Orchestrated (Dis)orientation

Amusement parks tend to orchestrate visitors' spatial orientation, literal or metaphorical: physical, cultural, social, historical etc.
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What soon becomes apparent to the uninitiated patron of AstroWorld is that the map more often impedes than facilitates one's ability to move through the park. In effect, one might con-
clude that the park encourages the patron to move in an ambient fashion through its space, to develop individual "interpretations" of the space through the act of wandering attentively yet leisurely.
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Some coasters offer the promise of free-form movement, liberated from the spatial and temporal constraints which the patron experiences not only on the park's ground level,
but also as a rule in the structure of everyday life.
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Another way in which roller coasters organize spatial and temporal dimensions as distinct from the context of ground-level space is by structuring the riding experience as a narrative, as a series of anticipations, climaxes, and resolutions.
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the contemporary theme park is a "hybrid" space, one defined by the accumulation
and reconfiguration of seemingly disparate features which have attracted patrons to various versions of the amusement park since its inception at the beginning of the century. It is also a postmodern space, sampling fantasy structures and reclaiming history in a way that often challenges and disorients the patron who attempts any motivated movement through it.
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The roller coaster, this hybrid's most distinctive attraction, offers a diverse set of unfamiliar,
exaggerated, and impractical interpretations of time and space which might be described as ultimately still more disorienting ... coaster euphoria is certainly a celebration of instantaneity; yet this celebration depends on a temporal and spatial contextualization
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Coasters offer intricate narrative structures whose pleasures can only be derived through spatial performance, through participation in the activity of rendering spatial and temporal dimensions coherent. Ultimately, by incorporating disorientation as a crucial element in a drama of orientation, the roller-coaster phenomenon provides a means of challenging
postmodern theoretical assumptions regarding the cultural context of euphoric pleasure.

"Orchestrated (Dis)orientation: Roller Coasters, Theme Parks, and Postmodernism"
by Michael DeAngelis
Cultural Critique, No. 37. (Autumn, 1997), pp. 107-129.