Word: coaster
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...Roller Coaster Ride...
...hear that kind of bantering trash talk from the Universal and Disney camps. A Walt Disney World executive, alluding to the high-speed roller coasters at the center of I.O.A.'s promotion, calls them "theme rides without the theme." True enough for some rides. The Incredible Hulk Coaster is similar to slinky steel screamers in nearby Busch Gardens, though it has some jet-propulsive refinements. Another thrill ride, Dr. Doom's Fear Fall, is supposed to extract "raw human fear" from the brains of its strapped-in victims, but it's just a fresh version of the Big Shot...
Theme parks are an eternal work in progress. On a few basic ride genres (the coaster, the stunt show, the 3-D effects extravaganza, the bumpy-ride-plus-film that began with George Lucas' Star Tours), grownup kids are always looking for inventive story lines to harness to new techniques. As Woodbury says, I.O.A. is "a lot of evolution and a lot of revolution." Disney, with the Tower of Terror ride and its own 3-D smash It's Tough to Be a Bug, will surely be part of that revolution. But for now, I.O.A. is the glorious trendsetter...
...they will define themselves here, or what adventures, successes and stumbles lie ahead. But what is so refreshing about these new arrivals (and about having been one) is that they have the right to be bewildered, and they know it. So the first year is somewhat of a roller-coaster ride, in which everything you see and do is new; you try to soak up your surroundings and gain some much-needed foundation--through friends, extracurriculars and, if you're lucky, a suitable concentration--and Harvard slowly starts to feel familiar...
...mind reels. Like thousands of women my age, I'm intimately familiar with the emotional roller-coaster ride that is in-vitro fertilization. Four years ago, my husband and I were blessed with our own test-tube babies--beautiful girl twins who are equally delightful but totally different. One looks just like me; the other bears little resemblance. Are they both mine? Were my eggs placed in the right drawer? In the right Petri dish? Fertilized by the right sperm? Is someone else raising one of my children? Is ignorance bliss...