Blind Idiot God

Defeated Sanity - Naraka

Lecherous Nocturne - Edict of Worms

Hooded Menace - Summoned into Euphoric Madness

Accept - Hellfire

Roughly the same distance from both SFNE and Canobie, both of which are around ninety minutes from me.

Death Grips - Beware

Revocation - Cradle Robber

Revocation - Archfiend

Coffins - The Unhallowed Tide

Nah, cats are just dicks.

Faith No More - The Morning After

Fleshgod Apocalypse - Sophistic Demise

Beyond Terror Beyond Grace - Dusk

In no particular order: Immolation Killing Joke Suffocation Faith No More Vektor Origin Alice in Chains Type O Negative Cattle Decapitation Om

Decrepit Birth - Reflection of Emotions

I think the issue at hand here is that the guests sound truly, astoundingly, monumentally stupid.

I think the main theme we're seeing here is "people are stupid, irresponsible, completely unwilling to accept fault, always looking for a cultural bogeyman, and always looking for material that supports their opinions of said cultural bogeyman". News outlets are going to speak of coasters as poorly-designed, horrendously unsafe suicide machines and parks as amoral life-jugglers who place profits over safety and who are hell-bent on making sure it stays that way because people expect that kind of portrayal and aren't inclined to question it, and anything from a news outlet that runs contrary to their uninformed, benighted subject views is probably going to anger them because people don't take kindly to stuff that does not line up with how they currently feel on the subject. It makes them feel stupid, and people tend to equate that with biting the hand that feeds because hey, they're loyal readers and CAN YOU BELIEVE THE NERVE OF THESE ASSHOLES SAYING SOMETHING THAT DIFFERS FROM MY OH-SO-DEEPLY-HELD CONVICTIONS THIS IS INEXCUSABLE GODDAMMIT I'M CANCELLING MY SUBSCRIPTION RIGHT NOW. Really, though, you can replace "coasters" with any common cultural scapegoat. This is hardly a major revelation.

Mostly because it's the issues surrounding guests who are not able to safely ride due to physical limitations and should not be allowed on but who are allowed on anyways for various reasons, mostly employee error/apathy or fear of discrimination suits and bad PR if they have to do the "walk of shame".

Probably the time on Bizarro where I had a pair of drunk teenaged girls shrieking in my ear the entire goddamn ride (yes, including on the lifthill), one of whom eventually threw up and (mostly) missed me. I have never wanted to strangle someone more in my entire life. Oh, and they were ASTOUNDINGLY loud. Like, seriously, I don't know how they didn't destroy their vocal chords.

Just because there's a sign stating that guests of larger proportions may not be able to ride doesn't mean that the employees will actually follow it or that a particularly angry walk-of-shame subject won't lawyer up anyways, and the language used IS vague enough that someone probably could argue over it in court without the case getting thrown into the trash. And yes, weight is often from lifestyle choices, but there are plenty of other less choice-based causes as well (hereditary conditions, medication side-effects, certain diseases, lack of affordable/available healthy food within an area, complications from forced sedentary activity due to injury recovery, etc.), and while I am absolutely against fat shaming, I'm also against the ridiculous senses of entitlement and the "everything that cannot readily accommodate me is sizeist thin-privilege anti-fat bigotry" (no, I'm not stereotyping, there really are people like this out there, and I've met a depressing amount of them) mentality that fat activists and some of the angrier overweight individuals out there tend to have. Sure, our culture definitely discriminates against overweight individuals, but do you think that being a loudmouthed, abrasive, obnoxiously confrontational jackass is going to help your cause any?

This has been Markey's baby for a while now. I want to say he has been pushing for this for at least the last decade. It's never gotten anywhere before, and I don't expect it to be different this time. Yeah, Markey's been at this for a LONG time. I don't think anyone actually takes him seriously or views him as anything other than a windmill-chaser as far as the issue is concerned.

I mean, "too overweight to safely fit" was what I was leaning towards as the root cause, and while she shouldn't have been allowed to ride in the first place, I can understand the reasons why she was let on anyways, the main one being that it'd be a PR nightmare. I can see it now: "Woman Told That She Was Too Fat To Ride Rollercoaster". Bam. Uninformed public outcry and the wrath of a million fat advocacy groups bearing down on the park and company, along with the very high likelihood of a discrimination suit. Now, I'm not going to get into a debate about our legal system thanks to the reasons that it is the way it is being a jumbled, convoluted mess, but parks, like any other business, think with their wallets, and for better or for worse, they're weighing out the low possibility of what happened happening versus the high possibility of the scenario I described happening, and they're going to go with the less risky of the two.

Markey for President! (seriously, only kidding, he might mandate body armor anytime you leave your house!) No, because remember to him ONLY Roller Coasters are dangerous. Nothing else...just thrill rides! He probably wouldn't even require that we wear seat belts in cars! So, based on his comments, he's for increased oversight of amusement parks, but less oversight of baby strollers. What does he have against babies? on HLN After Dark I was wondering why they were comparing rollercoaster safety to stroller safety. Isn't it clear that folding strollers with many moving parts are kinda dangerous since the occupant is a infant or toddler. Who's also more then likely not able to climb out in case of some horrible accident, such as strollers that have rolled off subway and train platforms. Clearly there should be more oversight to that then a rollercoaster that's designed by professionals. With the way strollers have progressed at some point they are going to be able to collapse in so far they'll produce a black hole. Hey, I'm all for that if it keeps the soccer moms from throwing their empty Starbucks cups and Luna Bar wrappers all over the place.

The SFNE one seems to be weird in terms of how much it roughs you up. There are some times where it's just a little shaky, and then there are those times where it feels like you just got jumped by a bunch of angry dudes and beaten senseless. The latter hasn't happened for years, however, as I'm tall enough to have the head portion rest firmly on my shoulders and below my actual head.

Oh, hey, sup Markey. Chasin' dem windmills again, huh?