The end of the summer is upon Hanover. I say this because yesterday I witnessed a pair of students, upon exiting class, immediately burn each other for heat. So what better time to tell everyone all about the number one highlight of my summer? So many words can be used to describe it. It was recent, yet death-defying. It was Six, yet Flags. It was amusement, yet in a park. Stumped? I am referring to my recent death-defying trip to Six Flags Amusement Park.
Now let me just start out by admitting that I am a classic sucker for advertising. You get somebody famous -- preferably a stuffed animal -- to tell me that I need something, and I'll in turn run right out and buy hundreds of stuffed animals. Such is advertising's unyielding effect on me. So it should come as no surprise that when a friend proposed that she and I take a day trip to Six Flags, in nearby Massachusetts, the conversation went roughly as follows:
Friend: "I saw on the news that someone fell out of a roller coaster and died last year at Six Flags, in nearby Massachusetts."
Me: "On television?"
Friend: "Yes."
Me: "And television has commercials?"
Friend: "Yes."
Me: "Alright, I'll go."
The bus ride down to the park took two hours, which, unbeknownst to many, is exactly the amount of time it takes for Arnold Schwarzenegger to permanently damage the hopes and lives of 28 bad guys, including Satan. The easy part being taken care of, we then attempted to gain admittance to Six Flags. We realized that this was no task for mere amateurs. It was a task for mere amateurs with over 30 dollars apiece. My friend and I, seasoned park-goers, both fit the bill quite nicely -- directly into the pocket of a man in a Six Flags uniform. After doing this over 30 times, we were finally granted permission to pass through several obstacles, including two gates, a metal detector, a pack of foaming robotic attack dogs and the Mayan afterlife, all of which led directly into funland! We had been waiting our entire lives for this. We were inside the Six Flags compound! Overjoyed, we used the restroom.
At this point, the actual number of Flags involved was negligible. Mainly because the other option was to stay in my dormitory room in Hanover, which technically has Zero to Two Flags, depending upon what you consider to be a Flag, and whether or not carpet stains count. Even so, my being a responsible citizen of decent intelligence (meaning: my hair is not styled in a mullet), led me to once again quickly discover the two fundamental principles utilized in all amusement park management: Line Waiting and Food Extortion. Of the 10 hours that my friend and I spent in the park, I would say that we stood waiting in lines for a total of, estimating conservatively, fifty million hours. The overall capacity of the park is clearly infinity. The Line Waiting was a picnic, though, compared to the Food Extortion. Not only were the prices obscenely high, but all of the food items looked as if they had actually -- in some way or other -- been extorted, possibly by the Turkish Empire.
Still in all, I did manage to spend a good portion of my day at Six Flags strapped upside-down into chairs, hurtling at warp speed, sincerely wondering if I was going to die. And this was just in the parking lot. I didn't need to go on any rides in my condition, which amounted to "scared like an infant sea otter." Now, there was a period of my childhood where I would automatically stand on my toes and jump up and down wildly, trying to prove that I met the height requirement for any single individual ride. I would have gone on them all. A roller coaster could have featured bolts popping out from all angles and terrorists riding in the front cars, and I would have harbored no reservations about boarding it (in motion). I was a possessed, drooling lunatic.
A few short years later, the rides at Six Flags are another story entirely. It is not so much my own fear that throws me off, as it is my own sheer whimpering terror. Most of the attractions have what I categorize, in my naivete, to be 'bad' names, like for instance "Ride of Death," "Amazing Death Ride Volume Four" and the ever-popular "There Is No Way That You May Legally Survive This Ride." One revolutionary new roller coaster, gloriously titled "Superman the Ride" (after everyone's favorite super hero, Unavoidable Death Ride Man) slowly but surely elevates passengers up twenty stories into the air simply to let them plunge -- this is an actual fact -- nearly straight down for TWENTY-ONE stories. And this is revolutionary? In the sense that we could undoubtedly demoralize British soldiers by subjecting them to this ride, then yes. However, might I point out that I did win a stuffed pig through cheating at a carnival game. We could also demoralize the British with stuffed pigs.
What, you ask, did I learn from this incredible summer Six Flags experience? What did I take from it? Well, I took a pig. I think I already announced this. In addition, I learned that if you add up all of the money some people are willing to exchange for the privilege of being terrified and poorly fed, the total can easily reach twenty dollars per Flag. Is it worth it? I think I speak for everyone when I say it all depends on how many stuffed animals are involved, and how many commercials they appear in.
