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      Everyone likes a good read from time to time, or even all the time. That's why our team of writers is constantly at work putting their opinions and insights into words, and this is the place to find their work: the Editorials & Articles section! We write about anything and everything, from the implications of the latest topics of news around the amusement industry, to the timeless topics of interest, to just plain satire. If you can think of a topic you would love to see in the form of an article, chances are you'll be seeing it in the future!

A Profile of Ride Enthusiasts
A Profile of Ride Enthusiasts / By: Devin Olson, Tuesday, January 27, 2004 -
When you're so absorbed in it all, discussing the specifics of this park's newly-announced steel coaster and speculating on the next move for that ride manufacturer, you might forget the underlying reason behind everything. But when an outsider asks you the simple question, "why do you like rides so much?" it can really get you thinking for a minute about what got you into it all, and why you do it. Indeed, there is no general answer to that question that can speak for the world of ride enthusiasts as a whole, so just like you have completely different types of rides with different layouts, you have different types of ride lovers with different reasons behind their hobby.

First, you have the stereotype that any psychologist who won't take "I do it because it's fun" for an answer would tell you is the profile of all ride enthusiasts. That is, the kind of individual that lives to be scared, and rides thrillrides to be scared, all because, they say, that it's a "primal instinct" to want to experience fear, with a few other scientific and medical terms thrown in there somewhere. They might even say that fear is a positive thing, because it exercises your internal organs. The type of person that views a ride as 'the worse, the better.' Basically, someone who likes to feel that if you can survive a 400-foot drop on a rollercoaster, you can survive anything else.

Next, you have the 'thoroughly obsessed' ones that ride just for the heck of riding and don't mind it either. The kind that might find a coaster that they love on vacation, move halfway across the country just to live near it, and count up their rides each year until they reach 2,000. Or they might make up their mind to ride every coaster in the nation, no exceptions, or travel the world riding the best of the best. The type who wants a reputation in the coaster world, and is going to get it one way or another. A goal of theirs might be to set a new riding record and grab a nice spot in the Guinness Book of World Records, and get a nice segment for themselves in a Discovery Channel coaster special giving a play-by-play on their favorite coaster while they're at it.

Then you have people that will just do it for fun, and might not care how many rides they go on, or even keep track of which ones they've ridden. They don't care who designed that ride, how long this track is, or what kind of inversion that is; they just purely enjoy the riding aspect, and might not necessarily have a solid opinion on why they do either, other than pure fun. They may have grown up visiting the local amusement park to ride all of the major coasters and took away fond memories, making thrillrides a little part of them their whole life.

You have some who enjoy the mechanical, technical, and design aspects of a ride more than they might actually like riding. The same kind of person that might be interested in skyscrapers and airplanes. Indeed, rollercoasters and other thrillrides are something to be fascinated with from even outside of the riding perspective, when you have rides today towering over entire city skylines and coasters that can launch you off with hydraulics to 120 miles an hour in a matter of seconds. You might find yourself online looking at technical drawings for the latest coasters, or following the construction process for an upcoming ride, but wouldn't necessarily ride more than one coaster at a major theme park.

Then there's the type that do it all for escapism, and as a form of entertainment, who like being absorbed into the experience and love a good storyline behind a ride as well. The kind who loves a good week-long vacation to Disney or Universal Studios or a weekend at the regional park to get away from all of the pressures of life and to do something completely away from the ordinary, and be taken to another world. It might be all about the surprise factor, or they may do it because a white water rafting trip or bungee jumping is out of the question, and they enjoy doing something safely that would put you in potential danger in any other circumstances.

Last but not least, you have ones like myself who love the speed, love the height, and love the airtime, along with every design aspect there is to a ride. Where else can you blast off and watch the world fly by at well over 100 miles an hour, then rocket straight up into the sky with the wind in your face? Where else can you literally fly like Superman, swooping within feet of the ground and then looping through the sky? It's not about fear at all, in fact, you're never more relaxed than when you're riding a rollercoaster or other thrillride. You love the fact that you can do just about anything that can be dreamed up, and be perfectly safe in reality. And it's not just about riding, because the major coasters themselves are larger-than-life art forms that you could just stand staring at, more impressive than anything else thought up by man. Beautiful, brightly-colored twisted tracks and structures standing hundreds of feet high, or wooden structures blending in perfectly with natural settings; all with ingenious concepts or themes to go along with them.

In the end, there's no way to summarize why we like them: we just do, all for our own individual reasons, and there is no single profile of a ride enthusiast. You might ride them for the escapism, you might be obsessed with them just for their uniqueness, or maybe you just ride them for fun. No matter what your reasons for riding them or what sparked your interest, you enjoy them, and that, in the end, is what matters.