization of the major theme parks and remembers why we go to parks in the first place: to be killed. And if you’re looking for a good value in ironic tragedy, I cannot recommend the carnival enough. 

The attractions at Six Flags and Disney are designed and maintained by world class engineers with multiple degrees in things like “Imagineering.” Carnival rides, on the other hand, are hastily slapped together by men and women so depraved, so wanton, so crusty, they make Andy Rooney seem tolerable (should I stop?).

Carnival folk, also known as “parolees,” add a new dimension to the thrill aspect of amusement parks. Not only are you strapped loosely into a rickety, warped roller coaster that hasn’t been cleaned or oiled since 1963, but there’s also a murderous lowlife leering and pawing at you! This is, for my money, the ultimate thrill.

Don’t feel bad if you lack the funds or parental supervision for a trip to the amusement park. You can effectively achieve the same objectives in a variety of ways inside your own home. You could, for example, hurl your body down a flight of stairs. Or, if stairs aren’t available, you can drown yourself in the bathtub. 

If a bathtub isn’t available, then I guess you could just wait for your shift at the carnival.