A cool breeze goes by my shoulder as my sister Alexis and I jump up in excitement when our mom Catherine told us we get to go to Six Flags Amusement Park. Thrilling rides can be many different things, both positive and negative.

The last time I went to Six Flags was when I was six-years old, even though my mom thought I was too young.  My family announced we were leaving right away. We hopped in the car and drove twenty minutes. Soon we came across a giant sign that read, “Six Flags, One Mile.” My family and I all jumped out of our seats in excitement as a giant roller coaster and a bunch of food stands were visible from the freeway.

Our car pulled into the parking lot. We leaped out of the car. As we did, we heard screams coming from the roller coasters. We entered and approached the first roller coster called The Destruction. It had a couple loopty-loops and it’s maximum speed was 40 miles per hour! We got into our cart and buckled in tight. The cart in front of us had a toddler throwing Cheerio crumbs! The rollercoaster started as we went up a hill the went straight down into a loopty loop. “Wooo hooo!” we all screamed. Two minutes later the rollercoaster ended and we unbuckled and ran for the exit. This was an example of people constantly having fun and being excited to experience thrilling rides.

On evening I saw on the news that someone at Six Flags had a broken seatbelt during the ride. He fell and broke his arm. This kid and his parents are suing Six Flags.  Thrilling rides can be many different things. I looked up injury statistics on my mom’s computer. I read about examples of disasters at a couple different amusement parks. Two people in Ohio were hurt in late July after a cable snapped and hit the passengers on a ride. 24 people were stuck for hours atop a roller coaster at Six Flags America in Maryland when the ride stopped 75 feet above the ground bag. Wow!  That’s suprising. And then I read on. “People are more likely to get sick or hurt on older rides than on newer ones. And about 1 in 8 accident reports, as they are called, are about riders who were hurt while getting on or off.”

The Los Angeles Times analyzed of six years worth of injury data from 57 theme parks across Southern California. In all, the newspaper looked at 2,089 injury reports. Now I get why some people might think that thrilling rides are dangerous and that you shoudn’t go on them. First of all, old ones are more dangerous than new ones. Also, many people get hurt going on and off them. Lastly, a huge number of people have been injured in theme parks bewtween 2007-2012. As for me, I dislike most roller coasters and yet I like other thrilling rides.   

This made me come to realize that some people think thrilling rides are fun and amusing when others think they are dangerous. This also made me have mixed emotions if the thrilling rides I like, are safe or dangerous. Like one time I went to a fair and went on a ride called The Gravitron that lifts you up and goes really fast and I thought it was really fun. With a perspective, I’m Johnny.