(no subject)

[camwyn]

Went to Jenkinson's on the Boardwalk in Point Pleasant yesterday. Rode the Dizzy Dragon ride with my nephew and actually caught him when he started spinning the car a little too hard and flung himself across the inside. Spent most of that ride keeping him focused on my hand on the wall of the car so that he wouldn't get dizzy enough to either fall over again or puke.

Only rode one other ride, the flying swing. I always love those; it's like riding my bike downhill at 25 miles an hour without having to worry about steering or seeing where I'm going. I spent most of the ride with my eyes closed, but at one point I had them open, and I caught sight of the Starship 3000 ride (aka the Gravitron). And it occurred to me that amusement park rides are largely sessile, but the ones in carnivals rather than actual parks often move around the country, and you kind of have to wonder how a crew of bored teenagers or carnies keeps them operating without more people getting hurt, and wouldn't the opportunity to test exactly how much centripetal force torture humans are willing to put themselves through before they start screaming for it to stop be the kind of thing that might lure one of the larger Decepticons away from a construction equipment alt mode and into settling down somewhere in the name of gathering intelligence...

I'm goin' to the Pit, aren't I.

Comments

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

Is the world ready for a carnival ride gestalt team?

[camwyn]

Well, it would allow for more bulk than some rides have- a lot of them are mostly arm and seating rather than solid body. Clap the Hurricane, the Roll-o-Plane, and a few others along those lines together and you have enough metal in one place to either get a reasonably bulky standard bot or one fecking huge giant robot spider.

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

How about some carousel-type things? And a Ferris wheel? Just because they're Decepticons doesn't mean that their alt-modes have to look nasty. In fact, if they don't, it'll be that much worse when the squishies realize that something has gone horribly wrong...

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

...Instead of yelling "Merge for the kill!" or something, their signal to combine would have to be "HEY RUBE!" :)

[moonlup.livejournal.com]

This image will not leave my brain now.

*pokes it*

[camwyn]

This is the ride that sparked the whole idea.

[moonlup.livejournal.com]

Yep. That's one of my favorites. The swing chair used to be one when I was little but I have now developed an irrational fear that my chair will go flying off. It makes me sad.

The real trick for a Decepticon here is finding a ride that doesn't really get so much disassembled as folded up/compacted. Unless it's more than one bot...

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

I'm ambivalent towards those. They're kinda fun, but all that centripetal force makes my eyes water (and the tears run into my ears, which feels... odd) and leaves me feeling slightly ill.

[sylveraven.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I never ride rides at a carnival is because every time I think of getting on one, I imagine the sort of stereotypical, uneducated liquored up teenagers put the thing together, and then I realise that my life hangs on the balance of a rusted screw.

I'm a bit of a pessimist, I think.

Glad you had fun, though!

[e-mily.livejournal.com]

The reason I never ride the rides at street fairs, only actual fairground rides that are there or at least only done once a year, is the sheer number of accidents that have to do with them.

My dad's a Firefighter/EMT.

Yeah.

[camwyn]

I don't remember the last time I was on a street fair ride. Might've been six or seven years ago, maybe more- I don't know. Jenkinson's is there pretty much all summer- I'm not sure when they start and stopt he season.

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

I never gave the subject of assembly much thought before, but now I'm really glad the PNE's a permanent installation where rides are not often disassembled (as far as I know).

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

Carniecons?

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Well, I've always rather wondered at what point do amusement park rides stop being "fun" and start being "torture"? For me, there's never been the fun aspect on anything but the really wussy things like the carousel; I can make myself violently ill by the simple expedient of sticking my finger down my throat and I don't much feel like paying money to be made so in public.

I think the Decepticons would be interested.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

I feel I should point out that, at least down here in the Southern U.S., those traveling carnivals have the reputation for being the best place to purchase crystal meth, because the carnies make it, use it, smuggle it, and sell it. The idea of riding a Tilt-O-Whirl operated by a methhead frightens the piss out of me, to say nothing of the personality of a Decepticon that would get along with these yahoos.

That being said, the idea of a Carniecon amuses me terribly and seems at least as logical as the soda dispenser bot from the first movie (if lacking in the extremely tacky marketing).