Word: coasters
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...seek out the fun seekers, our 50 writers, correspondents and photographers joined them, traveling across the country, stopping at Tex-Mex food stands, riding hot-air balloons and Giant Dippers and taking on the great outdoors. A roller-coaster aficionado since she rode - and rerode- one at a county fair in her native Georgia, Staff Writer B.J. Phillips last week crisscrossed the country from New York to California, visiting six amusement parks in search of the ultimate ride. Her technique was simple: sit twice in the front car for the view, twice in the rear car for the speed...
There are as many families waiting in line for the world's longest, highest, fastest, scariest roller-coaster ride (just about every park claims the ultimate) as there are for the elephant ride or the multimedia screen show or the placid monorail to nowhere. City children will spend hours playing with small animals; other young visitors may take a dozen consecutive gut-wrenching rides or spend rapt hours trailing wandering minstrels. Many TV-age adults see live shows and big-name concerts for the first time-and possibly the last, until their return to a theme park. Notes California...
...great rushing, rhythmic, onomatopoeic piece of machinery, the roller coaster distills our emotions and describes our physical boundaries. The achingly slow climb to the top, the high-speed plunge to the bottom; a moment of weightlessness at the crest; an instant of contorting heaviness from the G force in the valley; terrified anticipation when it begins, and grateful relief...
...quite certain why careening through turns and careering down heart-stopping hills hold such a strong attraction for otherwise sane human beings. Some psychologists have suggested that riding a roller coaster is a form of rebellion against smother love and all its safety, a final plunge to freedom from childhood dependency. Others theorize latent death wishes or the need to act out and exorcise fears. For some, the motivation is simpler. Two years after he crossed the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh took a spin on the Coney Island Cyclone, one of the oldest roller coasters still in operation (it is celebrating...
Each of the wooden coasters has a distinct personality. The Texas Cyclone at Houston's Astroworld is patterned on the Coney Island Cyclone. "It's just a little bigger and a little faster- Texas style," says a proud park official. But it retains the original Cyclone's sheer drops: the first of them, a devastating 53° plunge, bottoms out 92 ft. below the crest. Riders have lost wigs and false teeth in the 60-m.p.h. near freefall. St. Louis' Six Flags boasts the Screamin' Eagle; No. 1 in the Guinness Book of World Records...