Eco-Swing: You sit in a plastic toddler seat while a machine spins you around until your last meal goes away. It is firmly fastened to the main mechanism by a slim rusty chain that is maintained by a carny who, if he was good at anything at all, wouldn’t be a carny… These tend to break a lot but the riders tend to fly no further than the nearest deep-fryer…
ф
Log Flume: Okay, there are four of you, stacked groin to back, like bobsledders. If you are a teenage boy, the inevitable will happen in that it’s not a pencil and he is glad to see you. Ever wonder why that huge wall of water falls on you at the end? It’s the equivalent of turning a hose on a rutting dog…
ф
Haunted House: When you see that gory sordid images on the outside, you know that you are in for a terrifying ride. You get into a little cart and travel around the track for about three minutes through what is essentially a Seventh Day Adventist Halloween. If you were frightened at any time during the ride, you were probably frightened before you started that ride.
ф
Tea Cups: You are moving around a big circle with a wheel that allows you to spin the small circle of seats that you and your friend occupy. I encourage you to spin that wheel because centrifugal force keeps your friends’ vomit from landing in your lap.
ф
Free-fall: You go up on a track about sixty feet all at once and are weightless for just a second or so; then, you fall to the ground in about two seconds while your testicles find their way into your body cavity or the body cavity of the person next to you.
ф
Fireball: A sixty foot circle with a train in its inside perimeter. The train rocks back and forth until it traverses the circle… leaving riders, at some point, completely upside down. Operators of these rides have to be knowledgeable of weight distribution and speed-to-distance ratio… Which isn’t a problem because carnies are known for their extensive studies of civil engineering and the physics of dynamic bodies.
ф
Tilt-a-Whirl: The rider goes around and around and up and down until they feel like pretty girls crowd-surfing at a rave… except, when the ride is over they are still wearing their shirts…
ф
Big Roller Coasters: If you found yourself a hundred and fifty feet in the air and you could choose what type of vehicle you’d be in, I’ll bet your first choice would be “mining cart”. The people who design and build roller coasters are engineers and that scares the hell out of me because I’m an engineer and I suck at pretty much everything.
ф
Parachute Drop: A cable pulls people up very high and then drops them. Pretty much the bare minimum to be a thrill ride. Some would say it is pretty Zen… the Socratic ideal of thrill rides… when I achieve mastery of the entire planet, those people will be euthanized.
ф
Bumper Cars: The only ride that gives us control of where we go and WHAT do we DO with that control? We slam into the other riders like we’re in some vehicular adaptation of Lord of the Flies. As a species, we are lost…
Potatoes and the Promise of More Potatoes 
I only like the Ferris wheel.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It is pretty swell to have that view come over the top of the wheel and then out of sight again…
LikeLiked by 1 person
And I’m a chicken when it comes to rides
LikeLiked by 1 person
The last ride I rode was the Tilt a Whirl… and that was in the 80’s. It’s amazing how much money we’ll plunk down for the opportunity to vomit.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I guess the same logic applies to cheap bars and Arbys…
LikeLiked by 1 person
There is another danger of the tilt a whirl I know of. My brother made me laugh so hard I peed my pants. The horror in his face as we watched the pee travel along the back of the seat – towards him, away from him, towards him – well, it was classic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
He probably would’ve thought it was hilarious if you weren’t on a ride…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m too old to be into “mastery of the entire planet,” but I would like to be youthanized.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Do you also want to make the same mistakes you did when you were young?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Only if I learn from them before I get old. Other-wise, youth is wasted on the young….as Trump, or someone equally wise, once said.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Never thought of bumper cars that way. I’m never looking at the the same way again.
Well, assuming places that have them open up again anytime soon.
…And assuming I suddenly want to go to amusement parks again.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Where else can you get deep-fried butter?
LikeLiked by 1 person
You raise a fair argument.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“carnies are known for their extensive studies of civil engineering and the physics of dynamic bodies.” I should trust them more and ignore the stuff that looks like brain fluid in the cars.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s stuff is just deep-fried butter… or, if in Iowa, brain fluid…
LikeLiked by 1 person
They just aren’t the same…never could do anything in circles, but I did like roller coasters for awhile.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Did you ever see an engineer cheat on a test?
LikeLiked by 1 person
No, they cheat too?!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t, but the engineering fraternity had collected the tests from the different classes for perusal beforehand…
LikeLike
“Ever wonder why that huge wall of water falls on you at the end?”
Great mysteries solved here.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My Senior class went to six flags over Texas for our senior trip. That item is based pretty much on a real life event…
LikeLiked by 1 person
T. M. I. Also, mortifyingly funny.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Every second of my teenage years was mortifying…
LikeLike