It’s the school holidays here in NZ and keeping the kids entertained through the slow, sweaty, summer days can be a real challenge. So as a special treat, this last weekend we took them to Rainbow’s End, a theme park in South Auckland.
They had a great time, and two out of the three of them proved to be real adrenaline junkies. For myself, overall, it was a fun day, although when broken into smaller chunks, it was more like pockets of fun interspersed with long stretches of tedium (the inescapable queues), dotted with two or three paralysing moments of sheer terror.
One of these awful moments occurred while hanging upside down at the apex of the loop on the roller coaster, where I was struck by the sudden thought that if the engineering failed and our cart came tumbling out of the sky, the inevitable result would be a battered and bloody death for everyone involved.
At the end of the ride, my daughter, smiling from ear to ear, asked me if I’d like to go again. I wiped a dribble of vomit from my lips and suggested that she spread the joy by asking her mother instead.
After completing two more circuits, my wife and daughter then recommended I finish the day with this little number, the Fearfall.
Despite still feeling slightly nauseous following my turn on the rollercoaster, I was up for it. I’ve been bungy jumping and skydiving before and I thought it couldn’t be any worse than that. The Fearfall rises 18 stories into the South-Auckland sky. I don’t know why they don’t provide a useful metric measurement for its height, but in the final few seconds of our ascent all I could think was, S#*t this is high. This was immediately followed by Oh, God, this is going to be bad.
And it was. Pants-wettingly terrifying, to be frank. In some ways, the worst part was the few seconds stopped at the top, prior to the drop, where you realise you’re well past the point of no return and have the time to contemplate how absurdly horrible the coming moment is going to be, without ever knowing exactly when that moment is going to begin.
It was just the same when I went tandem skydiving in Queenstown many years ago. The same feeling of utter helplessness that comes with being strapped to some stranger’s front, blasted by the wind screaming through the open doorway of a plane 10,000 feet in the air, with no control over what’s going to happen next.
The abject terror of the fall was the same too. Time slowed down and, too scared to scream, my stomach rose up into my throat and I thought I was going to die. Then, only a moment later… it was all over and I was on the ground again.
Despite the awful, incapacitating horror of it all I actually giggled at the operator and thanked him upon exiting. The words came out before my brain could stop them. I suppose I was happy not to be dead after all but still, it seemed so incongruous. It’s a fine line between fun and fear.
Trudging back to the car with three exhausted but exhilarated children, I felt the day was another reminder (along with grey hair and varicose veins), that I’m not as young as I used to be. These days, when it comes to being entertained, I’d rather read a book.
When was the last time you paid good money to get scared out of your skin? I’d love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments below.
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