Innovating Thrill Rides

..."We are at the limit—I'm absolutely sure of this", says Walter Stengel, who has designed more of the world's rides than most. "We know the limits for the human body".
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If our thrill-seeking bodies can really take no more, what's going to keep dragging us back to the funfairs? Creating something new and exciting, yet safe, is going to take some careful thought. Can designers tempt us with gentler thrills, or is it time to let unruly chaos—or even the passengers themselves—take control?

Certainly a radical rethink is necessary. Some engineers, including Willem Bles, a consultant for Vekoma, a Dutch company that designs fairground rides, say they're frightened by what's allowed. For Bles, the problem with rides is apparent every time he visits a park. "Look at people's faces," he says, "they're not having fun." He believes that true innovation has been lacking for a while—that the new rides simply increase the horrors that people have to endure. "The rides are more about survival," he says.
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Roller coasters now include ever more loops, corkscrews and inversions. You can ride sitting down, standing up or upside down, you can copy aerobatic pilots' manoeuvres—but there's still only so many ways you can turn a car when it's on a track. Take the car off the track, however, and you can create a whole new set of sensations. (X roller coaster is one of "4d rides" examples which as well as playing with the three directions of linear motion—up and down, left to right, and front to back—they can now send you spinning head over heels.)

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The next step in designing rides, however, could throw predictability out the window.
It's based on the first law of having fun: lose control. And when spinning is involved, losing control is easy. This step has already been taken in the newest waltzers—tea cup rides—and it could easily be applied to the next generation of roller coasters.

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The latest waltzer cars now spin freely, driven only by the passengers' weight and the centrifugal forces created by the car's spin. It's all governed by chaos theory: perhaps not the most comforting thought when climbing aboard a ride. But they are very popular attractions. "People seem to like these chaotic rides," Stengel says.

Chaos means that the position and weight of everyone on the ride can influence just how good—or bad—your experience is. So you'll never have exactly the same ride twice. In fact, it is so sensitive that even the state of its bearings can influence the ride.

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Stengel feels that flinging people around in ever more chaotic machines is no longer the way forward. Bles agrees enthusiastically—and has a radical solution in mind. In amusement parks of the future, he'll be thrilling you gently.

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The pilots' enjoyment of the spinning machines seems to come from surprises. "It's often connected to the unexpected," Bles says. Tilt the head while spinning with the eyes closed, for example, and suddenly, an intense tumbling sensation called the Coriolis illusion comes into play. "People find it fascinating," says Bles, "a very nice and unexpected sensation of movement.

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Stengel believes the sequence of accelerations, not their size, is what makes a good ride. "Changing a small acceleration is more interesting than always being on the limit that a passenger can take," he says. A roll that includes a change of acceleration from small negative g—a feeling of weightlessness—to a small positive g—a slight crushing sensation—has an extraordinary effect on people, for instance. "They have no idea where they are or what direction they're moving in," he says.

Newscientist From issue 2288 of New Scientist magazine, 28 April 2001, page 32