A Boys View of Playland :: Amusement Parks Essays

A Boys View of PlaylandMost everyone screws an amusement park. Whether we delight in being jolted and swung by some wild ride, or enjoy the quieter pleasure of munching a candy apple while the younger ones scab their way round and round, we feel a natural attraction for much(prenominal) a place. But none that I have seen as an adult, from Disneyland to hexad Flags, measures up to my boyhood memories of Whitneys Playland at the Beach in San Francisco. Playland was wonderful because of the rides, the exhibits, and most of all, the people.Obviously, elicit rides are a boys first love in an amusement park, and Playland offered to the highest degree more stimulation than I could stand. The Fun House featured a giant rolling barrel to run and tumble through, a large flat wheel that flung riders into the wall, and a hardwood slide about four stories high. set about the Fun House was the Diving Bell, a converted Navy have cylinder that descended thirty f eet into a shark-filled tank of seawater and exploded lynchpin up again, creating a miniature typhoon every five minutes or so. But nothing matched the Ride in the Clouds, a scarlet roll coaster whose roar and clatter were audible a block away, even everyplace the pounding of the surf. Walter Sparks and I had to work up our courage a enormous time before we dared ride that one. Finally, though, we found ourselves in the second duet of seats from the front, rumbling up past the sign that said repulse AT YOUR OWN RISK, and watching the panorama of sky and sea. Then the coaster tilted over into a heart-stopping dive, plunging down, down, until we had knifed underground into a roaring tunnel that blasted us skyward again. The next peak offered almost as estimable a view as the first, if only our eyes had been open. When the ride was over we stepped shakily out, grateful to be alive and ready to brag in school on Monday.Quieter, but no less interesting, were Playlands exhi bits. A pet was the Crime Does Not Pay building, which contained grisly artifacts from mans brutal past. I would levitate in the gloomy halls of