The Appeal of Fake Danger in a Dangerous World
For a price, you and your family can feel safe, something that feels increasingly precarious everywhere else.
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This week I’m “enjoying?” a family trip to Busch Gardens for my older son’s spring break. After the success of last year’s trip of moms + second graders, with my friend Dr. Liz, we decided to add a new level of complexity by adding dads and younger kids, so all 10 of us (my family of 5 and her family of 5) are headed three hours north to Williamsburg, VA. 😅
As long-time readers of this newsletter know, I’m on the record about the misery of traveling with small children, and we’ve mostly avoided it for much of the twins’ lives. However, now that they are 4, out of cribs, don’t need to nap, and occasionally behave like manageable children instead of a circus of feral animals, we’re dipping our toes into the world of very simple, family-friendly travel. I’ll let you know how it goes! In the meantime, I’m resharing this newsletter I wrote (with a few edits) last year about the appeal of riding roller coasters and the cosseted environment of a theme park in our wildly tumultuous world. Enjoy!
Busch Gardens is a good choice for our family. It’s driving distance, and there are no Disney World-level logistical complexities that you need a travel agent for. In late March, the weather is mild, and the park is uncrowded on the weekdays. It’s dreamy; there are no lines! Last year, the kids could just stay on the rides they really liked and enjoy them over and over because no one was waiting.
When we visited last year, I myself hadn’t been to a real theme park or ridden on a roller coaster in probably 20 years. As a teen, I was a coaster daredevil, loving to hop on the scariest rides with loops and drops and high speeds at Six Flags over Georgia, the closest park to where I grew up. However, New York sophisticate Katherine had no interest in such philistine activities, so going to a theme park hadn’t crossed my radar in forever. I was not sure what to expect from that trip, or how my relationship with adrenaline and thrill-seeking had changed over the years, or if I’d just find the whole thing unbearably corny.
Becoming a mother made me much more sensitive to violent movies and TV shows, along with depictions of hardship or cruelty. Whatever switch flipped in my brain that sensitized me to screen violence and sadness never flipped back. As we got ready for Busch Gardens last year, I wondered if I’d discover that I’d developed an aversion to real roller coasters after so many of the metaphorical ones through political turmoil, parenting, COVID, and parenting through COVID.
Turns out theme park rides are way more fun than the things that are happening in the world we call “roller coasters.” While I avoid the biggest daredevil rides, I find it enjoyable and actually cathartic to spend 60-90 seconds strapped into a seat, zipping around a track, screaming my lungs out. It was surprisingly fun to scream as loud as I wanted with no one giving me funny looks. If something was scary, I just closed my eyes and felt full confidence it would all be over quickly, and I’d be delivered safely to the exit. While I know accidents can happen on theme park rides, riding a roller coaster at a fixed-site theme park is extremely safe, WAY safer than the car ride to get to the park.
Roller coasters are actually not a good metaphor for the adrenalizing turmoil many of us have dealt with over the years. Any way you slice it, the turbulence we face in real life isn’t fun. There’s no assurance it will be over quickly, or we’ll leave the experience unscathed. And life’s real rides are usually not by choice. The freefall feeling of panic that comes when you realize you are losing your childcare = not fun. The nauseating loops of political or police violence = not fun. The years of fearful anticipation of what will happen when you or your loved ones get COVID = not fun. Staring into a black tunnel of wondering if your children will be shot at school = not fun. The pitch-black silence when you face that you can’t get the reproductive healthcare you need = not fun.
We live in a society with virtually no safety harnesses, no 90-minute daily mechanical inspections, no backup fail safes, and very, very few places where it’s socially acceptable to scream. I’m certainly no cheerleader for major corporations, but sadly I have more faith in SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment Inc. to provide a safe environment than I do in our government. The visit last year allowed me to understand the appeal of theme parks for Americans in a new way. For a price, you can have entertainment for every age, a pedestrian-friendly environment with easy-to-read maps where children are cherished and never a burden. Your needs for strollers, bathrooms, nursing rooms, disability access, and kid-friendly food options are constantly anticipated. And most importantly, you and your family can feel safe, something that feels increasingly precarious everywhere else. You can understand why we came back again this year.
I would love to hear from you all: what’s your take on theme parks, and how have your opinions changed about them since you’ve had kids?
We had an AMAZING Double Shift member hangout earlier this month where the theme was “creativity and caregiving.” We were led in conservation by two long-time Double Shift members who are artists, and honestly, we could have talked for an hour or more, easily. We also all did a creative project together, at the suggestion of visual Ilyse Magy, where we created a “chat waterfall” poem. The prompt was: write a word or phrase into the Zoom chat box to describe your upcoming weekend, and on the count of three, we all hit send. Please enjoy our resulting poem!!
If you want in on this kind of community fun, become a member of the Double Shift, it makes what I’m doing here possible.
The Weekend
Garden toddlers, belly full of pasta Eventful birthdays Get stuff done Chill Emergent Quiet, contemplative, creative. Friends, music and Irish dancing Groundbreaking Looking forward to it Long and tricky Fuck, what’s going to happen this time? outside Low key Unpredictable programmed expensive Social obligations that will probably be fun but that I’d much rather sit out alone
Just took my rollercoaster loving girls (8&10) to a crappy Six Flags near us (out of 10 roller coasters, only THREE are running! 😒). Went on a rainy day so the crowd level was low (I could not have handled a crowd there) and we could ride the three open rides over and over.
I hadn't thought of this until your post -- I love rollercoasters too and reflecting back, I realized that I spent the whole first ride worrying how the girls were feeling. Was it too scary? Were they having fun? The roller coaster was a two seater that independently spun head over heels so even though I was facing them (they wanted to sit together), I could only catch little glimpses when we spun and faced the same direction for a second or two. And then when the ride stopped, I held my breath and tried to gauge the terror on their little faces until they released and both yelled "let's go again!"
That whole ride, I didn't allow myself to be scared of flipping through the air or enjoy any bit of it. My experience was absolutely secondary to theirs.
Metaphor for motherhood right there?
I would like to endorse these trips just with your girlfriends, too. I went with one of my best friends and among a group of about 8 to Dollywood last year and it was NONSTOP JOY. Just pure fun the type of which you assumed you left behind in your childhood. All of the ease you describe with kids, turns out adults like that too (but now it's things like, shade and well placed benches LOL). Dollywood in particular is just fab. The lines were long, yes, but we just chatted and caught up and people watched. No whiny kids! No problem! My takeaway from the weekend is that I don't play nearly enough. We need to feel safe and play, age 0-100 and beyond.