An unfortunate beginning

When I was five years old my mom took me out of school for a week so we could go down to Florida to stay with her best friend. During this time her friend would take us to all sorts of local attractions, including Busch Gardens, the now defunct Cypress Gardens, Circus World (also defunct), Sea World and of course Disneyland. This was the trip where my mom says we crossed some “horrible bridge” in the Tampa area, which I believe to have been the original Sunshine Skyway Bridge. I must not have found the bridge to be scary, as I don’t remember it. But I do remember well our theme park trips, especially the day we went to Disneyland. The park was much smaller in those days, and it was basically just the Magic Kingdom as the other adjacent parks did not exist yet. It was January of 1976 and the park had a brand new ride called Space Mountain. It was housed in a strange looking white building, and there was no clue as to what sort of ride it might be. Well, my mom and her friend decided they were going to ride. However, my mom began to wonder when she saw the signs warning people with certain medical problems to not ride. We probably waited a half hour or so, and finally we were able to board. Having ridden Small World and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, I was not sure what to expect here, as most everything else in the park had been pretty tame. I’ll never forget what happened next. Once we boarded the ride, the cars began heading up a fairly steep incline, complete with an ominous clanking sound. My mom and I were in the front, and her friend was behind us. I didn’t think too much of this hill, that is, until the incline leveled off at the top and we quickly disappeared into darkness. Then the terror began, a stomach dropping sensation of plunging off of a cliff into the blackest night. Sensations that my five year old body had never experienced, not even on an energetic swing set session. I thought for sure I was going to fly off into oblivion, never to be seen again. My hands were locked onto the grab bar in an instinctive death grip, and in the very dim light I could see my mom also gripping the bar. Somehow, in the maelstrom of panic I was experiencing, I also saw that my mom’s other hand was placed firmly atop her head. She was desperately trying to keep her wig in place… And then, after what seemed like an eternity of steep drops, hard turns and what I thought were several inversions, the ride was over. As the we came into the area where we would soon disembark, I was finally able to pry my stiff and aching fingers off of the grab bar. I noticed that my mom was relieved that her wig was still intact. I can’t remember her friend’s reaction as she had been seated behind us. But luckily she did not wear a wig.

From that day on, I developed an intense fear of roller coasters, especially those that went upside down (even though Space Mountain at Disneyland has no inversions – I just thought it did). Like so many scary happenings in my formative years, I was again blindsided by this one. Disneyland, the amusement park synonymous with cute, slow moving kiddie rides harbored something much more intense, hidden away in darkness within that odd looking structure. Back in those days there was no internet, no way of searching out videos of what such indoor roller coasters looked like with the lights on. For so many years, the darkness obscured something that seemed far worse than it really was. And so was born a fear that propagated itself onto every other roller coaster out there. It is unfortunate that I did not have the chance to take my first roller coaster ride on one that was outdoors, one where I could see where I was going. But that’s life – full of chosen (and un-chosen) pathways where so many obstacles are hidden away.