5 Amusement Park Rides Too Metal For The United States
Amusement park rides, by definition, are thrilling things. Rollercoasters, bungee seats, tilt-a-whirls -- you might scoff at the spinning teacups, but even those suckers are hardcore to their intended audience: three-year-olds and sissies. It takes a lot to stand out as especially insane in the field of 'elaborate devices that are supposed to almost kill you.' But it can be done: Most amusement park rides are made of metal, but some rides are just, well, more metal than others ...
Formula Rossa Literally Launches You Like A Fighter Jet
Where: Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Ferrari World aims to give the public a taste of what it's like to drive a car worth more than their miserable lives. Such was the dream behind Formula Rossa: At first glance, it looks like nothing more than a Formula One-themed rollercoaster:
Pretty formulaic, we'd say.
But as literally every Tinder profile can attest, looks can be deceiving. Formula Rossa employs the same technology that aircraft carriers use to fling fighter jets skyward, and all it has to fling is your drunk ass back through time. It is, quite simply, the fastest roller coaster in the world. As a point of comparison, Test Track -- the fastest ride at Walt Disney World -- hits a top speed of 65 miles per hour. Formula Rossa accelerates riders up to 149 miles per hour in just 4.9 seconds.
It's so fast that riders are required to wear protective goggles, because a fly to the eye at that speed would basically explode your ocular cavity. Here's what it looks like to go from zero to soiled in less than five seconds:
Right after, it escapes Earth's gravity.
To get the full effect, let's flip the camera around to see what the front-row experiences:
They're wearing special underwear to prevent scrotal whiplash.
Check out the guy on the right. Observe the way the skin of his face doesn't so much flatten as it does change states of matter. A few seconds in and his cheeks become a liquid. Soon after, his forehead becomes a gas.
Pyongyang Has Its Own Amusement Park! It Will Kill You!
Where: Mangyongdae Funfair, Pyongyang, North Korea
That looks like a pretty standard rollercoaster, right? Wrong: This one, located in North Korea, was designed by Kim Il-sung himself. Despite what the propaganda surely says, the man was not a professional rollercoaster designer (and while we're at it, he also probably didn't win a fistfight with the moon). The ride is, appropriately, nicknamed "The Pyongyang Roller Coaster Of Death." Why? Well just take a good, long gander at this close-up of the track:
Rust. AKA "Pyongyang brown gold."
Now, having seen the ... shall we say, less than ideal conditions of the tracks, watch this video of some folks riding it ... while frantically pointing out that their safety restraints don't work:
One Vice correspondent describes his visit to the park, where he had to wait "for nearly an hour while a guy with a mallet climbed up to the top and bashed a few loose screws back into place."
The nation's screwdriver was in use, fixing the Jong-Il hot tub.
Then "the guys in charge sent a few terrified farmers on test runs like a shipment of human flour sacks."
They couldn't use actual flour, because the city had none.
Say what you want, but that's service: They'll rope in a dozen farmers for use as human crash test dummies just as a courtesy to visiting Westerners.
The Gotterflug Sky Roller Lets You Control The Ride
Where: Belantis Amusement Park, Leipzig, Germany
Gotterflug ("God's Flight") is not very fast. It's not very tall. In fact, it's not much different from Disney's Dumbo the Flying Elephant.
And carries as many riders as your mom.
The main difference: Each seat comes with handles that allow the rider to control their tilt independently. Already that sounds like an impossibility in America -- no amusement park in their right mind would give riders such a dangerous amount of autonomy. And perhaps rightfully so: Here's a guy transforming Gotterflug into a human centrifuge for two full minutes.
"Gotterflug" is German for "God, holy fuck."
If a rider has the proper appreciation for physics, or is just wildly unlucky, he can flap his way into a dead spin. No way that guy came out of this with his wits and innards intact. His liver is now where his lungs go, while his pancreas has coated the head of the guy next to him like an expensive hair gel.
You don't want to know what the next to that guy got coated with ...
Gravity Max Is Like Tipping Backwards In A Chair ... On A Skyscraper
Where: Lihpao Land, Taichung, Taiwan
Take a gander at Gravity Max: Notice how the track just sort of ... ends? It is not under construction. It's built that way on purpose, to torture you.
Also, half their profits come from collecting loose change.
The passenger car rolls straight out onto that cut-off section of track and teeters there until your butthole swallows your pants, before finally swiveling a full 90 degrees. And before you accuse those reckless Taiwanese of playing fast and loose with human life, you should know it may have been inspired by existing American technology.
"U.S.Ahhhh! U.S.Ahhhh!"
That's the X-Scream, located at the Stratosphere, nearly 900 feet above Las Vegas. But while the X-Scream tips over the edge, hangs there for a moment, and pulls back, the Gravity Max doesn't like to cocktease. Not only does it tip to a full right angle -- car pointing straight down -- but that's just the opening act for the drop itself.
This is the most reckless use of Hogwarts staircase technology ever.
The Entirely Homemade Italian Amusement Park/Sausage Stand
Where: Ai Pioppi, Battaglia, Italy
An Italian man simply known as 'Bruno' had two passions: Sausage, and amusement parks. By all accounts he makes a damn fine specimen of the former. We cannot attest to the latter.
Sadly, both involve bloodied intestines.
His entirely handmade and unregulated amusement park/restaurant, Ai Pioppi, has rides like this:
*wood splintering*
And these:
*bones splintering*
This really all just serves to highlight the cultural differences between America and Europe. Here in the United States, Disney World has to let an entire water park go to rot over such paltry safety concerns as brain-eating amoeba. In Italy, the sausage guy can slap together an ad-hoc Thunderdome and the only concern is whether or not the rusty murder-coaster has enough wine-holders.
Jeremy Herbert is a Sagittarius, attempted filmmaker and fan of loud shirts. He writes about movies with the regularity of a national holiday at Who Spilled My Popcorn?. He tweets @DDayFilms slightly more often.
For more rides that probably shouldn't exist, check out 7 Actual Theme Park Attractions Clearly Designed By Maniacs and The 6 Most Terrifying Theme Park Rides Ever Built.
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